Divergent Streams

 To end the book, the final chapter focuses on touch interactivity, varied forms of e-lit and how they may evolve, and what could come next for the virtual literature space. Looking at what comes next is less about guesswork and instead about embracing a mindset of change and growth. Rettberg makes it clear that the element of fun, playfulness, and sort of whimsical approach is what makes innovation in E-lit occur. Glancing back at all the varied kinds of media and dozens of different projects we've seen in this course, I'd have to agree. It's pretty safe to say that no two pieces were alike, and the boldness and playfulness of the creators is what pushes people to innovate and try something risky and new. I'd said last week that the Network Writing was a daunting task because cooperative creation seemed like a recipe for disaster- maybe now I'd admit that exact disastrous possibility is what can make a piece so special (though I'd still worry). 

Touch interactivity is a bit different, but interesting in its own right. Personally, my initial reaction when thinking of touch-to-move gameplay is "mobile games" or little things you'd play on a phone to pass the time. It's dismissive in a way, but that was where my mind first went. What I didn't expect out of this week's materials was to come away with a better perspective on this form of media as a whole; touching what you're interacting with, even if it's through cold glass, gives an undeniable tangibility and a palpable quality to the content itself. Far Away from Far Away was undoubtedly enhanced by this tangible quality when telling a personal story of growing up in a rural and disadvantaged area- I'd argue that this is another medium which is better-paired with this level of interactivity, like some of the text-interactive works we've looked at previously. 

If the absurd breadth of projects and sites we've looked through in this course has shown me anything, it's that I have no idea where E-lit will go next, but maybe that's a good thing! Someone more creative than me can sit up one day and make that decision for themselves. 

Divergent Streams!

 

The title of this last chapter is very fitting. Electronic fiction has taken so many turns and jumps and breaks that it has diverted into different streams. I think that is a wonderful part of the genre. It is able to take many different forms and has spread through many technological changes. Since there is not just one way to create electronic literature this genre has been able to evolve and keep up with the times. I think it is interesting that there is a push to break into the GPS world through locative narratives. That is a cool way to once again change with the times and keep finding new ways to connect with literature. I am still unsure how I feel about VR. I think I would have to be really into the story to get fully behind it, or maybe it will become my new favorite thing. I have always been a fan of interactive installations. I love when art becomes real and you are able to be a part of it. I think this genre is destined to last long as it has already proved it can adjust to modern technologies and people's wants. 

I decided to do a deeper dive into Text Rain by Romy Achituv & Camille Utterback. My first thoughts are how beautiful it is. The letters falling down around people's silhouettes like rain is a beautiful visual. After learning more and finding out that the letters fall into words on the body this piece really stood out to me. Having people be the resting place for the words even if ever so briefly is a really fascinating concept. The poem does not come down all at once, you have to wait and move and want the poem. You must interact with the art a lot to get the full piece and I think that is really innovative. 

Divergent Streams

 The last chapter "Divergent Streams" was interesting due to the fact that it talked about uncommon forms of Electronic Literature, wanting to expand from the usual genres of E-lit like digital installations, VP/AR storytelling, interactive cinema, and locative narrative. One of these forms is locative Narrative, which is a form of storytelling through geographic locations. The form uses GPS on cellphones to track your specific location, and I find that cool. It's very unique to build a story on where you are, building more of a base with whatever story you tell. Also using radio frequency is another way to find a users location. Although it seems to be a little creepy to have this software to know my location, it is expanding E-lit to a cool and more personal experience. 

Text Rain by Camille Utterback is a cool way of including people into her work. The design that lines your body is cool and fun to think about experiencing. I have done something like this is Boston, where colors was shown on the screen when I stepped closer or when I backed away. The concept is unique and makes the users want to participate. Strange Rain was also cool to read about, seeing how more of that interactive storytelling comes into play. It is very similar to Text Rain, just more of those different designs and not text. 

I looked further into Mr. Beller's Neighborhood by Thomas Beller. The title drew me in with it's concept of being in a neighborhood that everyone shared. Then I was surprised and interested by the many non-fiction stories that were included. People that had New York City stores from their childhood or just random memories that they had, they send them to Thomas through an email to be published on the website. So users can go onto different stories and read them. One of my favorite was "Take the 7 Train" by Fredda Rosen, where she explained her first time in Queens, New York City. Her writing really drew me in, especially with the disappointment that she experienced after her dreams of New York City vanished. 

