According
to the Electronic
Literature Organization, digital
literature refers to «works
with important literary aspects that
take advantage of the capabilities
and contexts provided by the stand-alone
or networked computer». The
technical sophistication of digital
literature is inevitably related to
literary and artistic aesthetics which,
like the European avant-gardes, come
across experimentation on narrative
and poetic forms. Digital works concern
multiple procedures and involve poems
and stories that are generated by
computers, hypertext fiction and poetry,
random exploration and reading, kinetic
writing, interactivity, visualization,
etc.
In
Europe, authors like Philippe Bootz
set the origin of digital literature
around 1959, when the first experimental
texts based on combination and variation
were written. After 1980, Jean-Pierre
Balpe created the first automatic
generator. From that moment, the basis
of digital literature or cyberliterature
are developped thanks to works produced
with automatic generators (i.e. Action
Poétique n. 95, 1981 and
ALAMO founded in 1981, together with
animated poetry or e-poetry published
on the review Alire). Literary
hypertexts or hyperfictions will appear
on the Web few years later. Today
this kind of works are developping
fast thanks to new software that allows
both grafic design and animation to
be associated with verbal, visual
and sound aspects of texts, with the
aim of creating dynamic and interactive
narratives (Writing
new imaginative fiction for the web).
Moreover, collaborative writing experiences
like Websoap or MOOs (Multi-Users
Dimensions Object-Oriented), have
been developped on the Internet, anticipating
the Weblogs and becoming spaces for
new literary and creative experiences.
Many of the studies on Digital Literature
(cfr. Bibliography)
consider both the creative possibilities
and innovations of this kind of narrative
and the implications of the digital
dimension on writing and reading.
It is time, for us, to discuss and
develop a general and dynamic perspective
that will consider not only the evolution
of the technical aspects but also
the state of the art of those works,
from a literary and thematic point
of view, together with the formal,
technical and esthetic tendences that
they are following and the evolution
of their language, the collaboration
among authors and the question of
the hybridisation and transformations
of traditional genres and geographical
frontiers on the Web. In
this fifth number of RiLUnE, we hope
to consider all these questions in
order to compare points of view on
technology and literary and artistic
creation within a European perspective.
The
papers included in this issue explore
works by European authors (automatic
generators, e-poetry, hyperfiction,
weblogs, etc.), survey the inter-relation
between writing, graphism and informatics
and the status of images, sounds and
animation in the texts, and discuss
objectives and values of digital literature.
Ana
Pano
tr. Valentina Fenga
