Writing Machines Blog 1

Chapter 1. Media and Materiality

Chapter .2 Material Metaphors, Technotexts, and media-Specific Analysis.

“Writing Machines” by Katherine Hayles explores the relationship between contemporary literature and computer technologies, focusing on the ways that new technologies of writing have affected the development and dissemination of the written word.

The piece through an autobiographical character named Kaye explores the development of literature and how technologiess used to present lititure has evolved over a forty year period. From the 50’s when type was the voice of the printed page up to the 90’s and the practices of Cybernetics. Creative, technological, and artistic practices are explored.

Coming from a rural background the character Kaye initial bewilderment and almost obsession with the written material she encounters lead her to study English and Media. Katherine Hayles is currently Professor of English and Design Media Arts at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Hayles explains literature was never only words, never merely immaterial verbal constructions. Literary texts, like us, have bodies, an actuality necessitating that their materialities and meanings are deeply interwoven with each other.

Hayes introduces the important issue of copyright and sentiment then suggests it is the way in which ideas are expressed through digital media that could be secured as copyright as this also effects the readers experience.

Something that interested me - Text as Technology
Examples of language and hybrid verbal terms introduced and or developed by Hayes in Writing Machines:
Media-Specific Analysis
Cybernetics
Medial Ecology
The precession of simulacra
Simulacrum
Inscription Technologies
Tecotexts
Ergodic texts
Rhizomatic structure

Print considerations I found interesting:
Graphic design and print elements have been used to enhance the reader’s visual and sensory engagement. Consideration has been given to the print qualities of the book. It is a small paper back and was designed by Anne Burdick it has an embossed cover that allows the reader to pass your finger across the edge one way and it spells Writing pass it the other way and it spells Machines. The reader is invited to fondle and engage in a physical experience used in print media as embossing. The typography used in the book is innovative, variations and graphical manipulations of fonts are used and images of text to establish a relationship between form and content.