digital matters

My attention has been pulled away from poetry a bit these days, because I’ve been feeling a bit of a disturbance in the force. Is it just me or is Interactive Fiction experiencing a bit of a resurgence … again?

I think it was the launch of Blue Lacuna with its clever cross social media teaser “Blueful” that first turned my head.

Then, through February and March, I participated, obliquely,  in this  Interactive Fiction workshop.

Then Metafilter hosted its own IF competition.

And three people from my non-digital life, on separate occasions, spoke to me of either playing or wanting to play  IF.

And to what degree has the development of Inform 7, which is really a remarkable thing, had on this groundswell? ( if the ground is, indeed, swelling.)

and then over in another corner, though sometimes the same corner, there’s a buncha computer generated poetry being, well, generated.

new generators in development

newish generators pushing out  new texts.

oldish generators being put to newish uses, to be met with the same old outcries. (I think one of my favourites is a comment left on the post announcing the release of Issue # 1: “This isn’t art. It’s collage!”)

it seems as though everything’s all texty again. And is this because of texting? and twitter? (which was born out of texting and phonishness.) So is this a limited window of opportunity for those of use who love digital text to strike while we’ve got a mass audience, before the technology develops further and the ante gets uppped and people can afford to send video messages to each other on their phones?

Whatever the reason, it couldn’t have come at a better time. I’ve been waiting for something to emerge to be the object of my academic gaze for a few months, and then, perhaps, perhaps, a few years of academic study, and been hesitant, cause, well,  first there was nothing that moved me. And then, in my last academic go-round in digital studies, I poured all my love into MOOs, before reading the writing on the wall. The first cut is indeed the deepest, and I think we all missed a really fine moment with MOOs and MUDs to do some really interesting poetic work. But there’s a lot here to play with and think about, and play about and think with.

Who’s in?