Writing and the Digital Life

Myspace - creative space or Hobbesian morass?

The ever-interesting Nicholas Carr adds his $.02 to the increasing controversy over MySpace. He complains that:

When I look around MySpace I don't see much that's "strange and wonderful" - or "deeply disturbing," either. I wish I did. What I see is a dreary sameness, a vast assembly of interchangeable parts.

Of course this is not surprising - not everyone has the skills to express themselves in a creative and interesting fashion and if they don't, of course they will fall back on pre-digested tropes and the 'content' that requires the least effort for the largest potential effect - the display of their own bodies. But the interesting point I feel is that at least these people are being encouraged to try to express themselves and that this may at least encourage and enable a small minority of those that try to hone and refine their skills and become genuinely creative (or at least more self-aware).

English teachers have tried to encourage this sort of thing with diaries and self-reflective fiction for years but this arena (unlike the classroom) has peer pressure behind it and offers the producers the potential for peer reinforcement if they can produce something compelling.

Not to say that there aren't considerable dangers as well, of course!

Where writers and bloggers don't meet

I've arrived in Austin, Texas for SXSW Interactive and guess what - the Associated Writing Programs conference is going on right next door at the same time. I was just chatting with one of the AWP delegates and she told me there isn't much at all going on there about digital writing - maybe they should come over here :)  I did a panel on digital writing with trAce at AWP way back in around 1999/2000 and I know Web Del Sol and the ELO have also presented there, but maybe it has subsided back into print now. Was anyone there who can report on that? Anyway, at SXSW there's lots of discussion going on about new media and writing of all kinds. More on that soon, along with my final report on ETech, which has been somewhat delayed due to spending a day travelling from San Diego to Austin.

The Future of Writing seminar, 27 Feb, De Montfort University

The Future of Writing
Seminar, 27 Feb 2006, 3pm-5pm
De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Clephan Building 0.03 - 3-5pm
This event is free.

The death of the book has been falsely foretold many times; in this age of proliferating media it is clear that the book will not disappear but will have to fight for its place.  What are the challenges for writers today?  What does the new media have to offer writers?  And, vitally, what does the new media have to offer readers? 

Seminar featuring:
- Christina Patterson, (Deputy Literary Editor of The Independent)
- Michael Powell, (Course Leader for Game Art, De Montfort University)
- Kate Pullinger, (Novelist & New Media Writer)
- Sue Thomas, (Professor of New Media at De Montfort University)
Chaired by Professor Andrew Hugill, (De Montfort University, Music Technology)
More information

Organised by cultural eXchanges, an annual event hosted by the Faculty of Humanities at De Montfort University. The week long programme includes lectures, performances, debates, presentations and readings from a diverse body of artists, academics, practioners and those working in the cultural industries.

Writing in the shower

When I was at trAce,  we all knew that the team's best ideas happened in the shower, and many of our best projects were born that way, so I was excited to find this little gadget for recording future watery brainwaves. Indispensable :)
(thanks to Elisa Camahort at BlogHer)

Ted Nelson, computers and writing

Tomorrow I am going to Oxford to interview Ted Nelson, inventor of the word hypertext, for a new book I'm researching. I've met Ted before and he's well-known for being an intriguing and complex individual. Whilst looking through his Xanadu archive tonight I came across this historical document, which I thought I would share with you. It dates from 1965 and features what Ted calls 'probably the first public uses of the word 'hypertext' in an announcement for a talk at Vassar entitled 'Computers, Creativity, and the Nature of the Written Word'. He also invented the term 'intertwingling' which I've noticed coming back into use in blogs about Web 2.0. Indeed, it's now being said that Ted's early ideas about hypertext which fell by the wayside in the early years of the net are now coming to fruition. One might say that what goes around comes around or, as Ted Nelson might remark, 'everything is deeply intertwingled'.

The Agrippa Files

Last week the Transcriptions team at UCSB launched the Agrippa Files website. It's a fascinating collection of multimedia materials about Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) which appeared in 1992 as a collaboration between artist Dennis Ashbaugh, author William Gibson, and publisher Kevin Begos, Jr.

