Panel #1 Session 4
Wednesday 29 November - 11:30
Building 25, Teal Room
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Chair: Lainie Anderson
#web weaving: Hyperconnected Centos and the Digital Futures of Reading
- Axel-Nathaniel Rose
University of New South Wales
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While the desperate cries of poetry’s imminent demise in the digital age have died down a little since the rise of Rupi Kaur and Instapoetry, the relationship between literature and digital media is still in a state of flux. Focusing on the literary meme Parallel Posts (or ‘Web Weaving’), this paper addresses how literature, personal identity, and transformative work are intertwined in the age of digital hyperconnectivity, and gestures to a future integrating transformative and digital work into the teaching of English and Creative Writing.
Parallel Posts emerged from fandom culture on blogging website Tumblr. They are collages of quotes taken from different sources on a shared topic, and read variously as centos, memoir, and essays; common themes are female and queer identity, monstrosity, and alienation. In a digital literary culture fuelled by ideas of personality, authenticity, and community, Parallel Posts are a ghostly counterpoint, both reflecting and rejecting mainstream literary culture: they are intimately tethered to identity as a reader, yet void personal voice; they are shared and coauthored with many, yet lack a central community; and they are tied equally to ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. I argue Parallel Posts are a key point of insight into how literature is shared, redefined, and created online, and mirroring commonplace books, they represent a sustained impulse of literary fragmentation tied to personal identity. I posit that such hyperconnected and transformative practices are vital objects of study for teachers of English and Creative Writing, equal portals to literary history as literary futures.
Axel-Nathaniel Rose is an author, editor, and teacher, currently undertaking his Ph.D in Creative Writing at UNSW. His research explores the emergent phenomenon of ‘parallel posts’, a form of literary meme, in the context of literary culture online and the history of the commonplace book. His work lies at the intersection of fandom studies and book history. His short stories, non-fiction, and poetry have been published in Unsweetened Literary Journal, Tharunka, and Aesthetic, and his plays have been performed by NUTS. His creative works explore queer history and identity, modern Gothicism and Romanticism, and social media.
Defining (for the last time!) Australian digital literature
- David Wright
Nagoya University
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Digital or electronic literature has been around since the 1950s (Flores, 2019). Currently, in Australia, many literary prizes claim to offer awards for ‘digital literature’. Yet it remains unclear what these award bodies mean by ‘digital’. This remains a source of great frustration to Australian practitioners in this field, who constantly have to defend what it is they are doing. This is despite numerous internationally-recognised Australian practitioners who have helped define the field, such as Hazel Smith, Roger Dean, Jason Nelson, Mez Breeze, and the late Ross Gibson. In ‘Still Defining Digital Literature’ (2018), Simon Groth writes ‘There we were in 2017, still futzing around with definitions. This can be a source of frustration, especially when you consider it appears to be a problem peculiar to [digital literature]. The chair of the children’s book panel, for example, does not need to clarify what a book is, or for that matter what a child is.’ Many contemporary Australian awards, such as the Woollahra Digital Literary Prize and the Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award claim to support ‘digital literature’, yet their output suggests otherwise. This paper seeks to not just define what digital literature is, but to pinpoint why the adjective ‘digital’ continues to be misused and abused by Australian literary bodies.
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References
Flores, Leonardo ‘Third Generation Electronic Literature’, Electronic Book Review, 7 April 2019 at https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/third-generation-electronic-literature/
Groth, Simon ‘Still Defining Digital Literature’, The Writing Platform, 20 May 2018 at https://thewritingplatform.com/2018/05/still-defining-digital-literature/
David Thomas Henry Wright is an author, poet, digital artist, and academic. He won the 2018 Queensland Literary Awards’ Digital Literature Prize, 2019 Robert Coover Award (2nd prize), and 2021 Carmel Bird Literary Award. He has been shortlisted for multiple other prizes, published in various journals, and received various research grants and fellowships. He has a PhD from Murdoch University and a Masters from The University of Edinburgh, and taught Creative Writing at China’s top university, Tsinghua. He is co-editor of The Digital Review, narrative consultant for Stanford’s Smart Primer project, and Associate Professor at Nagoya University.
Ideasthetic Imagining—Mapping the Brain’s Microstates Using
Magnetoencephalography (MEG)
- Julia Prendergast, Paris Lyons & Benjamin Slade
Swinburne University
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In this presentation, we present preliminary findings from a Creative Writing | Neuroimaging Study. The project investigates activity in participants’ brains while undertaking a creative writing workshop (focusing processes of ideasthetic imagining). We use Magnetoencephalography (MEG) neuroimaging technology to determine where and how the brain is processing information while participants work imaginatively from short and long-term memory. We utilise a functional neuroimaging technique called Magnetoencephalography (MEG) to map the brain’s activity while participants work imaginatively from short and long-term memory. At distinct stages of the workshop, we map the interaction between the frontotemporal and limbic parts of the brain (associated with arousal, emotion, memory, abstract thinking and motivation), and the occipital | parietal regions (associated with visual perception). This project will provide insights into the neural mechanisms of memory as it relates to creative writing, showcasing how interdisciplinary research (creative writing, neuroscience, and psychology) can advance scientific understanding by providing a new and original contribution to intersecting fields of knowledge. Evidence from systematic reviews suggests creative writing practice is an effective intervention for emotion regulation, as well as people managing depression and anxiety, however the neural mechanisms by which this occurs is not well understood. By applying neuroimaging techniques to investigate the neural changes associated with creative writing (and unresolved autobiographical memory), we aim to provide fundamental insights into the neural basis of creative cognition, in this context, with a view to applications in the health and wellbeing sphere.
Julia Prendergast lives in Melbourne, Australia, on unceded Wurundjeri land. Her novel, The Earth Does Not Get Fat (2018) was longlisted for the Indie Book Awards (debut fiction). Her short story collection: Bloodrust and other stories was published in 2022. Julia is a practice-led researcher—an enthusiastic supporter of transdisciplinary, collaborative research practices, with a particular interest in neuro|psychoanalytic approaches to writing and creativity. Julia is President|Chair of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP), the peak academic body representing the discipline of Creative Writing (Australasia). She is Associate Professor and Discipline Leader (Creative Writing and Publishing) at Swinburne University, Melbourne.
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Paris Lyons is an interdisciplinary researcher working in neuroscience, psychology, and the arts. Paris' primary research focuses on the role of adverse experiences in childhood on neural development and adult mental health. Paris is passionate about the intersection between art and science, the role of creativity in mental well-being and resilience, and developing networks that facilitate interdisciplinary practice and open science.
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Benjamin Slade is a post-doctoral researcher at Swinburne University of Technology, with experience leading dementia, neuroimaging, and non-pharmaceutical research. His research focuses on understanding how therapies improve symptoms of dementia and understanding how these therapies can support and protect the brain from cognitive decline and dementia in later life. Benjamin has received $100,000 of funding as an early career researcher. He contributed to the Australian Electrophysiology Data Platform – a national project for reproducible neuroscience analysis, an initiative he led as Project Manager. Benjamin is a member of the Australian Cognitive Neuroscience Society and a member of the Science Art Network.