“What’s on your mind ?” - a literary dialogue with the machine-computer

All software tools are based on models of human action, desire, perception and cognition; they anticipate the user’s expectations, engage them in a dialogue based more or less on transparent presumptions. “Architext” is what the French researchers Yves Jeanneret and Emmanuel Souchier called the highly structured writing interface of tools and platforms. Recently, the formatting process of the text has taken a new turn which I refer to as “computext.” While architext imposes a form on media content, computext anticipates its very production, and sometimes even writes instead of the author, as if the machine is able to read their mind. Software tools are not neutral intermediaries. They embody the viewpoints of their owners and engineers. The relationship between the “voices” inside the produced text can be disturbing, if not dissonant. From the infancy of net art to today’s writings on social networks, these tensions have been reflected by writers who attempt to deconstruct it. In this article, I will locate the poetics of digital literature in the dialogical process that occurs between the human and the machine, rather than in the result produced. I will explore this hypothesis through a techno-semiotic analysis of literary works created by other authors and by myself.

Alexandra Saemmer. “What’s on your mind ?” - a literary dialogue with the machine-computer. Journal for Literary and Intermedial Crossings, 2021, 6, https://prod-57c411d4972db0da-vub.paddlecms.net/volume-6-issue-2-2021. ⟨hal-03998981⟩ - lien externe