Alan Liu writes that it is "a scholarly site that presents selected pages from the original art book (with the permission of the   publisher); a unique archive of materials dating from the book's creation and early reception; a simulation of what the   book's intended "fading images" might have looked like; a   video of the 1992 "transmission" of the work; a "virtual lightbox"   for comparing and studying pages from the book; commentary by   the book's publisher and scholars; an annotated bibliography   of scholarship, press coverage, interviews, and other   material; a detailed bibliographic description of the book;   and a discussion forum."

It's an absorbing collection for anyone seeking to understand and enjoy the multiplicity of contemporary new media texts.

Amateur / Creative

Aaron Segal wrote:

"There are tons of amateur painters doing water color landscapes and duck paintings without any interest for modern art, who paint for themselves only."

in reply to my posting of December 04, 2005 at 20:27

I accept that. I've known some of them, though those I have known are generally interested in what others do - though without necessarily searching it out.

They all seem to have an interest in what those around them think of what they are doing. They're often very good.

They seem in my experience to be less than obsessive than writers _amateur_ or _professional_; but of course I am selecting and evaluating the evidence for and against my own expectation and without showing my working, so I can make no claim for it

The matter of _modern art_ is interesting too, in that water colour tends not to be the medium of choice for many name artists. Hockney recently drew attention just by using that medium.

I take your point though. I take it seriously. My gut feeling is that there is a difference, both in kind and in quantity, but I couldn't argue it further than that. I have no good data; and I am aware that I may be fond of my prejudice.

It is a better example, I think, than what I expected - the number of amateur pop musician wannabees, because I think there are other things going on there

One thing that occurred to me since I wrote is to note the number of poets there were BEFORE the relatively recent creative writing courses.

Potentially an unexpected / _unregulated_ input is healthy...

Using and organising plain text files

I enjoy dipping into 43 Folders - it's perfect for those of us who are convinced that if we can only organise ourselves in a proper fashion the rest of life will fall into place. Mistaken, of course, but at least it's optimistic. I especially appreciated this item on My txt setup:

Like a lot of geeks and aspirational geeks, I do as many things as possible in plain text files. I’ve endlessly sung the praises of text on 43F, but in a nutshell, they’re portable, efficient, tiny, and almost endlessly mungible. They’re the lingua franca of Unix and most of the civilized world.

It goes on to describe an archiving system based on complex file-names which is so mad it makes me think there might be something in it.

Since I'm in the early throes of a new book which will demand a lot of reading and organising over the next five years I'm somewhat obsessed with organisational systems at the moment. Would anyone here like to share their own favourite tricks for managing snippets and notes of writing and references?

Amateur / creative

David Brake commented

"I do mean "significant" rather than meritorious. Though I think it may be useful as well - not artistically but as a way of providing people without great artistic talent or the time to pursue it a kind of creative outlet. Therapy comes up frequently but in my experience the people who do it often have no intention of trying to learn anything about themselves. They just want to get writing out of their system..."


That's really interesting. Two things catch my attention

- a kind of creative outlet... I note KIND.... but it also raises the question of what is artistic talent and the role of skill

- getting writing out of their system

this I find the most interesting in that I wonder how it got in there, though it does suggest there is something different going on to that generality of behaviours being lumped together as the creative industries

Are there similar people chock full of music or painting or sculpture? I'm serious. Why are there SO many poets? & why generally are they so uninterested in what anyone else is doing in poetry?

It reminds me of the second half of an Auden clerihew

he could never quite
leave the paper white

all best

Amateur / Creativity

David Brake wrote

"I must get ahold of some of his books... At least for me the important thing to focus on is not the 'how to' aspects of creativity but the 'why try'?"

Except I don't think that MC focuses either on How to or Why try? tho he is probably nearer to the latter. I don't see how he could be said to be focussing on either when, as I recall, he assumes we all know what creativity is; and so blurs a number of different properties, as I have described

"Surely there is something important going on when lots of people are out there writing... stuff. Even if the stuff itself is of little or no 'artistic merit' - and may not even want to be seen as artistic!"

