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Layered Compilation. Hayles characterizes elit as being layered while Calvino speaks of the persistence of literature as a system that conditions other systems. Birds exemplifies both of these ideas in that it is the layering of media on top of one another (which is in turn code, which is in turn 1’s and 0’s) and it is also exhibits a self conditioning feedback loop.
Rather than the flatness of regular literature which is 2 dimensional at best (the actual text and the meaning behind it [arguably vast as it may be]) elit may be multi-dimensional.
To Infinity and Beyond
Birds. Birds Singing Other Birds’ Songs by Maria Mencia is a game of sorts where the user enables any combination of 13 different ‘bird songs’ which then create a bird on the backdrop. The bird sings a song and loops until the user disables it.
The birds themselves are formed using words, the words are the phonemic representation of the sound they make, and the sound itself is reconstructed by human singers. In this way there are a multitude of dimensions to each bird. The first dimension comes from the sound the bird makes, which is then turned into a word, which subsequently forms the body of the bird forming a complete circle. The animations and sounds are toggled completely by the user, so a feedback loop is created where the user enables a sound. That sound may become cacophonous if more sounds are added until the user shuts down some sounds. The loop is complete when the user re-enables sounds.
The interaction of the user with the site is impossible outside the realm of eliterature, as are the animations. The work itself would be lifeless without the animation and the sound.
All Aflutter
Platform Virtualizations. When one operating system just isn’t enough, turn to platform virtualization. A computer’s architecture (currently the most common is Intel’s x86) is meant to handle only 1 operating system at a time, but after installing a thin client a user can install another operating system to share the physical resources of the machine. This allows one operating system to ‘host’ a ‘guest’ operating system. As a metaphor virtualization allows for an infinite number of elements within elements to exist. This is analogous to how a work of literature can be fleshed out in almost infinite detail. The recursive nature of a platform run in a platform run in a platform (etc.) is layered but within the context of the machine it is being run on. More interestingly, virtualization allows different operating systems to be run concurrently on one machine.
Starfish Regeneration. Starfish have the amazing ability (curse?) to regenerate lost rays (arms) and, in the case of a few extraordinary species, are able to regenerate the body and subsequent rays from just a single ray. This ability for a segment to expand and become the body relates closely to Calvino’s description of Multiplicity. In the most literal sense starfish are able to multiply themselves after having limbs severed and are therefore a perfect emblem for multiplicity. Metaphorically ‘dissecting’ a starfish will grant more specimen to study, and further dissecting that specimen yet again creates more material.
Multiplicity is the ability of literature to be analyzed ad infinitum. It is the detail within the detail within the detail that adds layers upon layers and thus compounds meaning. Conversely multiplicity is the ability to be singular and, while not shallow, obvious from the surface. As a plot convention multiplicity can be expressed in novels such as “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” (Italo Calvino) which begins in one story and then within that story starts a new story etc. Similarly, Shakespeare’s play “The Taming of a Shrew” is a play within a play. Multiplicity is that attribute of literature that allows for a sort of universal physics. It allows the simplest of details to connect and interconnect with myriads of disparate yet somehow related information. In this way no work is ever fully fleshed out, but on the flip side, each work stands as its own node in the massive network that is language no matter the length or depth of the piece.
Offsite Storage – Chemical Landscapes by Edward Falco (photograms by Mary Pinto, designed by Will Stauffer-Norris) is hosted entirely in the cloud. Although once it is viewed it is stored temporarily on the user’s computer, the ‘original’ copy is located on a web-server that exists outside of the singularity of the users computer. This allows the work to not only be accessed from anywhere that an internet connection is possible, but also allows for it to be loaded on multiple machines simultaneously.
