Elaina Sundwall

RED RIDING HOOD

RED RIDING HOOD is a combinatory, interactive fiction piece collectively written in twine. Our game references and draws inspiration from Colossal Cave Adventure and ZORK. Traversing more thoroughly or multiple times is rewarded with more text and multiple story endings. The narrative and structure were heavily influenced by the process of Jake and I collectively writing the work. It has game like structure and is traversed spatially like a piece of interactive fiction, while having a hyperlink structure by benefit of being made in twine.

Depending on what items the reader finds throughout the game, different parts of the story will be revealed. If you remember to bring your RED RIDING HOOD, text about your character feeling secure and warm will appear throughout the game. But if you forget your hood, whiny, shuddering text will appear throughout the cave system, and there is only one way to escape the caves. The piece is different depending on what items the reader chooses to pick up before entering the forest, and what items the traverser finds throughout the caves. The amount of choices the traverser has when encountering the goblin and Grandma increases with the number of items they find in the caves. The combinatory nature of the piece being linked to the items found while traversing rewards the reader for exploring more thoroughly. It is possible to forget your RED RIDING HOOD, pick up the hatchet and cucumber, smash the golden eggs, escape with the help of the wolf, and only have the options to offer Grandma the cucumber or tell her about the caves at the end of the game. It’s not possible to reach the end with all the items, so it is not possible to reveal all the endings of the game with just one traversal.

The piece heavily references the games ZORK and Colossal Cave Adventure. We sought to incorporate or reference aspects of interactive fiction games, such as traversing the piece spatially and problems for the interactor to solve to reach the end of the piece. Once in the cave system, the piece is traversed using a compass in the lower right corner of the page. Our game was created in twine and is a web of hyperlinks, but the cave system can be viewed as a grid like map in the twine editing interface. The caves are numbered and linked to each other, with alternate link names corresponding to where the cave is in relation to the cave the link is in. These links are arranged into a compass shape using css grid. The problem solving in this game is much simpler than the puzzles in ZORK or CCA. The traverser can use the items they’ve found when they are made available to solve problems as links within the passage text. I chose to use a hyperlink structure rather than an inventory system because it was easier for both Jake and I to make changes to the story this way, and because there would be text in the passage based on the items in the traversers inventory anyways, so it would be simplest for the link to be in the passage.

We reference ZORK and CCA in the narrative and aesthetic of our piece as well. The font and color are reminiscent of the games, but our piece has major differences in appearance from ZORK and CCA as well. There are hyperlinks within the passage text, descriptions of the cold shudder, and the caverns are navigated using a compass with links labelled as the cardinal directions rather than navigating using a text parser. The narrative and descriptions of unsuccessful moves are snarky and sometimes nonsensical, like CCA or ZORK. There are choices the player can make in the beginning of the game or while in the caverns that result in failure, as well as choices that leave the game unwinnable. It is impossible to escape the caverns without the hatchet if you forget your hood.

Our work is a piece of collective writing even though Jake and I were the only contributors, because the way we wrote the piece led to an unsuspected structure and storyline that we would not have created independently. We wrote the piece without the end in mind, though we had a common goal. The beginning of the game, before entering the forest, was written together as an in-class exercise. Beginning the project that far in advance of the due date allowed us to exchange the project back and forth many times. We added a manageable amount each time without the pressure of needing to complete a large portion, and the final version is the eleventh version of the file. We discussed the general direction of the work and occasional details, but for the most part did not know what to expect each time we opened the file. We created twists and problems for the other writer to solve that created a story and structure neither of us would have made on our own. Jake created the treasures and expected me to create a trophy case or have Grandma send RED RIDING HOOD back into the caves to retrieve the treasures, but instead I introduced the goblin to the story and created multiple ways to escape the cave system using different treasures and items. An arbitrary decision during the collective writing process made our piece multilinear, a choice either of us might not have made had we written the piece by ourselves.

