Invisible Rendezvous: Connection and Collaboration in the New Landscape of Electronic Writing - Hardcover

Wittig, Rob

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0819552755 ISBN 13: 9780819552754

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 1994

Synopsis

Erasing the boundaries between author, reader, and text in the electronic environment.

About this title

About the Author

Rob Wittig is a writer living in Chicago. Acting here as literary contractor for the in.s.omniacs, he is also a conceptual designer of books and multimedia at Ligature, Inc.

Reviews

This work calls itself a manifesto for redefining literature via the "net." It chronicles the development of INVISIBLE SEATTLE, an electronic bulletin board begun in the mid-Eighties in Seattle that, in turn, gave its name to a collaborative novel of electronically assembled random contributions from the citizenry. It is also a history of Seattle's cultural underground in the Eighties. Wittig's collaborators hoped that the anonymity and interactivity of the bulletin board would free users of their inhibitions, untapping their creativity; INVISIBLE SEATTLE, the culmination of this experiment, was published in 1987. The discussions about the network's impact on the form and future of literature are enthusiastic and sometimes clever, if a bit incoherent; Wittig's explanations on how bulletin boards work are general and a bit dated. The novel is heavily referenced; this title should be purchased as companion text to it. Together, this novel and history/manifesto could be a useful introduction to the net in creative writing courses or in public collections.
Robert C. Moore, DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Co. Information Svcs., Wilmington, Del.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0819552755
• ISBN 13: 9780819552754
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 199