Author: 0alloldusers

Interactive Installations

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Interactive installation is a form of Divergent Stream that is most interesting to me. This form can use various styles of storytelling, such as kinetic text and prose. I am a writer; I can see myself working within this genre and using kinetic poetry and hypertext fiction as a way to let others interact with my work to see what they would do with it. From what I have gathered from the text, performance art can be included in this genre. I find it interesting that language can be used as a signifier. The text explains it as an artist applying paint to canvas. This is interesting, I have never thought of language being used in such a way, and certainly not in a performance art setting.

The possibilities are endless in virtual and augmented world. Imagine if one can project a poem at an exhibit where anyone can interact with the poem, such as Tony Stark (Iron Man) interacting with his holographic projector and change line breaks and moving words around so the poem can take on a different meaning. I can also imagine users interacting with the hypertext fiction. For example, if the user can interact with an author’s hypertext fiction in a 3D, or virtual reality environment where words seems to float in midair; with a wave of a hand the users can advance the story. I imagine this being on display in place like Disney World’s Epcot Theme park. This would be a great and fun way for the genre to become mainstream.

Divergent Streams – March 22, 2019

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By far the most fascinating form of electronic literature discussed by Rettberg in “Divergent Streams” is virtual and augmented reality. VR is a concept I have discussed in previous DTC courses, because of my simultaneous fascination and fear of it. However, I have never looked at it critically as a vessel for writing, which I think is a potentially powerful tool for literature.

VR and AR are possibly the best tools for turning writing into a piece of technology by either creating a world for the text to live or giving the text the ability to live in our world. Rather than using the confines of available software and platforms, VR and AR allow the reader to interact in the most personal way possible by making the text a living entity that stands beside us. Rettberg’s provided examples of writing in augmented worlds, like Pry, showcase the powerful emotional connection that can be achieved via VR and AR.

Augmented worlds have proved to be scary yet exciting training grounds for the future of technological immersion. As Rettberg discusses, electronic literature is no exception. Augmented worlds hold a lot of potential for bringing pieces of poetry and writing to life to further encapsulate their meanings. Using the reader’s interaction to progress a story is a powerful tool for emotional connection, and VR and AR are easily able to do this. What is perhaps most exciting about the use of augmented worlds for electronic literature is the range of the works’ scales. A piece of writing in VR or AR can be short and simple, or it could be an entire world for a reader to explore that takes them out of body and puts them into a sea of text.

3D Literature

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Based on the several divergent streams that Rettberg discussed, I personally found expanded cinema the most interesting. This is because I personally have a deep interest in cinema, and the idea of altering cinema to become more and more interactive is very appealing. I also believe that cinema is ever-changing and likely will never die out. A big part of this is because the genre is ever evolving, and the forms of expanded cinema that Rettberg discusses only provides more examples of how the genre might evolve over time. I find it likely that cinema will become more interactive as the years progress, but honestly I doubt mainstream cinema will ever get to the extent that Rettberg discusses. For example, Rettberg talks about interactive films where the viewer ultimately decides which events unfold. This has already happened with Black Mirror: Bandersnatch on Netflix, and although I can absolutely see a special event showing of a film in theaters where viewers vote on the decisions of the characters, I highly doubt something that niche would ever become a mainstream viewing experience. Some literary possibilities within virtual and augmented worlds could include the viewing of films in virtual and/or augmented reality, which is already becoming somewhat popular, or even a truly interactive story written with the users decisions in mind. An example of this might be like a virtual reality version of those old choose-your-own-adventure text-based games, only hyper realistic. Since text-based games already were extremely popular, I could absolutely see virtual reality version becoming somewhat mainstream as well.

Augmented Reality

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Augmented reality electronic literature is a very exciting divergent stream of electronic literature because it may be the easiest genre electronic literature to immediately see real world applications for, by benefit of what it is. Enhancing reality by making more information available about an individual’s surroundings is one of the most exciting fronts of digital technology as many existing experiences and events can be vastly improved in constantly growing ways by digital technology.