Divergent Streams

The last chapter of the textbook explored locative narratives, interactive installations, virtual and augmented reality, and what is next for electronic literature. Locative narratives stood out to me; I liked how locative narrative works are rooted in a specific geographical place, and the images/audio/user exploration of that place brings it to life. The aspect of physically interacting with a space, even if it's through a mobile screen, immerses readers into a place's story. I had a hard time finding and downloading Bubble, so I looked briefly into Mark Marino's The L.A. Flood Project, as I felt the themes were similar. The L.A. Flood Project is a multi-POV locative narrative (and netprov!) based on a hypothetical flood and how the city/people of L.A. are impacted. I felt that this was another great example of how the use of Google Maps in digital lit pieces adds a deeper layer to the stories and the reader experience.

I really enjoyed Far Away from Far Away - I'd argue that it was my favorite piece of digital lit we've explored in this class so far. I found it impactful that the story itself focused on Fogo Island and used the deeper exploration of Zita Cobb's family to show the island's social and systemic problems, and how rural places can profoundly impact residents, their opportunities, and their life stories. I liked how the story was narrated - it felt like I was listening to an audio book while tapping through images and short videos, which further immersed me as the reader into the place. I also thought the mixture of textual elements, close up images, and videos that you pressed down on to "reveal" another video beneath were extremely interesting and made the piece all the more engaging. Far Away from Far Away was created for a mobile device, and I think that the act of touching and moving around the images of Fogo Island created a more intimate experience that readers wouldn't have gotten on a computer where the touchscreen aspects were absent. This is why I'd argue that stories told on a mobile touchscreen device can sometimes create more meaningful experiences for readers. 

Divergent Streams

I like the name of this chapter, "Divergent Streams," by Scott Rettberg, as it implies that electronic literature runs through these streams that lead to different artistic and networked paths, and how there are different stages, like when you view/read something alone, versus networked on a computer, or in a museum or gallery exhibition. Rettberg reflects on the five core genres, such as, combinatory poetics, hypertext fiction, interactive fiction, gamelike forms, kinetic and interactive poetry, and networked writing. He discusses how these five categories are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to electronic literature. I particularly like that this is the concept that Rettberg decided to end his book on. I believe it perfectly ties together everything that we've learned this semester with a neat bow. Being able to maintain these divergent works of electronic literature, like archiving, is difficult because of how fast they seem to disappear.

Text Rain by Romy Achituv and Camille Utterback is an installation that I believe bridges a lot of the core genres together, such as interactive poetry, other gamelike forms, hypertext, and networked writing, as it is a collaborative piece, such as at an art gallery. This piece, to me, feels like a clear and concise ending point for what Rettberg has taught us. 

Divergent Streams and Far Away from Far Away

 Far Away from Far Away was an interesting experience because of the interactive videos and audio storytelling. The videos were my favorite part because they created a cohesive mood for the story of the small island life. I think it helped create the mood and scenery of the story rather than having the narrator describe it. It felt like an audio book focused on human experience rather than literary experience. Far Away from Far Away is still a beautifully written story, but flipping through it and listening to it felt more like an art experience than reading a story for some reason. I think the small video clips, quotes on the screen, and the general storytelling of looking back on this girl's childhood on the island also make the piece seem like a true account rather than a fictional story. You also can't rewind if you miss something so you must listen carefully. It creates a sense of strong nostalgia for this life passing quickly by in short clips of memories and vignettes. 

