Week 4

I thought the beginning of the reading was a bit indecisive since it uses language that it refuses to define. For example it notes to “rethink terms such as ‘literary’ and ‘forms’”. Furthermore it says that moving beyond can also be a return and this statement on its face without further clarification seems to be a straight contradiction. The idea of going beyond the screen as a movement toward something posthuman interested me and I hope we will see this idea explored more. I thought the example provided for literalism was helpful although I disagree that its of special interest in this context. I think that while a movement beyond the screen could be viewed as a move toward literalism, given the lack of definition from the article, it’s possible for a piece to move both beyond the screen according to the vague definition of the article and away from literalism. If moving beyond can also be a return and a piece “returns” to a flat aspect of the screen, then it could show a lack of richness like dynamic text and movement which some of the main examples the author uses. The author also claims that the Internet has weakened the sense of authorship which I think is probably true in most cases, but I feel like there must be exceptions to this. Text in 3D is different from 2D since it has to look less simple. Even though a 3D text could simply be writing a 2D text and adding a shadow, when I think of 3D text I think of 2007 and WordArt and I feel like its a gaudy style that has long gone out of fashion. Of course 3D text can show depth and distance, but taking a piece of text that functions in 2D and putting it into 3D seems excessive to me. Keywords: Depth Distance Simplicity Parsimony Complexity Medium Space Curve Emptiness Substance