Articles by fmohame2

This has been an interesting class, I have been introduced to new things that I never would have experienced or appreciated. I can not say that I have enjoyed all the types of work that we looked at but there have been a few that I thought were interesting i.e. My Boyfriend came back from the war piece. I never really appreciated the saying that a picture has a thousand words until after we dissected that piece in class. Also the Nine piece was amazing because you have the picture with the words, and it represents this persons life history. I can not really say that I enjoyed the hypertext and the interactive fiction section of the course. I found those very frustrating and not enjoyable at all. I definitely did learn new things in this class, I learned that there are different structures of interactive narratives, and that what may work well for once does not necessarily do the same for the others. I also learned that there are different aspects of interactivity in electronic literature. The aspect of this class that really coalesced these points for me was when I did my textual media experiment. I had to think about these ideas, who my audience is, and what my point of view is before I started working on it. During the course of the experiment, I had to implement the different aspects of electronic literature that I had learned in this course. This really made me appreciate all the other works that we looked at in the course of the semester. I am glad that I had exposed myself to this different genre of literature instead of taking the normal print form, that was required for my literature requirement. Thanks for a Knowledgeable semester.

The notion of what makes a good hypertext is really up to the reader. There are certain criteria that a hypertext should cover. Each hypertext should have a good number of links that the reader can follow. The hypertext should be coherent and provide form that is characteristic that has organization. It should also intrigue the reader and make them want to follow the links. The medium employed in the hypertext should have the capacity to fully engage.

The great thing about firefly is that allowed the user to click on a line how many times it wants and still make sense and not change the outcome of the poem. Deena Larsen did a great job in investing to making sure that there were enough adverbs, adjectives, etc., that made things easier for the user.

The firefly poem is full of imagery that allows the user to imagination to be captured, and keeps them enthralled to the poem so that they continue to click on the hypertext. The poems themselves are not that long, they are usually about 4-5 lines.  The author made this piece in such a way that the user could read and look for new forms of imagery throughout the text.

Between Hegirascope and Firefly, I felt that Firefly was the most user friendly. I could simply not grasp Hegirascope, it through me for a loop. The reason why Firefly is user friendly is because it allows the user to have control on how fast they want to go. It also allows the user to have an easy accessibility to text by simply clicking on a line of text.

Nine is a visual interactive fiction, that utilizes nine title puzzle to tell a story. There is one title that is an empty space, so that the user can rearrange the title in a way that will formulate a complete picture. But as the user grabs one of the titles to move, the image fades into another image in a continuous loop with interchanging pictures. As the titles are being moved text appears in the vacated white space. The constant shifting out of focus of the images in the piece causes tension within the story. The text is the story about the authors life history, how he was born to a Cherokee mother an Island father and adopted by white parents.

There are twelve different images in the story. The pieces are not read until the user figures out the picture. Examples of the images are a baby, a face, fall leaves, outdoor water picture, and someone pointing at you. There is also a famous story of the Sequoa.  The puzzle s a metaphor for his life, there is always going to be one blank space… a missing piece no matter what. The piece seems simple at first but gets really deep and complex at the end. 

This piece symbolizes how our lives are constantly in motion, when the events that occur in our lives shift with the ending of one and the beginning of the other with no dividing line being evident.

I recently discovered this unique world that has captured kids imagination. Its called webkinz, I came across this over thanksgiving break when my nieces and nephews age 4 and 7 had asked that I buy them this stuffed animal. Its not only a stuffed animal, in each animal there is a code that you enter in this website website http://www.webkinz.com/us_en/. You enter your code so that you can adopt your pet into webkinz world. Here all the stuffed animals come to life. You get to name your pet and choose their sex. After a successful adoption you are shown to your room, where you start with a 2000 dollars in kinz cash so that you can decorate your room, buy new furniture, clothes and food for your pet. To earn more money there are an array of quizzes for every age group that is a fun way to learn and earn more money, to more items for your pet like pools, TV, refrigerator etc. There also arcade games as well. The pets rely on their owners for food, exercise, and all their other needs. There is a meter that keeps track of there feeling such as the happy meter, healthy meter, and hungry meter etc. The other fun thing about this site is that it allows the kids to invite their friends to come and see their rooms, they can play games with their friends and also chat with their friends.

This website allows kids to interact with their stuffed animals as if it were a really pet. They can have fun as well as learn responsibility. This is an amazing concept that utilizes kids penchant for loving animals and also introduces the kids to the computer and the different methods of interacting online.

I believe that John Harris piece Whale Hunt is both a narration and database. What made me categorize this piece as a narration is due to Mieke Bal criteria for a narrative which is as follows: it should contain both an actor and a narrator; it also should contain three distinct levels consisting of the text, the story, and fabula; and its ‘contents’ should be “a series of connected events caused or experienced by actors”. All of these criterions are present in this piece. There is a story being told with the pictures, the person in the picture is the actor and the photographer is the narrator. There is also small captions that inform the user on what is going on and the locations. Therefore there is enough information being given in this piece to equate to be a narration. I thinks that this piece is really amazing, because of the great photography. The picture tells the story it starts from the airport towards their destination and you see them actually hunting the whale. The user feels like they are part of the story because they don’t have to rely on their imagination when going through this piece, they can actually see the story as it unfolds. What makes me think of this piece as a database is when Lev Manovich states that “database represents the world as a list of items and it refuses to order this list.” That is what Whale hunt is a database of pictures taken during a trip. 

As I was going through the book by Hayles, all I kept thinking about was, I wish she would simplify her ideas and thoughts. I had to reread the passages over and over to understand the content and the what she was trying to get across to her audience. When I was going through the book in reference to the digital poem Bust Down the Door, she talked about how when going over these texts, that people perceive that the eyes are moving along to read the text but that is not case, the text moves while the eyes remain in place. I found that the reader here has absolutely no control of the speed the narration is moving and is left helpless. It seems that there is a struggle for supremacy between the speed of the narration and the different sizes of the text. The readers eyes are distracted by both. 

