Jaka -

That's a good point - it's perfectly possible to achieve three dimensional 
effects in the medium of print. A good example of this is ABC 3D by Marion 
Bataille - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnZr0wiG1Hg .

However, when you're working with text in the digital medium you can produce 
three-dimensional effects much more cheaply - basically you can do them for 
nothing, whereas Marion Bataille's book must cost quite a lot to produce, as 
there's quite a bit of engineering in it. In the digital medium you can also 
take the effects further - for example, you can allow viewers to zoom into 
your three-dimensional perspective, to the point where they get "past" the 
top layer and seem to be inside the layer-stack. Both these considerations 
mean that three-dimensional effects (and other digital text-manipulation) 
seem much more inviting and available to writers working in a digital 
environment than they do to writers working in print.

Another, more subtle, difference is the one between inscribed text and 
virtual text. The text we read from a printed page or an illuminated 
manuscript or a name-plate on a door is inscribed: the shapes of the letters 
have been physically written onto, stamped onto, or incised into a given 
surface. The shapes we see are the same shapes created by this physical 
act - allowing for the effects of blurring, corrosion and so forth, which 
might be called physical after-effects. In digital literature the process is 
entirely different, although it may often seem the same. When you type a 
page of text onto a computer you aren't physically creating the shapes of 
letters: you're compiling sequences of binary code which are tagged so that 
a piece of software can interpret them into strings of text. When you look 
at the screen of your computer and see a string of text, you're not looking 
at something which has been physically inscribed; it doesn't have a fixed 
shape; and, of course, one of the first things you learn when you start to 
use word processing software (or HTML, for that matter) is that you can 
easily change the appearance of a segment of text so that it displays as 
large, small, italic, bold, green, red, aligned right, aligned left, Arial, 
Garamond, Times New Roman or whatever you fancy. You can even code it so 
that you input one string of text and what displays is something entirely 
different. (In saying all this I think I'm probably just repeating something 
I read in an essay by Florian Cramer some years ago.)

The effect of this, again, is to make things like three-dimensional effects 
seem much more available to writers working in the digital medium - they're 
part of the fabric of digital literature; they kind of come with the 
territory; and in a postmodernist way, you may even feel obliged to use at 
least some of these effects to emphasise the fact that you're not working in 
print, and to draw attention to the nature of the digital medium.

But also, digital text always has a multilayered feel when you're working 
with it. If you're working in HTML, for example, you're always conscious 
that what appears on the screen is just the top layer: behind it is the 
"source" - HTML, CSS, javascript, image files and so forth; and behind that 
again, of course, are further layers of software and protocols going all the 
way down to binary code. I think this has a psychological effect on the way 
writers in the digital medium work. Layering always seems to be a very 
important technique - and three dimensional illusions can be seen as a form 
of this layering.

- Edward

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jaka Železnikar" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2009 6:55 PM
Subject: Re: [WDL] abcd, Slovenian songs and With the Cow the Poetry 
Started - to Jaka and all


> hi,
>
> a thought. I'm not referring directly to interesting text by J. Cayley but 
> if one of the distinguishing characteristic of
> e/digital literature from other literary form lies in unpredictability in 
> other, especially print based media we still have a
> problem. For example for my little e-poem 'abcd' I chose web page 
> (rendered by modern web standards-of-2009-aware
> browser). But I could go for a book. I would only need layered transparent 
> page and a bit of mechanical
> system small enough to be put inside a sheet of paper containing layers. 
> Instead of a mouse a reader would move a
> piece of paper - an interface for triggering a mechanism for moving 
> transparent layers with letters in a way that
> amplifies out perception of distance (objects far away move slower than 
> one in front). Or I could go for a Shadow Theatre.
>
> So I guess it's the materiality of the medium and sociology of its use 
> that play an important role in defining what e-lit is.
>
> Or am I completely off the track? And ideas on that?
>
> click, Jaka
>
>
>
> Edward Picot pravi:
>> With reference to Jaka's "ABCD", there's an interesting essay by John 
>> Cayley
>> (http://www.dichtung-digital.org/2005/2-Cayley.htm) in which he argues 
>> that
>> one of the fundamental differences between digital literature and printed
>> literature is the way that digital literature makes the "flat" page into 
>> a
>> far more complex space - for example, it can give it the 
>> three-dimensional,
>> "layered" feel which Jaka is exploring in his piece. Cayley is also
>> interested in the fact that digital pages can exploit the dimension of 
>> time
>> in ways which cannot be reproduced in print. It isn't the easiest essay 
>> to
>> read, but it's full of interesting ideas.
>>
>> I like your piece too, Regina - full of lovely design. Who's the man at 
>> the
>> beginning, and where does the cow come in?
>>
>> - Edward Picot
>>
>> **********
>> * To alter your subscription settings on this list, log on to 
>> Subscriber's Corner at 
>> http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/writing-and-the-digital-life.html
>> * To unsubscribe from the list, email [log in to unmask] with a 
>> blank subject line and the following text in the body of the message: 
>> SIGNOFF WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE
>>
>>
>
> **********
> * To alter your subscription settings on this list, log on to Subscriber's 
> Corner at 
> http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/writing-and-the-digital-life.html
> * To unsubscribe from the list, email [log in to unmask] with a blank 
> subject line and the following text in the body of the message: SIGNOFF 
> WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE
>
> 

**********
* To alter your subscription settings on this list, log on to Subscriber's Corner at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/writing-and-the-digital-life.html
* To unsubscribe from the list, email [log in to unmask] with a blank subject line and the following text in the body of the message: SIGNOFF WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE