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This is a collaborative course blog continuing the work started by students of "Electronic Literature: Hispanic Influences and Digital Theories" taught by Dr. Alex Saum-Pascual (Spring 2015) at UC Berkeley.
The current graduate seminar, "Experimental Literature and Digital Machines" builds on that course by examining theories, narratives, poetry and other manifestations of electronic literature in Spanish, both as a particular type of born-digital expression meant to live on a computer, as well as a larger field of inquiry that takes advantages of the capabilities offered by these electronic machines.
Throughout this course students will get familiarized with different genres of electronic literature (hypertext and interactive fictions, kinetic poetry, locative narratives, generative text, code work, etc.) while they learn how to analyze and explore electronic literature’s particular aesthetics, rhetoric and practical functioning. Apart from analyzing the formal characteristics of born-digital pieces, this course will explore the relations between digital experimentalism and some of the most revolutionary works of 20th and 21st Century Spain and Latin America. In order to establish this, students will read experimental literature by Borges and Cortázar, the Spanish Futurists and Catalan visual poets, the Brazilian Concrete poets, and contemporary post digital Spanish writers, among others from the English-speaking world.
We'll periodically post here our readings and experiences related to our explorations of electronic literature. If you are interested in learning more: stay tuned!
~Alex

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Post-digital y Open access

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En esta última semana los textos para leer fueron “Post-Digital Writing” de Florian Cramer, y un capítulo del libro Post-digital Print de Alessandro Ludovico titulado Post-Digital Print: a Future Scenario . Junto con estos textos observamos el trabajo Crónica de viaje de Jorge Carrión . Para esta entrada y a través de estos trabajos se nos propuso pensar en la relación entre las teorías post-digitales y las políticas de Open Access . Esta última, informada por el trabajo de Peter Suber, “What Is Open Access.” Empecemos por una aproximación a lo Post-digital. Según Florian Cramer, el resurgimiento de la imprenta es un indicador de que la era post-digital comenzó y es una era en la cual lo “digital” has become a meaningless attribute because almost all media are electronic and based on digital information processing; and where, on the other hand, younger generation media-critical artists rediscover analog information technology.” Si bien, es verdad que lo digital parece ya enco
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Is it really a glitch?

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The topic for today’s class is Materialities: Code and the readings assigned were “Code.Surface II Code. Depth” by Rita Raley; “The Poetics and Politics of Computer Code in Latin America: Codework, Code Art, and Live Coding” by Eduardo Ledesma and the reading by Nathan Jones, “Glitch Poetics: The Posthumanities of Error” in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Electronic Literature. The question guiding today’s discussion is “how code’s materiality and aesthetics and glitch poetics relate to politics of writing?”             Those of us that work with computers have at some point experienced a glitch. The Oxford dictionary defines a glitch as “A sudden, usually temporary malfunction or fault of equipment,” and we all know how frustrating at times that can be. Nonetheless, for glitch artists a glitch is not necessarily an issue or an uncomfortable experience. They have taken possession of this apparent “computer malfunction” and transform it into subversive messages. The readings mentioned abo
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E-lit as a labyrinth

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The topic for this week’s class discussion is Electronic Narrative: Borges and the Evolution of Cybertext. The readings assigned were El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (1941) and El Aleph (1949) by Jorge Luis Borges; Cybertext by Espen J. Aarseth. The prompt for this week’s blog entry is on the possible relations, influences or implications of Borges’s work and (global) e-lit or digital writing .             I would like to start by stating that Borges’ literature stirs many different feelings among literary critics and literature lovers. Some however, find it intellectually challenging and there are others that might consider it superfluous. However, it is evident that Borges was very critical himself and had very defined points of view about certain ideologies. It would be safe to say then that Borges had clear intentions when he wrote his narratives and every single word, comma or period that the issued in his writing was done with a purpose in mind.             Two of hi
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