Main Points

     The Class discussed sections of Katherine Hayles' Writing Machines. Katherine Hayles received several degrees in Chemistry before going to get her MA and PhD in English Literature. Because of her Chemistry background, much of her work has to do with the interconnections between literature, science, and technology. She is considered a very relevant critic in literary circles today.

     In the section the class read from Writing Machines, Hayles' overall argument seemed to be that the materiality of a text interacts with that text and impacts its meaning. Therefore the physical materials used to create a text are naturally important to how we understand that text. The importance of materiality has, until recently, been ignored. However, Hayles believes it is important to bring the topic to the forefront. Books allow for immediacy. Hayles, on the other hand, wants to focus not on immediacy, but on what Derrida would call the "supports" for the book. She wants people to notice the book as a physical entity and refocus our understanding of the book to include its physical elements. If we notice materiality, we can realize more of writing's potential.

     She brings up the idea of "Material Metaphor," which means an awareness of the materiality of media and how the user interacts with it is symbolic. We can see a material metaphor in The Hacker and the Ants  in which Jerzy can unplug the phone virtually and the phone will disconnect in reality.  Hayles also gives an example of interactive office space because people treat the virtual icons the same as they would the real object. Metaphors are not restricted to those created by words in a text.  She wants to show how words connect to their physical artifacts. Code is another way to interact with media where we see active results. Then, we discussed technotext, which is work that foregrounds its materiality. A type of hypermediacy. She likens technotext to hypermediacy and cybertext in some ways. Cybertext is about functionality and hypertext is about story. They are polarized, so she wanted something that showed both functionality and story. We learned that hypertext is chunked, has links, and then many pathways that stem from those links, which is something technotext exhibits often. Hayles wants to study these topics and calls for Media Specific Analysis, or MSA. MSA looks at both screen and page because she wants a new way to study media considering they often bother and grow from one another. 

        The class then discussed the materiality of the book, since Hayles' wants us as readers to focus on this. We noticed that there was a textured front and slick pages. On the side with the dashes on individual pages, when the book was pressed together correctly the side of the pages read, "Writing Machines." We found also, that her book was like a hypertext because many of the words were links to the glossary and there were special layouts and footnotes as she played with the spacial possibilities of her book. Online, she has experimented even more. Hayles stated that it would be a new way to analyze books to consider the differences of their print and online versions. This can definitely be done with her website and the printed Writing Machines. She plays with the opacity of the text, layering words over one another, copying in quotes, and doing much more. The class discussed the setbacks of many books today being born digitally. Because of this, everything is on a hardrive or laptop, and it loses its material trace. Also, with technology ever building, current technologies become obsolete much quicker, which makes some works in danger of being trapped in unusable forms. 

     Then, we discussed House of Leaves. We looked at page 179 where Johnny is getting worse and worse and fears the medication eh is supposed to help himself with. We then discussed Chapter 9, the Labyrinth. Johnny discusses that chapter as if it is a physical thing he must escape from. With Chapter 9 and 10, Danielewski is playing with space and how the reader functions with it. Chapter 9, thought it is not many pages, takes ages to get through, with its winding words and unending footnotes that looped back on each other. However, 10 is many pages long, though with only a few words per page, so the reader flies through. This gives the author an aspect of control because he controls at what pace you can move through the book, despite the reader's ability to choose where and when to go certain places.  While reading, one can choose what to read and what not to read, but the general feeling Danielewski wants to create does not escape anyone. We are uneasy and confused no matter what we read. 

     Writing Machines and House of Leaves both challenge the way readers take for granted the opaque nature of pages in a text.  Hayles uses her lexicon to draw attention to how words are put on a page and where they appear.  House of Leaves also has text that transcends individual pages.  The reader notices the backwards text and discovers the words appear exactly as they did on the page before, but now the reader sees them from behind.  These texts force the reader to notice the way the book is written, as Hayles insists technotexts foreground maateriality.  Then those who encounter the text look for the material metaphor and try to understand why the physical presentation of the book contributes to the meaning of the text. 

Definitions

Technotext - text that foregrounds the material of the work. It connects the technology that produces texts to teh texts' verbal constructoins. They play a sepcial role in transforming literary criticism into material practice. 

Hypertext - 3 necessary characteristics: multiple reading paths, chunked texts, and linking mechanisms.  (ex: House of Leaves)

Material Metaphor - Hayles creates this term to account for the traffic between words and phsyical artifacts. It is a term to explain how we interact with something depending on how it is made and what it is. 

Media Specific Analysis- It is "a mode of critical inquiry attentive to the specificity of the medium in which a work is instantiated." By MSA, Hayles does not believe that media should be studied separate or "isolated" from one another. Instead, she believes that as media constantly imitate one another and incorporate parts into each other, MSA should chart this. MSA will "attend to specificity and the form," looking at both screen and page. 

Life Outline - additional material for a book including footnotes, endnotes, bibliography, etc posted online with instructions on how to insert them into the actual book

Quotes

"[Media-Specific Analysis] attends both to the specificity of the form...and to citations and imitation of one medium in another.  MSA moves from the language of text to a more precise vocabulary of screen and page, digital program and anologue interface, code and ink, mutable image and durable mark, computer and book." (30)

     Hayles extrapolating on her point that material matters to the medium. She is describing how MSA will focus on how mediums are limited by and helped by one another. How the screen can affect the page and how code and ink can interact and interplay with one another to help critics learn more about each subject separately and as a group. 

"Rather, digital media have given us an opportunity we have not had for the last several hundred years: the chance to see pring with new eyes, and with it, the possibility of understanding how deeply literary theory and criticism have been imbued with assumptions specific to print." (33)

     As a literary critic, Hayles wants to expand the techniques typically applied to printed works to other new forms of media.  Since digital media already calls more attention to its materiality, we should apply old analysis to new media -- hence the material metaphor. Also, we should use new media to look back at the old and learn things we had not yet uncovered because of a new perspective. 

Links

http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/mediawork/titles/writing/writing_book.html

The site we looked at in class which shows the difference between the printed and electronic texts. 

http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/colloq/hayles1/

Another article written by Katherine Hayles. Her viewpoint on how we are becoming "posthuman" with our bodies' involvement with technology. Thus, in the way that she sees the material of the book as important to understanding it, it is important to look at the material that makes up the body and how it functions with society. 

 http://dev.cdh.ucla.edu/~newmedia/platform/

"As literary critics engaging with digital "texts," we are confronted with new challenges specific to new media. This project attempts to illuminate some of these challenges by exposing how the specificities of media formats can inform and inspire critical awareness and engagement...(the) goal is to make evident how digital form and platforms inform the presentation of digital content and affect content, whether that content is literary text, textual device, or textual theory." It shows how the form and materiality matter in an online environment, as Hayles believes.

http://www.onomy.com/redweb/index.html

This website contains images and information on the Reading Eye Dog mentioned in the text as well as other "experiments in the future of reading."  The exhibit contains the list of other alternative reading devices.  The Reading Wall contains a new look at the history of reading.  Each experiment has brief information on how the technology works as well as the intent of the creation.