“Softies” and “The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot”

kzoller

Image result for the ballad of sand and harry soot

SOFTIES by David Jhave Johnson is a web-based work, comprised of a series of videos and short poems. Each video contains a phrase related to one of the poems, which are manipulated in a program known as Mr. Softie (hence the title of the work.) However, Jhave’s mesmerizing animations were what caught my attention. By utilizing the Mr. Softie program, Johnson was able to manipulate the phrases through squashing, stretching, twisting, shrinking and expanding the text in ways that communicated the ideas of the corresponding poem. In his poem “Stand under” for instance, the word “under” is placed far above a stack of the repeated word “standing”, which strains and pulls at “under” in an attempt to rise above it. Fittingly, the corresponding poem to this video was one about humility, which would explain the struggle of the words lower down vs. the superiority of the word near the top. In addition to animating the text, Johnson also supplemented his work with music to set the mood of each video. Taking the above factors into account, it could be argued that SOFTIES is a work of concrete poetry—it treats words as tangible, manipulable objects and makes a clear connection to the program it was made with. It is also a multimedial work, as it combines text, sound, and on occasion imagery (in certain poems such as “Unity”, the background layer of the animation is another video.)  

The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot is a web-based hypertext that is composed of web pages rather than traditional “nodes”. A ballad is a song or poem telling a story in short stanzas, which is exactly what this work is mimicking.  A love story about a man named Soot who longs for a woman called Sand, Strickland describes her work as the symbolic relationship between technology and man. She saw the sand as silicon, which can be found in sand as well as in microchips, “and by extension the entire online world.” (Word Circuits Stephanie Strickland). As for Soot, Strickland described him as 

“a man made of carbon, biochemical man, a man of flesh and mood, a person.” (Word Circuits Stephanie Strickland).  

This work seems to follow a more traditional presentation of poetry than SOFTIES by placing text in stanzas, using colorful wording, and presenting ideas as riddles. One of the less traditional aspects of the work was the use of hidden hyperlinks within the stanzas to other parts of the story, adding a new layer of meaning, interactivity, and mystery to the piece. One might argue that The Ballad of Sand and Soot is a visual form of poetry because it is accompanied by images, but these are separated from the text and do little to aid the reader’s understanding of the poem (most of the images are nonspecific pictures of sand.) Thus, simply calling this a multimedial work might seem more appropriate, as it is merging multiple forms of media (images and text) into one.  

Sources: 

Word Circuits Stephanie Strickland 

 

Kinetic and Interactive Poetry – February 22, 2019

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Much like the previously explored hypertext fiction and interactive fiction, kinetic and interactive poetry explore the fusion of writing and technology to augment the way a person is able to explore and interact with a story. In Scott Rettberg’s words, “kinetic and interactive poetry explore the specific multimedia capacities of the contemporary computer as a poetic environment for both composition and reception” (Rettberg, 118). What kinetic and interactive poetry seek out to do is use the resources available from a computer to create a new breed of modernized poetry.

Two examples of kinetic and interactive poetry are Y0UNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES’ “Rain on the Sea” and David Jhave Johnson’s “SOFTIEs”. “Rain on the Sea” and “SOFTIEs” both make use of audio and music to add extra meaning and feeling to the poetry. Among other techniques, the two pieces set out to bring the anti-art movements of the early 1900s to the screen.

In the case of “Rain on the Sea”, the opening countdown, old-timey music, and layout of the poem gives it the feeling of a silent film. However, the stylistic choice of moving the words so quickly that upon the first time viewing the reader is only able to catch part of the story gives it a true feeling of avant-garde electronic literature. “Rain on the Sea” is an important example of film poetry, one of the many styles of kinetic and interactive poetry that exist.

Johnson’s “SOFTIEs” is even stranger than “Rain on the Sea”. Although part of it consists of short, traditional pieces of poetry, the rest of it consists of poetic proses being distorted, twisted, and stretched on a plane with ominous music in the background. “SOFTIEs” sets out to give words a second meaning, not just in what they mean but also in how they are presented. It is a good example of visual poetry, or “vispo”.

Although there are many more examples and subgenres of kinetic and interactive poetry that can be explored, these two are solid examples of what the movement has sought out to express with the addition of technology to writing.