The collective writing process mixed with creating aspects of interactive fiction was difficult and rewarding, because as we created puzzles for the traverser to solve, we created problems for our partner to find a solution for in the writing. The game flows from a hyperlink structure, to a spatial structure, and back to hyperlinks, and has multiple endings. RED RIDING HOOD grew into a game that neither Jake or I could have expected when we first began it.

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Elaina Sundwall and Jake Martin

https://dtc-wsuv.org/esundwall18/red/

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Kinetic Details in Pry

The extra details and nuance in the app Pry make the app worth multiple traversals. It was not until I read my classmates entries on the first half of the app that I realized how many details it was possible to miss just by nature of how the work is traversed, or pieces of significance that I had missed. The aspect of the app that gives the work its name, pry, was lost on me during my first traversal. The pinching and opening motion to progress the story mimics open one’s eyes and pinching or pulling back into ones mind to access the subconscious. I had been thinking of this piece in visual terms and had missed some of the kinetic aspects that make the work so subversive. The braille chapter is an obvious example of this that I had not missed. Chapter 3 was the most immersive chapter for me, as dragging my fingers across the screen forced me to remain engaged, almost like the conscious thoughts of the app with text. Other subtler details that increase immersion are fun to find and easy to miss as well. Chapter 5, in which it is confirmed that the protagonist is losing his sight, includes a part where the protagonist uses eyedrops. It’s funny to think about how this might have been filmed, but to a traverser this element increases the immersion and is a very concrete real life example of going blind. The more time I spend with this work, more and more immersive and kinetic details reveal themselves.

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Pry

The traversal method of Pry quickly becomes intuitive. Zooming in and out on a touch screen is already natural enough for a traverser, so zooming out to see the subconscious and zooming in to see what the main character sees is easy to understand and easy to figure out if the traverser misses the instructions. This work is significantly easier to traverse than more complicated or nested pieces of E-lit, and is presumably more palatable to a traverser who has not spent much time with E-lit, while still having controls that will intrigue traversers familiar with more complicated E-lit. The basic structure, zoom out to see subconscious, zoom in to see sight, and the base level being the conscious thoughts, the text that is the thrust of the story, could be a structure that other electronic works could use. The traversal method seems so versatile and something that could be applied in many different stories to create many different effects that build the main character that it could create its own genre if enough authors mimicked this traversal style. The separation of thoughts, sight, and the subconscious are used in Pry to illustrate the experience of PTSD. I could see this traversal method translating to other mental health disorders in interesting ways, such as making the sight and thoughts more difficult to access over time and the subconscious become overpowering or taking control from the traverser and switching between perspectives rapidly.

The three perspectives combine to create a constant montage, that the traverser controls. During my first traversal through the first four chapters, I tried to switch perspectives as thoroughly and regularly as possible, cycling through conscious, subconscious, conscious, sight, repeatedly in the same order. The conscious is between the subconscious and sight and by opening the subconscious or looking at what the character sees you progress the conscious text, so it is presumably impossible to see both the sight and subconscious that corresponds to one conscious thought, unless the visuals and subconscious last longer than a single conscious thought. It was difficult to traverse this way though, and I found myself switching between just the conscious thought and sight during the demolition chapter and switching mostly between the conscious thought and the subconscious during the first chapter, as the main characters sight is of his perspective in bed. The traversal method and the many montage combinations that can be created with it mean this work is best understood by being traversed multiple times.