    I wanted to talk about a part of 'Divergent Streams' in the textbook on the nature of play, the electronic literature community, and experimentation. Rettberg writes "electronic literature is not about replacing print literary culture, it is instead about extending storytelling and poetics to this cultural moment. Electronic literature is experimental literature that generates productive tests of particular admixtures of literature and technology, but it is also fundamentally about a sense of play and a sense of wonder. What kind of stories can our digital tools help us tell? What will we think of next?" (pg. 203). Applying this notion of play and wonder to Far Away from Far Away, does forming the narrative into an audio-visual app form not increase the wonder of the piece for both readers and creators? It certainly increases a sense of play with traditional literary elements like illustration, characterization, diction, and setting being transformed digitally. After everything we have read in this class, I believe that to be an electronic literature author you must be willing to rework previously established storytelling methods and digital functionality to create something new, fun, and experimental. In recent years, this means enabling the human body to work with the piece like in Text Rain. Or rifting on the cultural moment of mobile apps, using the platform for literary play like Far Away from Far Away or Strange Rain. I liked this quote from the textbook on the nature of these new forms, where "the conversation that takes place in the work is between the human body interacting with a technological apparatus more than it is a representation of communication between two humans" (pg. 190). Rettberg was speaking to Text Rain here, but I think it applies to the apps we are looking at this week, too. Phones have become a daily technological apparatus for us, almost completely an extension of our bodies, and these authors place a narrative into that extension. I think this increases the meaningful interaction of the works and the attention of readers. It is also moving towards a more modern period of electronic literature with seamless platforms so cleanly and smoothly experienced compared to early hypertext fiction. 

     

 Divergent Streams

In this chapter Rettberg discusses forms of E-lit that build on the genres discussed earlier in the book and take them in different ways. I found this chapter very interesting, mostly because I enjoyed reading about how the genres we have discussed are currently being shaped into different things. I found the concept of expanded cinema very intriguing, as it shows some potential ways E-lit could grow, I think the reason I found this so interesting is because the aspect of E-lit I like the most is how quickly changing and varied it is. That made it very fun to read about some ways E-lit could evolve further in the future. 

I found text rain to be very cool and I wish I was able to view it in person. I went to a museum one time that had a very similar instillation to text rain except instead of interacting with text the viewer was interacting with butterflies. I think text makes a lot more sense to have the viewer interact with, since reading is already interactive in a way. Taking the sort of passive interaction of reading and turning it into a more active form of interaction is such an interesting idea. I wish the page linked in the syllabus had the poem on it since I am very curious about what it is. I also wonder how long it is and how difficult it would be to actually read the whole thing while it is falling around you.

In Chapter 7, "Divergent Streams," Rettberg looks at how electronic literature has branched out into different artistic and social contexts such as locative narrative, digital literary installations, virtual reality, etc. While earlier chapters focus on specific genres (like hypertext or generative art), this chapter looks at how e-lit interacts with other digital cultures. I liked how Rettberg discusses how e-lit moved from being something you read alone on a computer screen to something you experience in a gallery or museum (Installation Art). The idea that modern electronic literature rarely stays in one "lane” and is often mixed with elements of gaming, social media, and physical hardware was very interesting to read about in this chapter. Rettberg reflects on how the field has been shaped by organizations and how archiving these "divergent" works is a major challenge because digital platforms go obsolete so quickly. Instead of one single "great tradition," e-lit is made up of many smaller, overlapping communities (indie gamers, digital poets, net-artists). NFB games like “Far Away From Far Away” and “Bubble” were very cool to look at and interact with as my first examples of e-lit from this genre. For my “bring it in” I decided to look into a place called “Earth Illuminated Orlando” which is described as an immersive art installation where users walk through the exhibit and go on a sensory journey while seeing different earth landscapes and journeys.

Network Writing

 Put in simple terms, Network Writing is writing in the digital age. It's collaborative, piecemealed, spiderwebbed way of writing that can incorporate varied platforms, media, and authors into a single cohesive final product. As a concept, this kind of literature is appealing to me -at the very least in a morbid curiosity- because of how faithful it seems a creator would have to be in the final product. Everyone's done a group project at one point or another and had to pray to whatever they believe in for the groupmates to finish their portions of the work; In this Network format, even if there is a solo authorship you still must find that same elusive faith. 

Flight Paths was a great example of this faith: two seemingly unrelated stories told by multiple creators across several webpages somehow come together to make a satisfying narrative cohesion. As an aside, Flight Paths was a wonderfully strange story. 

The Unknown, while less my cup of tea, was an even more extreme example of this piecemealing. I clicked through, reading as I went while making a very conscious effort to not obsess over finding every single link this time. Somewhere in the middle I ended up on Shakespeare, bastardized in a weird modern way that was kind of funny but mostly just weird. It's fun. Strange fun. 

