Code activism

In this week’s class we read “The Poetics and Politics of Computer Code in Latin America: Codework, Code Art, and Live Coding” by Eduardo Ledesma, as well as “Code.surface II Code.depth” by Rita Raley in order to learn about the aesthetic, political and literary possibilities of code. So far in the course, we have learned that code is the mechanism behind an interface. In other words, code is the operating system that makes an interface able to be interacted with and seen on a screen. Traditionally in the realm of electronic literature, code remained for the most part hidden from the viewer unless the reader of a digital poem actively looked for the code if she could access it in the first place. Later on, as Ledesma and Raley among other scholars inform us on the shifting reality of code, we learn that code transitions from playing the role of behind-the-scenes actor to becoming a prominent feature in the surface of digital poetry.  

Due to the deep nature of code, the notions of “layers, surfaces and spatial metaphors” have been established as important practices in the field of digital literature, as well as its distribution and presence on the screen have demonstrated the political implications of subgenres of electronic writing such as codework, code art and live coding (Raley 1). In his article, Ledesma examines the code poetry of three Latin American artists: Giselle Beiguelman (Brasil), Antonio Mendoza (Cuba) and Mitzi Olvera (México), arguing that work of these artists exemplify “hacktivism, digital zapatismo, dot-communism, digital artivism, or electronic civil disobedience” as a way to critique post-industrial capitalism (117). Each artist studied, therefore, is able to disrupt capitalist interests on the Web and consequently creates a spaces free of said interests. Through a close reading of the works of these Latin American artists, Ledesma posits that code is worthy of analysis and has the potential to afford profound analyses not only on digital systems, but also on local and global political contexts. 

In the work of Eugenio Tiselli titled “degenerativa,” (2005) code becomes highly visible in the text as one progresses through the text. The author tells the reader in the original page that each time someone visits the page, one of the characters, words or their structures degenerate (hence the title) into its coded makeup. A possible first interpretation of this mechanism points to the decay of all life forms in the planet due to capitalism’s relentless disregard for the survival of species, apathy of causing the rapid increase of pollution and waste, just to name a couple of examples. This is also reinforced by the bleak colors of the text: a black background and gray letters. As more and more code appears in the work, one could acquire the sensation that the author would like the reader to learn code, in this way democratizing the space of the Internet by making previously hidden code available to the masses. Likewise, in the work “regenerativa” (2005) also by Tiselli, not only does the page disintegrate, but is also able to regenerate itself by extracting parts of the page previously visited. Here, the colors are sharply contrasted: green background perhaps ties into a political stance regarding the environment, and letters in all sorts of vibrant colors such as purple and red insinuate a world becoming alive. In this way, Tiselli situates code and digital poetry as a whole as a powerful way of disrupting capitalism and affording the possibility of regenerating the world. In sum, these works open the possibility for code to function in innovative and ground-breaking ways, especially pertaining to literature and politics. 

Questions for further discussion:

1) Digital artists have been disrupting the separation between code and surface by including code into their works. The notion of depth (code as "deep") and surface is of particular interest to me. How can we apply these notions of depth and surface to the reading and interpreting of any text, whether referring to the materiality of a printed book or the actual content? And, if both surface and depth are integrated into a digital work, does this integration actually deconstruct them and question the very idea of spatiality? 

2) Raley writes about the temporality of code, stating that code is not "mere execution" since it has the ability to remain "dormant" for a time. Therefore, code begins the moment it is written and not until it activates a screen. Could we compare this to a printed text? Does the text become "alive" until the reader reads it?