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Final Description

For our final project, Jake and I are creating a cavern exploration adventure game in the style of ZORK or Colossal cave adventure. We will make references to the other two games throughout, but the game will be playable without the context of the other two games. The game will be created in twine and will not be navigated like ZORK and Adventure in a text parser style, and instead will be a hyperlinked, choose your own adventure-esque game. This project will be investigating hypertext using twine, interactive fiction through the structure of the story and the references to other games, and collaborative fiction, as Jake and I will trade the twine file back and forth to create the game. Due to the explorative and collaborative nature of how we will be writing the piece, the plot is tentative and may go in a different direction.
The traverser plays as little red riding hood and begins the game by being told to deliver a basket to grandma’s house, in the forest. Before going in to the forest, the traverser may look around for tools that may help them throughout the game. For example, the traverser may remain in the house and look around, finding their red riding hood, which will keep the warm later in the game. While investigating the garden outside their home, they may take a vegetable and a gardening tool, which may help or hinder them during their quest. Upon reaching the forest, the traverser will fall down a hole and must navigate a series of caves to escape.
Aspects of ZORK and Adventure we plan on emulating in our game include an inventory with a set limit, navigating using the cardinal directions while in the cave system, and actions available to the traverser that leave the game unwinnable. The inventory system in ZORK adds an element of difficulty and strategy to what items a traverser needs to prioritize during the game. Little red riding hood carries a basket of food for her grandmother and will carry her inventory in the basket as well, giving us a narrative reason for her limited inventory. As the game is navigated through hyperlinks rather than a text parser, while in the cavern system there will be a hyperlink for each direction, as well as a hyperlink to the basket inventory.

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Augmented Reality

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.

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Angels and Network Writing

“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.

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Kinetic Poetry


“The Ballad of Soot and Sand” by Stephanie Strickland has a hyperlink structure similar to hypertext fiction, while using elements of kinetic and interactive poetry. The poem is traversed nonlinearly through links in the body of the poem, within words that correspond to other passages. Soot and Sand is more navigable and asks less of the viewer than more dense or confusing pieces of hypertext e-literature by having links to other parts of the poem along the bottom of the screen. Links to passages that have been read are in bold. Each passage is formatted differently, with text aligned or oriented in different ways and color is applied to the text, affect how the text is read, at what rate it is read, and giving more significance to passages and words by coloring or orienting them differently than the rest of the text, conveying meaning that might not a have been drawn by the viewer otherwise.

Words and letters are not only carriers of meaning but material objects that themselves have variable properties. -Rettberg

David Jhave Johnson’s “SOFTIES” are a more dramatic example of manipulating the appearance of text to convey meaning. In his piece “Stand Under” he stretches and pulls the word understanding, broken down and rewritten several times to create an abstract kinetic form. The words “stand” and “under” are reiterated and stacked on top of each other under a long stretched letter. As the stretched letter is pushed and pulled the understanding beneath it compresses and contracts. The description of the work states “State under. Humility understands.” The work visually represents the literal meaning of the word understanding and how to achieve understanding through humility, and placing a situation one is trying to understand above oneself. Manipulating text minutely or grandly can be used to communicate major or minor subtext.

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Ad Verbum

I had a funny conversation with my father while traversing “Ad Verbum” by Nick Monfort. My dad came into the room and I mentioned that I was reading interactive fiction for a class, which I described to him as text-input based games which he had told me about playing when he was younger. He chuckled and said that he remembered games like that required you to use very specific words to be able to navigate them. I said that actually, I was mentioning it to him because I couldn’t do something in the game and I was wondering if he could help me guess the command. He immediately asked “Are you trying to go upstairs?” Yes I was. He told me to input “go stairs” and of course it worked. Here is a screenshot of all my guesses of how to go upstairs, and his answer.

My dad even remembered the names of his friends that he spent an afternoon with in front of a computer guessing how to go upstairs. The first thing he remembered about interactive fiction was how difficult using the text parser was. Rettberg describes this feeling hilariously as:

“The actual experience of interacting with IF can however sometimes seem more like conversing via telegraph with a precocious chimpanzee who has worked out a compass and the possession of objects than conversing with an adult human.”

This aspect of IF is becoming less of a problem as technology improves and text-parsers become more intelligent. The challenge of thinking and communicating in ways that a computer will understand. What was originally a limitation of IF games has become a feature of the game and these types of games have an aspect of nostalgia today because of it.

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Grammatron and Structure

Line 2 c of the definition of net.art created by Natalie Bookchin & Alexei Shulgin describes net.art as:

By realizing ways out of entrenched values arising from structured system of theories and ideologies

This single line in the definition of net.art could be extended to include many different types of electronic literature.

