Network Writing

0alloldusers

There is most definitely value to be found in each of these works as each explore a different aspect of network writing. One that was particularly interesting to me out of all of them was the flarf narrative “I Love Alaska,” which created a story through a woman’s search history. What the flarf shows is how search history can actually tell you a lot about a person. It reveals a persons interests, what they think about, who they think about, etc. I think it also opens up a conversation on big corporations like AOL and their ability to track their users and what their users are searching on their platform. “I Love Alaska” raises questions like how does AOL use that information, who do they give that information too considering many internet companies are reliant on ads since most big companies do not require users to pay to use their platforms? These are worthwhile questions and “I Love Alaska” really encourages that discussion.

“The Listeners” is another work I found interesting; exploring the relationship between humans and AI, which is a topic that I am genuinely concerned about. Devices like Alexa and Google Home Assistant represent the early stages of human and AI interaction; and as AI continually advances, that relationship will continually grow. I think it also opens up a commentary on surveillance and the implications of this fact. Like “I Love Alaska” I think there is great literary value because of the commentary and relevance of the topics it explores.

I think what these pieces do effectively is represent the variety of different works of art that can be created within this form of writing. From “The Listeners” to the “degenerative and regenerative,” each piece is incredibly different from one another. One of the aspects of electronic literature that I love so much is how much variety there is in ways to express and tell stories. Network writing is a perfect example of this fact.

Network Writing

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0alloldusers

So the work that I am doing a blog on for this week is the work “I Love Alaska.” I chose to do this piece of work because I felt like it was very interesting. Although it wasn’t really the best work that I have came across, it was something that, truly, caught my attention. The story is simple yet intriguing.

“I love Alaska tells the story of one of those AOL users. We get to know a religious middle-aged woman from Houston, Texas, who spends her days at home behind her TV and computer. Her unique style of phrasing combined with her putting her ideas, convictions and obsessions into AOL’s search engine, turn her personal story into a disconcerting novel of sorts.”

“August 4, 2006, the personal search queries of 650,000 AOL (America Online) users accidentally ended up on the Internet, for all to see. These search queries were entered in AOL’s search engine over a three-month period.”

It sounds like the story is told with a series of search queries that was searched that started, from the looks of it, in the beginning of March all the way to almost the middle of August.

“After three days AOL realized their blunder and removed the data from their site, but the sensitive private data had already leaked to several other sites.”

The real reason why this has caught my attention is do to the fact of how secure our internet really is and how, almost, anything that you put on the internet is not 100% safe and secure.

Sources:

  •  “I Love Alaska – Episode 1/13”: https://vimeo.com/2893100
  •  “I Love Alaska – Episode 13/13”: https://vimeo.com/2990727

Network Writing

0alloldusers

Some of the work (The Fall of the Site of Marsha) made me see home pages in a new light. I often ignore home pages when visiting websites. I tend to visit a website for specific reasons, the page is not one of them. I now realize home pages often have messages or stories on them. For example, when visiting a celebrity’s website, you will find a biography or a list of their works. The works have value; they made me realize how much time I spend on the internet as well as how much I depend on it.

From my point of view, the works actually parodied the web as well as show its flaws. I got a chuckle out of I Love Alaska. I used to use search engines to search for ridiculous things when I was bored out of my mind. It also made me think about auto correct. Some things I actually spell correctly, but auto correct will ask did I mean such and such? These works make me think about how absurd search engines (Google) can track our whereabouts. The Listener made me think about how much I depend on the Google Assistant. I ask it for direction, the name of a song, or the correct spelling of words. It often does not register what I am saying; I will often have to repeat myself three of four times until it registers what I am asking. The works made me see how much we are hooked into the Matrix.

