Author: genevieve

Okay. If you haven’t got it by now, I am totally obsessed with Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries. Sure all of their stuff seems the same superficially, but I am here to argue that is most definitely is not. “All Fall Down” kind of exploded my brain. Instead of having some foreign and unfamiliar text that I can ultimately ignore besides seeing it pulse and change along with the music, it is all in English and there are way too many things going on at the same time. When it was on the big screen in class, I seriously considered my chances for having a seizure. I think that this project plays with the relativity of words and how things are all connected. There’s always someone who has some sort of commentary on things that you have to say no matter how obvious.

“all fall down. (yup.) things fall down. (right.)”

“stars fall down. (on alabama.)

These are just some examples of the screens change, I feel like I am not precisely articulating exactly how I feel about this piece. I don’t know how many of you watch “The Office” (US version, although the UK one is highly underrated), but this reminds me of a conversation between Michael and Dwight so let me set the scene and diverge from “All Fall Down” for a quick second. Dwight is at his desk holding a bunch of grapes over his face plucking them off with his mouth Michael comes in and, although no one has said anything, says “that’s what she said”. Dwight says, “I don’t get it” and Michael says, “Grapes? Seductive?” I feel like the second or the response to the first statement, which I consider to be the main statement of the idea, is more of a “That’s what she said” almost an unrelated little quip. I still don’t know if I am making any sense. I think I’ll stop trying to explain it now.

What makes this such a sensory overload is not only the rapidly flashing text and contrasting black and white and your brain struggling with all of its might to keep up with what it is trying to process at the speed of light (signature of YHCHI) but also with the seemingly unconnected thoughts scrolling along at the bottom of the screen. I say seemingly unconnected because sometimes, if your eyes are quick enough, you can sometimes simultaneously look at both of the changing texts and they are somehow related, I can’t think of an example right at this moment but if you have looked at this piece enough, I think you know what I am talking about.

And once again, you are totally stuck in this piece although you may wish and pray for a pause button or maybe even slow motion (is that too much to ask?! I’m an English Major! I like to process what I read!!) there is no going back, and I don’t necessarily think you would want to fast forward. Although I think I may like “Nippon” better, this is most definitely an intriguing piece.

Jason Nelson is crazy. He may be a genius, but I think he is absolutely crazy and that is not necessarily a bad thing in my book. His creepy/haunting creative/crazy side came through with “The Bomar Gene” and I think that “The Weather Visualiser” allows him to show his more eccentric side.  I think the weather in general brings about the most eccentric side in people naturally, and I think that this project is very fitting to that effect.  I know I can’t speak for the rest of you but the first warm day of the year I feel like running around being goofy like he does in the video interpretations of the weather. Also very cold days make me a little crazy. Anyways, if you take the time to notice and scroll through a few states or regions of the world, the “prose/poetics” interpretations of the weather has a definite template and only the words in red change to create a different meaning for each one.  I think that the same can be said for the weather.  The day is a universal template, and the different weather patterns change the meaning or the mood of the day, with the weather being represented by the words. Okay, maybe this is a little far-fetched but I think you can all see where I am trying to go with this.

When I try to look too deep into his work, it seems a little fruitless.  At first it seems like it could have meaning, but there are so many wacky elements to it sometimes it seems like there could not be any at all and he is creating for the sake of creation and for people to muse and marvel over his work.  Maybe he is making some kind of statement on how the different weather affects people’s emotions or attitudes by showing his own. I’m still a little baffled by this piece. I think that Professor Sample should ask him for an explanation video about this piece.

So I am going to be completely honest here. I spent a lot of time in class when our computers were unfrozen playing “Arteroids”.  In my defense, it was the relevant topic of the day, and definitely expanded my knowledge of the application/project.  First of all, the game was fun. Who doesn’t like shooting at things on a screen, honestly? The words that they had programmed in were a little boring, depending on what mode of game play you are in, but when I found out that you could program your own words in I got a little mental “BINGO”! Honestly I put in an email from my bonehead ex-boyfriend and totally shot away at them, naturally with my name as the shooter. It was kind of justifying, not going to lie (what an honest blog post for class!).  I think that “Arteroids” is an excellent example on a variation of an old game, and a good attempt at really ‘prosing it up’ (puns are fun).

