Digital Writing About Digital Writing

Page from the piece referred to below, published in the EBR (Electronic Book Review)

Espacement de Lecture

2013-10-01

This image is from a “digital” essay - a version of a moving essay-poem originally presented in real time at the 2012 elo conference (elo = electronic literature organisation). Florence’s presentation explores how the “espacement” (Mallarme, Derrida) intrinsic to all writing changes in a born-digital context. The work reminds us of something we anticipated early in the formation of the Electronic Book Review (ebr) - that ‘critifiction’ is and always has been the way to make essays in the digital era.

(Edited, adapted version of the blurb in the ebr)

An Echo of Aurature, or, "Is there any(body) there," said Narcissus?[1]

Abstract: A Review Essay of John Cayley's The Listeners. What's both toxic and beneficial to poetic language? Listen up! Aurature has arrived.
Citation: Florence, Penny. “A Review Essay: John Cayley's The Listeners.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, no. 14, 2016. doi:10.20415/hyp/014.r01

What follows is the opening of my essay on a remarkable installation. Recent scandals over the Amazon Echo confirm its prescience. Follow the link for the full text.

Make no mistake, this unspectacular box is a work of serious brilliance. Indeed, the unremarkable external aesthetic, at once concealing and alluding to the reach and startling illumination of its significations, perfectly enacts its portent concerning innocuous appearances: Wake up to the toxic potential of neutral-seeming technology in general. Wake up in particular as regards language, so that we can also begin to benefit more fully and deeply from its potential for good.

And, perhaps most importantly, Wake up to the arrival of a prime example of the benefits of digital technologies: Aurature! http://hyperrhiz.io/hyperrhiz14/reviews/1-florence-aurature.html

David Jhave Johnston, Aesthetic Animism

Penny Florence
University College London

Citation: Florence, Penny. “David Jhave Johnston, Aesthetic Animism.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, no. 17, 2017. doi:10.20415/hyp/017.r03

“The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.”
— Sol LeWitt, Paragraphs on Conceptual Art (1967).

“Do not adjust your mind, there is a fault in reality.”
— Graffito (anon).

Well, it’s a long time since I have been simultaneously as delighted and dismayed as I have in reading this book. Possibly I never have, because when it is good it is very, very good, and when it is not, it is unreliable.

As a survey of the field, it is richly informative. As a guide to understanding that field, it sometimes falls short. This is especially so for anyone from the broader Humanities with little knowledge of digital poetry or, most importantly, how it relates to its predecessors.

http://hyperrhiz.io/hyperrhiz17/reviews/3-florence-jhave.html