Making-with: Nonhuman Animal Inclusivity in an Electronic Literature Practice

This paper reports on the early phases of a creative research project that aims to investigate ways in which a digital creative writing practices can incorporate domesticated dog co-creators in morally justifiable ways. I use a digital writing practice as an example that may allow dogs to help us to 'write' works of Electronic Literature. This practice-led research culminates from a series of interpersonal relationships with family pet dogs, in which the relationships between human creative practitioner and canine challenged the nature of the human creative process. By using a digitally generative system, dog/human interactions and worldings were invited to lead creative writing outcomes. The digital interfaces that resulted from this study, known cumulatively as the Intra-Facing project, aim to suggest ways in which digital writing practitioners can approach dog/human writing and creation processes as acts of bodily interaction, worlding and place-making.