Blog 8: Network Writing

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Christine

For my 8th blog, I decided to do The Fall of the Site of Marsha at first glance struck me as some sort of scrapbook memorial of a young woman’s better days. When I saw the three dates “spring ’98, summer 98′, and fall ’98” I was expecting to see old photos of Martha, some background text, and possibly some links that led somewhere mildly interesting. Boy was I wrong about that. On the first page, spring ’98, for Martha’s website the website is decorated like something meant to advertise for the Precious Moments figurines. There’s not a lot of details on the first page. We learned that she lost her dad and her job in the same week, she’s married to a guy called Mike and has a friend (whom she calls Bits) that also seems to enjoy angles. On this page, there are 6 links. Three of them give us a little more background on our characters while the other three expand our knowledge of angles and whatnot. You almost feel a bit ridiculous reading this kind of thing. If you go to the Throne Angle Bulletin Board you can read some of the posts made by Marsha. These posts not only make the website feel bigger but your emotional attachment to Marsha begins to grow little by little. She reminds me a lot of myself when I do my own journaling. The voice, the tone, even the wording just seems like a reflection of myself. The literary value begins to come through when things begin to take a downward spiral when you get to the warning from her angle, Eiron, who tells her that heaven would never welcome someone like her and to stop presumptuous. Summer of ’98 changes the scenery up quite a bit. The angles are messing with Marsha’s website, Bits and Mike are having an affair, and Bits may not actually be on Marsha’s side. Not only does the main page change but so do the links, causing the reader’s stimulation to go up a notch. The links have messages that are bolded and crossed out as if Marsha is denying the truth that is right in front of us. This change in the website gets the reader to engage more as we see the connections between the page and external links. On the last page, the background for the website is black instead of blue while the backgrounds for the external links are a gradient of orange and yellows. The text is almost unreadable as random letters insert themselves in every word. These qualities make it feel almost like a horror game as the atmosphere turns dark and grim.

Network Writing

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0alloldusers

 

From Rettberg’s reading, the main thing I was looking for when exploring the sources for this week was some the collaborative elements that he described for network writing.

The first reading I visited was degenerative. I think this one is interesting in the fact that yes there is a collaboration but not super interactive for the reader. Just by clicking on the page they become part of the decay that is destroying this website. I found it interesting the intent was to make something but in the process, most of the content is being removed. I wouldn’t say I was super engaged with this one, I clicked around, but it is mostly gibberish that you are looking at in all the versions.

The fall of the site of Marsha was my next read, which seems lighthearted at first but quickly takes a dark turn. The collaboration is fictionalized in this story. Marsha makes a site about angels after the death of her father to help cope, but she soon sees the dark side of the web. Hackers corrupt her site to reveal horrible things, on a site that was meant to be joyful. This story tied in quite a bit with degenerative with the decay on both sites. This one definitely interested me more as I explored the different links, the story was just more compelling.

Overall, I would say network writing makes one consider the way that the Internet connects us. Even though one might not be actively interacting through the form of a chat, they can still be connected with someone else by the shared click of a link.

Blog 8 – 3/8/19

0alloldusers

I chose I Love Alaska this week because I didn’t find anything else really appealing. This is a story told of an AOL user #711391o.

“On August 4, 2006, AOL accidentally published a text file on its website containing three months’ worth of search keywords submitted by over 650,000 users.”

This piece would not have been an existing idea, circulated piece, or as a film without the Internet. As the fractional search history of an AOL user, is narrated over images of Alaskan glacial paintings, each entry unlocks a hole upon an overwhelming portrait of oddness. The user seems to have a faint grasp of search methods, and blunt need for guidance, user #711391’s search bar becomes a priest, therapist, prophet. A user log of three months gives us the following perceptions into their life:

“Don’t cut your hair before a big event,” “People are not the same in person as they are on the Internet,” and? “I thought I could handle an affair but I couldn’t.” 

As we watch I Love Alaska, we come to learn that each search history establishes a secondary archive of the self. The continuous process of the inner life is now accessed through keywords. We cannot assume to know what the life of this user is truly like, but the unlimited isolation of being trapped in our own skin has seldom been fabricated in fewer words than,

“Why can’t I sleep since I had a hysterectomy?”

I had trouble finding something that truly hit home this week, but this story makes you think about how secure our information truly is on the internet.

Everything Dies…

Joel Clapp

Everything dies… even webpages.

When you think about it, they’re in a state of constant life support, existing only because we continue to maintain them. The landscape of the digital world is ephemeral, in flux. Yet in the back of our mind we take it for granted that a website will still be there, still give us the same experience it did before, the same experience it will give everyone else.

The normally passive act of viewing a webpage is undermined in this piece. A webpage, normally static aside from the periodic update or patches made, is like an artifact in a museum, locked in a glass case, only able to be touch by the chosen few deemed worthy to handle it. As a viewer of a website, you’re on a guided tour. You never see behind the scenes, you only see what they want you to see, and it stays an unchanging message, the same one-size-fits all message that every other viewer receives.

All that changes in degenerative. The owner of the website has given up control of curating their own set and left it to the whims of its programming (if programming can be said to be possessed of whims at at all, the notion seems rather anthropomorphic). Each view of the page leaves its mark, causing the text to degrade.

As the initial text says, “seeing is not an innocent action,” and “this page will not be the same after you visit it,” the creator calls us to be accountable for our actions, even if the action is only viewing. It is a reminder that our actions always have consequences and that we can never be non-participatory viewers, because the internet changes because of our actions… it’s just normally more subtle about it.

