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Janez Strehovec: Text as Virtual Reality
(Techno-Aesthetics and Web-Literatures)

    Digital literatures are a genre of cyberarts, which are becoming more
and more characteristic, even testifying praxis in the world, determined by
techno as a principle. One of the most recent generation of digital
literatures are undoubtedly literary projects on the web sites, which could
be classified as  genres of cyberpoetry, interactive drama, MUDs, MOOs and
new narrative, placed into the post-novel environments for story-, concept-
and "aisthesis" worlds.
    For this kind of projects a double challenge is distinctive; on one
side they enrich the aesthetics of cyberarts with new techniques and
concepts (bringing   new experiences to the user of such an art), but on
the other hand they pervert, revolutionize and extend the code of
literature-as-we-know it, because the existence of  literature at the end
of the second half of the 20th century represents a problem. Today, it is
by no means self-evident how and what about to write, as J. G. Ballard, the
author of proto-cyberpunk novel Crash, expressed in this claim: "We live in
a world ruled by fictions of every kind....We live inside an enormous
novel. It is now less and less necessary for the writer to invent fictional
content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to
invent the reality." (J.G.Ballard: Crash)
         Cybernetic literature on web sites is undoubtedly expanding avant-garde
and experimental forms of literature (visual and concrete poetry as well as
experimental prose), but its inquiries are especially relevant to
aesthetics (particularly of electronic art). Basic concepts like
interactivity and total immersion get a new encouragement from the web
media. When mentioning web-literature, we have to state the fact that it
includes a new generation of literature, made in a web medium. A term is a
technical one because of the nature of the literature entering in this kind
of immersive environments; this is a kind of literature beyond the
literature-as-we-know-it, beyond the book and beyond the world of ordinary
literary devices. So we can place its projects  between second order
digital-literatures, as into the first generation  obviously belongs the
influential, for literary theory very challenging form of hyperfiction,
written/computed by Michael Joyce and some more important successors of
that tradition (Stuart Moulthrop, Shelley Jackson, Carolyn Guyer, etc.).

Second-Order Digital Literatures

    In order not to mention a second order digital-literatures only on
abstract level, let us mention some more characteristic works of
web-literatures:
Stuart Moulthrop Hegirascope, version 2
Knut Mork, Stahl Stenslie  Solve et Coagula
C. Cann & R. Allalowf  Keywords
Olia Lialina  Anna Karenin goes to Paradise
Anne Joelle  The Confessional
Eugene Thacker  flesh/threshold/narrative
Maria Winslow  Electro Magnetic Poetry
Komninos Zervos  CyberPoetry
Jacques Servin  Beast
Shelley Jackson  My Body
Mark Amerika  Grammatron
Diana Reed Slatery   Alphaweb
Eduardo Kac  Holopoetry
Loss Pequeno Glazier  Visual+Kinetic

Stuart Moulthrop's
"http://raven.ubalt.edu/staff/moulthrop/Hypertext/hgs//HGS Propers.html"
Hegirascope,
version 2

Knut Mork's Stahl Stenslie's "http://www.gar.no/sec/" Solve et Coagula

C. Cann's R. Allalowf's "http://www.rugareal.demon.co.uk/irr.html" Keywords

Olia Lialina's "http://www.design.ru/olialia/anna" Anna Karenin goes to
Paradise

Anne Joelle's& "http://www.tufts.edu/departments/confessional/" The
Confessional
Eugene Thacker's "http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~maldoror/ftn2fr.html"
flesh/threshold/narrative
Maria Winslow's "http://prominence.com/java/poetry" Electro Magnetic Poetry

Komninos Zervos's "http://student.uq.au/~s271502/" CyberPoetry
Jacques Servin's "http://www.quake.net/~jacq/Beast" Beast
Shelley Jackson's "http://www.altx.com/thebody/" My Body
Mark Amerika's "http://www.grammatron.com" Grammatron
Diana Reed Slatery's "http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/issue.597/alphaweb/"
Alphaweb
Eduardo Kac's "http://www.ekac.org/allholopoems.html" Holopoetry
Loss Pequeno Glazier's "http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/glazier/viz/"
Visual+Kinetic

     The selection of these web-literature projects is not made according
to the criteria of  aesthetic values or in the sense "the best of", but
rather with respect to a very individual approach of their authors and to
different poetics. What is therefore the general characteristic of those,
otherwise very individual projects? They are put on the web and they try to
use more than only its reproductive and distributive capacities.
Web-literature sometimes still uses now already classical hypertext medium,
which had generated  a kind of hyperfiction (already mentioned in the
tradition of Michael Joyce), but its  latest projects try to intensively
use the particularities of web media and novelty of the software written
for it. We are dealing with a new form of media creativity, which is not
based on the literary forms, tropes and procedures as we know them, but is
introducing new techno-language of the techno-words-images-bodies, using
the effects of new media aesthetics and inventing new forms. By the way,
according to their main and crucial features, it is understood that
web-literary projects are much closer to the cyberarts installation  like
Jeffrey Shaw's "The Legible City" (or even to the projects of  Jenny
Holzer) than to the big novels in the tradition of modern and postmodern
fiction. Here we have to mention some basic concepts of web-literatures,
which are useful also for the techno-aesthetics of cyberarts.
    Word-image-body is arranged with  special effects, put into the total-
data-work of art (Ger.Gesamtdatenwerk), which includes the interaction
among media and daringly stimulates the perception. Because of this the
reading is supplemented with looking and touching (led and seduced with the
techno-suspense and techno-surprise), with the effect of total immersion,
with encountering the "impossible written objects", with the user’s
steering of screens and in some projects also with listening, which means
that this is a kind of activity distant from encountering the regular
literary forms and closer to the new visual (as well as aural and tactile)
forms of culture. We are no longer diving into the worlds of traditional
narrative. Instead we are entering the multimedia designed by series of
techno-words-images-bodies, arranged with regards to concept schemes. Our
(non-linear) encounters with them produce a story in the sense of a risky
event.
    We use the term 'techno-word-image' as an extension of the term
'techno-image', introduced by Vilem Flusser. We are referring to Flusser's
claim that the reference of the techno-image is the concept, so an abstract
form in a way, which stimulates the so called techno-imagination.
 The stories in the techno-language (as a combination of new media
arranged by verbal and visual components) are in no way  naive narratives
which signify the states of things, but they intend to demonstrate the
concept itself, the world of abstract components and the relations between
them. In a certain sense they are meta-stories intended for  meta-reading.
Therefore the reference in the concept leads their authors to abandon the
differences between literary and non-literary codes. (Example: Mark Amerika
   Grammatron  ).
    Techno-word, simulated as the unit of 3-D computer graphics, is a
mediated word, inscribed into the field of computer generated visual and
tactile cyberculture. The word is an object with body, with substance,
living a double life; on one hand preserving the indicating, referential
function, on the other hand it is only the visual, tactile and verbal
marker for 'building houses from the words-images-bodies' (Example: Diana
Reed Slatery   Alphaweb). It permits a new matrix of entry into the
literary text. The word with tactile features belongs to the current trend
media culture, which is not only visual, but tactile as well. It 'hits' its
users, makes an impact on them with its high-tech effects, but the readers
are  also in a position to touch  interfaces, to click the mouse, operate
the switches and hit the keyboard.
 In The Beaubourg effect Jean Baudrillard writes about the affirmation of
tactile perception in mass culture and reactualizes Walter Benjamin's
thoughts on the subject of tactile nature of avant-garde and film from his
essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. 'The work of
art of the dadaists became an instrument of ballistics. It hit the
spectator like a bullet, it happened to him, thus acquiring a tactile
quality.' (Benjamin 1986: 43) Tactility can be achieved directly
through powerful technical effects, which is the case of virtual reality
technology (one of the main challenges for its constructors is how to
achieve the successful tactile feed-back). However, it can  also be
achieved in a more subtle way, for example, in literature. Visual and
concrete poetry is already familiar with the tactile aspect of a word,
being radicalized in cyberpoetry (the case of Komninos Zervos). Here Eduard
Kac's   Holopoetry written in the 3-D medium of holograms should be
mentioned as well. Word-image-body is also getting a more and more
energetic issue, it is stimulated in the movement, gaining a cinematic
feature, what demonstrates visual and kinetic poems by  Loss Pequeno
Glazier  (Visual+Kinetic).
    The interactivity of the electronic literary  projects is enabled by
clicking on words or icons in the function of point-and-click interfaces.
This happens in accordance with already mentioned techno-suspense, which is
connected to the expectations of what is going to open after the act of
clicking, and what kind of reality will  the reader/ user enter. It is in
the artistic function of such literary project on the web that the
techno-suspense is also followed by  techno-surprise. This means that the
reader/user lands on a place far different from his/her expectations. We
might say that the artistic value of such projects increases proportionally
with the increased frequencies of digression of new series of
techno-words-images-bodies from the horizon of reader’s expectations.
    Cybernetic literature presumes the text as virtual reality; but it is
not about an encumbering  kind of VR, conditioned with the use of
data-glove and head mounted display (so called goggle-and-glove VR), but
about unencumbering VR, based on the reader's/user's identification with
the cursor. The term "unencumbering VR" was coined by one of the pioneers
of this technology, Myron W. Krueger. His installation Videoplace is an
attempt to design unencumbering, environmental artificial reality,
unencumbering in the sense that people can experience it without wearing
special instrumentation. It is environmental in the sense that technology
for perceiving the participant's actions is distributed throughout the
environment instead of being worn. Being there, the imperative for the
total immersion in the environment, is in a case of  "textscapes" enabled
by the reader's identification with cursor. (Example:Maria Winslow  Electro
Magnetic Poetry). The act of clicking anticipates the user’s meeting with
the clickual reality and continual linking from one part of a text to the
others. The reading of such literary projects is  principally non-trivial
and cybernetic. We read according to schemes, which we try to find, often
returning to the beginning. We print individual pages (if possible), do
