ABSTRACT
Media artworks not only manipulate language as a material in itself, but they also manipulate the viewer's perceptual channels. Experiments with letters, words, and literary structures indicate that language and literature are at least as important for contemporary audiovisual arts as they were for the avant-garde visual arts. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book investigates the literariness of media art on four different levels: the use of spoken poetic language; the poetically motivated integration of written texts; the exploration of literary genres; and the adaptation of works of literature into media art. While the first and second categories highlight the defamiliarization of the media of language (voice and script), the third and fourth explore experiments with literary genres and concrete literary texts. The main chapters in the book correspond to these central aesthetic practices.
