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My
thesis is being developed under the title
Cultures of Reception in Digital
Literature: The Implied Respondent In(ter)
Action. My project is a comparison between
the characteristics of digital works in
terms of the figure of the implied
respondent within the text and the rules
which frame the text in various types of
preface. My research in digital textuality
centers around three fields, that of the
spatial, the author/writer/reader, and the
interactive. This is intended to achieve:
- A
better understanding of how digital
works are 'read' or interpreted as
literature
- The
tensions and inconsistencies between
the possibilities of the story and the
rules made in the prefaces.
- To
discuss the remixed form in digital
contexts as a literary reality.
Hybridity
in the Bakhtinian sense of heteroglossia
(many voices) is a central concept to my
understanding of how such digital texts as
represented by my corpus function. This
corpus is composed of six digital works:
Ftrain
by Paul Ford (http://www.ftrain.com/)
Egypt: The Book of Going Forth by Day by
M. D. Coverley (http://califia.us/avegypt.htm)
Alleph by Sakab Bashir (http://www.alleph.net/splash.html)
Dreamaphage by Jason Nelson
http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/nelson__dreamaphage.html
Last Meal Requested by Sachiko
Hayashi http://www.e-garde.net/lmr/
Façade by Michael Mateas and
Andrew Stern (http://www.interactivestory.net/#facade)
My
research looks at the corpus texts from
the perspectives of:
- Defining
a digital text in terms of reception
- The
'implied respondent' (developed out of
the ideas of Wolfgang Iser combined
with the dialogism of M. M. Bakhtin)
as an active participant in the
interpretation and formation of the
digital text.
- The
laws of the digital text as embodied
in such preface forms as the End User
Licence Agreement (EULA), the FAQ, and
the Help sections, which attempt to
define possible receptions. This is
performed through addressing a
particular responsive image of the
interpretant throughout the text; the
implied respondent.
- A
comparison between the implied
respondent of the preface/s and of the
figure located in the story/ies. This
combines the material properties of
the texts with the content such as
addressivity, spatial navigation,
visual rhetoric and the politics of
access to the text.
- Remix
as being a serious form of literary
creation. Remix in digital texts is
conducted along numerous interlocking
spheres. I look at the remixing of:
- Genres
- Media
channels in the multimodal text
- Reception
(e.g. using the text as a musical
instrument)
- Other
texts in assemblage
- The
remixing of language in dissident and
creative ways.
The
first two years of my PhD research
(2004-06) were funded by a scholarship
from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Fund. I
was appointed to the staff of the
Department of Modern Languages at Umeå
University in June 2006 as a doctoral
candidate. Much of my work is conducted in
HUMlab, an interdisciplinary humanist-lead
digital laboratory and studio, where I
began working as a Masters student in the
northern spring term of 2003.
I can be contacted at
jim.barrett@engelska.umu.se
My Blog is at http://www.soulsphincter.blogspot.com
HUMlab is at http://www.humlab.umu.se/
HUMlab Blog: http://blog.humlab.umu.se/
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