1970’s Oregon Zoo Key

The Oregon Zoo installed their first zoo key system in 1970 and still uses a system installed in 1984 today (I had a lot of trouble finding a reliable source on this, they may have updated their system since). The zoo key program is a collection of audio boxes paired with animal enclosures and exhibits that will play a message containing information about the animal or exhibit upon insertion of the plastic zoo key. The current setup is nostalgic and the physical aspect of having a key and finding the audio boxes is great and shouldn’t be replaced, but the system could be improved and regularly updated by placing unique QR code stickers on each box and allowing visitors to receive much more information than audio on their phones, similar to the “Yellow Arrow Project”s unique numeric identifiers. GPS could be used in this system as well, making information available to users upon entering an exhibit or area of the zoo. The zoo key project is directed at young children, so incorporating children’s stories would be a natural addition to the current system.

Museums, galleries, zoos, and many other destinations have physical placards for information in addition to audio tour systems. Places whose goal is to inform must balance including as much information as they can and making placards easy and enjoyable to read for a wide audience. Many people will leave a placard wanting to know more about a topic or having skimmed the placard and retained nothing because it was too verbose. Making the information available on your phone allows organizations to include summaries, short, and long form pieces of information for each location, to allow the audience to choose the right amount of content for them, as well as being able to link out to outside sources. Audio systems are often expensive to rent or clunky to carry around, depending on how new the system is. Navigating audio tours can be frustrating depending on the system. In art galleries for example, an audio tour could be divided as broadly as 20 minute chunks of audio per exhibit, or two to ten minutes recordings per piece. No matter how minutely a physical audio device divides an exhibit, it still cannot tell you what will be contained in each individual recording and where the information will be in each recording. Parsing through audio recordings is always easier with time stamps and context which can be provided more easily on a phone than on a physical device.

In all the ways augmented reality can be used to increase the dispersal of factual information and nonfiction, it can be used for literature as well. Augmented reality makes room for literature in spaces where space for information is at a premium, physical space or audio wise. Incorporating narratives in spaces such as art galleries and museums allows these spaces to manipulate wayfinding and exploration of their spaces through apps they can update regularly.

Rettberg mentions “dérive, a practice of consciously breaking habits of movement and interaction with (a location)”

A place like the Oregon zoo or OMSI could publish a physical children’s book and/or app about their space that allows visitors to explore the place by following the locations in the narrative along with the location. The zoo could guide visitors through the park based on the level of activity in animals based on the season or time of day, releasing a new narrative every season to attract visitors year-round. Zoolights would be a great opportunity for this as well, a new holiday themed story could be paired with the lights every year. Augmented reality allows organizations to include literature in their spaces in ways they could not while having to prioritize space for information.

Bing autocomplete “poem”

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Most of these, I started typing in Bing, then completed the sentence with my own idea.

She was powerful, not because she was told.
She was a creature of light, not human.
Humans were fish, and she was the sea.
The sea was angry that day.
The day that music died.

Music was her refuge.
The music of the sea.
The sea of trees
Trees were cut down and made into lumber

Random Poetry

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Greasy fly natural hoax apple

Silk songs google pardon shock

Decay saw clutch lumpy snotty

Winter shade suggestion tie yam

Judge recognize thumb minor servant

Cork attractive protest cloistered free

Hum interesting tawdry halting chivalrous

Sudden mow fall awful quick

Dapper measure request depend butter

Dime deafening water damaged sanctify

Separate seize night frequent yell

Tread boundless windy create useless

Collar torpid cherries haircut hop

I created this poem using a random word generator. None of the work is my own, and the words are in no logical order. Before settling on the final poem, I looked at these words and contemplated rearranging them. I looked at the words given to me, and tried to come up with some sort of story that resulted from them. In the same way that I went through this process in the creation of it, I thought it would be interesting if the reader also went through this process. This is why I didn’t touch the poem and kept all of the words in the same order that they were generated. I think it would be interesting for the reader to try to come up with some sort of storyline, for meaningless words in a meaningless order.

 

Here is the website used: https://wordcounter.net/random-word-generator

Network Writing

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Out of the works we were asked to explore this week, the one that engaged me the most emotionally was heyharryheymatilda by Rachel Hulin. I had never seen a work done this way, so it was very interesting to me. Most of the time while I surf Instagram, I don’t really look at people’s posts as a way of telling a narrative, but as I was exploring heyharryheymatilda it made me realize that posts can in fact be considered a story. I did find it a little hard to follow at first, but then I remembered that the most recent posts are displayed first in the feed, so I scrolled down to the beginning and started there.