Here, the author refers to the programmed degeneration as a disease, but isn’t it reminiscent of the same entropy that causes everything to unravel? After all, the process of oxidization, the very breath we take, leads to our own degeneration. Web pages may not have to deal with erosion or free radicals, but entropy eventually erodes everything. Just look at GeoCities. Once again, degenerative is just less subtle, because it wants to make you aware, while everything else tries to hide it.

Alaska

kzoller

This week, I watched I Love Alaska by Submarine Channel. It is a documentation of search queries by an unknown user (which were unintentionally leaked by AOL), and then put together to create a narrative. The online network is made visible within the presentation through these search queries, whose familiar broken appearance are common in most online platforms. This user’s search history was unique in that the queries were long and specific, revealing to us a clearer picture of what was going on in their life. Indeed, Rettberg noted that 

“[Network Writing] may interrogate the nature and materiality of the network itself” (Rettberg 2019, p.152) 

This was especially true with I Love Alaska: though it was represented as a video, it felt like a commentary about the nature of search history. The choice to tell a narrative was eye-opening, as it caused me to reflect on my own search queries and wonder how I could create a story from them. It made me realize how much can be revealed about someone just through their search history, and how it can sometimes be a serious breach of privacy if recorded and used by someone else (even if only to sell products.)  

In addition to raising points about search queries, this work has literary value as an unusual yet effective way to tell a story. The creator didn’t have to invent anything at all—they simply stitched pieces of reality together and left it up to the readers to interpret it. In this way, the narrative was a mystery, while also being a romance and a drama—all while drawing on a true story. Personally, I found I Love Alaska to be emotionally engaging because it was so dramatic. Most everything that happened to this user (as far as I could tell) seemed like it came right out of a movie, and I was constantly reminding myself that it was based on real events. It reminded me of Bigelow’s work How to Rob a Bank, which was also told through search queries (though the narrative was much clearer since it was an imaginary story.)  

Rettberg, Scott. Electronic Literature. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2019. 

Network Writing – March 8, 2019

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0alloldusers

Beyond what other forms of electronic literature have taken advantage of the computer, network writing uses the possibilities present with the Internet. The simple goal of network writing is to take what is typically invisible to the viewer online and incorporate it in the piece of work so that it becomes visible. With an oddly specific goal in mind, it is fascinating how many subgenres of network writing exist and thrive online, from flarf to webpage fiction to net critique.

Network writing is perhaps the most clear form of electronic literature that wears its heart on its sleeve. Rettberg explains this in Electronic Literature: “As technology has led to rapid societal change, one of the most logical extensions of the project of electronic literature is to serve as a locus of reflexive critique of the position of the human within the technological apparatus” (Rettberg, 152). Although this understanding of network writing may sound akin to science fiction, networking writing is much more personal as it constantly reminds the reader that the flowing relationship between human and technology is a product of today.

Much like other forms of electronic literature, network writing is experimental. Tiselli’s piece “degenerative and regenerative” brought the code to the website to the forefront by allowing the people who visited the website to be responsible for breaking the code and revealing it bit by bit. Tiselli pointed out both the flexibility and fragility of our network as a result. Lernert Engelberts and Sander Plug’s “I Love Alaska” took advantage of the network’s fragility to paint the story of a distraught housewife in Alaska whose saddening relationship with Google was leaked to the world, alongside about 650,000 other people. John Cayley’s “The Listeners” uses an infrastructure built atop Amazon’s Alexa to create a sort of modern ELIZA, testing the ability (or perhaps more so highlighting the inability) of technology to serve as therapy and emulate human emotions. Although all three of these pieces are vastly different, they all play with the many possibilities of the Internet and the network to push the boundaries of technology and its relationship with modern society.

Network Writing

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0alloldusers

In the works chosen to explore this week, I had the most emotional response from heyharryheymatilda by Rachel Hulin. I also believe that this work was the most accessible example of “network” out of all of the works. Rettberg defines network writing as “electronic literature created for and published on the Internet. It may require readers to visit multiple sites to experience the narrative, […] or use the network as a site for performance” (Rettberg 152). Heyharryheymatilda does this by using Instagram’s photo sharing platform as almost a scrapbook. Instagram is already a well-organized app and using this interface works well since it’s already basically an online scrapbook. Following the scrapbook analogy, heyharryheymatilda is able to evoke various emotions from users such as nostalgia, happiness, joy, and even sadness. The literary value of this work is found through the formatting of the captions, similar to love letters. This also evokes emotion, especially because this is something that many people can relate to. The love letter aspect definitely made me think of my girlfriend and my love for her, which made it especially easy for me to enjoy the work. This piece especially stimulates my thinking about the networks we live within, because it feels nostalgic in such a way that makes me reminisce about looking through scrapbooks as a kid. This makes me wonder if in the future, scrapbooks will follow this same sort of digital platform, and if they do, will they be able to become nostalgic for those even moreso in the future? The same question applies to love letters, will they become purely digital, and if they do, will they have the same impact as a physical love letter does?