scripts and schemes about already chosen links, meaning that we are utmost
active in composing/supplementing the "textscape".
    A text with certain rules and at the same time with alternatives for a
reader, possibilities on which s/he will bet or abandon on his way through
a "textscape", directs to the reception similarly to that in a game.
Literary projects on the web are because of that feature close to the
trends of today's ludic culture (i.e. the culture of games spread between
the principles of agon and ilinx  - according to the division introduced in
the work of R. Caillois), and also close to the techno-sensitivity
described as a feeling of today's trend individual as homo aestheticus. An
aesthetic being is not stimulated only by such activities and attractions,
but also by encountering different forms of cyberarts. The highly uncertain
and unusual experience and sensations are also offered by works of
web-literatures, which require a reader who will curiously and even
hazardously choose how to navigate through a "textscape". The main thread
is lost in the linear course of the text; that is on the referential level,
as well as on the visual/tactile one. The authority of the sentences,
pages, images, of the evident "now" and "later", of the beginning and the
end is destroyed.
    The objects in "textscapes" of web-literatures which enable a
thrill-like-atmosphere, which stimulates the homo-aestheticus are so called
impossible written and impossible readable objects. These are the issues of
programmed uncertainty, devoted for seducing and beguiling the view. The
reader's/user's capability of reading is challenged by virtue of the movie
(with its fast cuts) of the unstable words flowing past the screen. We are
facing the stream of moving, even raving words and letters, which enable
the experience non-comparable to the reading of the printed text.
(Examples: Komninos Zervos  CyberPoetry  and Knut Mork's and Stahl
Stenslie's  Solve et Coagula ).
       Web-literature is not articulated on printed pages, but on the computer's
windows, which have a very complex structure. Often the impossible is
demanded from the reader/user - to look at the same time at different texts
and visual components, which are distributed on the computer window as in
space with distinctively profound extension. Here we are facing  a,
methaphorically speaking, a textual version of the video-wall, similarly as
 in a couple of video installations by Nam Jun Paik and by Marie-Jo
Lafontaine. However, the change is here in the nature of apparatus: instead
of on the videos, in a case of web-literature the user has to encounter
dynamic "textscapes", set within computer windows.
    With these kind of projects the change of temporal perspective is also
important: the shift from perfective to imperfective, from "once upon a
time" (distinctive of traditional narrative) to real time, in which the
interactive environments are set. Real time is a technical one, and
therefore a time-space, because it is imposible to imagine time without
space in a technical approach. Techno-words-images-bodies refer to spatial
dimension of technical time due to their ability of powerful representation
of spatial relations. Real time also corresponds to "real closeness" as
spatial saturation of temporal point reached through the matrix of techno.
     Navigation through words-images and words-bodies in "textscape" takes
place in a complex time. It seems that in the moment of linking (or turning
the screens)  'nows' start to load. These 'nows' are torn out of temporal
continuum and form a certain between, which is being constituent for
reading and techno-suspense in textscape. This is the between, which is
characteristic of the  apocalyptic moment. One waits for  the arrival of
the unknown, the other wants it. It seems that we are dealing with
uncertain time following something no longer and preceding something not
yet. This is a time of expectation, the time nourishing the deepest dreams
and mythic visions. Everything is left open, the link simulates a narrow
door through which messianic word may enter Example: Shelley Jackson  My
Body ).
    Let us also mention the creative approach of web-literatures to the
main features of the media (webness) in the forms of self-reference
(example: Olia Lialina  Anna Karenin goes to Paradise) , autopoesis and
self-organization. These are the main devices of the second-order
cybernetics, which is drawn closer to the human than so called classical
cybernetics, directed towards feed-back issues. Entering web-literatures,
we are also facing the possibilities of collaborative authorship. Such
projects are then not only the scheme demanding reader's concretization and
supplementing, but the environments, which enable a more active
approach.(An example: Mark Amerika's statement on  collaborative authoring.)
    To understand web-literature projects, the trend characteristic of
new-media culture, called aesthetics of closeness, is also important. What
we have in mind is a tendency different from  a traditional work of art,
where such  work is understood as a window, actually as a departure point
for the viewer's/reader's/user's way into the complex background of work of
art. However, a media work, e.g. computer graphics or web "total data work
of art",  is designed as the most complex surface arranged with special
effects. It is characteristic for them to cause such a density of data
units and thus enable the viewer/user to experience the deepness in a very
special way. It is no longer a deepness beyond the image, but a deepness
which, metaphorically speaking, is growing towards the viewer/observer,
filling the space between the eye and the image surface. A model for such a
media work is surely a hologram like 3-D optical memory unit, but today 3-D
effects tend to be generated also by other media, from movies to VR. With
web-literature projects "the deepness growing towards the observer" is
primarily arranged by simulating the special effects, which produce quite a
high saturation, a certain surplus of information as well as a velocity
surplus of their arrangement.
    The literary projects on web are the part of today’s cyber arts as
the utmost hybrid area of distinctly concept projects in which the pair
ground/world in Heidegger's essay Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes is replaced
by the pair web/world, because we are dealing with the articulation in
on-line world. Maybe only a longer temporal distance from the present will
allow a more critical regard of these works, which have abandoned the elite
art institutions, democratized themselves (they could be understood as the
issues of cyberpop), but on the level of production they demand enough
creative approach and software expertise. After decades a new name may be
found for the wide area of creativity, the starting-point of which are
mostly art and smart technologies. This area extends from the artistic
domain into the scope of post-artistic creative sensitivity and
spirituality, and above all of the communication in the world, determined
with techno as a principle. But at the moment it is certain that  among all
regular institutions, exactly art is the only one which can accept such
forms of creative communication,  enabled within the matrix of
technoculture.

