My Third Hand Plays column at the SFMoma blog Open Space is chugging along. I’ve been granted an extension, which means two new works in addition to the nine already posted. I’ll cap it with a new piece by yours truly if I ever find time to create it.

The artists so far, from something like six countries: Daniel C. Howe, Alan Bigelow, joerg piringer, Alison Clifford, Erik Loyer, Benjamin Moreno Ortiz, Jhave, Christine Wilks and a certain sleepless dynamo named Jason Nelson. Forthcoming are new works by J.R. Carpenter and David Clark. It’s a great, eclectic bunch and it’s been great to work with them! I think this method of doing “career recaps” could be a model for future writing about e-lit artists, especially as there are so many now with large bodies of work.

The texts that I post on Tuesdays concerns something I call the “Comedies of Separation,” which are basically varieties of text/code interaction that I see as the “simples” underlying much of what we do in electronic literature. You’ll have to read my introduction to get a better idea of what I mean. I’m basically looking for a rudimentary vocabulary with which to discuss properties that exist in larger, “cumulative” works (such as Stuart Moulthrop’s “Pax: An Instrument,” which has many components).

Underlying the series is an attempt to link works of e-lit to art and literature that either predated the explosion of new media art in the past decade or that respond to the ubiquity of digitization in our culture. I’m hoping that these writings, along with a longish essay that will appear somewhere if the editor ever gets back to me, will form the outline of a sexy book project that I will propose, oh, somewhere, maybe MIT or your mama. It would be much expanded, less chatty, more based on theory and philosophy, but accessible and, I hope, illustrated in color.

These are in reverse chronological order, the latest first. I’ll post the next offerings as they appear on the blog. In the meantime, read and enjoy:

The Posts

The Works