The genesis of electronic literature began with the kind of combinatory poetics seen in \u201cHouse of Dust\u201d by Allison Knowles and James Tenney, \u201cStochastic Texts\u201d by Theo Lutz, and \u201cLove Letters\u201d generator by Christopher Strachey. All of these works were released as early as 1952 but no later than 1967, and by looking at the extent to which understanding the historical context of combinatory poetics facilitates a greater appreciation for the works, we being to understand how that type of electronic literature might not be as applicable or effective as it was at the time of its creation.<\/p>\n
What struck me most about the historical context was the way artistic movements such as the Dadaists heavily influenced creativity taking place. The cut-up technique adopted by many within this movement rejected notions of common sense and unoriginality by taking an article, cutting up all of the words, and then drawing randomly from the pot to create something new which became a common practice amongst creative writers (Rettberg 21). Thus, digital combinatory poetics\u2019 connection to print forms of poetry lies within the same principle\u2014feed the computer random words and have it arrange them in a random order to create a distinctly original poem. Rettberg highlights the way as well in which \u201ccomputers provide a variety of ways to easily select at random\u201d material that can be used for randomization within poetry (23). This aspect of randomness, however, as a reader located well within the 21st<\/sup> century, doesn\u2019t as easily trigger my sympathies considering my externality from the original culture the text was placed in. Consequently, the randomness\u2019 interjection in my ability to easily understand the text proves rather frustrating.<\/p>\n As a result, I am moved to ask: does the importance of combinatory poetic works lie within the text itself or rather within the process by which the text was created?<\/p>\n Simultaneously, the search for originality in the mid-20th<\/sup> century not only gave rise to the cut-up technique but also the distinct form of the works. The text becomes more indecipherable, I argue, due to the way in which electronic combinatory poetics escape formally from the confines of the screen to never return except in a reincarnated fashion. The Nick Montfort\u2019s implementation of Strachey\u2019s \u201cLove Letters\u201d<\/a> flashes the letters across the screen without proper time to read them, and if you can\u2019t read it in time, it vanishes. This movement provides a reason for the why \u201cStochastic Texts\u201d<\/a> and<\/em> \u201cLove Letters\u201d remain fundamentally poetic. Their representational meanings in addition to evocative meanings, as we discussed in class, remain under the control of the works\u2019 forms. With regards to these two combinatory poetic pieces, their representational meanings are hardly the only meanings present, for the evocative meanings are heavily privileged when the content is difficult to decipher, disappears, and is recycled.<\/p>\n I remain intrigued by Rettberg\u2019s claim that \u201cif these letters are not great literature<\/em>, they are literary writing produced by the procedural operations of the computer\u201d and if this is the way we choose to think about combinatory poetics, then to what extent have modern computer science advancements also advanced (or diminished?) the ability for writers and scientists alike to be better storytellers (32). Particularly, what is the purpose of poetry if not to somehow come to understand it? Am I unable to understand the gravity of these works because I could not relate to the contextual culture?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The genesis of electronic literature began with the kind of combinatory poetics seen in \u201cHouse of Dust\u201d by Allison Knowles and James Tenney, \u201cStochastic Texts\u201d by Theo Lutz, and \u201cLove Letters\u201d generator by Christopher Strachey. All of these works were released as early as 1952 but no later than 1967, and by looking at the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":263,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-a"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/263"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":382,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions\/382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}