Redridinghood

Posted on March 4, 2013 by | Comments Off on Redridinghood

@v_kono

When I first went to the website to see the story of  Redridinghood, I was completely surprised. My expectation was to see an animated version of the story, “The Little Red Riding Hood.” I was taken off guard. The story I was used to hearing was about a little girl who was sent to her grandmother’s house. As she  goes there, she encounters a wolf who tries to eat her towards the end of the story. This new version of the old story brings in many new twists to the old classic as we knew it. A soundtrack was added. The music was intriguing, and added a certain dangerous feel to the story. At first, I expected to just sit back and enjoy the story line. Then I realized that I had to put in effort to actually go through the script. The way the story has been reinvented is to have the user interaction. It makes it more engaging and keeps the user awake. As Marshall McLuhan writes, “Electronic circuitry profoundly involves men with one another” and “We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience co-exist in a state of active interplay.” (p.63) The old classic was remade for a newer generation. Instead of a classic wolf, the author had a boy on a scooter. The option to let the little girl sleep next to the flowers was also an interesting twist. The clickable flowers, and many other objects allowed the author to retell a familiar story as an electronic literature and engage the reader.

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Weyman – post march 4th

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@alweyman

When looking at my Facebook page, the first thing that comes to mind is that there is no avatar to represent myself. I had thought that this type of virtual representation was only possible though games and other media where you controlled a user. However as Coleman says in his work, “it is often a graphical representation of a person with which one can interact in real time.” (Coleman pg.12) This made be think that maybe an avatar can be something not entirely visible? On Facebook, there is not avatar, however the pictures of you and other things on your wall hint as to who you are. The main purpose of an avatar is for others to see who they’re interacting with. (as well as a method of virtual movement in games and such.) The idea that media changes the user seems to lean on the notion that where there is a virtual world, there lie possibilities that may not otherwise be feasible in real life. For example, there is no way an inexperienced adult could handle a fully automatic artillery weapon without knowledge of how it works, reloading, etc. In the game however, the user can actually use their avatar and make them do the work, while all they are really doing is sending a command. This gives the user a sense of knowledge, as if they know in real life how to work the weapon. This changes the user and can help grow, yet also help scatter the minds of people

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Blog Post: Red Riding Hood.

Posted on March 4, 2013 by | Comments Off on Blog Post: Red Riding Hood.

@DTC_AlexTDTran

The affordances of the electronic medium in the story of Red Riding Hood presented by Donna Leishman, titled Redridinghood is a piece of electronic literature that must be viewed or read on a computer or another compatible device. This work is an interactive fiction piece that is very immersive as it requires the reader to engage within the work by using pictures, videos and interface connectivity (a term I use that basically means that a person must connect with the interface or the piece of art in order to continue on with the plot or to enjoy the piece as a whole). This interface connectivity allows the user to enjoy the story of Red Riding Hood not through just pictures and words like in a book but rather through the ability to choose what Red Riding Hood does; a common critique to reading books (the inability to choose what you want the character to do,  giving rise to the alternative works known as fan fiction). Tying the idea of fan fiction and the ability to choose, this is what McLuhan was talking about in this quote, “Countersituations made by the artists, provide means to direct attention and enable us to see and understand more clearly” (McLuhan 68). The countersituations that the artist provides to us through this specific medium allows us to clearly understand what awaits Red Riding Hood. The environment created through this new medium enhances the message of the work providing a more in-depth and new way to tell the story.

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Week 8

Posted on March 4, 2013 by | Comments Off on Week 8

@CailinJohnson

New media allows an old, well known story to be told in a completely different way. In the case of the original text Red Riding Hood you are reading words on a page and letting your imagination interpret the story. However by turning Red Riding Hood into an electronic literature piece it changes the way the story is interpreted. The electronic piece shows animation and sound with very little text showing a story instead of letting a reader read the story and interpret it themselves. Now instead of being able to imagine what the wolf or red riding hood looks like you are being shown. Also instead of being able to determine the mood of the story the music that is being played sets the mood for you. “Media, by altering the environment, evoke us in unique ratios of sense perceptions. The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act-the way we perceive the world.” (McLuhan p. 41)  Media is changing the way we understand and interpret things such as Red Riding Hood. “The metaphoric associations put into play by the device’s physical form include traffic between machine and biological organism, companion animal and parent, printed marks and oral production, static book and dynamic text-to-speech generation, artificial intelligence and human cognition, reading text without understanding it and (for young children listening to the Reading Eye Dog), understanding what is said without being able to read it.” (Hayle’s p. 94) Old stories are being told in ways that they never would have been able to without the aid of electronic media.

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Redridinghood Blog Post #8

Posted on March 4, 2013 by | Comments Off on Redridinghood Blog Post #8

@YakustaLeader

With Donna Leishman’s “Redridinghood” it has definantly been made to be interactive with the reader and changes the way the story is normally told. This new form of the story is like one of those story books where you are at one page and gives you options of where to go next in the story. And each option changes or stays with how the story is being told, good or bad. It does have that same effect but because of the new media that it was created on, more like an electronic piece of literature, then it has changed the way the reader interacts with the story. It also has changed the story a bit as well. Everyone knows the original story of Red Riding Hood, but in this version, it changed certain elements in the story. It’s more modernized and the wolf is actually a guy.