The non-linear nature and aspects of variability enabled by electronic literature allow for the deconstruction of structures that are used to signal meaning in other types of media. A typical movie will follow a paradigm, a structure that signals to the viewer when certain aspects of the story are important and why. The viewer knows they will first be met by an exposition, and they expect a resolution at the end, with interest and conflict in between. Many movie critiques center around whether a movie met this structure, and if it signaled what aspects of the story the viewer should take notice of by using structure. Electronic literature often makes no attempts at helping the viewer make sense of the content. The unsatisfying nature of many pieces of E-lit is what spurns the reader forwards in the story, making the consumer work for the meaning the author has embedded in the work, rather than presenting the meaning in a structure the viewer is familiar with.

Grammatron is an example of net.art that makes no effort for the reader to make sense of or even be comfortable with the piece. Grammatron refers to itself as a writing machine, introduces a creature, an image of a nosferatu-esque face covered in text, mentions the concept of gender, and displays text that creates the illusion of self-awareness. An eery audio files appears in a popup upon beginning the traversal, and the aspects of the piece, the writing machine, the creature, and self-awareness, are gradually revealed in the beginning, but in different orders from traversal to traversal. Grammatron does not prepare the viewer with what the content will be about. The piece and the authors description of it in the Mark Amerika article are deliberately vague. Net.art, like much of electronic literature, makes no effort to be palatable or sense-making to the reader. Net.art demands that the viewer be invested and investigate the E-lit to reveal the meaning of the piece and create the viewers own unique understanding of the experience.

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Hypertext over Print

The non-linear nature of hypertext fiction can express more than print can due to the nature of randomness and the arbitrary connections readers create while reading a nonlinear story. Randomness refers to mathematically random sequences, made possible by programming. The word arbitrary refers to decisions or connections made for no specific reason or a not necessarily relevant reason, decisions made by a human. When a story is reordered and put into a nonlinear form that can be regenerated again and again through the use of programming, the reader makes sense of the story in different ways every time. New stories can be formed in the mind of the reader with the same text be formed in different orders, or by new text being created and inserted into a preexisting story. The hyperlinked nature of electronic literature allows viewers to “choose their own adventure” combining the random aspect of programming with the arbitrary nature of the reader’s choices, allowing the story to be rewritten in almost an infinite number of ways.

Electronic literature’s uses the properties of a computer, programmability and the network, creates literature that could not exist in print

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Taroko Gorge

“Taroko Gorge” by Nick Monfort is an example of a poem generated by a computer, or combinatory poetics, as outlined in the Electronic Literature Organization’s list of existing electronic literature practices as part of their definition of E-lit. It fulfills John Cayley’s short definition of E-lit as it is “writing in networked and programmable media” and is primarily an example of writing in a programmable media. It also a good example of Stephanie Strickland’s definition of E-lit, which she says

“relies on code for its creation, preservation, and display: there is no way to experience a work of e-literature unless a computer is running it –reading it and perhaps also generating it,”

“Taroko Gorge” could not be read and would not exist without a computer generating it.
“Taroko Gorge” was originally created in Python and then recreated in Javascript so it could be viewed in a browser. The poem is created by first announcing in the program a series of lists of words, which are then returned randomly in an order determined by the type of list they are in and displayed in phrases that create a poem. “Taroko Gorge” is what N. Katherine Hayles would call “born digital” and each iteration of the poem is unique. Every instance of the webpage will return a different poem than the last. The piece is not only “not easily produced or consumed in print literary contexts” as Scott Rettberg describes in the reading, but it is impossible to produce or consume as print. One iteration of the poem could be printed and distributed as print, but the intention of the piece would be lost.
The piece is a straight forward example of combinatory poetics. Scott Rettberg describes combinatory poetics as programs that “access and present data… and then through algorithmic processes, modify or substitute the data.” “Taroko Gorge” uses Javascript create lists of data, words in the poem, and select and present them randomly to form a poem. This is a similar process to the recipe for a Dadaist poem Tristan Tzara describes, cutting words out of a newspaper and gluing them down randomly as you draw them from a mixed bag. Combinatory poetics uses computer programming languages to create Dadaist poems instantly.

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