There is a sign in a window round the corner, a local politics matter, which says "2000 people can't be wrong" which I find illogical

What do you mean by important? To whom? It's one thing to say a particular focus of study is important to you; and quite another to say that something is objectively important. When one sees a lot of people doing something, then presumably it is important to them, if they do it freely. But is it important in itself? By what criteria? And is it more important the more people do it?

Perhaps when you say "important" here you "significant" rather than "meritorious" The importance of writing might be thought to be best evaluated by considering artistic merit. But you've thrown that away, doubly so apparently, because you put the phrase "artistic merit" in quotes as if there is something suspect about it.

Therapeutic effect might also be considered. And perhaps a career need to keep publishing. And wrong-headedness... but that would bring us back to a need for criteria

Narrative Laboratory Seminars, Spring 2006, De Montfort University

Find out what's new in digital content and who's looking for it

Narrative Laboratory for the Creative Industries

4 Private Seminars at De Montfort University - Membership by Application Only

High-quality digital content is a priority for the creative industries, whether it's gaming, broadcasting, publishing, tourism, or software. It's also important to authors in search of the right kind of media for their fiction, hypermedia, journalism, poetry, or many other kinds of writing.

The NLab Network connects small creative businesses with writers to generate pioneering partnerships creating digital stories and other narratives. Network members come together to find out what makes them different from each other, what connects them, and how they can forge new collaborations.

For this series, membership is free but limited by application, and members will be selected to ensure a creative balance of expertise and interest. Priority will be given to applicants from the East Midlands.

Amateur

The trouble with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is that he doesn't actually say what he means by creativity

It just er flows, talking about what it hasn't defined so that one finishes up, from one point of view, with an (implicit) definition which uses itself in that definition; and that is not up to much

This allows him to lump creativity with other kinds of insight and ability - one hell of an assumption if one has met the members of some _creative departments_ (That he means it is clear from his subtitle)

In a culture where someone who says Why don't we try it another way? is called innovative, someone who says Why don't we try it another way? soon gets called creative

It's not that I begrudge the operative with a modicum of intelligence some praise, but it tends to deny the identification of the special

I recall being on a management course where, encouraging us to make pretty assessment folders, everything with colour in it was called beautiful

everyone must have prizes - and that soon degrades into everyone has their price

I think MC may  be on to something on the rewards / the buzz of various occupations, though I think he overstates it; but I was not otherwise impressed

Another use of the word _amateur_ which is in my usage is for those who decide they don't need to bother with competence but just go straight for self-expression and respond to any comment about rhythm, cliches, punctuation etc with _I don't write like that_.

Would we let people program mission-critical systems that way?

All right, then, more people

Amateur

in his post about fan fiction, David mentions 'amateur creativity'. In my comment to his post, I said that I felt that the term 'amateur' is problematic in this context. Just to unpack that a little more, I have always found the distinction between 'amateur' and 'professional' difficult in relation to writing because it implies that being paid for publication is what's important, whereas a publication fee is not a marker of quality or seriousness, simply an indication that someone sees the work as part of a viable business concern.

Interestingly, though, perhaps amateur will be revived in a more positive light via conversations like the one at Mary Hodder's Napsterization blog. Here's an excerpt:

Kevin suggests, in response to my earlier piece on the terminology of Users and Consumers,  that we instead bring back the original meaning of 'amateurs.'  Well, I love this:

We already have a word for people who create for the love of it, rather than being paid to, and it is 'amateurs'. As with many other pleasures, when we seek out opinions, we prefer those that flow from passion rather than from payment.

Now it may be argued that, given the decline in the teaching Latin and French, the loving root of 'amateur' is no longer perceived, so those who write pour l'amour ou pour le sport may see 'amateur' as a slight. In which case lets retranslate it to english and call it 'lovingly created media'.

Fantastic. Because it means we take back from the concept of 'professionals' the notion that 'good = professional." Instead we claim the aspects of our experience through creation that are so humanly, actively ours to own and enjoy, as unpaid creators. 'Amateur' has been derogatorily used to convey 'less than' status. Sometimes one or another works is less than, but it is not due to whether or not someone is paid for their work. A work should be judged lesser or greater because of its intrinsic qualities and value to those who apprehend it.

