Vortrag
09/12/2024
18:00 Uhr
Scott Rettberg: Small forms within larger forms of digital narrative
Computation-driven works of electronic literature nearly always rely upon small poetic or narrative structures within larger ones. Poetry and story generators, for example are typically small computer programs which draw upon arrays of words or sentences. We can think of these programs as systems for potential literature as they rely upon predefined but somewhat randomized authored grammars to recombine these elements in expansive ways that produce many stories or poems—a kind of maximalism derived from minimalism. Link and node hypertext narratives similarly rely upon the breakdown of larger narrative to small units, ranging from individual lines to self-contained episodes. These are connected by links that offer readers multiple paths from one node to another, resulting in completely different stories depending upon how the reader navigates those units. In this talk electronic literature author and scholar Scott Rettberg will provide examples of his own body of work in genres ranging from hypertext to poetry generation to combinatory film to generative AI text-to-image fiction to illustrate how long-form electronic literature is based on different ways of assembling and recombining small forms.