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Digital Literature. Topic: The Uses of Randomness in Digital Literature. The Uses of Randomness. Outline Definition Works to read “I’Ching Poetry Engine†* (done; to be compared with “Oracle†and other generators) “Clues†* (done) Scott Rettberg, “The Meddlesome Passenger†(see list.htm)
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Digital Literature Topic:The Uses of Randomness in Digital Literature
The Uses of Randomness Outline • Definition • Works to read • “I’Ching Poetry Engine” * (done; to be compared with “Oracle” and other generators) • “Clues” * (done) • Scott Rettberg, “The Meddlesome Passenger” (see list.htm) • Simon Biggs, “Book of Books” (see list.htm) • Stuart Moulthrop, Reagan Library (see list.htm)unity of form and contentform of randomness as that of memory • YATOO (“You Are the Only One”) • Radio Salience
Definition • Random link A link in affiliation with a “random generator,” which, once executed, brings forth a destination/page in a random way or a randomly selected destination/page with randomly chosen text. --Check out “randomness” and “hyperlink” in Wikipedia • Random generator For some digital artists, the term “random generator” refers to a random page-selecting program or a random text assembly script embedded in a machine, rather than to the machine itself. For instance, in the introduction to his “Esmeralda,” Teo Spiller states: “The player feels in charge by choosing answers, when in fact he is subverted by the game’s random generator” (1999: index.htm). The “random generator” of “Esmeralda” is actually a random page-selecting script installed in the game. Different from Spiller’s concept of “random generator,” Andrew C. Bulhak’s “The Postmodernism Generator,” as the random text-generating machine is called, employs a system that runs a random text-selecting script, a set of specifications (grammars), and an internal database for text retrieving. --Check out “random number generator” in Wikipedia
“The Meddlesome Passenger”; The Splash Page. The passenger’s eyes are closed before the mouse moves over the bust.
Eyes are widened after clicking. A randomly selected page is uploaded in the frame to the right.
“The Meddlesome Passenger” • A Storyline: • “[Rettberg] begins it with the death of an author. The reader is immediately told by the only witness, the narrator of the text, that he has killed the author. What ensues is a story that pits the intentions and interests of the author, narrator, and reader against one another. The reader looks to the narrator for a story, but the narrator cannot, because of the death of the author, provide one. At least, he cannot provide a traditional “readerly” text as Barthes would have defined it; the narrator of the text does not have a fixed, predetermined story for the reader to follow because his author has been killed. In fact, the narrator continually appeals to the reader for a story. The major conflict of Rettberg’s story occurs between the reader and narrator. The reader wants to consume a story told by the narrator, while the narrator wants the reader to act in place of the dead author and produce a story.” • --Robert Ford
“The Meddlesome Passenger” • Random links as metaphorical links Rettberg’s broken narrative, a result of the random link, is meaningful as a form of expression in the sense that the broken form metaphorically embodies the dead man’s mode of narration, supposedly “meddlesome” as the title suggests. • See lecture-hypermedia-noteso.doc.(including topics beyond randomness)
“Book of Books I”: a body of endless implosion • The three screen shots of “Book of Books I” represent three states of evolution. New letters keep emerging in the screen while shrinking in size. No. 3 shot shows the final state of evolution, a space filled with letters of dots in the size of a pixel point size. The shape of the space resembles “1” (one), a symbol with relevance to “the Alter One Language,” or “our new universal language, binary code.”
According to Biggs, the “Book of Books”series is concerned with the following: *Firstly that it might be possible to write the works of Shakespeare using random methods if enough time and processing power were applied. The commonest form of this idea is that a room full of monkeys given enough time could achieve this feat. *The second idea comes from Jorge Luis Borges’s story ‘The Library of Babel’ where he imagines a library that contains every book, even hypothetical books, including those made up of utter nonsense, and of course the book that contains all books . . . . *The third premise relates to another Babel story, that of the Old Testament, where the once unified human language has been destroyed and divided into innumerable other languages and dialects. *The final theme is an attempt to create a form of writing where the text is always written from inside the body of the text . . .” (2003b: statement.htm) [Ref.: text generators] Metaphorical transformation of random process into that of evolution.
Reagan Library • Compare with “ALWS,” “The Meddlesome Passenger,”“Its Name Was Penelope,” A Life Set for Two, “Book of Books I” in terms of random methods. (隨機選文／選頁程式) • The structure (ref.: 0-review-RL-05) • The storyline • Compare with “Book of Books I” in terms of evolutionary form.(文本演化設計（evolutionary text; 見圖；08-busp-pavilion-1-4)
YATOO • Supplementary Reading: You Are the Only One (YATOO)
Supplements: YATOO • The lyrics:You are the only oneYou ain't got no fearYou can't solve my problemsYou will come with meWe will survive this momentI love you so muchI won't leave you aloneI will suffer from youI want you to escapeI feel close to you