So, take the label 'amateur creator' as a point of pride.  It means you create for love, and not for money.

read the rest

This excerpt is part of a larger discussion about the terminologies of users and consumers. Mary Hodder is a graduate student at UC Berkeley, and I like her work at Napsterization. She conducts some fascinating research and reports on it intelligently, carefully, and without hype.

Anyway, my point re 'amateur writers' is that the opportunities of internet have begun to alter, in a positive way, the value we ascribe to writing that is not paid for.

(Nicholas Carr also discusses amateurism in some depth, see my recent post  on the changing economics of creative work)

A different look at fan fiction and amateur creativity

As I was casting about for a topic for my PhD I found myself reading a fair amount about fan fiction and about the sociology of amateur writing and creativity. My research went in a different direction (or so I thought!) but as I had hoped nothing learned is ever entirely wasted as I am starting to get interested in the area again. But my reading in the area is rusty and doubtless incomplete and here I hope you can help.

From what I remember, academic framing of 'popular' creativity divides into three main strands:

• Writing as a means of entering the 'field' of (more or less) commercial writers (Bourdieu 1993, Bourdieu 1996) or as a means of entry to a fan community (Fiske 1991, Hills 2002, Jenkins 1991)
• Writing as a counter-hegemonic practice – even when not explicitly political (Fiske 1991 – and lots of others that don’t leap to mind immediately)
• Writing/creativity as part of the educational process (Papert 1990, Piaget 1954)

What I don’t remember seeing is:

• Anything quantitative on how many people either are writers (or other artists) or enjoy writing as amateurs (are there any statistics on how many people keep journals or diaries?) and
• Analysis of the social or psychological significance of being able to express the creative urge (or not being able to). Not as a means to an end (as in the above three framings) but as an end in itself.

The latter in particular seems to me to be such an important issue I would be amazed if there isn’t a literature about it somewhere. So where should I be looking?

References:
Bourdieu, P. (1993) The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature,  (trans. Johnson, R.) Polity Press, Cambridge.
Bourdieu, P. (1996) The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Fiske, J. (1991) "The Cultural Economy of Fandom" in The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, (Lewis, L. A. ed.) Routledge, London; New York, pp. pp. 30-50.
Hills, M. (2002) Fan Cultures, Routledge, London.
Jenkins, H. (1991) "'Strangers No More We Sing': Filking and the Social Construction of the Science Fiction Fan Community" in The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, (Lewis, L. A. ed.) Routledge, London; New York.
Papert, S. (1990) Introduction: Constructionist Learning, MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, MA.
Piaget, J. (1954) The Construction of Reality in the Child, MIT Press, Cambridge MA.

Writing Across Forms

I've written an essay for the trAce front page on my experience of writing across forms, from novel to screenplay to digital fiction.  Here's the url:  Writing Across Forms I'd be interested in your thoughts.   Kate

Your decade with technology

From trAce, my former home, an invitation to contribute your writing. The entries make fascinating reading.

In the last ten years there has been an explosion of new technology, especially related to computers and the internet, and for some of us it has changed forever the way we live and write. As the trAce Online Writing Centre reaches its tenth anniversary, we invite you to reflect on your own personal decade of living and writing with technology. Tell us in 100 words about the technology you love, hate, or anticipate. http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/decade/

Narrative Laboratory for the Creative Industries

I'm pleased to announce the start of a new project - the Narrative Laboratory for the Creative Industries, based at De Montfort University.

Our first step is to create an East Midlands NLab Network to connect small creative businesses and writers in the East Midlands of England, Membership is by selection, so if you fall into that category contact us for information on how to apply. In Spring/Summer 2006 we will hold four private seminars for the NLab Network. Each seminar will focus on digital narrative content for a specific area and include a guest speaker, panel discussion, and workshop.
 
In July there will be an NLab National Conference open to all and featuring national and international speakers in a full day of talks about digital narrative content. Watch the site for updates.

