Sharing Digi Text

 For my final I've firmly settled on the sizeable Twine project I began last semester. My intention was originally to create an escape room-esque experience of puzzling your way out of a nondescript area, but as I kept adding things more and more narrative elements started creeping in. I'd estimate that I'm 50-60% of the way done with my final vision, but if I can't complete that entirely in time I have the original 1.0 version as a backup. 

When creating it I kept being drawn more toward horror and a gothic style, with a fantasy world that isn't explained or even contextualized outside of what you learn. I've had a blast, but as the game gets bigger technical limitations are beginning to show- for the amount of necessary playtime, I might have to implement a save system (that will definitely be annoying to figure out). 

When looking for inspiration in old text or point-and-click games, things like Myst and Rogue come up right away, but from a technical standpoint games like Zork or Colossal Cave Adventure are probably closer. A key difference, however, is that I used simple keyword boxes to link cells, not a built-in navigation by using directions like in Zork or Cave Adventure. 

Sharing Digital Text

 I am using thing link for my final project because I think it's the software that I understand the most, having easy controls and aspects of the website is explained well. Also I do like that I can use Canva to produce the pages and then add text to each little picture or symbol to explore more of the story. Thinglink has a tool that can take photos directly from Canva to make it easier for the users, which I think is really cool. Everything about Thinglink is designed really easy and cool. My project is going to be a story about a troubled couple from the 60s, going back in time through the eyes of Bobby Summers. Rosemary Dollie sends a postcard to Bobby after a whole decade of not talking from their last meeting. And everything is different now. Rosemary is a mother in the suburbs and Bobby is a famous Journalist in New York City. It goes through Bobby's memories that starts to surface after reading her postcard while deciding if he wants to write back. I chose to write this story because I love creative writing and coming up with stories. I believe I will be able to explore about how different classes was a deciding factor in relationship and love. Also how love between people can be 'right person, wrong time' and have people come back together when things in their lives are more figured out. 

 

    

I am still working out a lot of what I am planning to do for my final but I do know I will be using ThinkLink. I want to use ThingLink because I have the most experience with it and it is not that confusing. I want to do a tour of my room in a My Body type way. Breaking down little aspects and the stories that go with them. I love how real My Body is and I want to bring the same energy to my final. The front page would lead to many different off shoots to create a narrative story. I am still working out if I want there to be a mystery element or not to lean into a fiction lens. I usually write from a personal narrative voice so combining that with visuals will be an interesting experiment in my own creativity. Every slide I want to create a story while also continuing the main theme. I might use Canva to design some pages and lay out the text. I am excited to see how the final version will look. 

Sharing Digital Text

(First, please ignore how messy my bookcase is, I haven't reorganized it and cleaned it up since Christmas break. Also ignore how I have an empty cube, when this was taken I had recently donated some of the books I don't need.)

I chose to do my final project on my bookcase. I'm using ThingLink to do a tour through it. My plan is to go through each section and pick either a book or a series to do a summary on and why I liked the book. I was inspired by the idea of what a past student did with her closet. I'm personally really excited to do this final project because talking about books is something I really enjoy. Reading is something I've loved doing ever since I was a kid and it's one of my favorite things to do. I'm very proud of my collection of books I've built up over the years and I love talking about it. Each section of my bookcase has its own genre or its organized by author if I have a lot of one. For example, I have a cube dedicated to just my fantasy series and another just for my favorite author. I'm looking forward to exploring ThingLink more and getting to know the platform better. I liked this platform the most when we used it during one of our play assignments. I find it easier to navigate than other platforms.  I'm looking forward to doing this project and I hope I can make the vision that I see in my head come to life. 