HeyNetworkHeyWriting

Mallory

I really enjoyed most of these pieces–even if I didn’t like the plot exactly, I appreciated the medium. My favorites, however, were HeyHarryHeyMatilda, The Fall of the Site of Marsha, and I Love Alaska.

HeyHarryHeyMatilda was interesting not only for the plot (which wasn’t fantastic but was still fun to read, in my opinion) but for the way it utilized Instagram. I don’t know if I would call it a full ‘novel’ (although the author did publish an actual novel of the story) but it did weave a compelling narrative as well as made me pause and wonder what story I am telling with my own social media accounts.

HEY HARRY,

 

I think you’re right. I get the signs but not the message. I’m like a highly attuned, extremely useless oracle.

I like this quote in particular because it reminds me a lot of how most people interact with social media. We see what’s on it, but not always how it all fits together to form our stories (or at least, the stories we send out to the world).

I did think that it was a bit of an odd choice on the author’s behalf, however, to compose the story in the form of emails posted as Instagram captions rather than simply Instagram posts. Obviously, that would have somewhat changed the dynamic of the piece: two twins sharing one Instagram account rather than exchanging emails. I guess Harry would have to have given Vera access as well, which does differ from Vera just getting Matilda’s email address…but I think it would have strengthened the usage of Instagram as a storytelling medium.

That said, I liked how the author interacted with commenters as Harry or Matilda, as if they really were the ones running the account; it gave it a realistic and modern depth in a way that a paper novel is incapable of. I also started noticing a few commenters creating friendships and even weaving their own little storylines in the comments, which was fun to see. I’m not sure how fictional or otherwise these commenters were, but it was an interesting branching of the narrative that I bet not even the author predicted.

The Fall of the Site of Marsha and I Love Alaska were both interesting because they were both about humans turning to the internet to cope with their tragic (or, as some might see it, maudlin) lives. I liked The Fall of the Site of Marsha as a statement, a story, and in an aesthetic sense: I thought it was really impressive how a single website with just a few pages gave such a sense of character. I took the Throne Angels and their interactions with Marsha as a metaphor for the dangers of using the internet as a crutch–even as a kind of false faith. I also enjoyed the website being broken as a visual for Marsha’s life falling apart. With I Love Alaska, I thought it was a bit more poignant since it was a real person and not a fictional account, although I didn’t actually like the woman herself. I thought it was another interesting example of how we turn to the anonymity and perceived safety of the internet in times of stress or other negative emotions, as well as the dangers of those actions. A person turning to the internet for comfort can easily be abused, as in Marsha’s case, or revealed unexpectedly, as in the case of User 711391.

As a side note–I liked the website Degenerative, too, and thought it was a pretty neat concept. However, when I click the ‘read more’ button on the first page, it takes me to http://www.motorhueso.net/degenerative/about/ which reads ‘Hacked by Nero Hacker!’ It doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the piece, so I think it really was ‘hacked’ by someone? Or am I misunderstanding something here?

Network Writing

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jredman172 Comments

Typically, reading a story alone is just that. It’s your own personal experience and the only way to share it is if your right next to another person or go online to talk about it after a reading session. In Degenerative, the original page can be read just as a normal web page, but it is a work that exists to remind you that many people may look at it considering it’s the internet. Like a normal web page, it at first glance makes you forget that it is connected to a network as the site doesn’t appear to change. The catch with this work was that the more people that read it, the more broken the text would become eventually resulting in a near blank page. This work made me think about how in some cases, the user has more influence than the creator. When everyone is given the ability to affect something on the internet, they run wild with it. This is why moderation exists on so many websites that contain user generated content. The sites that aren’t moderated go down in infamy because they have become places under near complete control of users. I Love Alaska freaked me out a little because it reminded me that search engines remember everything you type in. The story consisted entirely of one person’s search phrases, but that was enough to reveal her personality and drop major hints about what was going on in her life. The literary value of these works is the network itself. They involve many people.

“Networks are both technological and social structures. For electronic literature, networks are both platform and material.”-Rettberg, pg 152