Electronic Literature: Discourses, Communities, Traditions

Electronic Literature: Discourses, Communities, Traditions by Thomas Swiss, has interesting things to say about the role of collaborative creativity, and something he calls “hybridity”. Swiss emphasizes the act of writing, over the scholarly or public reaction to it: art over theory.

To hear the critics tell it, one problem with emergent digital literary and art forms is that they don’t yet have established stars. Where’s our Shakespeare of the Screen? Our Pixel Picasso? How long before we have a Digital DeMille? The assumption is that we’ll have them eventually — undisputed geniuses working in what is now generally called “New Media.” But behind this assumption is another assumption, one with a long, sometimes thorny history – that the “best” or “most important” art is created by an individual, a single pair of hands in the study or studio.