The changing economics of creative work

This article by Nicholas Carr at his blog Rough Type is now a month old - sorry for the delay in linking to it - but it's a must-read critique of Web 2.0, the Wikipedia debate, and issues we discuss here at  Writing and the Digital Life. He writes:

The Internet is changing the economics of creative work - or, to put it more broadly, the economics of culture - and it's doing it in a way that may well restrict rather than expand our choices.

and at the end:

Like it or not, Web 2.0, like Web 1.0, is amoral. It's a set of technologies - a machine, not a Machine - that alters the forms and economics of production and consumption. It doesn't care whether its consequences are good or bad. It doesn't care whether it brings us to a higher consciousness or a lower one. It doesn't care whether it burnishes our culture or dulls it. It doesn't care whether it leads us into a golden age or a dark one. So let's can the millenialist rhetoric and see the thing for what it is, not what we wish it would be.

read the whole post

Writely - the Web Word Processor

Has anyone tried this? It seems to be getting lots of good reviews. It's like a wiki, but not a wiki, apparently... http://www.writely.com/

Update on this post from October:

I've been experimenting with it for a couple of weeks and have been very impressed. It's only in beta and not fully functional yet, but looks very promising. Presumably there are other applications that do similar things and I'd be interested to hear about them.

Notation, Improvisation and Performance

POSTGRADUATE CONFERENCE:

Notation, Improvisation and Performance
Goldsmiths College, University of London

Saturday 12 November
Ian Gulland Building, Whitehead Building

10am Coffee

10.30am
Roger Redgate Introduction

Sebastian Lexer discusses his work with improvisation / interactive
computer sofware

John Lely discusses his compositions

Lawrence Upton & John Levack Drever discuss 'Close to the Literal'

Anthony Pryer Freedom To / Freedom From: Ideological Aspects of Notation
and Improvisation

Matt Lewis Found Film as Notation

Matt Wright Needlepoint: The meeting points of Turntablism and Notation.

6.30pm Great Hall

CONCERT

Programme to include:

Lawrence Upton & John Levack Drever 'Close to the Literal'

Matt Lewis 'Composition for video quartet and Saxophone'

Plus improvisations and performances by

John Lely,

Matt Lewis,

Matt Wright,

Sebastian Lexer,

Roger Redgate

**********

The death of cyberspace - response to Sue and Jim

Two very useful comments. Thanks each.

Spot on about the potency of friendship, Sue. I hadn't thought of it so clearly and am grateful. I am often deeply offended by the familiarity with which they approach me only to proposition - and such propositions, money as materiel in a battle, sex as a form of violence and self-king-making. But the offence caused, as opposed to personal disinclination, is to do with the betrayal of tones of intimacy, abuse of the desire for friendship, as you say, the potency of friendship.

Jim, I didn't find what you said banal. I don't think though that I am arguing for cyberspace being a kind of unconscious; though when, later, you spoke of cultural unconcious, I wasn't so ready to object if only I am not so sure what that might be,

Is a cultural unconscious like a collective unconscious? I have never been sure I accept *that.

I doubt I expressed myself clearly yesterday. I was certainly being simplistic, limiting myself to two states, awake and dreaming, because I wanted to stress the constant changeability of the waking state at least and, potentially implicitly, a denial of the idea of _the personality of x_. I do not have a scientific theory here, not my field, just a diy set of beliefs about individuals as federations which gets me to - possibly by unintentional bootstrapping - the line spoken by an individual as also being multivoice

And after that I start muttering rapidly, showing you several thousand typescripts the way some people show holiday pics

It does seem to me, however, that a great deal of the unconscious needn't be that unconscious. We may only get to it by means of indirect pointing, but it's there. This morning, passing a flowery garden, what I think of as an evening scent, though I can't name it, doubled my world with a memory of childhood, crosslinked if ever there was a crosslink, with no beginning or end. I was trying to give directions to someone, but there were almost two of me, one 50 years younger, standing in I think the gardens of Cotehele House on the Tamar while the adult calculated where the road must lead though I had never been down it. Is that the unconscious cutting in?

Cyberspace seems to me too accessible for that name, and too contingent

The window of our attention can be trained. External demands damage it; but that is something else. Whatever we do of course we are going to remain in the metaphorical; it's a matter of degree.

