Reading between the bytes

On Friday, performances by avant-garde poet Christian Bök
and Los Angeles-based digital media artist Erik Loyer showcased
some of the latest endeavors of UCLA’s Electronic Literature
Organization at the Hammer Museum. Friday’s event, sponsored
by the ELO and the Hammer Museum, was the first in a year-long
series of events called “Beyond Hypertext: New Electronic
Poetry and Fiction.”

Since its inception at UCLA in 2001, the ELO has worked to
promote the development of electronic literature under the guidance
of the English department and Design | Media Arts.

Loyer’s presentation involved his computer-based piece
“Chroma,” a science fiction novel that blends narrative
and interaction, and blurs traditional notions about image and
text. The USC graduate and long-time computer aficionado sat at the
front of the stage hunched over his laptop, manipulating the
program with his mouse as the images were projected on a large
screen.

Bök’s performance included readings from his
avant-garde collection “Eunoia” and an excerpt from a
work-in-progress called “The Cyborg Opera.” The word
eunoia, Bök pointed out, is the shortest word in the English
language to contain all five vowels.

Much of Bök’s work is best classified as sound
poetry, a little-known form of expression that focuses more on the
expressiveness of language and its phonetic attributes as opposed
to the literal meaning of the words. As a result, Bök’s
powerful and acrobatic vocal phrasings drew equal parts
astonishment and amusement from the audience.

Both artists’ work reflects unconventional approaches to
language and communication, something absolutely necessary in
approaching the realm of digital literature. The aim of developing
such a medium is ultimately to create works of literature that
could not be reproduced without the use of a computer.

“The actual use of machines as an aid in the production of
poetry or as a kind of mechanical prosthesis to creativity really
hasn’t been fully explored,” Bök said. “I
think its potential is quite interesting but probably frightening
for many more conventional poets.”

Bök emphasizes the fact that electronic literature is still
in its embryonic stages ““ without a coherent set of theories
to inform the writing of electronic literature, much of it is still
focused on shaking off the burden of other literary
conventions.

But poets already have an idea of how computers can potentially
play a role in the creative process. Loyer’s
“Chroma” may seem like an elaborate computer game, but
the work is really focused on telling a distinct narrative subtly
colored by the user’s choices. Loyer’s first work of
this kind, “Lair of the Marrow Monkey,” was created in
1998 and is now a part of the San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art’s design collection.

Another example of the promises of electronic literature is one
posed by Bök: a poet could run text through a spell check and
allow the computer to make its own modifications to the
poet’s inputs. Or, perhaps, a programmer could allow users
online to vote for certain phrases, putting one poem through a kind
of Darwinian form of creative expression, where the voters’
aesthetic preferences ultimately decide the form of the piece.

While neither of these methods may produce actual art, they
point toward new ways of thinking about creative expression in a
digital age, and they present potential forms of art otherwise
impossible without the intervention of computers.

“It’s possible to imagine in the future that poets
may not be respected for the kinds of poems that they write, but
for the programs that they could use that write poetry,”
Bök said. “They may have to learn Perl, Quark or HTML in
order to actually participate as poets in the literary
milieu.”

Such notions inspired English graduate student Jessica Pressman
to pursue study in the field. As associate director of the ELO,
Pressman organized the Hammer series, and as a grad student she has
incorporated digital literature into her course instruction. Her
use of “Chroma” in an English 4W course last summer
drew a positive response from many students.

“The students were very comfortable with the
material,” she said.

As the first English doctoral candidate to focus on electronic
literature, Pressman’s endeavors may run into harsh
opposition from literary purists. But under the guidance of English
Professor Katherine Hayles and Design | Media Arts Chairwoman
Victoria Vesna, the ELO department is encouraging participation
from any interested students in various fields of study at
UCLA.

The ELO’s Matchmaker Initiative, one such endeavor, aims
to connect student writers, artists and programmers with each other
to collaborate and create their own kinds of electronic literature.
The best productions will be presented at the Hammer Museum at the
end of the school year as a part of the ELO’s reading
series.

“There’s more and more criticism every day as more
electronic literature is produced,” Hayles said. “But
I’m convinced that it will eventually be an important
component of every day literature.”

For more information visit www.eliterature.org.