I have decided to use Twine to make my digital text for my final project. I have always enjyed choose your own adventure type stories, and have wanted to create one for a while. I also think Twine provides an interesting way to add history and context to a story, similarly to the way Wikipedia articles link to ones with pertinent information. This is the main reason I chose to use wine, because it is an aspect of the platform that is mostly impossible to do in a tradtional text, though it is possible to do a similar thing with footnotes. I have also decided to make a fantasy story, since it is the genre I have always been the most drawn to and a lot of my favortie gitial texts are fantasy video games such as Baldur's Gate, Skyrim, and God of War. I think fantasy works especially well with Twine since when introducing a character or important item, I can add a page explaining the history/background of it. Because of these inspirations, I aim to create a sort of RPG type story where the reader takes on the role of a character, and hopefully get immersed in the world. I am also interested in Twine's ability to code things into the story, though I have not looked into that aspect of the program that much yet.

Digital Texts

 For my final project, I have been contemplating using the platform, Bitsy, to create a piece of electronic literature, but recently, the concept of drawing out my own designs has been calling me, potentially using collage mixed in as well. I want to use poetry as an interactive form to incorporate into the game. I'll probably use ThingLink or Twine if I were to go with my second option and put in photos of my own work. 

I had trouble finding a specific game that emulates what I have in mind, especially because the games I did find were unable to access due to being outdated such as "Game, game, game, and game again". I particularly like the idea of the writing going over the artworkI found a video by the Indiana University of Pennsylvania . Where it discusses Twine, and how there is a cluster of coding, storytelling, and decision-making that goes into digital literature. I think decision-making is the important aspect of digital literature because catering to not only your interests, but how it might reflect and appeal to the audience. 

Sharing Digital Texts

 

    For my final project, I was inspired by the augmented reality Circle, which is based on the user interaction with various artifacts and personal belongings from four generations of women. The physical interaction with the objects highlights the women's stories and makes it more personable for the user, making the story more engaging. 

   I liked the idea of using personal belongings to tell someone's story. Focusing on multi-generational dynamics and how generations of women can have interconnected stories is intriguing to me. There's an old family photo I have of me, my mother, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother - I'd like to use this photo as the basis of my project. Like Circle, I want to include the personal artifacts/photos from each generation of women in my family to tell my family's story of endurance. As a journalism student, I want to dig deeper, too; I'm interested in possibly including interviews with both my mom and grandmother about their lives, childhoods, and the struggles they faced as single moms. These can act as both audio and visual elements that would contribute to the interactive / semi-hypertextual collage I will create on Thinglink. 

Sharing digital texts

 I was looking for inspiration for my final project when I came across a really cool web comic (does this count as e-lit?) by Stevan Živadinović called Hobo Lobo of Hamelin.  I think I've really been drawn to elit works that combine traditional art with digital displays, like entre ville or CityFish. The collage element is my favorite, and the way the website scrolls sideways instead of up and down. It's like reading a book but online. I like how Živadinović has it separated into chapters with different colors and themes. I've realized I'm not a big fan of the video game like e-lit works or the build your own adventure types, but rather digital stories that are strong in unique visual elements and compelling displays. Hobo Lobo makes this even more interesting with how the images are layered and move (the synopsis calls this "kinetic imagery"), creating a 3d like aspect. I don't think I'll be able to code 3d layers and kinetic elements for my final project, but I will definitely be taking inspiration with the collage layered look. Hobo Lobo combines fairy-tale like elements with crude language and political humor in the middle ages, and I also think that e-lit is the perfect space for these sort of surreal stories to take place, like J.R. Carpenter's works and My Body is a Wonderkrammer follow the same theme. I wonder if there is a more surreal creative element I could include in my final work. 

The digital "text" I am choosing to share is the website where there are just about all of Porpentines twine games. This website has so many games that discuss so many different topics. I am hoping to create some sort of game for my final project, and looking through this archive of porpentines games is really giving me great ideas for plot lines of my own game. I also used this website for my midterm ELD entry and I just feel pretty connected to all of these works. Digital literature as a concept in general has been such an amazing thing to learn about and even though I am not the best with technology, I still feel like I have gained so much valuable skills and knwoledge about an amazing topic. https://xrafstar.monster/games/

VR and

 I liked Chris Milk's take on virtual reality. I thought it was interesting and engaging. I liked how he talked about how new virtual reality technology can be used for good, I agree with his statement on how virtual reality is the ultimate empathy machine. It was cool to see him talk about one of his projects that we looked at in class and it gave a fun background perspective. I think VR is a fun way to play video games, it has an interesting perspective. My brother has a VR set and he uses it all the time but he does say that he gets so invested in it that he becomes unaware of his surroundings. I feel like that is a downside to this new technology but it does have its benefits. Chris also talked about different parts of different projects of his and how they were made which I found interesting. Sometimes hearing how things were made and the process is more fun to hear about and see than the actual game. I also found it cool that he showed this technology to UN officials and they liked it. Giving people who have the power to do things and make decisions is really important because they have the ability to make things happen. 

