A Dynamic Reading Environment for Literary Texts

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A Dynamic Reading Environment for Literary Texts

• Terry Butler
• Research Computing Director
• Faculty of Arts
• May 2003

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Dynamic text - outline

• Text has changed, but our theories of text have
  not
• What is the significance of dynamic text?
• What are they consequences for teaching and
  research?
• Preview of the Text Teller

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Text is on the move

• The changing nature of electronic text

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We already have the gear

• Reading tools eBook readers (Microsoft and
  Adobe)

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Characteristics of Dynamic Text

• It appears on a mobile and portable device
• It is kinetic it appears in real time
• It is transient when we are done with reading,
  the text is gone

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Recent sightings of dynamic text

• Closed captioning on video
• semi-automatically generated
• potential for inadvertent humour is great
• Radio Data System
• display of information sent along with audio
  broadcast
• And what about that annoying dancing text?

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Static theories of static text

• Electronic text has most often been studied as a
  static object
• OHCO (Renear et al) and other theories imply a
  body safely dead and decently buried

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Literary text display systems

• Shakespeare Internet editions
• web.uvic.ca/shakespeare
• Ronald Tetrault. Dynamic Collation, Lyrical
  Ballads
• www.rc.umd.edu/editions/LB
• James Joyce Text Machine
• www.andromeda.rutgers.edu/ehrlich/jjtm

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The Text Teller

• A research environment for literary text
• A virtual device for the user to control dynamic
  text
• Demo of the Text Teller

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The Text Teller

• Reader control is the key
• Reading returns to its roots as uni-directional,
  more performative (like oratory or music)
• The device can read the Internet, which
  involves text transformation and basic syntactic
  processing

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Text Teller DTD

• lt!ELEMENT dynamictext (header?,text)gt
• lt!ELEMENT header (title?,author?,date?,source?,pro
  perty)gt
• lt!ELEMENT text (p)gt
• lt!ELEMENT p (s)gt
• lt!ELEMENT s (c)gt
• lt!ELEMENT c (PCDATA)gt

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Text Teller XML coding

• lt?xml version"1.0" ?gt
• ltdynamictextgt
• lttextgt
• ltpgt
• ltsgt
• ltcgtI would say to the House,lt/cgt
• ltcgtas I said to those who have joined this
  governmentlt/cgt lt/sgt
• ltsgt
• ltcgt"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil,
  tears and sweat."lt/cgt lt/sgt lt/pgt
• ltpgt
• ltsgt
• ltcgtWe have before us an ordeal of the most
  grievous kind.lt/cgt lt/sgt
• ltsgt
• ltcgtWe have before us many, many long months
  of struggle and of suffering.lt/cgt lt/sgt lt/pgt

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Pedagogical possibilities

• Return immediacy to the act of reading
• Explore reading as performance
• Use the power of the computer to selectively hide
  and show ancillary materials

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But no one will read literature on the screen

• A computer screen is not an appropriate
  interface for the primary act of reading." David
  Miall, 1990
• We are all counter-examples to the shibboleth
  you cant read extensively from a screen
• The commercial world has given us computers and
  displays which are more than adequate the
  difficulties that remain are more social than
  technical
• We can expand Aarseth's Cybertext categories and
  add dynamic text to our vocabulary

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Bibliography

• Espen Aarseth. Cybertext perspectives on ergodic
  literature. Johns Hopkins Press 1997.
• Sven Birkerts. The Gutenberg elegies the fate of
  reading in an electronic age. Boston Faber and
  Faber 1994.
• Mats Dahlström. When is a Webtext? TEXT
  Technology. 2002 11(1)139-161.
• David S. Miall. Rethinking English Studies The
  Role of the Computer. David S. Miall, editor.
  Humanities and the computer New Directions.
  Oxford Clarendon Press 1990 pp. 49-60.
• The Electronic Paper Chase. Scientific American,
  November 2001.

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Web resources

• My personal website
• www.arts.ualberta.ca/tbutler
• Text Teller
• www.arts.ualberta.ca/tbutler/textteller
• Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta
• www.arts.ualberta.ca
• The TAPoR Project
• http//tapor.ca