INTERMEDIATION

By N. Katherine Hayles

Almost all print books are digital files- print is only an output form. Some texts are designed in such
way that they are marked with visual – People of Paper, Extremely Loud…. Electronic literature is
somehow digital-born- it is created on computer and meant to be read on it; it is not only marked but
also actively formed. It is actually a dynamic interplay with computational media. It is interesting to
study the effect of those interplays, its differences from the print as a medium and in which way the
users contribute to the work, and in which way the intelligent (?) machine. Computation is central for
the performance, play and interpretation of electronic literature. The text deals with the cognitive
capacities of computation.

DYNAMIC HETERARCHIES AND FLUID ANALOGIES

Everything that is computable has to be reduced to the binary code in order to be executed. The idea
of intermediation is developed through the two key concepts: dynamic heterarchies and fluid
analogies- both embodied in multi-agent computer programmes.

Cellular automata are simple computational devices which can create complex patterns from the
interaction on local level. It is problematic when it has to be shifted to a higher level. The author uses
the idea of intermediation, adopted from Gessler, which explains that a first-level emergent pattern
is captured in another medium and re-represented with the primitives of the new medium, which
leads to an emergent result captured in turn by yet another medium, and so forth. The result of this
re-representation is called dynamic hierarchy, but the author calls the system dynamic heterarchy,
since feedback and feedforward loops interact continuously while moving through the system. This
can be compared to mother carrying a baby, where they influence each others’ functioning.

Other complex systems can be explained through the model of dynamic heterarchies, such as:
cosmology, origins of life and molecular biology. The complexity emerges when the heterarchies are
interacting with one another. It is similar o the formation of the molecules from the atoms, since
once united, the dynamics of the atoms changes, since they are transformed into a different system-
a different medium of molecular interactions. Also, DNA sequences can be understood as digital
systems of base pairs (DNA code: ATCG) but when tRNA brings the amino acid to form a protein, on
the basis of the code, the amino acid part (the protein) is analog- topologically determined, and
actually it is the functional part. Digital DNA code makes it possible to form a fully functioning analog
protein. Both digital and analog processes together perform in more complex ways. Digital processes
are discrete and provide much finer error control that analog ones. On the other hand, analog
processes are better at transferring information from one medium to another through morphological
resemblance and can encode information in more diverse ways compared to digital encoding. As
both types of processes successfully work together in biological processes, they can be expected to
work together in the dynamic heterarchies.

Interaction between human and the computer can also be seen as a dynamic heterarchy (bound
together by intermediating dynamics). They are bound together in complex physical, psychological,
economic and social formations. People create diverse machines they surround themselves with and
are in turn being reengineered through their interactions with computational devices, which now can
perform cognitively sophisticated tasks. They can also use both natural language and programming
code which allows them to function in a complex human-computers networks. In this two-way
interaction, feedback goes in both directions, and complexities emerge when shifting from one media
to another.

There is a question of CHINESE ROOM

computers’ cognition and
intentionality. If we take "Suppose that I'm locked in a room and ... that I know no Chinese,
into account Searle’s either written or spoken". He further supposes that he has a set of
Chinese room experiment, rules in English that "enable me to correlate one set of formal symbols
then we might think that with another set of formal symbols", that is, the Chinese characters.
the computers need to These rules allow him to respond, in written Chinese, to questions,
possess a certain amount also written in Chinese, in such a way that the posers of the questions
of understanding in order – who do understand Chinese – are convinced that Searle can actually
to be called cognitive understand the Chinese conversation too, even though he cannot.
agents. Hofstader suggests Similarly, he argues that if there is a computer program that allows a
that ‘’cognition is computer to carry on an intelligent conversation in a written language,
recognition’’ which means the computer executing the program would not understand the
that in order to have conversation either.’’
cognitive capacities one/
copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
computer has to be able to
recognize the patterns and
extrapolate from them to analogies. There are some programmes that can complete the given task
using fluid exchanges between the codelets they are using, making informed guesses. Due to the
dynamics of this process, this can be seen as the computational equivalent of understanding.

