"Interferences: Elements of Style at the Interface"
Rita Raley
Department of English, UC Santa Barbara
This paper analyses codework—the use of the idiolect of the computer and computing processes in new media experimental writing, or [net.writing]—as a general practice that foregrounds and theorizes the relations between interface and machine and emphasizes its own inscription and mediation. It addresses the codework of "netwurker" Mez, which borrows text from email lists and chat settings and refashions it into a hybridized neologistic language used for composition. The paper also addresses the principle of interference in Mez’s codework in relation to issues of lexical, stylistic, and architectural minimalism.