For this new version, the story is not like a picture book or anything other form of a paper book. Yes it’s like the version I stated above, but everything else is different. Redridinghood is a picture story, but has very little texts. It’s been remediated into the digital form and has become interactive. You click on a certain place or image and it may have it do something (like with the flowers moving), or the book becoming a diary when you click on Red Riding Hood’s bag. In doing so, then it allowed the use of affordance to help tell the story.

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Blog Post Week 8

Posted on March 4, 2013 by | Comments Off on Blog Post Week 8

@brandonluc01

Many people know of the childhood story Little Red Riding Hood where a girl is going to her grandmother’s house and along the way she meets a wolf who eventually attempts to eat her but Red Riding Hood is saved from the wolf. Leishman’s electronic literature version of the story adds many new elements to the story. Leishman’s interactive story contains very little text, and uses images and music to tell the story. The lack of text forces the reader to interpret the story themselves; the reader could interpret the dark and scary music as foreshadow for the outcome of Little Red Riding Hood or the red images to symbolize blood or death.

Taking older pieces of literature and altering their medium to make the story the author’s own has become more and more popular. The purpose is to stimulate senses that plain text cannot stimulate and create different a message. Marshall McLuhan’s book title “Medium is the Massage” is a manipulation of words to explain that the new mediums massage our senses tand expand the viewers interpretation of the story’s message. McLuhan speaks of the technique used by Donna Leishman, to make Red Riding Hood her own story. On page 41 he says,”Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratio of sense perceptions. The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act – the way we perceive the world.”This quote explains that newer mediums and technologies influence the readers perception of the story or message.

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redridinghood

Posted on March 4, 2013 by | Comments Off on redridinghood

@JacobCWalton
Marshal McLuhan states that “Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon as information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information…We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience coexist in a state of active interplay.” (Pg.63). What this means is that, rather than coming up with new stories, culture nowadays would rather take old stories and tell them in a different way. Donna Leishman, for example, turned red riding hood into a piece of electronic literature. Rather than tell the story straight, the viewer pieces the story together themselves. Essentially, the original story is lost in the navigation of the site.

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Redridinghood

Posted on March 3, 2013 by | Comments Off on Redridinghood

@PerrinKyla

Redridinghood is a classic fairy tale that everyone knows. The electric medium allows us to interact with the story and tell it in whatever way we wish. Exploring Donna Leishman’s site for redridinghood she explains her theory of how it is possible that the interactivity of point and click destroys the story. In some ways I think that the answer to her theory is yes. For me, I know the story of little redridinghood as one of a young girl and a wolf and a grandmother. Her rendition of this story take an old story and transforms it into a new medium. Marshall McLuhan stated that “Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon as information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information…We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience coexist in a state of active interplay.” (Pg.63). I think that what McLuhan was getting at was that creativity is not like it use to be. That the interpretations of stories is now becoming more common in the sense that people would rather remake one story into their own then to make up a completely new story. In Leishman’s story there is no specific ending to it and it is also confusing to navigate her electronic literature. I think that it is considered electronic literature but that in order to be a good new medium it should have more options to the user in order to help her prove her theory.

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Redridinghood and Electronic Mediums

Posted on March 3, 2013 by | Comments Off on Redridinghood and Electronic Mediums

@RachaelS_DTC

“Redridinghood” is an electronic literature piece created by Donna Leishman. This piece was created to be read with a specific medium, a computer, which affects the message. The message is affected by this choice of medium because it allows the reader to be interactive with the reader. To continue the story the reader clicks on an item, such as a picture or a window. The reader can also choose between letting Red Riding Hood dream or wake up when she falls asleep in a field of flowers. With an interactive environment, created by the medium, the reader can experience more from the story than reading a book. The environment is important because it also affects the message. “[C]ountersituations made by the artists, provide means to direct attention and enable us to see and understand more clearly” (McLuhan 68). This means that our attention is directed toward a specific idea so we can understand the idea the artists wants us to understand. This is done through the medium used. Throughout the piece, Leishman created everything with dark colors and had eerie music playing to put emphasis on the danger that awaited Red Riding Hood. The author manipulated the reader’s ‘environment’ through the medium, the computer, to allude to the ending of the story. The electronic medium allowed a new way to tell a familiar story by controlling the environment, so the reader focused on a certain aspect the author wanted to emphasize.

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Redridinghood and Electronic Medium

Posted on March 3, 2013 by | Comments Off on Redridinghood and Electronic Medium

@KatieGullans

With the familiar story of redridinghood, a twist on it that allows the reader to interact makes the electronic medium of this interesting. With electronic medium, you can tell well-known story in your own way. Donna Leishman put her strange thoughts together to create a different version of this story. Being electronic, it brings this classic fairy-tail to life.

I think this can be similar to graphic design in a way because you put things up differently and to get people’s attention to get the message across, but tell a story differently. An example I have is when I took intro to graphic design, the first project we did was recreating the story of Jack and Jill with a paper filled of symbols and pictures we could use to help tell the story. I recreated my story by having two birds fly up to the top of a tree to get a worm. Then one bird(Jack) was shot down with an arrow. And the other bird(Jill) was shot down after. This tells the basic idea of the nursery rhyme, but it a new way that other people may have not seem before. The electronic medium could really enhance something like this, as there are many options with video and photoshop.

A page that stood out to me in “The Medium is Message” is the one about environment. It says “Environments are invisible. Their overall patterns elude easy perception”(Agel). It shows a picture of buildings above, then on the next page, it shows it’s on the water. I interpreted this as a new way to see things that you didn’t see there before.

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