May 8, 2006
regards croisés / crossed looks Seeks Digital Literary Perspectives
deadline: 10 June 2006
La version française figure ci-dessous
Dear colleague,
The Paragraphe Laboratory at the University of Paris 8 is creating a new bilingual Fench/English academic review called regards croisés/crossed looks that focuses on the digital literature. This review will become a locus for exchanges between different points of view on digital literature. The review is resolutely multicultural and pluridisciplinary. It puts contributions by authors and researchers together. Researchers will come from literature, communications studies and new media studies, semiotics, psychology.
The review is not concerned with studies on the role the computer plays as a support for publishing and distributing printed literature, nor with the methods and computing tools for literary studies, nor with confusion between literature and video games, even if they have some similarities. Works that use specific properties of the digital medium to create literature are the concern.
The look should be multiple. It should describe works or approaches, look at the place of digital fiction or poetry in the literary history of a country or in the world, look at the different genres or forms of this literature, make naratologic or semiotic analyses, apply some new or classical theoretical models to these objects – this list is non-exhaustive.
Proposals for issue no. 1 must be sent me by mail before 10 June 2006 so that there is time to translate articles. They should be papers of less than 30000 characters (approximatively 10 pages in Times New Roman 12). Screenshots have to be in black and white only.
The paper can be written in French or in English, it will be translated into the other language.
Philippe Bootz, philippe·bootz (at) multimedia·univ-paris8·fr
…
Cher collègue.
Le laboratoire Paragraphe de l’université Paris8 lance la revue bilingue française/anglais regards croisés/crossed looks consacrée aux hypermédias littéraires. Cette revue internationale se veut lieu d’échanges entre divers points de vue, diverses approches des hypermédia littéraires. Résolument pluridisciplinaire et pluriculturelle elle regroupe des contributions d’auteurs et de chercheurs en sciences de l’information et de la communication, littérature, psychologie, arts des nouveaux médias – qui, tous, prennent les hypermédias littéraires comme objet de création ou d’étude.
Il ne s’agit pas ici de considérer le rôle du support informatique génère dans la diffusion ou l’édition d’œuvres imprimées et d’ouvrages anciens, ni de s’attacher aux méthodes et outils informatiques d’aide à l’analyse littéraire, ni de confondre littérature et jeu vidéo malgré leurs affinités mais bien de focaliser l’attention sur ces objets littéraires récents qui utilisent des propriétés spécifiques du médium numérique pour faire acte de littérature.
La revue propose un regard multiple. Il peut décrire des œuvres et des démarches, regarder la place de ces objets dans les histoires littéraires nationales, s’attacher sur les différents genres qui, peut-être, émergent dans ces œuvres, analyser des aspects plus narratologiques, sémiotiques ou communicationnels, confronter ces objets à des modèles analytiques et théoriques éprouvés par ailleurs ou développés spécifiquement pour ces objets – il ne s’agit là que de quelques pistes non exhaustives.
Les propositions pour le numéro 1 doivent m’être envoyées par mail directement sous forme d’un article définitif de 30000 signes maximum (soit une dizaine de pages en times new roman corps 12, simple interligne, format A4, marges de 2,5 cm) avant le 10 juin 2006 de façon à ce que nous ayons le temps de les traduire. Si l’article comporte des captures-écran, celles-ci doivent être en noir et blanc.
L’article peut être écrit en anglais ou en français. Il sera traduit dans l’autre langue.
Philippe Bootz, philippe·bootz (at) multimedia·univ-paris8·fr
June 9th, 2006 at 1:05 am
nor with confusion between literature and video games, even if they have some similarities
Sadly they seem to have neglected to precisely delineate where they think the dividing line is between “literature” and “video games”. =]
June 9th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
Well, true. But I think the point here is that they don’t want to investigate that dividing line. On the other side of things, Game Studies doesn’t want to, either. You can still have plenty of good discussion in such journals, you just have to find other places (Grand Text Auto!) to talk about the intersections and margins.
June 9th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
I suppose that’s a reasonable position, but I’m not sure they aren’t somehow implicitly doing that. When you add interactivity to something, it automatically brings up that question in my mind. Just because it bears superficial resemblance to something that was in previous eras called “literature”, and you call it something literary-sounding like “hypertext” doesn’t mean it isn’t really a video game dressed up in different clothing. How is hypertext different from choose your own adventure, and how is that different from a branching-plot computer RPG? All the interesting work, again imo, is in figuring out what exactly an interactive experience is, and how to shape it for whatever your desired ends are.
June 9th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
I forgot to add my specific question: Is interactive fiction digital literature or a video game? I personally consider it closer to digital literature, but some people seem to view it as basically a text-based video game. No doubt it depends on the piece of interactive fiction (some are closer to text-based adventures than any sort of real work of fiction, while others have barely any adventure-game feel at all).