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This began as a friendly challenge or nudge from Astrid Ensslin on Twitter [1]. The exchange highlighted a number of observations including thoughts about the minimal unit available for reskinning, how reskinning is like translation and this intriguing remark: "I like the idea of provenance that generates new loci and new bodies." What follows is a way to classify the means that new loci and new bodies arise from cultural artefacts.
The introduction into this dialogue of recogntion and provenance as precurors to generation and the hint of a "sharable world" leads me to suggest that the notion of intertextuality is at play. In particular how intertextuality is thought through the poetics of possible worlds. My tutor text is Lubomír Doležel "Epilogue" in Heterocosmica. I suggest expanding the three rewrite rules for postmodern ficition as proposed by Doležel to transmedial creation and to think through the applicability of transduction and possible worlds to these modes of cultural production.
We begin by positing reskinning as a form of intertextuality. Doležel remarks:
Riffaterre distinguishes two sources of intertextuality: particular texts and universal cultural stock. [...] Intertextuality is bidirectional; it is a sharing of semantic traces in texts irrespective of their chronological order. Through intertextuality, texts are bound together in a relationship of mutual semantic illumination. (Doležel, 200-201)
He then goes on to transduction
I have emphasized repeatedly in this book that fictional worlds gain a semiotic existence independent of the structuring texture; they thereby become objects of the active, evolving, and recycling cultural memory. [...] Transduction takes the literary work beyond the communicative act into an open, unlimited chain of transmission. (Doležel, 202-205)
Having established the bidirectionality of the intertexual relation and the unlimited chain produced by transduction, Doležel introduces three cases of postmodern rewrites
All postmodern rewrites redesign, relocate, revaluate the classic protoworld. (Doležel, 205)
He goes on to explain three distinct types of rewrites in the context of fiction making: transposition (preserves design and main story of the protoworld); expansion (extends scope of protoworld); displacement (constructs essentially different verion of protoworld). In short, transposition results in parallel worlds, expansion in complementary worlds and displacement in polemical antiworlds.
His context is postmodern fiction but what is described as the result of rewrite rules is applicable to transmedial creations: transposition (parallel worlds); expansion (complementary worlds) and displacement (polemical antiworlds).
It is the concept of possible worlds that suggests the application of rewrite rules to situations of transmedial reskinning
Fiction thrives on the contingency of worlds, emphatically asserted by the idea of possible worlds: every world and every entity in the world could be or could have been different from what it is. (Doležel, 222)
This assertion of the transformability of every and any entity is underscored by Doležel's quoting Genette on hypertextuality [1982 Palimpsestes pp. 343-344]
Every object can be transformed, every method imitated; there is no art that by nature, escapes these two modes of derivation which, in literature, define hypertextuality. (Doležel, 224)
It is this core notion of transformability that informs my extrapolation of types of postmodern rewrites to transmedial translations. There is undoubtably a certain elegance in encompassing the activities of transmedial translations with three simple principles (transposition, expansion, displacement). These principles taken in conjunction with possible worlds can serve the formal analysis of transmedial translations. A colour in one world can map onto a sound in another world. Or a colour can map on to more than one sound. The one instance is a simple transposition, the other an expansion. Displacement is easier to conceive with time-related elements: in a protoworld a colour appears for a specific duration; in an antiworld, a displacement can play with replacing the colour for the same duration; in a complementaty world, an expansion can change the length of the duration and in a parallel world, transposition can substitute a tone for the duration. Though it is difficult to distinguish what might be a transposition from a displacement, the attractiveness of the typology based on three rewrites from Heterocosmica is the attention to the degree of transformation.
Given the difficulties of ascribing a stable label to transmedial creations, the typology of transformations serves as a heuristic device. It is a place to begin.
In the brief descriptions of the exhibits that follow, you may decide on a different categorization for any one of the exhbibits.. And you may even be puzzled why possible worlds are a good way into understanding the transformations. The key to both understanding the variety of ascriptions and the link to possible worlds resides in positing the notion of a zone between source and target where the translations yet to be actualized. This zone holding the variations of translation is akin to a possible world. It is a fruitful analagy. It helps imagine the nature of the result of a transformation.
I first saw it on display at the Canadian Textile Museum. It accompanied an exhibit exploring pattern. http://www.musanim.com/watch_mam.html
It is a transposition. The colours and shapes parallel the auditory track to reference the parallel worlds.
The hemline rises and falls in response to changes in the stock market. https://www.surrey.ca/sites/default/files/media/documents/NancyPatersonStockMarketSkirt.pdf
Another example of transposition from one medium to another.
The Kazimir Effect takes its inspiration from a simple, iconic square: Suprematist Composition – White on White by the artist Kazimir Malevich. Christian Bök has written a series of sixteen, minimal poems: each, a kanji haiku composed by juxtaposing two names for varied brands of ‘white’ sold by British Paints (e.g. Moon Ray on Dawn Frost). https://www.umlautmachine.net/artworks/the-kazimir-effect
This would be an expansion bordering on displacement.
For six months, eight students studied and reflected on the objects they had chosen from the Museum’s collections, learning everything they could about their history, fabrication and traditional uses. They then made digital art works to express the beauty of these objects and their enduring cultural importance.
The art works can be considered transpositions and expansions depending on how one reads the possible worlds of the objects that were the subject of study.
Samuel R. Delany in the novel Stars in My Pocket
Like
Grains of Sand
offers an interspecies transmedial experience. All
of course conveyed in words.
