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Electronic Literature

Peer Response (250 words each) =total 500 words

Student A

Qulipos are literary pieces where “procedural efforts “produce…a textual outcome” (Calvino, 1). As I read this description of Qulipos, I was reminded of First Screening where the author created text that glided and seemed to dance across the screen. The only difference between Qulipos and First Screening  is the lack of repetition. Calvino’s line also brought to mind Pieces of Orchestra where the words produce an outcome although it is not the intended textual outcome.

Raymond Querneau’s Un Contre a Votre Falcon happens to be “an application of simple algorithmic techniques” (Calvino, 1) in the same way that the prose in Pieces of Orchestra resembles code instructions and First Screening produces text on a screen. I could easily see sentences similar to “As sleeping-bags the silent landscape pave” and “staunch pilgrims longest journey can’t depress” gliding across the screen. The difference between Querneau’s work and First Screening is that Querneau’s words seem to connect to form a coherent narrative while the words don’t seem to connect in First Screening. Querneau’s work loses some coherence by placing the line “Through snobbish growing her hemline zone” (Querneau, 13) after the line “From playboy chance the nymph no longer flees” (Querneau, 13). As a result, the two sentences are no different than the phrases featured in First Screening.

Borges story The Library of Babel immediately brought me back to his previous work The Garden of Forking Paths. Borges’ quote “that a few miles to the right, the tongue is dialectical and that ninety floors up, it is incomprehensible” brings to mind the separate ways that one can view the labyrinth in “The Garden of Forking Paths.” It can extend across the past and future or even across different realities. The quote makes me think of when I am in a library with a labyrinth that leads to two different sections of the library and two different realities. For example let’s suppose that the two sections in the library are “World Cultures” and “Programming”. The two separate realities are that I may know more about one subject than another. In one reality I might know about Programming and go into that section. In another reality, I might know more about cultures. In speaking of cultures, I must add that this story reminded me of the Tower of Babel except that the letters and sections of the library took the place of individuals speaking different languages.

The axiom can be linked to two types of realities, similar and different realities. The interesting thing about the axiom is Godel’s assertion that “it doesn’t matter in which order you add two numbers you always get the same sum.” Unlike the labyrinth, the axiom appears to lead to the same outcome. Hilbert asserts that “one axiom might conflict with another in a way that the conflict could manifest itself in a theorem such that the theorem could be proven both true and false.” The point that axioms could conflict would be another reality.

Student B

The readings from this week definitely held similarity to the ones from last week in that they were still fairly cryptic. The Borges story, “The Library of Babel” had similar themes to “The Garden of Forking Paths” in that libraries and books were major agents for story progression, and time was heavily discussed. The one major difference that I noticed between the two stories was that “Garden” seemed more like a story. There were named characters and events that took place. “Library of Babel” definitely seemed more like a history lecture, describing an old place, how it worked in the time that it existed, and some things that happened there. Both libraries in the stories had to do with time, rather the questioning and reasoning of it. In “Garden” the grandfather’s process of figuring out how time worked along with alternate timelines was never described. This story felt like it could be part of the thought process that went into figuring it out. Reading Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem felt only a little easier than trying to read the source code for First Screening from last week. Somebody who knows math/logic theorems/coding would have ease making sense of those readings. However, I am not well versed in the logic behind mathematics or coding, so it did not click right away. Oulipo is interesting as it reminds me of both Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit and First Screening from last week. Oulipo’s poems seem to be meaningless with lack of context behind the words themselves. They seem choppy and would only make sense to the writer of them. Their format is artistic and aesthetically pleasing, each block around each line seems to break up the poems and make them seem choppy, which gave it a similar feel to Grapefruit and First Screenings. Part of the choppiness adds to the charm, but the lines of Oulipo made little sense together. It was hard to piece together a story from them. At times I felt that each line was designed to be its own poem and not go with the surrounding ones. For instance the line “From playboy Chance the nymph no longer flees” on page 159 seems to work just as well on its own as its own poem. I find that social media allows for poems like this today, in that it can be one short cryptic sentence for the reader to interpret their own meaning. Twitter has a character limit per tweet, thus only allowing for small bits of text per post. People have taken to instagram to make word art for short poems and inspirational phrases to post in an image there. Despite the difference in time from these poems on Oulipo and social media today, it still seems that short cryptic poems remain consistent, but perhaps it is because that is what sells. It is short and cryptic enough to allow any reader to relate to it, but it still holds meaning in itself.

Rubrics

• Post comprehensively addresses the topic, adds value to discussion with stimulating posts
• Posts in-depth, incisive reflections that demonstrate critical thinking; shares real-world experiences and examples
• Well-written posts made within required timeframe; no grammar/spelling errors