Network Writing

This chapter was easier to understand than others have been. Network writing is pretty basic is when text is made specifically for the Internet. It can be interactive and collaborative like if you were posting things on social media or sending emails back and forth. I find this really cool because every day the internet has something new, it's constantly changing therefore the form of literature is too. Network writing really highlights having more than one author. The author is more of a participant instead of being the one and only creator. This form created such a huge shift in the ways people are able to create and contribute media for the public to see. Rettberg talks about how the idea of combining hypertext with the elements of digital literature. It was created with the modern day and future in mind, making it easy to process the material. The material consisted of artistic movements. For example, the artist Jackson Pollock emphasized the physical act of painting. Which showed that meaning can come from anything, including technique. One of the stories mentioned and the one I chose to look at was Flight Paths which was created by Kate Pulling and Chris Joseph & Co. It follows two characters, a man who is trying to escape from Dubai to get a job and a woman who goes to the store. When he falls out of a plane and lands on the lady's car, the stories intertwine. I thought it was an interesting creative choice to have him fall out of a plane. This story was easy to understand and piece together. I liked how the story was formatted. I didn't realize till about halfway into the story that there was sound, I think it added a cool aspect to it. 

flight path

Chapter 6, Network Writing, was a simple read and easy to understand. As someone who is learning all about digital literature for the first time, this was a chapter I found very easy to digest which made it more interesting. It seems like the basic idea is that network writing is text that it created specifically for the internet. It can still be interactive and include many different aspects of other interactive works. I like how collaborative network writing can be, like twitter chains and even through email. Network writing emphasizes collaborative authorship. The "author" is a facilitator or a participant rather than the only creator. Rettberg argues that literature moved from a finished product (a book) to an ongoing process within a network. The piece of network writing I looked into is Teju Cole’s “Hafiz” which is an example of network writing because it used the social aspect of Twitter to create a narrative rather than just publish one. Cole didn't tweet the story from his own account initially. Instead, he sent segments of the story to various friends and followers through Direct Message. He was able to make the story by retweeting those individuals in a specific order. What I found the most interesting was that for Cole’s followers, the story didn't just appear as a block of text; it appeared as a series of voices from across the globe appearing on their timeline. Furthermore, “The Unknown” was pretty cool to look around as well, it followed non-linear paths and had a map. I liked how readers navigate by clicking hyperlinked words within the text, which transport you to different scenes, cities, or flashbacks. The interface often uses a color-coded map of the United States, where different colors represent different narrative threads or moods. Because of its scale, I found it hard to read every page. I like games like this, how every reader's experience is unique based on the links they choose.

 

Network writing is simply writing that is created for the internet. What is so cool about this is that the internet is changing and constantly evolving, so this form of electronic literature is as well. Network writing is also very often interactive in a way blurring the lines between author and reader. Network writing thrives in its ability to be interactive in a way that a book could never be. Network writing is also a haven of collaboration for everyone. Being able to mix artists and writers and other creatives is something network writing is able to do perfectly. Network writing was a huge shift in the way we are able to create and understand different media for literature. 

I really enjoyed Flight Paths. I enjoyed that all of the mini stories went together and I enjoyed that it was kind of unnerving. At first I thought it was going to be mostly a political statement about the labour in Dubai. But I like that it took a weirder route with the Dark Mass and Yacub living in the pantry. The fourth one "Dark Mass" was my favorite because I enjoyed the two separate conversations that were happening. I liked how the Dark Mass had a different font and how a black screen closed down on the. blue sky. The sound in all of them was also wonderful. It added a lot to the story and you definitely need the sound on to understand the story fully. The format was also really cool having to click to get through the story. I am a big fan of when there is a lot of words so this one was perfect for me. 

Networked Writing!!

 Networked writing, to me, was based on many modern ideas in the digital world. The internet is a collaboration to tell stories and spans across different networks. The use of networked writing is infinite, as there are so many different individuals working on it, and it is more focused on the process of it. Rettberg is referring to the artist's realm of producing materials and creative design. Chapter six, "Networked Writing," by Scott Rettberg, discusses the idea of art intertwining with hypertext and digital literature elements. Covering the idea that interactive fiction and the art that is combined within dates back to the 70s and 80s. 

The Unknown by Rettberg & Co, was a piece that I thought was well put together, and though very text-heavy, using a lot of hyperlinks, it stands true as an important collaboration piece. It felt overwhelming at first glance, and as I continued through the piece, I felt like I was getting lost in this seemingly never-ending maze. 

