The Workings of Space in Steve Tomasula’s VAS: An Opera in Flatland

Year 2021, Issue: 55, 53 - 73, 01.05.2021

Gülşen Aslan Uslu

Abstract

This article investigates the workings of space in Steve
Tomasula’s first novel VAS: An Opera in Flatland (2002). As an
experimental novel, VAS makes use of space on different levels. The
first one is the spatial form, which informs the structure of the novel.
Rather than following a linear narration, VAS employs a wide range
of sources and topics and incorporates them within its fictional world
with the use of hypertext. The narrative space of the novel, which is
the fictional space where the characters of the novel are dwelling in,
is America in an unidentified future time. In this place, the human
body becomes a site on which different discourses such as history,
genealogy, and medicine interact. Finally, the spatial design of the
novel presents not only verbal text but also images, graphics, pictures,
charts that all help the book mimic the human body, and thus bring
the physicality of the book to the front. The interaction of these three
levels of space exhibits that as an example of experimental fiction VAS
uses the space of the novel in such a way to reflect the tenets and
answer the needs of the digital age.

Keywords

VAS: An Opera in Flatland, Space, Spatial Form, Hypertext, Materiality, VAS: An Opera in Flatland, Space, Spatial Form, Hypertext, Materiality

References

• Abbott, Edwin A. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. Dover Publications, 1952.
• Banash, David, editor. Steve Tomasula: The Art and Science of New Media Fiction. Bloomsbury P, 2015.
• Banash, David and Andrea Spain. “Introduction: Composition, Emergence, Sensation.” Steve Tomasula: The Art and Science of New Media Fiction. Edited by David Banash. Bloomsbury P, 2015, pp. 1-23.
• Chevaillier, Flore. “Experiment with Textual Materiality: Page, Author, and Medium in the Works of Steve Tomasula, Michael Martone, and Eduardo Kac.” College Literature, vol. 46, no. 1, 2019, pp. 179-203.
• Enns, Anthony. “‘The Material is the Message’: Coded Bodies and Embodied Codes in Steve Tomasula’s VAS: An Opera in Flatland.” Steve Tomasula: The Art and Science of New Media Fiction. Edited by David Banash. Bloomsbury P, 2015, pp. 51- 73.
• Federman, Raymond. Critifiction: Postmodern Essays. State U of New York P, 1993.
• Frelik, Pawell. “A Book, an Atlas, and an Opera: Steve Tomasula’s Fictions of Science as Science Fiction.” Steve Tomasula: The Art and Science of New Media Fiction. Edited by David Banash. Bloomsbury P, 2015, pp. 227-239.
• Genette, Gérard. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Trans. by Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky. U of Nebraska P, 1997.
• Gibbons, Alison. Multimodality, Cognition and Experimental Literature. Routledge, 2012.
• Hayles, Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. U of Chicago Press, 1999.
• ---. “The Posthuman Body: Inscription and Incorporation in Galatea 2.2 and Snow Crash.” Configurations, vol. 5, no. 2, 1997, pp. 241-266. Project Muse. muse.jhu.edu/article/8121.
• Holland, Mark K. “The Work of Art after the Mechanical Age: Materiality, Narrative, and the Real in the Work of Steve Tomasula.” Steve Tomasula: The Art and Science of New Media Fiction. Edited by David Banash. Bloomsbury P, 2015, pp. 27- 49.
• Klinkowitz, Jerome. “The Novel as Artifact: Spatial Form in Contemporary Fiction.” Spatial Form in Narrative. Edited by Jeffrey R. Smitten and Ann Daghistany. Cornell UP, 1981.
• Kristeva, Julia. “Word, Dialogue, and Novel.” The Kristeva Reader. Edited by Toril Moi. Columbia UP, 1986, pp. 35-61.
• Link, Alex. “Pierre Menard with a Pipette: VAS and the Body of the Text.” Electronic Book Review. 28 June 2012. www. electronicbookreview.com/thread/fictionspresent/naturalized.
• Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. A Postmodern Reader, Edited by Joseph Natoli and Linda Hutcheon, State U of New York P, 1993, pp. 71-90.
• Olsen, Lance. “Ontological Metalepses, Unnatural Narratology, and Locality: A Politics of the [[ Page ]] in Tomasula’s VAS & TOC.” Steve Tomasula: The Art and Science of New Media Fiction. Edited by David Banash. Bloomsbury P, 2015, pp. 209-223.
• Sammercelli, Françoise. “Encoding the Body, Questioning Legacy: Reflections on Intersemiotic Experiments in Steve Tomasula’s VAS: An Opera in Flatland.” Steve Tomasula: The Art and Science of New Media Fiction. Edited by David Banash. Bloomsbury P, 2015, pp. 75-98.
• Tomasula, Steve. “An Interview with Steve Tomasula.” Interview by Kiki Benzon. Electronic Book Review. 3 May 2015. electronicbookreview.com/thread/fictionspresent/talkative.
• ---. “An Apology for Postmodern Prose.” The Iowa Review, vol. 32, no. 1, Spring 2002, pp. 116-122. JSTOR. www.jstor.org/ stable/20155072.
• ---. “Bytes and Zeitgeist: Digitizing the Cultural Landscape.” Leonardo, The Workings of Space in Steve Tomasula’s VAS: An Opera in Flatland 76 vol. 31, no. 5, Sixth Annual New York Digital Salon 1998, pp. 337-344. JSTOR. www.jstor.org/stable/1576592.
• ---. “Information Design, Emergent Culture and Experimental Form in The Novel.” The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature, edited by Joe Bray, Alison Gibbons and Brian McHale, Routledge, 2012, pp. 435-451.
• ---. “Not Just Text: An Interview with Steve Tomasula.” Interview by Yuriy Tarnawsky. Rain Taxi. www.raintaxi.com/not-just-text-aninterview-with-steve-tomasula/.
• ---. VAS: An Opera in Flatland. U of Chicago P, 2002.
• Thacker, Eugene. “VAS: An Opera in Flatland.” Leonardo, vol. 39, no. 2, April 2006, p. 166. Accessed 29 May 2015. Project Muse. muse.jhu.edu/journals/len/summary/v039/39.2thacker.html.
• Tissut, Anne-Laure. “Languages of Fear in Steve Tomasula’s VAS: An Opera in Flatland.” Electronic Book Review. 28 June 2012. www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/fictionspresent/cerebral.
• “Novels.” SteveTomasula.com. www.stevetomasula.com/novels.htm.
• “VAS: An Opera in Flatland.” VAS Homepage. www3.nd.edu/~stomasul/ VAS_homepage.html.