Thesis

0x0a is a writers’ collective for Digital Literature. At the moment, its members are Gregor Weichbrodt and Hannes Bajohr.

0x0a is the hex code for the line feed. It is a symbol that does not have an analogue in the analog. It cannot be pronounced and exists only as “control character.” It is thus the ideal symbol for the attempt to produce genuinely Digital Literature. 0x0a strives to be a workshop, a laboratory, a showcase and a focal point for digital conceptual literature. We want to start the discussion about this form of literature in Germany and beyond.

What is the Digital? A great promise: Everything is text. Images, sounds, movies are text. Even text is text. For it is not itself the last word, but only a wave on a submarine system of signs. Even the word “word” is, one level below, encoded as 57 6F 72 74 in hexadecimals, and lower again, as 01010111 01101111 01110010 01110100 in binary

The Digital has doubled the text. It is writing and action. Text can be read and executed. In the Digital, text is thought and deed at the same time.

0x0a is the hex code for “line feed,” the control character that causes a line break in a Digital text. As a command, you can see its impact, but as a sign it only exists below the visible signs. A control character, that is: instruction and action, not letter and symbol. You can not pronounce it, because it is an action; you cannot write it on paper. A control character can only exist digitally.

Digital literature is not digitized literature. You can translate between the Digital and the analogue, but any such translation is both loss and gain, interpretation and distortion. Just as each medium creates its own reality, so does the Digital. The Digital has a different reality from the analog.

Digital literature is something that expresses the change in the perception of the world through the Digital. For if the Digital produces other realities, it also produces other experiences. For if text in the Digital condition not only provides descriptions, but can also be action, these experiences can manifest itself in ways the analog did not know. A text in which the characters use computers is not digital text. A text that requires the Digital for its existence, is. The experience of the Digital need not be description. The experience of the Digital expresses itself on the level of production, distribution, iteration, combination, and the immaterial.

0x0a researches the possibilities of the Digital in text.