Whereas print media must be mass produced, thus creating multiple hard links (destroying one book would not affect the reality of the other copies) elit can use symbolic linking to create references back to an original (but deleting the original would completely destroy any of those links). Every internet accessible work of elit moves from a simple link (which can be either a hyperlinked image or text) to another page (again, either media
Chemical Landscapes. Chemical Landscapes by Edward Falco (photograms by Mary Pinto, designed by Will Stauffer-Norris) is a work of electronic literature that begins with a ‘photogram’ that then leads the onlooker into a series of texts. These texts appear in a raw unadulterated form and a reflective lighter form. In this way the original page (simply a photogram) is an image that begets description. The photograms themselves are inspired by landscapes; they are the picture representation of a different image. The name of the work describes the process by which the work is created, but is also a description that leads to the image (a flashlight was used in a darkroom to expose certain parts of the work creating ‘chemical landscapes).
The entire work is hosted online, rather than locally on the user’s computer. As the user clicks on a portion of the home screen image a new page is delivered over the web. Each link then is symbolic in that if the material were removed from the site the link would be empty. Furthermore the links themselves summon up new pages and so lead from an image to a description in the way Calvino describes moving from an image to its description.
Biosonar Echolocation. Flying rodents, commonly referred to as ‘bats’ employ a wonderful ability that allows them so see without using their eyes. Bats can ‘see’ at night using echolocation. They emit a sound that echoes back to them after it hits a solid surface that doesn’t absorb the sound. The bats then analyze the quality of the echo to determine the size and distance of the object.
As an emblem the bat represents the ability to create an image from the abstract. Just as reading a book enables a reader to create an image from the text, so too does a bat’s interpretation of its echo enable it to create a comprehensive picture of its world.
Time Machine. No, not the book by H.G. Wells, the automatic backup process deployed on the Mac OS X Leopard operating system. Time Machine is a versatile little program that backs up your entire computer whenever you plug in an external drive designated for use with Time Machine. The application creates a carbon copy of the user’s entire hard drive copying each file, folder, preference list, hidden setting, etc. (which by proxy means that every 1 and 0 is copied as well).
Thus a Hard Drive (HD) with 99 Gb used of 160 Gb will create an initial copy on the external HD of 99 Gb. Now comes the magic. Suppose the user creates 2 files before the next back up, and suppose those files are 1Gb files each. That means that 2 Gb have been added to the total used space on the HD (101 Gb for those keeping track). Instead of copying over the entire HD onto the backup drive, Time Machine simply adds the 2 new files to the backup but also makes a fresh copy of all of the rest of the files. ‘What?!’ you may be screaming, but worry not, thanks to the wonders of multi-hard linking your external hard drive only contains 101 Gb of data. Hard linked files are not like soft (symbolic) linked files in that deleting the original file will not result in loosing that file. Whereas a soft linked file is basically a roadmap for the file, a hard linked file is a ghost like clone of the file. If there were two hard links to a file and the user deleted the first file, the hard link would still be the file (whereas deleting the file would render a soft link useless). Hard links are like the many heads of the mythical Hydra. Each head is the Hydra, but cutting one off does not fell the beast.
Confusing as all of this is it does actually tie in to Calvino in a somewhat circuitous way. Hard links are the objective truth of which Calvino speaks. They are the universal truth because each link is in reality the file. Symbolic (soft) links are the subjective truth; they rely on a file to have any validity and once that file is removed they loose meaning. Hard links are, in a sense, true no matter what; they are objectively true. Soft links are, in a sense, true dependent on the state of the file; they are subjectively true.
Visibility is the driving force behind a story. Calvino muses how an image may drive words to form itself into a reality, or how conversely words may shape an image. The imagination then is a link, but is it a symbolic link or a hard link? Does the imagination help us to know what is really there, to point us back to one original truth, or does it merely redirect us to a different thought entirely, one that is particular to our system of thoughts? Put another way, is the imagination the proof of the subjective truth, or of the objective truth?