When looking at Becoming Homeless, it really shifted my perspective. The game uses VR to make you be in the shoes of someone who is homeless and you have to go through the stages of losing your job, your home, and having to figure out what to do next. This game creates a lot of empathy and shows how often this occurs in America. Our country has the highest rate of homelessness. It really makes you grateful to have what you have. 

VR & Empathy

 Chris Milk's talk on empathy through virtual reality was really interesting. It shaped how he thought of empathy at a young child, making it easier for him to add empathy to his VR games. I also think his idea of adding empathy came from the struggles that he faces, like people seeing him when he made music videos and songs. I believe that it made him think in a new light, trying to understand why those people decided to do that to him. We talked about his first project with the use of google maps, the music and running down your hometown with picture that are in the internet. So I did already know about this but it was cool to see what he said about the project. Then he talked more about his project using shadows and animation, like the boy waving his "wings" on a screen. 

"Cloud Over Sidra" is a VR game about a 12 year old girl names Sidra, and the games goes through her life in Syria to Jordon. The game turns into her having to live at the camp for a year and a half. This games shows so much empathy because we get to see how difficult her life is, making the users step into her shoes. It shows that someone always has things worse, making you feel grateful for you have. 

"Becoming Homeless" is a VR game about the experience of getting to a point where you are homeless. I think that this shows the most amount of empathy because of how common this happens to people in America, our country having one of the highest rate of homelessness. Also the seriousness of not having enough money to keep your house filled with many memories. 

VR & Empathy

 I've focused on empathetic mediums a few times over this semester's blog, specifically pertaining to interactive fiction elements that better bridge the gap between audience and creator. Chris Milk's TED Talk covered this exact topic- emotional emersion, reducing the divide between the audience and narrative, and "living" the story the creator wants to tell. From a writing standpoint, there are amazing benefits to VR as a medium, but it has shortcomings as well. The greatest positives lie in the tangibility of the work itself; an audience has quite literally blinded themselves to the world around them and is focusing solely on the story before them, which inherently magnifies their focus on the content itself. From the other side, I would argue that the "window" covering a film and the distance between them is where imagination really lies, and that imagination is the highest form of empathy we can experience. There's something in the act of choosing to step that gap into a story you read in a book or watch on a movie screen as opposed to limiting your perception to only that one thing. It's an amazing technology to be sure, but in my opinion a be-all end-all of empathetic storytelling lies in our own imagination, not in a visor. 

This Is Not Private was a great example of exactly what I'm talking about. You can hear the stories of people (although my French is not even half good enough to understand them fourth-hand from a speaker to a mic to a screen to a speaker to a mic to my computer earbud) and watch them as they tell those stories, with your own face following your eyes to blend you and the storyteller together. You're still present in your own space, and the both literal and metaphorical projection of yourself into the story can be seen without closing yourself off to the rest of your own experience. It's a unique concept and I can understand why it garnered attention, seeing your own experiences in someone else's story is one thing, actually seeing yourself while they're telling it is probably something deeper to an audience member. 

Chris Milk's Ted Talk was very good. Using VR as a tool to help other people is a really interesting way of using the new advancing technology for good. His background in film makes his VR stories beautiful and powerful. Clouds Over Sidra was beautiful. I would love to view it in VR to get the full story. It was so compelling and real. Letting people see the world through the eyes of a twelve year old girl in a refugee camp is powerful. 

