Scripting reading motions : the codex and the computer as self-reflexive machines / Manuel Portela.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Portela, Manuel, 1964- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Reading, Psychology of.

Books--Format.

Books.

Electronic publications--Design.

Electronic publications.

Hypertext literature.

Literature and technology.

Information visualization.

Books and reading.

Design.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 410 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2013]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

An exploration of what experimental literature in both print and programmable media tells us about the act of reading.In Scripting Reading Motions, Manuel Portela explores the expressive use of book forms and programmable media in experimental works of both print and electronic literature and finds a self-conscious play with the dynamics of reading and writing. Portela examines a series of print and digital works by Johanna Drucker, Mark Z. Danielewski, Rui Torres, Jim Andrews, and others, for the insights they yield about the semiotic and interpretive actions through which readers produce meaning when interacting with codes. Analyzing these works as embodiments and simulations of the motions of reading, Portela pays particular attention to the ways in which awareness of eye movements and haptic interactions in both print and electronic media feeds back onto the material and semantic layers of the works. These feedbacks, he argues, sustain self-reflexive loops that link the body of the reader to the embodied work. Readers' haptic actions and eye movements coinstantiate the object that they are reading.Portela discusses typographic and graphic marks as choreographic notations for reading movements; examines digital recreations of experimental print literary artifacts; considers reading motions in kinetic and generated texts; analyzes the relationship of bibliographic, linguistic, and narrative coding in Danielewski's novel-poem, Only Revolutions; and describes emergent meanings in interactive textual instruments. The expressive use of print and programmable media, Portela shows, offers a powerful model of the semiotic, interpretive, and affective operations embodied in reading processes.Important Notice: The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images found in the physical edition.

Contents:

1.1 First Scene of Reading 2

1.2 Second Scene of Reading 5

1.3 Reading the Writing of Reading 10

1 The Codex and the Computer as Self-Reflexive Machines 15

1.1 Seeing Reading 15

1.2 Moving Eyes 23

1.3 Reading Hands 37

1.4 Assembling Pages 43

1.5 Embodying Books 52

1.6 Performing Codes 66

1.7 Charting Fields 73

2 Codex Codes: Mapping a Choreography of Reading 79

2.1 Writing the Type 79

2.2 Fleshing the Word 85

2.3 Bibliographic Codes 89

2.4 Recoding Bookness 94

2.5 Translating the Codex 97

2.6 Remediating the Codex 100

2.7 Mapping the Codex 107

3 Digital Transcreations: Transcoding a Poetics of Reading 113

3.1 The Poem Is the Medium 113

3.2 Topographies of Reading 117

3.3 Performing Inscriptions 135

3.4 Language Machine 142

3.5 Galaxies of Signifiers 150

3.6 Kinetic Translations 158

3.7 Reflexive Remediations 161

4 Moving the Mind: The Motion of Signifiers 167

4.1 Poetic Engines 167

4.2 Machine Texts 177

4.3 Self-Assembled Databases 193

4.4 Semiotic Gaps 200

4.5 Immersive Spaces 208

4.6 Procedural Signs 211

4.7 The Play of Reading 215

5 Loving the World: The Codex as Computer 233

5.1 Infinity Is Round 233

5.2 The Book Is Round 237

5.3 Typography Is Round 244

5.4 Language Is Round 254

5.5 The World Is Round 259

5.6 Love Is Round 269

5.7 Writing Is Round 278

5.8 Reading Is Round 283

6 Mouse-Over Events: Meaning Emerges 291

6.1 Working Codes 291

6.2 Playing Poems 293

6.3 Integrating Channels 297

6.4 Permutating Cut-Ups 307

6.5 Programming Interactions 312

6.6 Visualizing Meanings 318

6.7 Entangled Poetics 330

7 Scripting the Act of Reading 333

7.1 Inside Out 333

7.2 Outside In 338

7.3 Unwriting 347

7.4 Unreading 361.

Notes:

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

ISBN:

9781461943303

1461943302

9781299848467

129984846X

9780262317351

0262317354

OCLC:

858282178

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.