Revival of the Verbal?

    There are many different views about the main features of the web
medium and the shifts caused by it. Of more interest  are the ones, which
in spite of flat statements about the domination of the image at present,
are even finding out a great closeness of the computer- and web-medium on
the one hand, and the written documents on the other hand. The standpoint
of the German scholar Hartmut Winkler (the author of Docuverse, 1997) is
that on the web there is an explosive expansion in natural languages of
written documents and that today we see a  crisis of the visual medium
rather than a crisis of writing. Similarly claims  author and scholar
Umberto Eco: 'The present and the forthcoming young generation is and will
be a computer-oriented generation. The main feature of a computer screen is
that it hosts and displays more alphabetic letters than images. The new
generation will be alphabetic and not image oriented. We are coming back to
the Gutenberg Galaxy again'
     The question being raised from such a standpoint is, whether in the
presence of the literary projects on Web and those established for it, we
can really talk about returning into the Gutenberg's galaxy, about the
renaissance of literature within the Web and about the revival of the
Verbal? Are computer and web-medium the ones, stimulating us to withdraw
from their promise in the field of visual and multi-media, and directing us
back towards the word? The answer to this question is certainly not simple.
It is affirmative, but in the sense of us being the witnesses of the
Revival of the Verbal and of the Word within the radical changed
conditions. The Verbal and the Word once more, yes, but in a completely
different form. The word namely, which we find in the
web-literatures-medium is no longer a word within its traditional syntactic
and semantic role in the process of representation, neither is it a word
within a postmodern game of signifiers. It is a Word which has changed into
a new generation of moving, techno-accelerated words-images-bodies, being
units of the immersive environments of the web-artistic and non-artistic
projects. The word entering the second-order digital literatures (and which
will continue entering because the present situation in this field is
certainly pioneer and experimental one ), has not slept through the 20th
century and its technical and new-media advances.
> Having dealt with different web-literature projects, we can see that it
is a kind of work put beyond the concepts, devices, forms and genres of the
literature-as-we-know-it. It is a literature beyond the book, beyond the
printed page and beyond the literary devices like the plot and the closure,
and beyond the difference between fictional and non-fictional. The key
issue attracting the author of this paper most is the so called ontological
approach of the authors of these projects towards the institution of a word
and verbal in the time of new media and computer mediated communications
(Example: Eugene Thacker  flesh/threshold/narrative.)
    These projects, in my opinion, respond to the following questions :
How is a word in the societies, defined by technology and new-media
communication at the end of the 20th century possible? How does a word
respond to the challenges of the mainstream visual, aural and tactile
culture? Why even today a word and not a merely jostling and overlapping
images of music video? How to preserve the authority of a word today and
how to approach it? How to rescue a word from the stream of triviality and
the pure game of special effects? How to form the environments and thus the
contexts for presenting words-images-bodies without they being a Disneyland
for words? How to escape the Macdonaldization and MTVzation of the verbal
in a time of globalization and its consequences in the field of art and
literature?


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Janez Strehovec is a private researcher at the project Theories of
Cyberculture supported by Slovenian Ministry of Science and Technology. He
holds an M.A. and Ph. D. in aesthetics and is also a lecturer at the
Academy of Visual Arts - Department of Design (at the University of
Ljubljana, Slovenia). His most recent book written in Slovene is
Technoculture - Culture of Techno (1998). One of his articles written in
English is available on: http://www.ctheory.com/a49.html





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