Even more amazing is the work Milk is doing by taking these VR stories to UN officials. People who can actually do something. Something that really stood out to me in his TedTalk was, "they were affected by it so we are going to make more of them"(Milk). Showing this to politicians and powerful people helps spread awareness to those who can take action. And what is even more important is that Milk saw the effect and decided he needed to make more. Showing the world different voices that can often be left our from the main world stage. 

Becoming Homeless takes the idea of using VR to create empathy by placing you in the shoes of someone who is becoming unhoused. It is real, scary and something people actually experience. I do not have Steam so I was unable to play it but the trailer shows you slowly selling your things in a desperate attempt to stay in your apartment. I think VR games like this do a good job of showing people who might not be able to experience empathy on their own how to start to understand other peoples emotions. 

VR and Empathy

 Chris Milk's TED Talk on VR machines and how it connects to human empathy. He managed to get extremely specific on the representation of VR frames and the meaning behind them, which I found very interesting, especially after we closed out the Rettberg text with divergent streams and then took the path of this TED talk about VR. VR puts us in the thick of it, where we can experience this human, almost tangible experience. And that is the point of immersive technology. In Milks talk, we are on a journey with him through his adolescence to how he went into virtual reality and creating it as an emotional immersive experience. It allowed me to make sense of the other VR experiences such as "Clouds Over Sidra" to experience the raw human emotion and creating different perspectives for users to feel and experience in a virtual realm. 

This is Not Private, describes the possibilities of empathy as "meta-language," which I thought was a fascinating term. It is used through the human face, and we can never see our faces outside of things like a mirror. The artist wanted the audience to disregard the barriers between languages to incorporate the emotional connection between the six people in this piece. I love the interactive element that allows audience members to paste their faces over the screen so that the stories each individual says can be understood on an emotional level, disregarding the language. 

 VR and Empathy

I really enjoyed Chris Milk's Tedtalk and  I agree with him that virtual reality is the ultimate empathy machine. The part of the Tedtalk where Milk starts talking about frames and what they represent really stood out to me and made me think about the physical structures of the media I interact with. I had not though of it before but I do feel a certain level of disconnection when watching a show or reading a book, since the parts of the world I can see are very curated to show the world way the author wants to. His explanation of the frame being a window you look into is a good one, and it really helped me understand why he thought virtual reality is the ultimate way to get through and into these windows. I found Clouds over Syria to be very impactful. Even though I was using a monitor instead of a real VR headset, being able to move the camera around as if I was looking around made the places in the film feel much more real than if I were simply watching them. I think the interactive element is the most important part of it, because being able to move around is what makes the reader feel like there are no windows for them to pass through to access the work. I found this to be especially true in the scenes that were outside, I think because being able to see into the sky and off into the horizon makes the reader truly understand that this is the real world.

 

I found This Is Not Private to be fascinating . It is such a unique concept that I think would be very interesting to experience in real life. The concept is so interesting and I would really like to hear about what made Daniele want to create this project. I wish I spoke french so I could hear some of the stories the people are saying, because I think knowing how visceral the stories are would give me a greater understanding of what the project is trying to accomplish. I also think it would be a lot more impactful in real life rather than watching a video, since it seems like something where it's hard to realize how impactful it is without actually seeing your face displayed over the actor's. 

VR & Empathy

 I agree with Chris Milk's idea that VR is the ultimate empathy machine. I think that there are some lived experiences that photographs or videos alone have a hard time conveying, primarily because they live "inside the frame", as Milk described. VR puts the viewer "through" the frame and directly into the environment/setting, making the experience more immersive and emotional. Experiencing stories through VR allows people to "live" someone else's life on a deeper level. By tapping further into the viewer's empathetic capabilities, VR storytellers can create a profound connection and understanding between the viewer and the subject.

Becoming Homeless: A Human Experience from the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab highlights Milk's idea that VR can be an empathy machine. The game itself shows the step-by-step circumstances that caused you, the player, to become homeless: layoffs, eviction, living in your car, run-ins with the police, etc. I thought this VR experience was impactful because it challenged the stereotypes around homelessness and emphasized the humanity around this issue; the game itself created feelings of frustration, anger, and stress for players, which made players further empathize with real people who have lived through this experience. 

