Multimedia Fiction is one of my favorite genres of Electronic Literature so I was looking forward to exploring these works this week. I feel like the use of multimedia elements can add so much to the overall experience of a piece. One of the works that I chose to really delve into was Loss of Grasp by Serge Bouchardon. What I liked most about this piece was the amount of user interactivity. In the first scene, the user has to mouse over the text on the screen which would reveal the next set of text. I really enjoyed the connections between the text and the user interactivity. For example, once the sentence saying “Everything escapes me” appeared, the visible mouse pointer actually disappears. I also thought it was really meaningful when the words on the screen read “I feel I’ve lost control” and the colored orbs that once followed the movement of the user, all of a sudden disperse and the user no longer has control over where they move to.
I felt like all of the scenes in this work illustrated the message of the character in a meaningful way. One of the other points of the story that I found a strong connection between text and user activity was the part of the story where the narrator is talking about how he is discovering a woman that he’s just met by asking her questions. As the user moves the cursor over the screen, a figure of a woman begins to appear underneath the various text.
Another work that I took a deeper look into was How to Rob a Bank by Alan Bigelow. I had been exposed to this work in a previous class, but only to Part 1, so it was interesting to experience other sections of the story. Truthfully, I am glad that I had some understanding of the backstory, because it helped the narrative make more sense.
I thought that the way the work is revealed through the main characters’ use of their iPhones and all the different searches, texts, apps, and other functions that appear on their screens is an interesting way for the user to experience some immersion while reading the story. I found it even more immersive while viewing this story from my iPhone. As the user, using the swiping motion to progress the story made me feel like I was actually viewing the different apps and such. The use of multimedia elements in this story definitely make it have a more immersive quality than some of the other multimedia fiction we have looked at.