I think this piece is a perfect example of how we interact with the networks we live in. One of the things that really brought this to my attention was the use of the Instagram platform itself. After a post is published, users/viewers are able to interact with the posts by “liking” images as well as making comments on the posts (if the owner has allowed them) to further engage with the story.

“-digital literary art can serve as a critical mirror to help us better understand the networked society that we co-create, that we are subject to, and that we together inhabit.” (Rettberg, 182)

While looking more into this work, I discovered that there is a paperback version of the novel as well. It would be interesting to read the print version and compare the experience of the two. I would make a guess that personally,  I would feel more engaged and immersed in the Instagram version of the novel than I would with the print version. I think that the use of imagery and video really enhances the experience and makes the narrative come to life.

Angels and Network Writing

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“Electronic Literature is most simply described as new forms and genres of writing that explore the specific capabilities of the computer and the network”

– Scott Rettberg
Most of the electronic literature we have discussed in this class has been focused on, or more apparently has to do with, the computers programming capabilities. Other than hypertext fiction, most of the works we have been traversing have been fueled or made interactable through their programmed elements. Network writing is focused on the network capabilities of the computer.

“Networks are both technological and social structures. For electronic literature, networks are both platform and material.”

– Scott Rettberg

Network writing is made up of collaborative works that use the capabilities of the network to build the piece, or the piece resides in a networked instance on the internet, such as social media posts, email, or websites. The piece “The Fall of the Site of Marsha” by Rob Wittig combines these two aspects of network writing. The work is hosted on three iterations of a nostalgic HTML site, created by Marsha with the help of her husband, Mike, dedicated to angels. The iterations of the site get subsequently darker as the angels take over, first adding text, that is struck through to represent Marsha and Mike’s attempts at stopping the angels, and eventually deteriorates to a disturbed and dark version of the website, where the angels have taken over. This work emulates collaborative network writing, with the angels editing and eventually taking over the content of the site. The work may be more palatable to traversers who are uncomfortable with the difficulty of traversing more programmed works, as it is presented in three static HTML sites. Traversers may become emotionally engaged in the work, as there are definite antagonists and protagonists, and the work presents itself in a linear fashion, if the traverser chooses to traverse the sites in order.

Network Writing

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As stated in the first sentence of Rettburg in his chapter on Network Writing, he states that network writing is created for and published on the internet, and that the internet has vast potential for collaboration. The fact that most of society is literate on the web makes network writing a form of writing that is readily accessible and  understood by web users everywhere.

Flarf poetry is a movement that places an emphasis on how language and technology collide to create works that express, as Rettburg puts it: “the arbitrary and idiosyncratic flood of texts that marked the adoption of the Internet in our lives”. The flarf work degenerative and regenerative is based on a webpage that loses a character of HTML markup each time the page is visited until there is nothing left of the markup. The fact that the page destructs at such a fast pace speaks to the idea that the internet is constantly browsed by individuals everywhere, and the results that arise over the course of the deconstruction of the page is interesting, to say the least.

Social media also provides various opportunities for network writing. Twitter is a platform that challenges writers to work around the constraints of a short word limit, all the while presenting the text in a format that strings together sets of text; an alteration from the typical reading experience that a traditional novel provided. Different social media platforms are frequented quite often by web users and as a result, works of Network Writing are easily accessible for reading and collaboration.

 

 

Dreamscape and Reality: An Exploration of Network Writing

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“Degenerative and regenerative” by Tiselli, was a longer term project, that was entirely dependent on the interactions. The webpage featured text that would “degenerate” with every visit. Within days, the text became unreadable. I took this piece as a commentary on value and importance. Although degenerated and unreadable, the piece still had conveyed something. It seemed to comment on the idea of network writing in itself. Was there importance in the net language, or was all importance and meaning degenerated?

“The Fall of the Site of Marsha”, by Rob wittig, and “MEZZANGELLE”, by Mez Breeze, seem to further this point of importance. Although a bit more legible than “degenerative and regenerative”, these pieces still highlight the importance and meaning that can be held by net language.