VR and Empathy

   Chris Milk makes an interesting argument for VR being the ultimate empathy machine. You can empathize with people more deeply when you have a deeper understanding of their situation. Using it in the way Milk did by showing it to people in government who are making decisions for these people in difficult situations is a really interesting application of the technology. It's one thing for a random person like me to understand Sidra's life in the refugee camp, but it means much more when authoritative figures have an understanding of how the decisions they make can effect people in these places which are otherwise far from them mentally and physically. We live in an increasingly globalized world, and maybe adapting this video game technology to fit empathic means will truly make us more "human" as Chris Milk thinks. 

    I like the idea of using VR to convey human emotions and experiences through immersive technology. It has the ability to tell stories that are otherwise difficult to understand, like Sidra's life in the refugee camp. The part at 6:40 where the children are surrounding you in Clouds over Sidra had the greatest effect on me. It didn't feel like children surrounding a camera; it felt like children surrounding my body. When you are watching a movie, it is easy to remain outside of it because you are still separated by the screen, and it sometimes feels like an incomplete or fabricated image. But with VR, you have the complete reality from all angles. There's no camera or apparatus distancing you from the actual experience anymore. So, I think it is effective for telling these stories, especially stories where the actual reality can be distorted through media, news, and distance. 1000 cut journey: “but rather a visceral understanding that connects to spirit and body as much as reason.” In the news story video they mention that racism can happen in a number of contexts over a person's life, and often what we focus on in the mainstream media like violence and discrimination only scratches the surface of the real experience. Using VR allows for a more nuanced and realistic telling of the specific events tinged with racism in a black person's life that may otherwise pass us by.

    

I enjoyed watching all of the different ways that Virtual Reality (VR) can be used to tell different stories in ways that text or typical film simply cannot do. I enjoyed the TED talk by Chris Milks and how it tracks Milk’s journey from a childhood to a pioneer in Virtual Reality (VR). Milk argues that while traditional film is a powerful medium, it is just a "collection of rectangles." He explains how the viewer is always an observer looking through a window and describes his career as a mission to break that window and put the audience inside the story. This was a good segway to the other short VR pieces like “Clouds Over Sidra” and “1,000 Cut Journey”. I was a bit confused about how VR would be able to relate to empathy, but now I definitely understand what it means. I felt very emotional watching all of the VR stories and it makes the viewer feel very present in what is going on during the VR. I feel like this is an excellent medium when trying to make meaningful advertisements or watching movies that are meant to be very emotional. For my “bring it in” I discovered a video about how the shoe brand TOMS did a virtual reality giving trip. During the video it showed how there is a VR piece where you get to feel like you have traveled to the country they are giving shoes to and handing them out to families and watching children try on their new shoes. I think that this was another very good example of how VR can instill empathy in a person and become a very thought provoking medium of technology. https://youtu.be/jz5vQs9iXCs?si=VUUwDYRaFS3BR6hj

Divergent Streams

 In this chapter, Rettberg talks about how electronic literature has different streams that connect views to different artistic paths. He talks about how these paths lead to stages, for example when you see or read something alone online as opposed to something like a museum in person. The chapter discusses locative narratives, virtual and augmented reality, interactive installations, and what's in the future for electronic literature. I find it interesting how location narratives use geographical places and how the aspects of images, audio, and exploration is what brings it all together. It's definitely a more modern form, which can make more of the younger generation want to participate in.  I do think it's a bit creepy that this software uses my and other locations for it but it creates a more personal aspect to it's understandable. 

I decided to look into Text Rain by Romy Achituv and Camille Utterback. When I first saw it I thought it was really pretty. I love the way that the letters fell around the silhouettes of the people, it was a very cool thing to watch. Seeing the letters make words on the bodies was really interesting. I like how you have to move around and interact with the poem for it to work. This poem had a very interesting and intriguing concept. It reminds me of something I've done at museums, which Kacey also mentioned. I've always like doing the interactive things in the museums and the one that is very close to this is really interesting.