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

Author

Year

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

littraire lectronique

Guy Bennett

201
0

Language as Gameplay: From the Oulipo to

the Jew's Daughter

Brian Kim
Stefans

200
8

Language as Gameplay: toward a vocabulary

for describing works of electronic literature

Brian Kim
Stefans

201
2

Playable Media and Textual Instruments

Noah
WardripFruin

200
5

Travels in Cybertextuality. The Challenge of

Ergodic Literature and Ludology to Literary
Theory

Markku
Eskelinen

200
9