Intermediation between humans and computers is the framework for understanding electronic
literature. Since the literature actually works through the metaphor, evocation and analogy, it could
be seen as shifting media. In the concept of electronic literature, intermediation has two distinct
ways in which it might be understood: as a literal description of the dynamics of human-computer
interaction, or as a metaphor for such interactions. If the computer programme is complex enough, a
human interacting with it will use more cognition to interact. Metaphoric programmes create the
dynamic between the electronic literature and the uses and the performance is metaphoric, since
the computer is not cognitively sophisticated. If the programme’s effect elicits complexity in the user,
than the effect is no longer metaphoric, but it rather influences human’s cognitive processes.
Further, when a programmer/writer creates an executable file, the process reengineers the writer’s
perceptual and cognitive system as she works with the medium possibilities. The programmer
experiences creation as an active dynamic in which the computer plays central role. The result is
meta-analogy: as human cognition is to the creation and consumption of the work, so computer
cognition is to its execution and performance. The meta-analogy makes clear that the experience of
electronic literature can be understood in terms of intermediating dynamics linking human
understanding with computer (sub)cognition. The interaction itself is a fluid mix of possibilities, both
for the user and for the programme. In terms of electronic literature, this flow is crucial for narrative
and design thematics and design functionalities. Book as a medium is also a way of capturing writer’s
cognition and transferring it to the reader through the print and its own specificities. However, while
in books the letters don’t shift once printed, in electronic literature, there are possibilities of
recombination (recombinant flux). It is argued that the computer as the real agent, or at least as an
illusion of a real agent, has more power in creating intermediating dynamics.
When shifting to another medium, the knowledge is carried forward in a way which at first tries to
resemble the earlier medium. At first, pieces of electronic literature resembled print, and only later
did they start to emphasize the effects that could not be achieved by print.

The idea of intermediation reveals how effects of electronic literature are achieved and how they iply
the existence of dynamic heterarchies that bind together humans and computers. The examples with
wich the author deals are limited to the interplay between print and electronic textuality but she
claims that other sorts of dynamics also exist.

FROM PAGE TO SCREEN: MICHAEL JOYCE’S AFTERNOON, A STORY AND TWELVE BLUE

Here, the evidence of print is apparent even though the hyperlink and interactivity are used.
Afternoon, a story after reading does not give sense of being completed, thus negating the
Aristotelian plot structure of rising complication, climax and denouement. Stories such as The
Elevator and The Babysitter are often seen as the precursors of electronic literature due to their
branching structures. Twelve Blue enables the reader to experience the flow of images, characters
and events. It seems that the reader creates patterns. Metapatterns emerge through the process of
forming analogies between analogies. Some critics say that Twelve Blue perfectly represents the
change from literacy to electracy because its logic has more in common with the ways in which image
and text come together on the Web than with the linearity of text in a printed book.

MARIA MENCIA: TRANSFORMING THE RELATION BETWEEN SOUND AND MARK

In Maria Mencia’s work, the emphasis shifts from the mixing of human and machine cognition to the
reconfigurations possible with digital technologies of the traditional association of the sound with the
mark. She explores what happens when one detaches graphemes and phonemes from their original
location and represents them through the digital media by exploring different ways to mobilize
junctions of marks and sounds. In traditional reading, visual perception of letters creates silent
sounds which are then turned into visual images in reader’s head, who gets the impression that
he/she can see the events described. Even though in her work, the connection between text and
vocalisation is intact, visual perception is not purely phonetic. In Birds Singing Other Birds’ Songs, the
human is mixed with nonhuman life forms to create hybrid entities that represent the conjunction of
human and nonhuman ways of knowing. Mencia’s work creates analogies between human and
nonhuman, as well as between the different media transformations. Those are dynamic changes
which reveal the deep structure of intermediation both in terms of media and human/nonhuman
communication. Although Mencia’s work can be classified as electronic literature, they are
fundamentally about literacy as such rather than any given literary form.