Flight Paths by Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph was definitely my favorite piece to look at this week, as it was a collaboration that included many visuals, details, and just a strong use of art and poetry. There were so many different areas to look at, especially having the option of which flight path the reader wants to take at the start. Having many participants on this piece showed the networked writing and collaboration that we read this week. 

Network Writing

     I enjoyed Chapter 6's discussion of Network Writing. I had a minimal understanding of digital literature before taking this class, but I felt that Network Writing was the one area I was (vaguely) familiar with. It also feels more rooted in the "modern" area - although perhaps that is my Gen Z bias because Rettberg mentioned things like Twitter fiction and email novels, and Twitter as a platform for storytelling feels more contemporary than, say, Flash, which is no longer in use. 

     I liked how Network Writing can be a collaborative and collective work. I looked at the wiki novel A Million Penguins, which was launched by Penguin Books and De Montfort University, and was open to the public briefly. It's no longer live, and the novel never achieved a cohesive plot line or story structure, but there's a research report that was published by the university after the experiment, which is an interesting read. And perhaps the ephemeral and chaotic nature of the work is what makes this piece so compelling (people can't work together, apparently).

    The Unknown, which is another collaborative piece by Rettberg & co, is arguably a more successful collaborative work (however, it wasn't open to the public for contribution, so that could be the reason). Although, as I've talked about before in a different blog post, the piece is still messy, and you can easily get lost, so chaos is still a present theme. Occupy MLA, a piece by Mark Marino and Rob Wittig, feels like a mixture between the collaborative nature of A Million Penguins and the humorous, satirical themes of The Unknown. (Though I am a bit confused on how the archive of Occupy MLA differs from the original Twitter thread, if at all, so I definitely want to explore that more.)

Network Writing

 In Chapter 6, Rettburg argues that Network Writing is a new fascinating way of storytelling using the internet. The definition of Network Writing is a tool made and exists on the internet. It has readers click onto different websites or spaces to actually read the material, highlighting the experience of the work. In the chapter, it talks about how Network writing isn't just one writer, there are many participants involved. I think it creates more of teamwork through the community. The chapter talked about how network writing was created with the thoughts of 20th-century movements in mind, mostly artistic movements that focus on process and material. Artists like Jackson Pollock was mentioned because he highlighted the physical act of painting. He showed that meaning can come from technique.

"Flight Paths" by Kate Pulling, Chris Joseph & Co is a digital story about two characters, a man trying to escape to Dubai to get a job and a woman who goes to the supermarket. Their stories collide when the man falls from the airplane onto the woman's car. It's a very odd way of having the character cross paths. But I guess that it the point of the title. Although, I did like the images that you passed though. It gave it a really aspect to the story, making it a little easier to understand. Also, the music playing in the background made it feel like a movie of some kind.

I choose "Degenerative" by Eugenio Tisselli because of the cool way of software and writing in has. Every time a user goes onto that website, one character gets deleted from the code. It basically is an experiment to see how much can be jumbled from how many people join. I think its cool because it showcases how easy it is for websites to crash and not make sense. Also, I liked how you could see the code in the end, especially now when you go on it, its just coding. 

In Chapter 6 ,"Interactive Fiction and Other Gamelike Forms," the focus shifts from experimental "high art" hypertexts to the world of digital stories that function as games. Rettberg explores how these works require the reader to act as a "player-character," where the progression of the story depends on solving puzzles or going through a simulated world. I thought the history of Interactive Fiction was very interesting to read about, Rettberg traces the roots of IF back to the 1970s and 80s. He discusses the "parser-based" interface, where the player types natural language commands (e.g., "go north," "take lamp") to interact with the game. He mentions the development of specialized programming languages, like Graham Nelson’s Inform, that allowed writers to create complex, literary IF without being professional coders. I found that the chapter covers works that moved away from "treasure hunts" and toward emotional, psychological narratives, such as Emily Short’s Galatea (a conversation-based game) and Adam Cadre’s Photopia. Furthermore, “The Unknown” was pretty cool to look around as well, it followed non-linear paths and had a map. I liked how readers navigate by clicking hyperlinked words within the text, which transport you to different scenes, cities, or flashbacks. The interface often uses a color-coded map of the United States, where different colors represent different narrative threads or moods. Because of its scale, I found it hard to read every page. I like games like this, how every reader's experience is unique based on the links they choose. After reading and clicking through all of this week's readings I chose “Photopia” by Adam Cadre as my bring it in. The game is a "jigsaw puzzle" narrative that jumps around in time and space. It weaves together three distinct threads: the real world, the fantasy world, and the frame story. The game begins with a scene where you play as a drunk passenger in a car. You soon realize the car is headed for a collision and as you play through the other "happy" memories of Alley’s life, you gradually piece together the reality that Alley dies in that car crash.

