Alan Bigelow

Artist’s Statement:
“A Change of Heart” asks the question, Is there life after college? For Danny Clay, there is no easy answer as his job, dreams, love life, and health devolve into chaos. Refusing to be molded, “Clay” navigates through one strange event after another on his predestined path to what he has always rejected: change.”A Change of Heart” is linear in plot and uses other elements of fiction (character, symbol, etc.) typically found in conventional print-based works. This is a deliberate attempt to bridge the “audience gap,” where we still see a mainstream audience for print-based literature, but a limited audience for electronic works. This bridging is an important concern in our field: with works using linear plots and other standard elements of fiction, we can expand our audience among readers who are more comfortable with the conventions of traditional literature; at the same time, we can also show younger writers a path, with its historic antecedents, that connects the past and future of storytelling. This mixed brand of electronic literature—technically savvy in its use of multimedia but borrowing elements of traditional story telling—empowers our field with an inclusiveness that embraces beginning writers and widens the potential for popular engagement. 

Bio:
Alan Bigelow’s work, installations, and conversations concerning digital fiction and poetry have appeared in the Library of Congress (USA), SFMOMA, La Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris), Turbulence.org, Rhizome.org, The National Art Center (Tokyo), Los Angeles Center for Digital Arts, FreeWaves.org, Art Tech Media, FILE, Blackbird, Drunken Boat, IDEAS, New River Journal, and many other places worldwide. He is currently a Professor of Humanities at Medaille College in Buffalo, New York, USA. You can see his work at http://www.webyarns.com.