Eve's Week 7: Network Writing

In this chapter of Electronic Literature, Rettberg writes, “Networks are both technological and social structures” (152). Network-based electronic literature allows for a unique form of collaboration that other forms of literature cannot. Things like Twitter, email, blogs, and homepages were not originally created with the intention of being used to write literature, but authors found a way to manipulate these programs and create something new with it. One section of the chapter that I found interesting was about Mail art. Rettberg used it as an example of primitive network writing and talked about Ray Johnson, an artist who mailed pieces of art to other artists asking them to add to it. Johnson said that “the essence of this art practice...lies not in the art object as a commodity, but instead in the flow of ideas through time and space” (159). I thought that this was an important quote because it serves as a reminder that things like art and literature are valuable despite not always being profitable. In class we have previously discussed how a lot of electronic literature authors don’t make a lot of money from what they do but still create because they are passionate about it.

I decided to take a closer look at the homepage novel, The Fall of the Site of Marsha by Rob Wittig. The website is “written” by “Marsha”, a woman who is obsessed with angels. She develops this obsession after losing her father and her job, claiming she saw an angel while walking in a park one day. There are three different versions of the homepage, the first being Marsha’s writing and design of the page. The second version includes writing from a hacker who is insinuating that Marsha was somehow responsible for her father’s death and is a bad person. In the third version, the site is in shambles and there is a message revealing that Marsha is in the hospital. In each version there is a link labelled, “Private Door” that only Marsha, her husband Mike, and a spiritual guide named Bits can open. It shows communication between the three of them as the story progresses. The private messages show that Mike and Bits may be having an affair. In the textbook, Rettberg explains that it was Marsha’s husband hacking the site and pretending to be angels talking to Marsha because he was done with their marriage. I liked this story because it was interactive and felt like I was actually looking at a real website. As you click on each “version” of the homepage it truly does feel like you are watching the website fall apart in real time. Writing on platforms like this allows an author to be creative in new ways and explore a narrative through a unique and immersive perspective.