Kinetic/Interactive Poetry

Poems are to many a somewhat divisive literary medium. Many don't love them -personally I always get stuck in a limbo between not trying to read too deeply into things and missing the point entirely- and there are so many forms of poetry that it's fair to say it might be the most diverse form of literary art. 

This week I focused on In the White Darkness, and I made a point of not reading up on the piece before reading through it. The interactive elements let you click through strings of images and sounds; many are related or very similar to one another, but even following the visual strings does little to help differentiate a set path to take. After spending some time with the poem I read back about the authors' intentions with emulating the life of someone living with Alzheimer's. The disjointed images are meant to represent the lack of order or constancy in the memories of someone with the disorder. Now, the strings of thought that have very little reasoning to their placement except for a vague similarity in tone make sense as a reflection of the uncertainty I'm sure you'd feel when you can't fully trust your own memories. 

To touch on the 'medium becoming the metaphor' and the inverse, by fragmenting the story with disorderly images and sounds that retain a tangible similarity, the viewer is pushed into that same perspective of confusion and difficulty. I have a family member with Alzheimer's, and the moments of clarity interspersed with a displaced sense of time felt very accurate to my own experience. Poems are inherently empathetic pieces of literature. They're more open, honest, and often reflect as much as they can in as little text as possible. The empathy of In the White Darkness comes from stepping into the shoes of someone who can't fully trust their own recollection, and the medium of strings of memory delivers a pretty emotional punch. It's super intriguing to see an emotional outlet like poetry be recontextualized this way.   

 

Before I read this chapter I assumed that kinetic and interactive poetry were the same thing. Well they can be used together they are different things. Kinetic is using the movement of the poem as part of it. And interactive has the reader actually participating. I am a big fan of both of these forms. I think that including movement of a poem adds to the depth poetry can already go blending in a futuristic lens. I have had less experience with interactive poetry I enjoyed interactive games and I enjoy poetry so seems like best of both worlds. I find it cool bring poetry into the modern age by using technology and advancing it with us instead of just leaving it behind. I enjoy that poetry in a digital lens has its own specialities and its own place in the digital world. 

Reading dear e.e. I found it very interesting. It is cool how the poem is moving around and you have to actually put in work to read it. I enjoyed that as you were asleep the room was moving around fast and floating in an unreal like way. Putting poetry in a new fashion is a great way to deepen the meaning of a poem and I like the way this one was executed.  One of the awake lines about just hoping to find matching socks I found comical in a very real way. Compared to someone else perceived as more "put together" and the comical way of masking jealousy was very well done. 

 This week, the chapter was all about interactive and kinetic poetry. This form of electronic literature has sparked the most interest for me. I have (slowly) grown to love poetry after years of resenting it in school. However, I was mostly reading classic sonnets and limericks, where syntax and word placement are the most defining traits. Kinetic and interactive poetry completely dissolve this, using motion and user engagement as the main traits. This form of digital literature CANNOT exist in print, which I also find interesting. Since this is a digital literature class, that is to be expected. However, in previous chapters, there is typically some form of print media that can be easily translated to print, like choose-your-own-adventure books. I also enjoy this form of poetry because it is a lot more tactile for the viewer. Poetry (typically) evokes lots of emotions, and when reading it through this digital literature lens, there are more avenues to harp on. This can be done through auditory, visual, and spatially. 

