Literary Aspects of the New Media Art Works by Jaka Železnikar and Srečo Dragan

Abstract

Jaka Železnikar’s works are written as algorithms, which ensures that they function “naturally” on the computer. On the other hand, as literature, these works participate in creating a new – similar, but different – literary experience. Železnikar writes visual poetry using literary algorithms. ASCII art using linguistic characters to produce images is a functional new medium for generative visual poetry. During this period, Železnikar programmed several visual poem generators and typing machines, which focused on the interface layer of the new media object and on the gesture of typing. Železnikar referred to his works from 1996 to 2005 as “net.art”, and afterwards he began writing browser extensions and “networked narratives” for the web 2.0 environment. Since 2008 he has been creating “networked e-poetry” incorporating on-line social media such as Twitter. Srečo Dragan, a new media artist with a background in conceptual art practices, video art, and painting, addressed the literary aspects of new media art in a series of techno-performances from 2005 to 2010. These projects involve verbal articulation of what is seen, or otherwise perceived, and are intended to actively integrate and change the mental archive of the visitor (i.e., previous experience, psychological condition, and social and cultural background) within the frameworks of a happening. Dragan’s Mobile E-Book Flaneur references digital reading as a nomadic practice: the reader strolls through the database of the linguistic corpus streaming from the internet at one time, and on another occasion the reader is an urban nomad, where the city is layered with databases containing cultural artefacts. The city can thus be “read” at the level of the spatialization of the text on the map, at the level of memory and oblivion of past cultural events, and finally at the level of reading the literary texts displayed on mobile screen devices.