[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> codework

[josh zeidner <jjzeidner@yahoo.com>]

  "ART IS THEFT."

  Floral
  Underwear
  Clotheses
  Kindred
  Yeti
  Ossifying
  Unicode


> 
> >From the 
> Codework 
> special issue of
> American Book 
> Review, edited 
> by Alan 
> Sondheim
> http://www.litl
> ine.org/abr/Iss
> ues/Volume22/
> Issue6/abr2206.
> html
> 
> 
> Codework 
> 
> McKenzie 
> Wark
> 
> What happens 
> to writing as it 
> collides with 
> new media? I 
> was thinking 
> about this 
> recently while 
> looking over an 
> exhibition of 
> William Blake�s 
> work at the 
> Metropolitan 
> Museum in 
> New York. On 
> display was not 
> just Blake the 
> artist, Blake the 
> poet, or Blake 
> the quirky 
> revolutionary. 
> Here was Blake 
> the media 
> artist.
> 
> Blake 
> assembled all 
> of the elements 
> of a media 
> practice. As a 
> writer he 
> experimented 
> with all aspects 
> of the 
> production 
> process. His 
> aesthetic did 
> not stop with 
> the word on the 
> page. Here, I 
> thought, was a 
> useful 
> precursor to 
> name for the 
> new 
> developments 
> in writing that 
> take place on 
> the Internet, 
> developments I 
> will shortly 
> define as 
> �codework.�
> 
> But Blake is 
> interesting in 
> this connection 
> only if one 
> embraces all 
> aspects of his 
> productivity. 
> There�s a 
> tendency, in the 
> teaching of 
> literature and 
> the 
> management of 
> its canons, to 
> separate off the 
> authoring of 
> the text from 
> the other 
> aspects of 
> writing as a 
> production. It�s 
> a tendency that 
> full attention to 
> Blake 
> frustrates, 
> given how fully 
> he was 
> invested in the 
> implication of 
> writing in all 
> aspects of its 
> production and 
> circulation. 
> Blake�s 
> creation did not 
> stop at the 
> threshold of 
> �text.�
> 
> Digging 
> writing out of 
> the 
> prison-house of 
> �text� might 
> just be what is 
> needed to 
> unblock 
> thinking about 
> where the 
> Internet is 
> taking writing. 
> There has 
> always been 
> more to writing 
> than text, and 
> there is more to 
> electronic 
> writing than 
> hypertext.
> 
> Hypertext may 
> have come to 
> dominate 
> perceptions of 
> where writing 
> is heading in 
> the Internet 
> era, but it is by 
> no means the 
> only, or the 
> most 
> interesting, 
> strategy for 
> electronic 
> writing. 
> Hypertext 
> writers tend to 
> take the link as 
> the key 
> innovation in 
> electronic 
> writing spaces. 
> In hypertext 
> writing, the 
> link is supposed 
> to open up 
> multiple 
> trajectories for 
> the reader 
> through the 
> space of the 
> text.
> 
> Extraordinary 
> claims were 
> made for this 
> as a liberatory 
> writing 
> strategy. 
> Hypertext has 
> its limits, 
> however. First, 
> the writing of 
> the text stands 
> in relation to 
> the writing of 
> the software as 
> content to 
> form. The two 
> are not really 
> brought 
> together on the 
> same plane of 
> creativity. 
> Secondly, 
> hypertext tends 
> not to circulate 
> outside of the 
> academic 
> literary 
> community. It 
> has its roots in 
> avant-garde 
> American and 
> English 
> literature and 
> tends to hew 
> close to those 
> 
=== message truncated ===


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