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[I've completed my Third Hand Plays run at the SFMoma Blog Open Space. I curated 11 new works of digital literature for the series and wrote 12 illustrated blog posts outlining my idea of the "comedies of separation." I've been asked to contribute a piece to the series of new e-lit but just haven't had time to make anything. Anyway, below is my earlier post about the series and a chronological ordering of the posts themselves.]

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.

The Posts

1. An Introduction to the Comedies of Separation
2. The Comedy of Subjection
3. The Comedy of Dysfunction
4. The Comedy of Reduction
5. The Comedy of Exhaustion
6. The Comedy of Recursion
7. The Comedy of Simulation
8. The Comedy of Duplication
9. The Comedy of Association
10. The Comedy of Automation
11. The Comedy of Encryption
12. Putting It All Together: The Comedies of Separation

The Works

1. “Scrape Scraperteeth” by Jason Nelson
2. “Repeat After Me” by joerg piringer
3. “Something” and “Telescopio” by Benjamin R. Moreno Ortiz
4. “Out of Touch” by Christine Wilks
5. “TYPEOMS” by Jhave
6. “Big Cradle” by Erik Loyer
7. “Palimpsest” by Alison Clifford
8. “The Quick Brown Fox …” by Alan Bigelow
9. “automatype” by Daniel C. Howe
10. “Struts” by J.R. Carpenter
11. “Bodies of Water” by David Clark

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