Second of all, aside from it being fun and an awesome tool for personal revenge, it got a little boring after awhile, sure I wanted to try and get to level 216, but my patience definitely ran out (as did class-time).  I think that this project serves solely as an example of what the miracles of the internet can do, although maybe not utilizing them to their fullest potential or expanding on an existing idea to its fullest potential. I don’t have an exact idea of how this could be improved from its current state, so I’m not going to try and pretend to offer up some suggestions. All I’m saying is that I believe that somehow it could be made better. Maybe the color scheme could be adjusted somehow, or have the words fire back as you instead of needing to avoid them, or maybe when you get to a certain point there is some ultimate high-score list that is recorded on the internet forever (okay I lied here and really did offer some suggestions).  Although this might be the most fun interactive media we have covered this semester, it also might be the most lacking.

Just like “The Bomar Gene”, I vividly remember watching “Bust Down The Doors!” in 325 recitation (can you see a pattern here? All of these are why I signed up for the class.). However, “Nippon” is not just all about shifting pronouns and creating the reader into a voyeur, but tells some sort of stream-of-conscious story/stage directions (all so very complicated).  What intrigued me most about this piece was once again the bold contrast of the colors and the very catchy music, but also the text. If I could read Japanese (I think ) I would be all over the top part as I have heard (or maybe read) that it is not an exact translation of the English at the bottom.  I love the musical nature of the text as the English responds to the note changes and rhythms with the horns and the top language (I’m going to just call it that at the risk of sounding ignorant) corresponds to the piano part of the music.

I secretly love that Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries is really into controlling their audience. I am the worst and impatient Internet reader that I know.  If there is a large block of text on the screen I have to force myself to strain to stay and read it, or otherwise I have to print it out.  It’s really that bad.  The projects that they produce force me to stay in front of the screen, straining my eyes through my expired prescription glasses to actively participate in reading what is being thrown at me on the screen.  I can’t fast forward, and if I miss something (inevitably) I cannot for the life of me rewind, I have to watch the entire thing over again.  The words fly by so fast in some instances and I find myself way too happy for a slight pause to be able to register what was just thrown at me.  I find all of these elements, the music, the text and the story simply delightful.  Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries is in my bookmarks now and I am a frequent visitor. I think that their projects are a good inspiration/brainbreak when homework gets a little too stressful.  They are also a very helpful reminder that even the simplest things can be very complex.

I remember this from 325 recitation last semester, but could never remember exactly what it was. I remember it being a little weird but overall interesting.  I think my favorite gene would have to be the Felton Color Gene where Milly is hyper-sensitive to colors. I think the story and not the little gadgets where you can change the colors and make windows of images appear is what is most intriguing for me about it.  There is terrific irony in that in order for the student/teacher who is dealing with Milly ultimately destroys Milly’s eyes, which are the things that actually make the gene affective.  The woman goes on to be successful and does contribute monetarily to Milly’s life, but nothing can really bring back Milly’s true essence which existed when she could still see and be so sensitive to colors.

I think that watching Jason Nelson’s explanation for his creation of the Bomar Gene was kind of hillarious. Though, I think that he is a little strange as re-referenced in the Weather Visualizer.  I think his explaination was excellent about the ways and reasons that people do create different kinds of art or any kind of emotional expressions.  I am also not quite sure if he was positively reliable in all of his explanations of the different genes.  I do like the thought that he brought up, however, about incorporating very personal relations and character traits of people who you may know or once knew into any type of self-expression.  I think that his grandmother’s belief in the paranormal and psychic is a very interesting driving force behind his project.  I do have a slight facination with certain traits, but not even necessarily physical traits being genetic, and I think that is maybe why I feel some weird connection to this work.

Maybe someday in the distant future genes will manifest in certain people almost akin to “The Bomar Gene” or maybe even “Heros” (super-duper powers).  But for now, the idea of super-human traits or super-sensitive traits, almost synesthesic will have to exist in these kinds of works of fiction.

