Katherine Hayles

Print Is Flat and Code Is Deep: Rethinking Signifiers in New Media

Date 1/26/00

Affiliation New Media Theorist, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles

Abstract

From dynamic typography to multimedia hypertext fictions, New Media have vividly explored the fusion of word and image. Less widely known is the tradition of artist books, which have exuberantly experimented with the fusion of word and image in print. Richly illustrated, this talk with explore similarities between hypertext in print and digital media. At the same time, it will also delineate the characteristics specific to print and digital media. The aim is to map the influences between print and digital media as they flow from one to the other and back again.


Bio

N. Katherine Hayles writes and teaches on the relations between culture, science and technology in the twentieth century. Her books include The Cosmic Web: Scientific Field Models and Literary Strategies in the Twentieth Century, Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science, and most recently, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. She is the recepient of numerous prizes and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Presidential Fellowship from the University of California, and the Luckman Distinguished Teaching Award. She is currently at work on two books theorizing electronic literature, Linking Bodies: Hypertext Fiction in Print and New Media, and Coding the Signifier: Rethinking Semiosis from the Telegraph to the Computer.

-- As of 1/26/00


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