“The Fall of the Site of Marsha”, tells a story of a fallen woman to “angels”, and even contains an affair storyline. How can such an advanced story be portrayed by so little text?

“Blue Company”, also by Robb Wittig, tells a story with more text. While this story line contains more text details than that of “The Fall of the Site of Marsha”, they are both similar in the level of story given. This goes to show, that the amount or straightforwardness of text, is not always needed to portray a complicated story line. Although both of these pieces leave holes for the interactor to fill in, I found more interest in the storyline of, “The Fall of Marsha”. It left much more to be desired, which really reeled me in.

“heyharryheymatilda”, by Rachel Hulin, was also very text and image heavy. I found it very interesting how this piece used Instagram to portray the story. I still though, found much more interest in the more abstract pieces, then these filled out novels.

I was also very interested in, “The Listeners”, by John Cayley. I found it interesting how this piece strayed a bit farther away from net language, and focused on another aspect of human engagement with the net. This piece was a critique on human interaction with the net, and was portrayed through an audio conversation of a man with an “Amazon Alexa”. As someone who uses an “Amazon Alexa” daily, I found it incredibly interesting how this piece played out. I also found the commentary on our reliance with the sociability through these networks incredibly interesting.

“I love Alaska” seemed to have a similar commentary, as it follows the search history of a middle aged woman in a sexually dissatisfying relationship. The story progresses to her finding lovers in chat rooms, and eventually cheating on her husband with one of these chat room members. It seems to be a commentary on our dissatisfaction with our real world circumstances, and how our online networks can provide us with exploration and a sense of satisfaction in what isn’t real.

All of these pieces seem to provide almost a dreamscape, and highlight the other reality that is our online networks. I fully enjoyed all of these pieces.

Blog 8- Network Writing

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I enjoyed most of the works this week. Signing up for 43 emails is not something I wanted to do for MEZANGELLE, but reading about it in Rettberg has definitely piqued my interest in the real time story-telling structure it portrays. The Instagram novel I did not quite understand how to follow. The Listeners I couldn’t quite enjoy because my own Alexa consistently wanted to participate.

In regards to “degenerative and regenerative”, I am actually learning about HTML, and at least the first couple of pages, I could decipher what the coding was. HTML really is an entire language in and of itself so beyond that it was fascinating to see the code slowly disappear as the “corruption” spread, and yet still see something of a storyline, simply with some words or letters removed (until the last few pages). I loved listening to “I Love Alaska”, as the search terms progressed into the user’s personal life. I only listened to the first episode, but I plan on continuing on my own.

“The Fall of the Site of Marsha” was very interesting because of how the story was laid out, and how you could read what left behind when they made edits, only crossing out previous text on the website. It turned dark very quickly and I like those kinds of stories. It was somewhat easy to follow but alongside it the reader can see, how the relationship between Marsha and her husband devolved, as well as the sinister implications of Marsha’s involvement in her father’s death, online.

A piece that I actually did further research on outside of our assigned works, was Online Caroline. The idea really intrigued me and I actually wanted to sign up. It doesn’t appear to work anymore though, so I found a blog article of someone else’s experience with it. You receive emails from this ‘Caroline’ and with information about yourself that you provide, she will email you things regarding her life (namely, her work, and her boyfriend David). The blogger I read mentioned that she had a child, and ‘Caroline’ replied “There was me banging on about not liking children, and then discovering you’re already a parent. Ah well, you still came back for more.” You have a choice sometimes to reply to her (if you think she’s boring, or happy, or if you think she should leave David), but she may not take your advice. As problems surface in her relationship with David, the story begins to take a dark turn and in the last few bits of the experience, it is David, not Caroline, in her webcam videos, a company called ‘XPT’ emailing the reader, not Caroline.

Although you can go in and enter your information and interact with certain links on the surface, the information you enter doesn’t seem to actually go anywhere anymore, I never received any emails.

Works Cited:

Walker, Jill. “How I Was Played by Online Caroline.” Jill/Txt, 23 Apr. 2004, jilltxt.net/txt/onlinecaroline.html.