The window of our attention can be trained to make more and more knowable to us... and as a matter of course (perhaps like adding RAM) or as a special effort (killing some processes in order to get a very large file to print)

Making a jump, because at present I only have doubts about and interest in what you say, seeing Alan Sondheim's films made with location sensors at West Virginia Uni, apologies to those who haven't seen them, certainly accessed parts of my responses I didn't have fully documented. I mention it here because it was digitally produced; but finally the response was to a work of movie art.

I think that we can, at least at present, keep subjectivity out of cyberspace. I was serious in my suggestion of us being intelligent nodes off a file server. We can do our own thing. So far.

Spells, meaning and folksonomy

The conversation over at -Empyre-, where I am a guest this month, is becoming very interesting. The focus at the moment is on pattern flows as described by Bill Seaman - visit the website to catch up with the discussion. My most recent post seems to me to also plug in with this month's WDL topic so I am re-posting it here:

Teaching writing via computer games

I've also had a suggestion from Jeremy Douglass, of the excellent WRT: Writer Response Theory, who drew my attention to this post at Terra Nova :

Amanda Linder, a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, now uses Anarchy Online to teach Technical Writing. While past teachers had students read a sci-fi novel as the context for all the writing assignments (reports, instructions, memos, and the like), Amanda has students play – and write from the context of – Anarchy Online. All technical writing assignments and class discussions are now based on in-game content, typically written from the perspective of employees of Omni-Tek, the mega-corporate power in the game.

read the rest at  Anarchy Online to Teach Technical Writing

This is especially interesting to me because I'm currently working on the syllabus for the new DMU Online MA in Creative Writing and Technology and this looks like an idea we should definitely consider adding to our workshops.

October at -empyre-

I've been invited by Marcus Bastos to contribute to the following discussion at -empyre- during October. For those unfamiliar with it, -empyre- has an ongoing series of often fascinating email discussions covering a wide range of topics in considerable depth. I'm very much looking forward to taking part. The blurb for October is as follows:

Writing is one of the oldest known technologies, but the concept of writing did not change as substantially as the different forms of text mediation have done, throughout the years. Nevertheless, the invention of press and, most recently, of the computer, altered important operations related to how words and paragraphs are organized. Also, devices such as the Internet, DVD and mobile equipments allowed new forms of writing and publishing.

During the month of October, Bill Seaman, Brigid McLeer, Friedrich Block, Giselle Beiguelman and Sue Thomas will discuss, at the – empyre – mailing list http://www.subtle.net/empyre, if the concept of writing is still adequate to describe the most eloquent examples of creative processes involving words and digital media.

Given the growing use of sound, image and programming at the web — once claimed to be the media that brought text back to the center of an increasingly image oriented culture—, what is the state of the art, on the field of digital writing? Issues such as the recombinant nature of digital writing, writing for public spaces (and related notions of placement / displacement), sampling as a form of intertextuality and writing for mobile devices, among others, will be the central topics.

Subscribe https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/empyre

Interview on Digital Poetry

I recently had the flattering experience of having a college student write to me because she was doing a class presentation on me in her digital poetry class.  She asked me a bunch of questions about my work, which I am not vain enough to think worth posting, but she also asked some things about digital poetry/art in general, which I thought might interest other people here.  In particular, I wonder what answers other online writers would give to these basic, rather naive, questions.  So often digital practitioners spend their time answering complex, theoretical and abstruse questions that they may never put into words their thoughts about the really basic issues in our field.

Here is the relevant extract from the email interview with the student (cleaned up a little):

Online MA in Creative Writing & Technology

Kate Pullinger and I are devising a new online MA, due to start at De Montfort University in Autumn 2006, (subject to validation).

About 80% of the course takes place online, making it very suitable for those wishing to obtain an MA in Creative Writing by distance learning.

It is designed for writers interested in exploring the potential of new technologies in their writing via a combination of online study with a short compulsory Summer School in the UK. There is also an optional residential weekend in Semester 1.

More information.

Thanks for the comments.  Margaret, funny that the place is just a three hours drive from my place, but I never thought of it beyond the 'I'll visit some day' syndrome. I am glad I finally did, and it is wonderful.  And Peter, I think it really is a place with some inspiring wildness. Thanks for the wonderful comments.

I