When Literature goes Multimedia

"In February 2000 Robert Coover noticed the 'constant threat of hypermedia: to suck the substance out of a work of lettered art, reduce it to surface spectacle.' Coover's message seems to be: When literature goes multimedia, when hypertext turns into hypermedia a shift takes place from serious aesthetics to superficial entertainment. What Coover points out is indeed a problem of hypermedia. If the risk of hyperfiction is to link without meaning, the risk of hypermedia is to employ effects that only flex the technical muscles. Can there be substance behind spectacle? In this paper I discuss three examples of German digital literature which combine the attraction of technical aesthetics with the attraction of deeper meaning." -- from ELMCIP

"Roberto Simanowski received his Ph.D. at the University of Jena in 1996, was Research Fellow at University of Göttingen (1997), Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University (1998-2000), Visiting Scholar at University of Washington (2001), Visiting Professor for Cultural Studies in Digital Media at University of Jena (2002), and Assistant Professor for German Literature and Digital Aesthetics at Brown University in Providence (2003-2010). Simanowski is the editor of dichtung-digital.org, a German-English journal on digital aesthetics, which he founded in 1999. Besides articles and books on mass-culture in 18th century, nationalism in German literature and literary salon, he has published extensively on digital literature and arts. In 2010, he accepted a position at the University of Basel where he is now professor of media studies." -- from ELMCIP