Nortela, Mikko
Bittien poetiikka
digitaalisen fiktion toiminta ja tulkinta ergodisen semiotiikan näkökulmasta
(The Poetics of the Bit: The Interpretation and Textual Processes of Digital Fiction from an Ergodic Semiotic Perspective.)
Abstract
The Poetics of the Bit: The Interpretation and Textual Processes of Digital Fiction from an Ergodic Semiotic Perspective.
Digital equipment has provided us with a new platform for presenting ideas. The present study is concerned with digital fiction, which is understood as a large term combining all forms of digitally stored and presented fictional works, including fictional hyper- and cybertexts, games and other simulations describing virtual or fictional worlds. In these works of fiction the “reader” becomes the user of a digital program and an active participant in these fictional situations. This situation demands theorization that differs from that used in the analysis of printed, filmed or orally narrated fiction. This, in turn, requires a new or at least updated version of semiotics. The present dissertation seeks answers to such problems by combining semiotics, communication studies and studies of aesthetic response with major theories of digital fiction within a method referred to as “critical semiotic reconstruction”.
According to Espen Aarseth (1997: 40) ”When the relationship between surface sign and user is all that matters, the unique dual materiality of the cybernetic sign process is disregarded. [...] Furthermore, what goes on at the external level can be fully understood only in the light of the internal.” In a subsequent publication, Aarseth (1999: 35–36) claims that “[t]his is why purely semiotic theories of computer-mediated phenomena generally fail: they are not concerned with the sign-producing mechanisms, without which the cybernetic sign processes cannot be properly understood. Semiotic theory is not well-equipped to describe ergodic modes of discourse.” Aarseth’s criticism is partly correct. In reading signs from the computer screen we may see them as ordinary signs, very much like those on paper or stone. But, unlike in the case of paintings, books or television, the signs we see on the computer screen depend to some extent on our own actions. We navigate in a virtual or textual world; we interact with the work and its virtual inhabitants, and participate in the processes displayed on the screen. Hence, the signs must be interpreted as they emerge on the screen. Our own actions within the virtual world become something that we have to interpret in order to understand the becomingness of digital signs. The present study therefore presents a semiotic theory reflecting ideas originating from Charles Peirce’s semeiotics and specially developed here to describe such “cybernetic sign processes”. This theory is then applied to cybernetic works, which are understood on the basis of theories describing digital fiction, i.e., hypertext theory, cybertext theory, game studies and studies of interactive fiction.
These theories of digital fiction then direct attention to a picture of programmable, interactive, immersive, and procedural media (Murray 1997: 71) where fictionality seems not only to be a feature of the ‘fictional world’ (cf. Ryan 1991: vii) on the screen but also a fiction of artificial spaces (Eco 1985a: 49–50). In addition, the fictionality and, indeed, the general working of these digital spaces depend on interactivity. This interactivity has been described by Espen Aarseth (1997: 1) in terms of ‘ergodic’ literature: “In ergodic literature, nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text.” The ergodic activity is based on “some kind of cybernetic system, i.e., a machine (or human) that operates as an information feedback loop, which will generate a different semiotic sequence each time it is engaged.” (Aarseth 1999: 32–33). The emergence of these semiotic sequences is what has been sought for in this study. Ergodics shows how deeply interwoven interaction and digital works in fact are. Indeed, it demonstrates how deeply interaction and digital signs as we see them on the screen are connected to each other. Hence, the name applied to the semiotic theory presented in this work, which aims at describing the signprocesses of interactive and procedural media, has been termed ‘ergodic semiotics’.
Ergodic semiotics is based on a triad of represented signs (representation), binary computer code (code) and regulations in accordance with which each computer program works (regulative level). While both the original computer code and the original programs or subprograms are made or selected by the author(s) of the work, the representation that they develop results partly from an ergodic process. In ergodic semiotics the user of a program is connected to the code and regulative level through this ergodic triad. For this reason the interaction is now involved in sign-processes, and Espen Aarseth’s criticism, cited above, becomes a contribution to a new theoretical point of view.
The reader of digital fiction becomes an interactor who participates not only through narrative positions of interpretation but also through active ergodic sign processes. These works do not continue without interaction, and their reading or understanding is not possible without study of the signs beyond the screen. While the interactor or user is reading digital texts from a narratological position, he/she is also interacting in the virtual world via an interactive sign (cf. Andersen 1990: 199–212). This interactive sign is a digital sign that is the means by which the interactor participates in the ergodic processes. It is also a sign that is controlled by a computer program. The user is, therefore, to some extent controlled by the digital work and its regulative level.
Philippe Bootz (2003; 2004; 2005; 2006) has developed a new communication model for digital works in which the communication happens through a medium that is never transmitted as such but which gains its real form in its reception. In Bootz’s model we have a ‘semiotic gap’ between sender and reader. With ergodic semiotics we are, however, able to overcome this gap by means of ergodic processes. Combining this idea with existing theories of literary reception leads to a new model of interpretation in the digital world. When the reader’s interaction is based on the represented signs and on his/her interpretation of the internal interaction of various signs, the interpretation is basically built on interaction and regulations set up by a computer program. These regulations and their differences from or similarities to our everyday reality are, then, the main matter of concern in the interpretative process, and the rules of digital simulation written by the author(s) become the object of our interpretation.
Ergodic semiotics provides a theoretical model suitable for interactive and dynamic works. We are safe from Aarseth’s criticism because interactivity and cybernetic connection form the very basis of the sign process and interpretation. In the present study, therefore, the theory has been constructed for and tested with works of digital fiction, which have the advantage of binding their audience into specific narrative situations and narratological positions. Hence, it may well be understood how the implied reader and his/her internal point of view in the fictional world is transmitted into a digital virtual world and a semiotic position of interactive sign. Some of the examples used in this study have, however, also been taken from non-fictional digital works, which may help to suggest how ergodic semiotics could have a wider range of applications than to fictive works alone. It is indeed a model by which we may be able to study computer-human interaction in general.
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