E-Lit Wiki
What is not electronic literature today? Rather than introduce electronic literature or “e-lit” as a distinct literary category, ELIT WIKI wonders if it’s still possible to consider literature beyond the electronic circuits that characterize the networked present. The creation and study of literature today is facilitated by a range of digital formats and networked consoles, each of which introduce new practices of production, circulation, reception, and reading. Alongside these transformations, this wiki explores a range of new literary genres inhabiting, for example, computer scripts, image macros, flash movies, social media, hypertext bandcamp releases, interactive applications, and print on demand Analysis of Diana Hamilton's Dream. Thinking through the present, ELIT WIKI examines the history and future of literature through the everyday experience of computers and electronic devices. From the history of digital poetics to recent internet publications, we track the development of literature under the influence of computation up to works published in the present, as they emerge online. In lockstep, this wiki considers the category of “electronic literature” as a way to think about historical works remediated to the internet, in a wide range of (post-)digital formats. The wiki features short pages in an open format, which may be critical or creative in form, developed in conversation with the editors. No previous experience in programming, poetry, or literature is required to read these pages.
Inspiration
This wiki surveys the development and current state of electronic literature, from the popularity of hypertext fiction in the 1980's to the present, focusing on a range of emergent genres. It also discusses the central critical issues raised by electronic literature, pointing out that there is significant overlap with the print tradition. At the same time, the essay argues that the practices, texts, procedures, and processual nature of electronic literature require new critical models and new ways of playing and interpreting the works. E-Lit WIki is not a systematic attempt to survey and summarize the fast-changing field of electronic literature, artists, designers, writers, critics—instead, it imagines itself a playful engagement with the forms and platforms of the present.
