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.