Calvino himself struggles to pin visibility down admitting that sometimes he begins with an image and lets it carry him forwards (in a purely subjective way [that is to an image that he creates that is entirely personal and his own]) but prefers to think of imagination as a way to understand a larger, objective knowledge (not of his own understanding, but of a universal sort of trueness).
Literature then is both that which can point back to a past ‘authority or tradition’ but can also work as novum – a work that is novel to the point of forcing the reader to question authority and tradition (as used in Sci-Fi literature).
The Ties that Bind
Dawn by Reiner Strasser and Alan Sondheim is a mutli-modal poem/story that employs text, images, audio, and movement to tell a story that is larger than the sum of its parts. Cumulatively these media merge into one work where before a work would at best be able to employ an image and text. Furthermore these media combine to form a meta-media, that is that of a video, as the work resists interaction and plays on a loop as a video would. A simple non-elit text could not work on such a varied spectrum simultaneously.
As new media become part of the canon of literature the use of more than one mode of representation will refine its uses, but this particular work shows an efficacious complimentary rather than supplementary use of what Hayles calls a major characteristic of elit; elit ‘tends to be multimodal.’
Dawn by Reiner Strasser and Alan Sondheim is a mutli-modal poem/story that employs text, images, audio, and movement to tell a story that is larger than the sum of its parts. Each aspect of the story is chosen specifically to elicit a certain response. The imagery is pastoral and tranquil containing no traces of the human world with the exception of one scene where a harrowing figure stands mid turn on the banks of a river. The audio is similar in quality to ‘white noise’ rather than a busy vocal track. It has a sense of natural rhythm that is enforced by the pictures that fade in and out.
The text is sparse and entirely un-flowery, employing repetition much as the audio does. The words alone could cause a sort of kinesthetic ‘coldness’ (the story is rather chilling) but the images combined with the audio serve to take the bitterness out of the story and instead replace it with a feint glimmer of hope and rebirth. Thus a multitude of media exactly formulate a mood for the reader.
Waggle Dance. Bees forage and scout for the most appropriate nectar for the hive and communicate the location of said treasures in a remarkably calculated way. Western honeybees perform one of two dances upon returning from a successful food foray. The two dances correlate to relative distance from the hive, with ‘waggle dance’ relating to far away food, and the ‘round dance’ (a shorter version of the waggle dance) means that food is closer by. The intensity and speed of the dance stand for the quality of the pollen and nectar; faster and more frenzied means more delectable meal stuffs.
Other indicators, such as how many turns the bee takes during the dance correlate to the direction of the food.
On top of the visible dance, bees communicate through an odor system. The returning scout carries the scent of the bounty she finds and shares it with her allies. They can then piece together the correct route using the scent of the meal as well as the directions gleaned from the dance.
In this way the waggle dance correlates to exactitude in its extreme use of differing movements that create a roadmap; ‘order out of [seeming] noise (the dance).’
Dot Matrix. A dot matrix printer is fed directions from a print server or computer and then composes an image (whether pictorial, graphical, or textual) line by line. This feat is accomplished by the print head laying dots down on a single line and then moving up to the next line similar to how an old school typewriter writes one line at a time. The dots then create the image which is perceived as a single whole but is really created from hundreds or possibly thousands of precisely laid dots.
Much like a crystal which creates a final form from intricate inner workings that layer upon one another, so too does a dot matrix printer create a refined image from a collection of plotted points aligned.
A close up
Exactitude is the preciseness and thoroughness of wording that also conveys the subtleties of thought and imagination. It is the quality that can paint an entire landscape in the mind through the use of particularly chosen words and wording. It is how a story becomes a reality to the reader by arbitrary symbols on a page (text).
Calvino emblemizes exactitude as a crystal with an’ invariance of internal forms’ and vagueness as flame that has a ‘constancy of external forms in spite of relentless internal agitation.’ The crystal accomplishes beauty through the precise alignment of elements while flame becomes beauty through ‘order out of noise.’
Precise Alignment
Order out of Noice
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