McKenzie Wark (2002), 'From Hypertext to Codework', HJS vol.3, issue1, http://www.geocities.com/hypermedia_joyce/wark.html


There is a lot of work that deals with writing and code. McKenzie Wark cites the work of William Blake in this connection and sees him as a media artist in the sense of the scope of his production beyond simply text or images (2002). Perhaps this is also what Graham Harwood was thinking about in his recasting of Blake's poem London into perl. The point for Wark is to extend the debate around electronic writing from hypertext to what he calls 'codework'. In the tradition of post-structuralist thinking, hypertext exemplified the opening up of the space of text and the potentiality of the reader to complete the text. The emphasis here has tended to occlude the material production of the text.

The term 'codework' attempts to address this technical and cultural issue. For instance, Wark points to the a range of alternative practices that are often antagonistic and work under collective pseudonyms like Antiorp or Integer with semi-legible postings to mail lists in which meaning and authorship are in question:
'this - a l l this. = but 01 ch!!!!!!p. uneventful
korporat fascist gullibloon zpektakle.'
Texts such as this appear to be produced for their visual qualities and as noise, and fully integrating into a machinic production process combining natural and artifical languages and other spheres - from the Unix command line to Internet Relay Chat. Wark cites the work of Alan Sondheim using IRC to questions the status of writing in relation to the informal and collaborative nature of chat where other participants can enter the space of the text. 

Codework can thus be seen to cover the authoring or writing of text or coding software to write text opening up the possibilities of literature and creative production in general. Wark says that: 'Writing is not a matter of the text, but of the assemblage of the writer, reader, text, the text's material support, the laws of property and exchange within which all of the above circulate, and so on.' (2002)

Sondheim's use of the term 'codework' makes the issue of material production more explicit...