In her book Hayles discusses that the idea of text that moves while the reader’s eye remains stationary was thought of by Bill Brown in the 1920s. What I thought was amazing was that he got his idea from cinema, “Brown imagined that reading could be brought to speed, so to speak, by displaying it as a linear stream of words flashing by, much as a highway unfolds at night through the windshield while one is driving fast” (Hayles, 125). I think that this is true for Bust Down the Door, because it creates a continuous series of approach that enables the user to become entangled with the analysis of the text, and give it meaning. This contributes to the formation of a suspenseful and intriguing relationship between the text, the computer and the body.

The story of afternoon starts with the narrator saying ” I want to say I may have seen my son die this morning.” then the narrator starts what I think is him flashing back to the past and reminiscing about an event that occurred in the past. then the story seems to focus back into the present because he starts taking about seeing her car not far from where there son attends school. There he saw bodies laying on the ground but just continued to drive off. This sounded really bizarre to me, a normal human being despite whatever the circumstance would have stopped to make sure that his wife and child were okay or that they weren’t involved in the accident. After a few frames when he is at a dinner with his co-worker he asks him why didn’t you just stop or turn around and find out if it was them. After a few frames of text we see that the narrator goes to his son’s school to find out whether he attended school that day, and from there we find out that the author is in fact divorced. We also find out that his ex-wife has a new lover and has moved on with her life unlike himself. You could see a hint of resentment to the new man in her life and from the way he talks about her you can tell that he still cares. The circumstances by which they broke up has not yet come to light, there is some hint to an indiscretion on the wife’s part. The narrator has some proof that his son and his ex-wife were inolved in the accident that morning, but it seems that he is more worried about what people will think about him if it isnt true. Thats why I dont understand why he does not go to the hospitals and see if they were there.

The story stopped there for me, when he decided against going to the hospital. After that it just started getting confusing. Who’s Penelope and what does she have to with the story? I really did enjoy this interactive fiction story because it flowed for me…. It did not require for me to type the commands.

I attempted Photopia today. I can definitely say that I got a lot further with it than I did with the Lost Pig and Shade. I guess because it was most similar to the Choose your own adventure books. The story continues progressing as you enter the commands. What surprised me was when it started the story was of two guys in a car, they were both drunk and were driving to meet these girls that they had met earlier in the day. The driver passed a red light in the intersection and the story moved on to the exploration of the red planet Mars. I got a bit confused at first at how quickly the story jumped. As I was discovering the red planet it was coming along easier the computer and I were in sync, that is until the end when the explore found what they had come looking for and needed to head back to the spaceship before running out of oxygen. Whatever command I wrote I could not get the explore to do anything, I even re-read the instructions and the prompts so that I could get back to the spaceship nothing worked.  I just wish that I were able to finish the story before frustration kicks in and I give up.

I really do think that I much rather prefer hypertext than interactive fiction, because its easier to click on a picture than it is to figure out what command the computer will recognize.  I guess of all the interactive fiction that I had done the one that we did in class Aisle was the easiest for me to navigate through. 

Before joining this class I had never heard of interactive fiction. After the first day we started talking about it in class I decided to google it and find out what it was about and the point behind it, because I was truly confused in class. I first found the definition and it said that it is a computer-mediated narrative, resembling a very finely grained “choose your own adventure” story. So you basically read a few lines and type instructions to the computer to find the plot. I thought to myself ok and what’s the point???

As I was finding information on Interactive fiction I came across this fun little tidbit, that a computer programmer that was going through a divorce, and was searching for a way to connect with his kids created it in the early 70s.

The first interactive fiction that I did alone was the Lost Pig. I tried doing myself at first without reading the instructions and that did not work out so well. I really was not moving along very well, and was getting frustrated by the minute. I decided that I needed help so I went to the link and read the instructions. I attempted it again and used the prompts that were given. I unfortunately did not find the pig because I was getting frustrated with the fact that when I made a mistake typing I could not delete the mistake and continue typing, and I was also annoyed with Grunk talking in the third person. I will try it again tomorrow when I have more patience.

As far as interactive fiction is concerned I prefer the CYOA books. I guess it’s as easy as turning the page. I am really not computer savvy I only know basics. 

What aspect of the CYOA book did your map or the mapping process crystallize?
When I was doing my mapping I had done it a section at a time on paper over a few days. I really did not get to see the complete picture until I was done. That’s when I noticed that the stories have similar endings and are intertwined. What else surprised me was how many different endings the book had especially considering the number of pages the book contained. Another surprise was how much time consuming constructing the map was.

This is my first time ever doing a blog, with that said compared to the Hegirascope, I thought that this was a vast improvement. I enjoyed how the story is told with some interaction from the audience. The minute I turned into the webpage the first thing that drew to my attention was the stark contrast of the black and white. Its so fuzzy that you can not make out the features of the couple. It could be anyone. In the first frame it shows the couple and a window. You can see that the couple aren’t close, it seems as if there is physical as well as emotional distance between them. The window draws you in to take a glimpse into their life and find out how the story unravels, because your peeking into their life through the window your only getting glimpses and hearing certain things without knowing the complete story. Therefore your left to come up with your own conclusions, thats what I found most fascinating. 

As your going through the story you start wondering what war was the boyfriend in??? How long was he gone??? What happened with the neighbor that has upset him so much?? There is a hint of infidelity… at the same time she say “No Never”. I felt that story left more questions than answers. 

In the last frame there was the authors name and the MBCBFTW museum link. It was great seeing other peoples take on the story and all the different aspects to this one story.