CREATIVE WORK

Author: 

Stuart Moulthrop

Year: 

2003

Web URL: 

Pax: an instrument

About Pax

Language: 

English

Publication Type: 

Published on the Web (individual site)

Record Status: 

Incomplete record (stub)

Description (in English): 

Theme

"Pax" is a lesser apocalypse that began to unveil itself one stormy spring day near

Dallas when someone closed the terminal and the guns came out. It's about flying

and falling, truth and desire, nakedness, terror, and the home land. While some

may find these themes all too American, they are as Chekhov might have said

originally Russian: recall what happened to those cosmonauts who took off from

the USSR and landed in the CIS, displaced by a trick of history, discovering (as we

all must) that we travel through time as well as space. It's become a common

experience these days, this journey to another world, this never coming home.

Especially when the guns come out.

Form

As will be apparent, this is not a work of literature in the ordinary sense; neither

does it have the formal properties of a game, though it is meant to be

be played as well as read. Taxonomic questions--whether this text is hyper, cyber,

techno, or oulipo, indeed whether it is "text" at all--I leave to those who care about

such matters. Some years ago and in another world, John Cayley pointed out that

we play many things besides games--for instance, musical instruments. He went on

to wonder if we could create textual instruments, rule-governed systems for

producing patterns in which the element of configuration or play is highly

prominent. Though it is probably not what Cayley had in mind, the form of "Pax"

began as an attempt to realize his suggestion.

(Source: Author's description on About Pax page)

Critical writing that references this work:

Title AuthorYear

Ce livre qui n'en est pas un: le texte littéraire électronique

Guy Bennett2010

Language as Gameplay: From the Oulipo to the Jew's Daughter

Brian Kim Stefans

2008

Language as Gameplay: toward a vocabulary for describing works of electronic literature

Brian Kim Stefans

2012

Playable Media and Textual InstrumentsNoah Wardrip-Fruin

2005

Travels in Cybertextuality. The Challenge of Ergodic Literature and Ludology to Literary Theory

Markku Eskelinen

2009