I chose to explore "in the white darkness" by Reiner Strassar. I first clicked on and "played" with no information. It was a bit difficult to understand, with sounds and pictures phasing in and out. After my first run through, I read more about it. It was created to simulate memory and its fragility. A lot of the photos are loosely related to eachother, with little to no "connecting" piece. This is bound to leave the reader confused. However, that is the intention. It was written to mirror a person living with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease, with disappearing words and unclear meanings demonstrating memory lapses. 

interactive and kinetic poetry

 Before I read this chapter I had little knowledge about interactive poetry and even lesser knowledge on kinetic poetry. Kinetic poetry is when the text moves on the screen while blending with other aspects of the poem. I think this way of poetry is more helpful for people who might not understand what traditional poetry is trying to say. Personally, nine times out of ten I get confused on what the author is trying to say in poems. After looking at some of the different kinetic poems, some were easier to understand and grasp. Although, when I read Because I Love You) Last Night, I was having trouble trying to figure out what he means. I don't know if it was because I was tired when I read it or if it was the word choice and grammar, but at times I didn't know what it was trying to say. I knew it was about love and the relationship that's talked about but I thought there might've been more. After reading it a few times I saw that the author was talking about a women's body. Which made me realize the poems format is in the shape of a women's breast. I might be reading too far into this but it was an observation that I thought might have some relevance. 

Another reference I did was Dear E.E. which was an interesting piece. At first when pictures started to show up in the montage of what looks like a living room, it just kept going and going. I thought it was going to stop so I let it sit there for a few minutes and nothing was happening. I figured out how to read the words when they went by super fast by accident. I clicked on the screen and I was able to slow it down which was a lot easier than trying to read it when it was going super fast. I like this piece cause the illustrations and the words were easier to read and see. I think that the idea is really creative and a fun way to read poetry without feeling like you are. 

Interactive Poetry

 I enjoyed Cruising and Dear E.E. a lot, and think they are great examples of using the medium of a piece as part of the piece itself. When I first opened Cruising I was confused on how I was supposed to read it since the text and images were going way too fast to read. Once I figured out how to control it I was surprised by how sensitive it was and how it was quite difficult to keep the poem moving in a way that I  could easily digest it. Thinking about it more though, I think it works really well since the story of the piece is about young people wanting to experience more of the world the aspect of learning to control the piece evokes that same feeling in the reader. I also think the images that move on the bottom of the screen reinforce the aspect of driving in the piece since it feels like looking out of the window of a speeding car. 

 I think Dear E.E.'s use of medium is even more impressive and well executed than that of Cruising. I mainly think this because the themes of dreaming and memory in Dear E.E. lends themselves better to interactive poetry. The constant shaking and moving of the elements on the story, as well as the random letters that shoot through the background, do a great job in evoking the sense of being in a dream. They also evoke the feeling of trying to recall something you can't quite remember. I also think the simple, almost child-like drawings is a good way of getting these feelings since dreams and memories are something so important to being humans that they are things we start to do as kids. 

 For my bring it I looked at First Screening: Computer Poems by bpNichol, It was a collection of 12 poems made in BASIC. I found the poems to be very entertaining and impressive, but I did find too much deeper meaning in them. My favorite of them: After the Storm features words and letters moving around the screen to create the line "This is the sentence that the wind blew here" I thought it was very clever and a great way to use the movement that is available in digital poetry to create something that could not be made on paper. I also really liked Construction one which sees "TOWER" appear on the bottom of the screen and another "TOWER" appears on top of it until it reaches the top where "BABLE" begins to flood the screen. I liked this one because it was interesting to see the Tower of Bable story portrayed in such a unique way.

 

Kinetic and Interactive Poetry

    This week, I enjoyed exploring dear e.e., Cruising, and ii in the white darkness. These digital poems were rooted in movement and animation - their meanings were derived from the reader's interaction with the text, which I thought was impactful. I liked how arguably all three of these digital poems explored memory and feeling through the text's animations. I was especially drawn to the chaotic animation of dear e.e and how the drawings would seem to move away even after you hovered over them - much like a fleeting memory. 

    I also chose to explore the dreamlife of letters by Brian Kim Stefans, which is a Flash animation that uses the "chance meeting of words" to respond to a colleague of Kim Stefans in a poetry roundtable event. The words and letters move all over the screen (so much so that there is something new to look at every few seconds) and it moves in a seemingly random, chaotic manner. The text itself is almost a performance - a play on language - and I liked how it made me associate words differently due to the manner of the animation. It caused me to think more deeply about language because of the non-linear fashion of the piece. 

    

    I think the dreamlife of letters is a perfect example of how the medium can create metaphor. The medium (the text's animation) moves chaotically, which allows words to be connected / associated with one another that otherwise would not of. The meaning of this poem lies not only from the text itself (the literal definition of the words), but from the way the words move across the screen - the randomness of the language is what creates meaning.  

