New Media Writing in a Literary Mode

Thom Swiss and Maria Damon

Abstract

Adalaide Morris writes in her essay, “ New Media Poetics: As We May Think / How to Write,” “The rapid evolution of software and hardware, the variety of uses they can be put to, and their roles in the constant flow of morphed and sampled data through global networks make it all but impossible to give the term "new media literature" a stable definition.”

When Morris and one of the authors of this presentation, were recently editing a book on new media poetics, they were often confronted with problems of taxonomy as digital literary compositions are variously known as "new media literature," "e-lit," "digital literature," "computer-literature," "net.art," "codework," and other, more specific names such as “interactive fiction.”

We will talk about some of these new media literary forms, describing their own engagement with them as teachers, critics and creators. The presentation will offer other UMN new media researchers a window into recent projects and processes that engage language and the notion of 'poetics' as key elements in making art.

Full Paper [pdf]

About the Authors

Thomas Swiss's collaborative new media poems appear online, as well
as in museum exhibits and art shows. The author of two collections
of poems, Rough Cut and Measure, his latest books include Unspun
and New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories, a co-
edited volume about poetry in a digital age. Swiss teaches at the
University of Minnesota in the Culture and Teaching Program and is
President of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Literature
Organization.

Maria Damon is the author of The Dark End of the Street: Margins in
American Vanguard Poetry, and co-author, with Miekal And, of online
and print booklength poems Literature Nation and
pleasureTEXTpossession; and online work Eros/ion; She is the
co-editor, with Ira Livingston, of the forthcoming Poetry and Cultural
Studies: A Reader, and has published widely on US poetry. She teaches
in the English Department at the University of Minnesota.