I think that sometimes we all forget that information can be presented in so many various and stimulating ways than the plain prose blocks most of us are used to looking at.  I found this to be such an interesting and fast read. I haven’t really read that many comics in my lifetime excluding the ones that come in the newspaper which I used to read regularly when my family had a subscription to the Washington Post while I was in high school. I’ve read some graphic novels, I guess they would be considered, and thumbed through a lot of them. I never really thought as it as some philosophical-type of art form. Though I can say that before reading this I did consider comics as art. Being somewhat artistically challenged I automatically lend merit to anyone who can draw anything to represent some sort of reality, because I can not. Like I said, I’ve dealt a lot with some sorts of comics in my life, but never really thought about what makes them tick and so successful.

I think what was most interesting to me was the comparison of the eastern and western styles of comics. It’s so cool to think that one idea was being developed simultaneously in two parts of the world and so recently! I don’t think it would be such a gripping concept if they were talking about some ancient form of something being developed in two different places at the same time a million years ago like stone tools or something. But for two different schools of thought to develop so many different ways of interpreting and presenting the same thing in much more recent time is totally cool (I’m using the word cool with all respects to the word. I feel like I could use interesting but I don’t know if that quite gets my intense appreciation and enthusiasm for it across). I have never really been into Anime or any kind of Japanese comics/cartoons/what-have-you but it kind of makes me want to take a look at it for the first time. I’ll play that off under the guise of investigation into what Scott McCloud is telling us to see if it does really involve a different kind of thought process than something that was produced in America by Americans.

This “fun” but really super informative reading really peaked my interest into comics. I really can’t wait to see where we go from here in class.!!!

I know I didn’t answer this question in class, but I think honestly that I enjoyed Afternoon so much more than I did Twelve Blue. Afternoon feels like it is so much more easy to navigate and to find different passages than Twelve Blue. I think that whatever story lines exist in Afternoon are much more identifiable and are more easily accessible than in Twelve Blue. I have played with Afternoon to the point that I can kind of anticipate where my actions are going to lead the story. I have found that with Twelve Blue it is easier to get stuck in some short cyclical pattern consisting of about maybe three screens. Afternoon also has its own cyclical parts, but they tend to be much longer with many opportunities for diversion. In Twelve Blue, I am only referring to this cyclical pattern in dealing with clicking on the in-text links and not with the graph on the side with the twelve opportunities for diversion.

The side panel in Twelve Blue I feel is completely open for diversions.  However, I do not feel like it is a complete story as compared to Afternoon (if you can even call it a complete story). I feel like somehow Michael Joyce got a little cocky with his unique way of storytelling and forgot some of the key things in a story. Like maybe a plot. I feel lost when I read Twelve Blue. There are so many story lines running parallel and bumping into each other and over lapping I feel so overwhelmed, but maybe that’s the point. There are so many aquatic themes running through the veins of the side story panel and I’m thinking that he is trying to make it comparable to being adrift in the ocean. Maybe I’m way off base here, but I think it is kind of an easy comparison.  Everything is written in blue. duh. I also think that the blue text on a blue background makes it hard to read at times especially in those huge blocks of prose that he is using, unlike Afternoon where the writing is minimal and seems to be pretty concise and contained on the page.

But it also could be that I enjoy afternoon more because I have spent more time with it.  Of course you’re going to like a book you have read ten times over than something you have only gotten half-way through. I think that’s something natural. But yes, I have found that I definitely find the complexities and obscurities in Afternoon a little more charming than the changing tides and currents of Twelve Blue.

So I transferred into this class a little late and need to make up a few blogs to be able to get to the checkpoint for next time.  By my watch this should be my 4th post.  I know this is a little late and that we all have gone over this little piece (it was my first experience in this class) but I think it is worth it for me to revisit it to see how far we have progressed in class for the past few weeks.

I really enjoyed this piece and the many ways that it can be interpreted.  Obviously the infidelity of a partner while the other was fighting in a war. What strikes me as to be so important in this piece is the font size, case, and use of bold and italics.  “he was my neighbor” is obviously a whisper while “WHERE IT WAS?” is obviously a loud demand.  The dynamics of soft and loud, of war and of pretty dresses is, I think, very important to the reading of this piece.