Dylan Niehaus – Kinetic and Interactive Poetry

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Dylan

The first poem or poems to catch my attention were the sound poems by Jorg Piringer. I enjoyed messing around with the different interactive sound poems, trying to create my own unique and interesting sound bites. Although fun and interesting to interact with, I failed to notice any deeper meaning within the poems. This may be because I have a difficult time finding meaning within things in general, but with these sound poems, I just fail to see how they could allude to anything of deeper meaning.

“Concrete poetry is based on an awareness of and interest in the material nature of language, its shapes and forms, and the aesthetic and semantic effects made possible by manipulating language as a material.” – Scott Rettberg

The sound poems by Jorg Piringer follow the definition set out by Scott Rettberg in that they allow the reader to manipulate sounds created by language in unusual ways. Many of the sound poems contain letters that can be manipulated freely by the user. As the letters are manipulated, a sound is made based around that letter. The only deeper meaning I can pull from these poems is that at its roots, the English language can be incredibly nonsensical and off-putting. But, this poem appears to be a form of Lettrism, so being devoid of meaning may be its intention. Lettrism focuses on deconstructing poetry to be devoid of semantic content. The sound poems created by Jorg Piringer succeed at this by focusing only on letters, their movements, and the sounds they make.

The second poem that caught my attention was Cruising by Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapnar. This is a poem that utilizes sound, images, text, and animations to tell a short story. This is similar to the sound poems by Jorg Piringer only in that Cruising utilizes sound, but in Cruising, the sound is used to tell a story through a voiceover. This kinetic poem is much more traditional in that it has a clear story and meaning. The poem is also interactive, the user can move their mouse and make the images and text on the screen scroll at different speeds. The description of the poem states that this was done in order to create an experience in which the user needs to learn to control and “drive” the poem.

Blog 6: Kinetic and Interactive Poetry

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Christine

Tom Swiss’s Shy Boy is short yet conveys quite a bit to the readers. The poem is a representation and a voice about a boy who left in the shadows and wants to disappear. The movement of the text and rectangles convey ideas such as melting and vanishing. These movements enforce the idea that the boy is at the end of his rope. through this imagery, we can feel that he can’t bare his life anymore because he has lost his strength and will. In the end, the boy dies and is left as a ghost to reminiscent on the times he was alive. The music in the background acts as a sort of limbo. You feel as if you are floating and observing the boy before you. In Ingrid Ankerson’s Cruising poem, however, takes a very different approach. For starters, Ingrid narrates her poem as she shows us black and white photos of a car on the road unlike Swiss’s which has no photos. Some catchy guitar music plays in the background, giving the atmosphere a feeling of freedom and fun compared to the more classical and solemn music in Swiss’s. If you hover your mouse in either direction the photos will zoom past music. This interaction gives you a sense of control, similar to how you would control the speed of your own vehicle. Although her poem moves her text, unlike Swiss’s, does not. The text above the photos remains stationary until you hover over the screen; then the text starts to blur like the lights from a row of cars passing by. As the reader, I don’t feel like the floating onlooker like I did in Swiss’s poem. I feel as if I am in the car cruising with her, enjoying life and not giving a care in the world.

Blog 6 – 2/22/19

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After looking through all of the works for this week, I chose two that stood out to me. The first piece I picked was “The Dreamlife of Letters” by Brian Kim Stefans. The digital poem was created from words written to him from a coworker during a roundtable conference. He alphabetized her words and produced a series of short digital poems. The poem’s text moves in different ways on your screen.  The text is responsive to other words and letters, but sometimes the text seems to only have the first letter in common, rather than the first few letters, or patterns of letters inside the word. At certain points of the poem, the movements of the letters match a word.

          E.g. , “the word height expands and grows taller at first,       then shrinks away, while the word “drip” appears as the letter D falls down the screen.” 

I felt excited as I made my way through Brian Kim Stefans work but nothing prepared me for A is for Apple. I watched this a couple of times, and I felt like I needed more. I went to David Clark’s page and started looking through more of his work, and I am thrilled to have discovered this man. All of his work is just beautiful, and I can’t wait to explore all of his stuff. For now, I will discuss A is for Apple. This piece is a Flash-based project that uses the hypertext to investigate the science behind an apple. The piece uses a sequence of links, looking for hidden meanings that come from the apple. 

        “The image of the apple leads to references and ideas borrowing from western metaphysics, popular culture, the history of cryptography, ideas of language, and psychoanalysis.”

