Towards a Digital Poetics

Abstract

In many respects, electronic literature is about lines of sight. It is amorphous and transient, almost Fluxus. Depending on your line of sight—the gateway with which you choose to enter a work, be that form or content—your reception of a piece will be altered accordingly. Lines of sight are also context dependent: our cognition, our appreciation of technical systems, these are all connected to notions of the posthuman. As electronic literature continues to define itself and find a place in the catalogue of conduits through which human beings tell their stories and express their creativity, it will be continuously reenvisioned as a result of its malleability, the potential for different critics and practitioners to view it through a variety of different lenses. This is, of course, an inherently literary phenomenon, but the presence of the digital adds a new complication: you cannot simply say that you are focused on the content, as in doing so, you are discounting aspects which are as beautiful and sublime as they are materially and symbolically complex. There is validity in taking the literary line of sight, but only if your reception is tempered with an appreciation of the cinematic experience, the visual design, and the underlying computational structures. There can never be a critical language for electronic literature, only an awareness of many critical languages. We will only ever be working towards a digital poetics, because there is no one digital.