The imagery too, I believe, is an important thing to keep in mind while reading and clicking away.  The very statement “After dinner they left us alone” brings up all kinds of imagery in the white print on the black background. Who is “they”? I imagine it to be parents of the girlfriend and boyfriend, like they met for a dinner to finalize wedding plans or engagement party plans or something of that matter.  I can picture these two sitting not really knowing what to say to each other due to the time and the seperation between them, and all the things that he has seen at war.  “DO YOU/LIKE/MY/NEW/DRESS?” conjurs up images for me of some kind of WWII era frilly frock worn for a soldier’s homecoming.  I feel like she still has it on from earlier in the day and is trying to change the subject from the earlier conversation on infidelity.

One can read into a lot of things in this text, the ability to click on any window in any order, and the ability to expand those windows to make them seem more important, but I think that the imagery should be an important consideration upon reading.

So it took me awhile to mull around what I was going to write as a response to Afternoon.  I really like the stream of conscious style of narration.  It seems to me that no matter where you click or what you type or if you answer yes or no you are still somewhere in the narrators brain thinking about a million things a minute.  That brings me to the timeline of the so-called story.  There is no definite setting or period you can place all of these characters in.  They are infinite beings running around telling about their lives, experiencing a few moments together and are in no way stagnant.  I don’t even know if you can refer to them as definite characters.  Sometimes they just seem to be ideas in whoever decides to narrate the story at any given times head. There is also some weird love triangle (square?) also in circulation of these characters which deepens the story-line (if there really is one. I feel like I may have just contradicted myself saying so.).

Getting into more technical terms of the story-line, if you simply click on words from the start until as I have found you get bored, you have a somewhat circular plot, not really resolving itself and mostly presenting you with information you have already come across.  If you utilize the input option and the y/n option you are able to yield more results and to learn more about the characters.  I feel that this whole story and what the reader gets out of it is completely due to the level of involvement put into it.  And really, isn’t that what makes interactive fiction great?  The ambiguity and the possible outcomes and what can be said of books can truly be said of it that no one reads the same thing and you can definitely never really read the same thing twice.  I feel like it’s a beautiful thing.

Undoubtedly Lewis Carroll used this engine while writing his stories about Alice.  Those stories and poems definitely have a special place in my heart, and you have to admit that the language he uses is definitely innovative.  Jabber seriously amused me for a while.  “Jabber realises a linguistic chemistry with letters as atoms and words as molecules” is how the introduction page reads.  What a great idea!  I’m not much of a science person, but I can appreciate the comparison between language and science.  Think of how instantly you are able to equate language, symbols, to concrete objects or ideas or feelings.  That has to be some form of science, rapid computing.  Jabber does nothing to really provoke anything completely profound or earth-shattering but it is a fun way to make up new words in combinations I would never begin to imagine.  I found it to be representational of language!  It could be almost satirical of how we place such a symbolic value to objects and ideas with the meaning of words.  Words are only valuble to us because of their relation with what they represent.  What if a desk was called a koiestre?  Or a pen an estrami?  Desk and pen would be the weird words and the other two would evoke an image of school or an office or wherever.  Some combinations of letters and vowels are so significant while others, as in the Jabber engine, are combinations that are nonsense unless we assign them meaning. Just like good old Lewis meant when he said, “and the mome raths outgrabe”.

I read “Beyond The Great Wall” for my COYA book. For me, the mapping process affirmed that the plots contined in the book were most definitely linear.  With only one exception, there was only one way to achieve one of the twenty-two possible endings. It was very interesting to see this all played out on paper.  I definitely expected to see more twists and more possible ways to achieve different outcomes, but you followed a plot and it took you to only one place that no other plots crossed.  I also found it very interesting when reviewing my map for the different outcomes that result from different kinds of decisions.  The decisions that lead to the best and most rewarding endings with the longest story lines were those that were made in good conscious with an expectation of some kind of standard morality or sense of caution.  Subconciously this must have some kind of affect on the reader.