During their time together, Korga and Marq go dragon hunting, a process which initially Korga mistakes to involve catching and killing dragons. However, when he hits a dragon with his bow, Korga can see through the dragon's eyes and experience what the dragon is experiencing, prompting Rat to announce "I was a dragon!", and the realisation that no dragons are going to be killed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_in_My_Pocket_Like_Grains_of_Sand (Accessed 22.12.21)
This is a displacement. The world of hunting and by implication the killing of prey is inverted.
A day in the life of Alice B. Toklas. Starring Maira Kalman as Alice B. Toklas. In celebration of the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein illustrated by Maira Kalman.
https://www.instagram.com/tv/B9MmUc8lVMv/
This is a wonderful "adaptation" of passages from Stein which illustrate various passages from the Autobiography of Alice including "Alice" visiting the Picasso portrait of Stein in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Transposition and expansion.
There is a moment in the credit sequence where "Alice" sings the Piaf song "Non, je ne regrette rien". A song Stein would not have known.
Expansion and displacement
MAP PIECEA challenge. Conceputal art.
Draw a map to get lost.
1964 spring
But here the temporal order helps one distinguish worlds where one draws a map and then gets lost from worlds where one gets lost and then draws a map.
[1] See Appendix for transcription of the exchange between François and Astrid Ensslin from December 6, 2021 to December 14, 2021.
François Lachance, Scholar-at-large (S-A-L) @FranoisLachanc2 Replying to @AstridEnsslin @jlugiessen and 3 others I like how taxonomic considerations lead to contemplating ecosystems. Which study of course depends upon archives and metadata. History in the service of the future: the inductive work of collecting and describing provides a gene pool for creators. 4:37 PM · Dec 14, 2021·Twitter Web App
Dr. Astrid Ensslin @AstridEnsslin Replying to @FranoisLachanc2 @jlugiessen and 3 others Yes, it's content, or mechanics/operational logic, or quite generally a deep structure that is resistant to fundamental change but highly productive (generative grammar style). I like the idea of provenance that generates new loci and new bodies. 3:59 PM · Dec 14, 2021·Twitter Web App
François Lachance, Scholar-at-large (S-A-L) @FranoisLachanc2 Replying to @AstridEnsslin @jlugiessen and 3 others Interesting this stretch of the idea of skinning the "body" in question -- it leads one to consider that what can be ported to new creations is either a base text (content) or a procedure (mode of traversal). Coterie cultures operate on recognition of provenance. Applicable here? 2:50 PM · Dec 14, 2021·Twitter Web App
Dr. Astrid Ensslin @AstridEnsslin Replying to@FranoisLachanc2 @jlugiessen and 3 others Oh, and then there's Taroko Gorge. I wonder what the minimum "body" is that can be reskinned. An operational logic? A bit of code? a Jungian archetype? A Brawler? All of the above? 1:17 PM · Dec 14, 2021·Twitter Web App
François Lachance, Scholar-at-large (S-A-L)@FranoisLachanc2 Replying to @FranoisLachanc2 @AstridEnsslin and 4 others Found an "avantgarde" example. Christian Bök's series Kazimir Effect. Malevich white square is starting point for a series of sixteen, minimal poems: each, a kanji haiku composed by juxtaposing two names for varied brands of ‘white’ sold by British Paints. umlautmachine.net THE KAZIMIR EFFECT — UMLAUT MACHINE Cover for THE KAZIMIR EFFECT by Christian Bök 11:16 AM · Dec 14, 2021·Twitter Web App
François Lachance, Scholar-at-large (S-A-L@FranoisLachanc2 Replying to @AstridEnsslin @jlugiessen and 3 others Ah, I wasn't thinking of avantgarde. I had shared-worlds e.g. fiction based on Jane Austen novels or adaptations (such as cyberpunk versions of literary classics). I was thinking that there is at some functional level an isomorphism between skinning games and versioning story. 10:16 AM · Dec 14, 2021·Twitter Web App
Dr. Astrid Ensslin @AstridEnsslin Replying to @FranoisLachanc2 @jlugiessen and 2 others Thanks for your post, @FranoisLachanc2 , great question. Please share some examples of the kinds of morphs, versions and remixes you're thinking of. To my mind, skins are incompatible with avantgarde art forms, or rather avantgarde forms subvert skinning. Let's ask @netpoetic . 2:32 AM · Dec 14, 2021·Twitter Web App
François Lachance, Scholar-at-large (S-A-L)@FranoisLachanc2 Replying to @AstridEnsslin @jlugiessen and 2 others Thank you for a rich & elegant talk presenting theory making and examples of growing corpora. Intrigued by the track the question about games, rules, and manifestations took: "Not every rule structure offers itself to skinning" Would morphs, versions or remixes be akin to skins? 8:38 PM · Dec 13, 2021·Twitter Web App
Dr. Astrid Ensslin @AstridEnsslin The video of my recent keynote at @jlugiessen, on "Literary Gaming: Digital Culture Between Narrative Play and Electronic Literature," is available now. https://youtube.com/watch?v=uuKwdIpgNTo… Kudos @RobinSchmieder for post-production. @eliterature #literarygaming youtube.com KNL | Astrid Ensslin | Literary Gaming [Links]All the Delicate Duplicates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzdept4Ft4A&t=1sThe Water Cave: https://dreamingmethods.com/portfolio/the-water-cave/[Thi... 2:27 AM · Dec 6, 2021·Twitter Web App
Doležel, Lubomír. "Epilogue" in Heterocosmica: Ficition and Possible Worlds. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).
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