I started this week's readings with some of the e-lit pieces and the three works (dear e.e, Cruising, and ii-in the white darkness) all had the same sort of vibe to them. It honestly took me a little bit to even be able and understand what I was reading or looking at. They are very interactive pieces and require a lot of precision with where you place your cursor. I feel like the piece “dear e.e” was the most emotional one to me. This is because it seemed to be the most chaotic one and hard to understand what you were reading. I was pretty confused and honestly still am when it comes to the reading content, but I feel like it doesn’t even matter because I felt so much just by trying to place my cursor in the right spots, etc. The ways that these works would speed up or slow down, zoom in and out, or just simply have no sense of direction was very intentional and meaningful to their overall messages. Even the use of sound was a big game changer. I feel like these works are all great examples of how the medium creates the metaphor. They are so full of feeling just by the ways that they are laid out on the screen (their medium). In Chapter 5 of the textbook I really enjoyed reading about all of the poetry and what you can do to make it a work of e-lit. I love poetry and literature so this was a very easy read for me. Interactive poetry is super interesting to learn and read about. This chapter was full of ways I didn’t even know could be added to poems, like the visuals and letterism. For the “bring it in” I wanted to reference one of the earlier poems that show ways to create interactive poems. “Easter Wings” by George Herbert was referenced in the Chapter as an example of concrete poetry. This was interesting to me because it was published in 1633 and was written in a way where the words are structured to create wings and look a certain way which adds to the symbolism of the title and poem overall.

Kinetic Poetry; the medium is the metaphor

 

I am a huge fan of poetry and enjoy reading it frequently. This chapter and the works for this week were a testament to how much I really love poetry. The beauty of "Dear e.e." by Lori Janis and Ingrid Ankerson was a very interesting, chaotic form of kinetic poetry. Between the music and the fast pace of the imagery flying by, though it may be hard to absorb all of its contents with how fast the main portion of the piece is, it's a beautiful idea with the use of furniture and poems attached. It is basically put together and taken apart, and put together and taken apart again; as Rettberg says, it is manipulated. 

The kinetic poem, "In the white darkness" by Reiner Strasser, was a beautiful poem, but it was difficult for me to understand where it was going or establish a pattern. The idea of it being about the fragility of memory is very beautiful to me, and it is set up as memories being shown in fragments. The fifth chapter in Rettberg's "Electronic Literature" notes, "Words and letters are not only carriers of meaning but material objects that themselves have variable properties." (pg. 118) Kinetic poetry goes beyond the functions of hypertext, as digital poetry is not only generative. 

"Cruising" by Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapner, uses multiple mediums like voiceover, music, visuals, words to capture this interesting piece. It appears to me to be a coming of age piece, with a young voiceover. It's very fast which emulates the idea of "cruising". It shows a young woman putting on makeup in between a series of cars. Its a very interesting poem to view and interact with. As the line of what looks like, film, begins extremely fast and gets slower and then speeds up and then slows back down. 

Kinetic and Interactive Poetry

 

Before reading this chapter, I didn't really know about interactive poetry let alone Kinetic Poetry. It was fun to read about the more aspects of poetry, seeing if they were easier to understand because I found myself usually getting confused with what poetry was trying to say. Although these readings gave me more insight about the deep meaning behind poetry. For example, Because I love you (last night) written by e.e Cummings is easy to gather the meaning. It's dream-like feeling goes perfectly with the fleeting manner of love. Also it shows the person you love coming through intimating, creating a beautiful and sensual poem that she writes. I think I understood this one because it is written in a light tone manner while having some heavy feelings behind it. 

Dear e.e written Lori Janis is another story about understanding. It was confusing at first, I didn't understand what to read and what to look at. It was hard to follow along with because of the images and words combining together. I do think that it something to do home intrusion maybe? That's what I gathered from the first opening and when they went through the entire house. It was difficult to navigate because the words are hidden until you see them. I didn't really like Cruising written by Ingrid Anderson and Meghan Sapner because I couldn't understand how to stop the words from moving. It was moving to fast with the images, and I just couldn't read what was written. I don't know if that was the point of the poem, to have it like you are in a car zooming past things, but the images were too small and slow or big images with fast motion. While I bet these were investing poems, I don't think they were the ones for me. The only one I liked was e.e Cummings. It was easy to understand and flowed very smoothly.