Poets like Emily Dickinson bring to mind the image of a solo
poet, confined to her room with pen to paper, divulging her soul in
her words. But not all poets today reflect the same image.
With the opportunities of new media and electronic literature,
fiction is no longer a relationship between the author and the
reader. Today, electronic literature offers a field in which
collaboration is welcomed and essential for a piece.
Deena Larson and Geniwate, both friends and veterans in
electronic literature, will perform a piece they created together
tonight at the UCLA Hammer Museum as a part of its yearlong series
“Beyond Hypertext: New Electronic Poetry and
Fiction.”
“This is our first foray into that kind of work,”
said the series’ curator Jessica Pressman, who also serves as
associate director for UCLA’s Electronic Literature
Organization. “It leads to something important (as it results
in) a field of collaboration.”
The series, constructed as a sort of “electronic
literature 101 class” is an introduction to the medium and
the first series of its kind in Los Angeles. It is co-sponsored by
the Electronic Literature Organization, which moved to UCLA in
2001, and serves as a non-profit organization of graduate and
undergraduate students from the English and Design | Media Arts
department.
Tonight’s introduction of collaborative pieces features
two seasoned electronic literature artists. Larson is a hypertext
writer who creates online novels.
With the computer as their book, readers read the text and
choose where to go in the story by clicking on one of the
hyperlinked words. The interactive element of storytelling in
hypertext allows readers to almost create their own narrative
course.
Along with hypertext, Geniwate, who is from Australia, will
introduce the other facet of electronic literature: animation.
Animation creates a performance aspect of electronic literature.
Sounds, music, words and animation are projected on a screen, while
the author reads the piece.
A crucial aspect of electronic literature is its aesthetic
quality. These works depend not only on text but on the appearance
of their form, said Pressman. In new media, or electronic
literature, the movement of the graphic design is as important to
telling the story as the words.
The necessity of good writing and design in electronic
literature is what makes collaboration new and practical.
“You need writers, you need graphic designers, you need
programmers, you need musicians, and sometimes those don’t
all fall into one person as usually a writer does. In the field of
literature we are so used to thinking of a sole author, but that is
certainly changing, too,” Pressman said.
Collaborative literature is experimental and certainly bold in
its attempt to redefine the boundaries of literature.
“It is certainly the case that modern authorship is an
intensely individual experience,” said 20th century American
fiction Professor Mark McGurl. “Although it has been tried
before, collaboration has always been an exception. It is very rare
and has rarely been successful.”
“Even with the technology of 2004, we are still interested
in authorship as individuals and reading novels and poems as the
experience of an individual voice,” he added.
Pressman acknowledges that this medium is challenging
convention, but that may be the point.
“It changes things,” Pressman said. “It
changes how you view literature. We have a certain understanding of
what an author is, someone who bears their soul and the individual
psychological experience the reader shares there. How does that
change when you have multiple people? It’s
interesting.”