A is for Apple was created using the model of a collage. Initially, paper collages were made. Those became the basis of a flash website where David and his associates made the page interactive and animated. One of the best Pieces of art I have ever scene.

Kinetic and Interactive Poetry: Shyboy and Rain on the Sea

Mariah Gwin

“Shyboy”, unlike the works we have read thus far, is linear. In addition to being displayed in a linear format, it is very much visual poetry in that the lines and text itself will appear, disappear, and shift based on what is being said in the poem at any given point. All in all, it is a short piece. The way it was designed visually is simplistic and effective, in no way detracting from the poem itself and instead adding to it. One of the best examples of this, in my opinion, is right at the beginning when the text appears line by line going down the page and then when it gets to the bottom, it says,

he can’t help it. And he can’t help that

he’s easy to read, even from this end of the hall.

 

You know what he wants to do?

 

Vanish

Then that word ‘vanish’ actually does, it slowly fades away.

“Rain on the Sea” is also a very visual piece but compared to “Shyboy” with its ease, fading and guiding the lines and text, “Rain on the Sea” is very flashy and in your face. Additionally, rather than being that of a flash work, “Rain on the Sea” is in fact a video which creates a linear path so that there is only one way to read through the work. Granted that is dependent on whether you can keep up with it. Sometimes the words flash by too quickly that I found myself clicking back or pausing the video just to read it.

It is interesting to note how there are multiple parts to the work. Additionally, the premise of the poem itself is rather unfortunate for you as the individual becoming the person in the piece. Within the first minute alone you are tossed into a situation where you are dying on the bathroom floor and yet suddenly ‘given another chance,’ in a sense, by an almighty power:

Too late for that, you said–your last mistake, for it turns out there is indeed a God, quite powerful, quite knowing, not amused. He pardoned the last stages of your tortured marriage. He granted you it was perversely entertaining, mere child’s play in your world of murderers.

The words themselves are quite intense when given a chance to read them, though the format they are displayed in with the quick flashes as they fly by on the screen do also provide that sense of severity.

The video itself feels almost as if one is trying to download the data off of the screen, processing it as it goes. It is stiff and mechanical and the only way to really read it is to pause and slow down and take the time to go through each and every word within the different parts.

Sources:
“Shyboy” by Tom Swiss
“Rain on the Sea” by Y0UNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES

World Of Awe

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I chose to explore the World of Awe, an electronic story that takes place in some sort of weird desert where an unnamed traveler is searching for some sort of unknown treasure. There are three chapters in which the first takes place in 2000, the second in 2002, and the third in 2006. You explore this travelers journey by opening up love letters that he wrote to his loved one but were never sent. Even though he knew she would never read these letters he would write them anyways to keep himself from going insane. Some of them were often amusing as one that I read in the first chapter was talking about how he got captured and escaped but ended the letter in “P.S. still looking for the lost treasure”.

 

Due to the advance of technology each chapter seems more advanced than previous chapters. The first is just sound and text, the second has some short object animations, and the third has some 3D pictures and designs. I however enjoyed the first chapter the most as I found it more immersive with the audio playing in the background as I would read the letters. The third chapter was the most difficult to me as it seemed like the language was arabic or some other form of Middle Eastern language. This story all around seemed very bizarre and strange but I enjoyed exploring it nonetheless.

Ad Verbum

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0alloldusers

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.

E-Literature & Those We Love Alive

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E-Literature

 

              In looking at the “Those We Love Alive” (TWLA) I am intrigued by its repetition, as well as its descriptive language. The other piece I looked at was “Deviant” which after playing for a while I remember going through last semester. While Deviant was intriguing, I felt like I was running into the same problem that we have discussed in previous classes. Following the general character but not understanding the story or what is going on, due to lack of context. But after reading the authors inspiration of what inspired them to make deviant it makes a lot more sense. Looking at TWLA it was a lot more linear, so it was easier to follow I really enjoyed it. The tone and mood set by the colors and music are eerie but fascinating. I looked quickly at howling dogs and was surprised that they were both done in twine as well as TWLA seams like a more refined and completed piece but that was only my initial thought. E-literature has such a wide spectrum of what it can do that I will just learn and enjoy whatever I can.   

The Narrative World of Porpentine

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I explored “With Those We Love Alive”, by Porpentine, and “Howling Dogs”, also by Porpentine. I didn’t intentionally explore two works by the same author/creator, but after doing so, I believed I got a far better understanding of the author’s methods. Both of the works seem to center in on a dark, twisted society and the daily mundane tasks of members of that society. In “With Those We Love Alive”, we follow our protagonist, a creator hired on by the empress. The world is dark and filled with muck, and the occasional dead person who is staring at you. The empress is described almost in a monstrous way, with horns, oozing ichor, and rotting flesh. The empress hunts humans, and human body fluids are drunken. The city is falling apart, ridden with monsters, stains, and rot. The protagonist also has to refuel on hormones, and imagery is used to describe the glow of veins pulsing with hormone. “Howling Dogs”, although not as visually interesting, carries a similar theme. The protagonist wakes up in a cold, sterile almost hospital-like room. The protagonist then has to do daily tasks such as drinking, eating, throwing out garbage, before heading into what is called the activity room. This room is described to have almost a virtual reality visor, that continues the main storyline for the protagonist. Both pieces are very mysterious and poetic. The game is progressed through a series of link choices. “With Those We Love Alive” is a bit different than “Howling Dogs”, as it possesses links that can be alternated by the player. Both of these pieces involve the interactor or player, by forcing them to make decisions to advance the story line. While playing both of these pieces, I would often find myself stuck in the storyline, if I didn’t find the correct link that would advance it. The links also changed how the storyline played out, and the circumstances that would be faced by the protagonist. These two works seem to follow more of a hypertext layout, then that of a game. While they both provide options for the player, these two games seem to be more of framework for a literature piece, rather than a game. The works are both incredibly mysterious, and engage the player’s imagination in a multitude of ways. The wording is poetic and ambiguous in nature, and each new prompt, brings up more questions and plot holes to fill. In my exploration of, “With Those We Love Alive”, I had stumbled on a friendship/romance storyline that seemed to hint at a big turning point for the two characters. They never explicitly stated what had happened but seemed to hint at it. I really loved these two pieces, and would love to get to a point where some of the plot holes are filled.

Dylan Niehaus – Narrative Games

Dylan

Game Game Game and Game Again by Jason Nelson has caught my attention like no other piece of electronic literature so far. Game again is a narrative game that combines elements of a video game platformer with poetics, strange sounds and visuals, and video clips. The platforming was actually quite fun and unique at times, especially for a flash game focused on narrative. I have to say that Game again is the most bizarre, strange, and straight up creepy flash game I have experienced on the web, and that says a lot.

I felt like I was playing something that was created by an insane person as I was bombarded by strange sounds, visuals, and pieces of text that did not make too much sense. The whole thing had a disturbing, almost otherworldly feeling. The game encourages the user to find meaning by placing different objects to reach within each level. As an object is collected, it reveals a piece of text. Within many levels, a clickable button will appear that plays a short video clip on repeat.  Overall, despite the disturbing aspects of Game Again, I would have to say that its combination of platforming, visuals, video, and text are incredibly engaging and impressive.

I then decided to explore With Those We Love Alive by Porpentine. This game is quite different from the previous one that I explored, as it is a text-based adventure, much like Zork, except the user clicks on words instead of typing their own. The game also has a soundtrack which I found to be quite nice and relaxing, it made me feel much more immersed in the experience. I actually quite enjoy text-based games as they allow you to visualize a world in any way you wish because, in reality, the author is just providing guidelines of how the world looks; it is up to the reader to create their own details and interpretation of the world.

Providing music can help influence the way in which a reader visualizes a world. The music in this game had me thinking of a beautiful, serene palace instead of one that may be old and run down. This is interesting because the story actually takes place in a world where a larval empress has you working for her in a dingy palace, but the background colors and music make me think of this serene place. The game also allows the user to change words in the story by clicking on them. For example, I had to make a gift for the empress and I did so by clicking on words to change them to create a gift. At this point, the music changed to something more strange and sinister but returned to its relaxing form after I returned to the palace.

Both narrative games I explored are incredibly different in nature. Game Again relies heavily on visuals and gaming aspects (platforming) while With Those We Love Alive is a purely textual experience. Game Again felt more like an on-rails experience, as the goal was to get to the end of each level while collecting things along the way. The game bombarded the user with strange sounds and visuals to create a confusing and disturbing atmosphere. With Those We Love Alive is a non-linear experience that allows the user to take their time and explore the world at their own pace. It has atmospheric and relaxing music, but also has depressing and dark themes, but overall it is a much more muted experience than Game Again.