Author: Matt Zdance

Music videos are the visual scoring of a piece of music, in a way. The scoring of a movie is done after the film is complete, and works to compliment the overall piece. A good score helps to subliminally increase the emotion displayed on the screen while not taking the focus away from the film itself.

Often times music videos fail to do their simple job and overshadow the music they are supposed to be complimenting. Music videos are treated as commercials rather than vehicles in which the listening experience can be enhanced. Even good music videos seem to miss the mark. Take the Beastie Boy’s music video for “Sabotage,” for example. It is a funny and interesting spoof of 70’s cop epics, and without a doubt one of the best music videos of all times, but it completely detracts from the actual song.

I think that in lot situations, music has been demoted to a level of “complimentary art.” Music is treated less like an art form in itself, and more as a way of enhancing other works, or other daily experiences. Music is listened to while riding in a car or walking to class, but rarely is it the main focus.

            I recently came across a clip of Jakob Trollback’s new approach to the music video (which can be found here: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jakob_trollback_rethinks_the_music_video.html). The video reminded me a lot about Nippon, and got me thinking about how this abstract approach to the music video could help benefit the listener’s experience of the music.

Instead of trying to promote the artists as celebrities or making an attempt to depict of the song’s subject matter through actual images of the words, the lyrics—the actual words themselves—become the main focus. By focusing on shapes and letters and the movement in sync with the music, the viewer becomes more aware of the music’s subtleties and gains a fuller experience. They are not distracting from the music in anyway, they highlight the different parts. In a way, it is similar to a visual player that can be found on itunes or windows media player—which is basically a score of the music.

I think by taking this approach depicted here, the listener’s experience of the music can be further enhanced because it takes into consideration the relationship between form and function, unlike the music videos of today.

Scott McCloud said about the “non-sequitur” transition between the panels of comics: “No matter how dissimilar one image may be to another, there is a kind of alchemy at work in the space between panels which can help us find meaning or resonance in even the most jarring combinations.”

I started to think about why it is that humans think in terms of causality; seeing one image and then another and then making an inference. I tried to apply this across mediums and realized that Hemingway’s iceberg technique functions in a similar way. For instance, if you look at his short story “Hills Like White Elephants,” he never once explicitly mentions an abortion, but it remains an essential element to the story. Through his use of language, he forces the reader to fill in gutter, and to become an active part of the story.

The more I thought about it, the more I started to realize that the gutter wasn’t only unique to comic books; it’s just more visually defined than most other mediums. In comics, the gutter is more of a vocalized pause, where other mediums simply have a silent pause—or one that is more universally ignored.

In film you don’t see the space between cuts, because you don’t need to. Between cuts, there is an implied gutter. Since the viewer isn’t physically looking from panel to panel, there is not a need have a pause between cuts. The viewer is looking at the same location the entire time, and the cuts do all the movement. As the pictures on the screen change, it is understood that two images juxtaposed one after the other is the same as observing two separate panels, as opposed to one continuous shot. The same amount of closure—a third relational idea—can be drawn from two cuts in a movie as two panels of a comic book.

In other static art like paintings and photography, there seems to be an elimination of the gutter, assuming that without multiple panels there can be no real progression. However, if the painter or photographer is worth their weight in jellybeans (whatever that means), the viewer will be guided through the image in a different way. By the use of shapes and colors, different parts of the image will catch the eye of the viewer first. Then, as more time is spent with the piece, different things will become apparent. While there isn’t a clear, chronological progression, the piece can tell a story through the flow of the viewer’s eye.

In literature too there is a gutter. Takethissentenceforexample. The previous sentence is not very easy to understand because there is no gutter guiding the flow of information. Imagine a whole paragraph without spaces. Even with the correct capitalization and punctuation it would be very difficult to understand. Textually, written literature makes the most use of the gutter, separating the book into chapters, pages, paragraphs, sentences, and words. In an artistic sense, like the way that Hemingway draws his readers into the story, the gutter is present in a the actual content of the text.

The gutter can then be separated into evocative and representational purposes. Part of the gutter’s purpose is to separate the content of a work, while the other part is to encourage to reader to fill in the blank—to become an active part of the experience.

A conversation between two strangers will usually begin with an attempt to establish a general understanding between the two of them. This usually begins with a broad topic, which is why such a common initial subject is the weather:

“Nice day out isn’t it?”

            “Yeah, it’s gorgeous out.”

             While the subject of the conversation is concerned with the weather, what the two of them are actually doing is establishing is a common ground; a shared experience. The importance of the establishment of a shared experience can not be underestimated (no matter how broad or superficial the actual conversation), because it is the first step toward empathy. While it is not necessarily a reflection of deeply felt emotions, it is a way of saying “you are not alone in your feelings, I feel the same way you do.”

These shared experiences aren’t even always vocalized, a smile or a wink or a wave, any sort of reciprocated action is an acknowledgement of some shared experience; even if only that moment.

When was the last time you were walking across campus and you weren’t sure how to interact with a former acquaintance? Chances are you’ve thought: “should I stop and talk to them, should I just smile, should I acknowledge them at all, should I just ignore them—I don’t want it to be awkward?” The reason that there is such an apprehension in these situations is a sort of fear of rejection; a fear that the action will not be reciprocated and you find out that the other person doesn’t feel the same way about you (the snub).

Have you ever had an experience that you particularly found hilarious, but when you describe it to others their reaction is much less than what you expected? You generally will resort to qualifying the story by saying something like “You had to be there.” Why? –And why are standup comedians funnier in person? Why do we go Why do TV shows have laugh tracks—do you not know what’s supposed to be funny?

            Where am I going with this? Well…

I think that this human need for empathy is the basis for all literature (as well as many other endeavors). “We Feel Fine” takes a much more direct approach, linking people on the internet through emotions, which essentially makes it an “Empathy-Networking Site.” The reason that we are interested in reading about how other people feel is because we’ve all felt that way at one time or another.

This has a lot to do with our ability to see ourselves in electrical sockets and two dots above a line (as McCloud depicts in Understanding Comics). With the more avant-garde pieces we’ve looked at throughout this course, I think it’s been a lot more difficult to find the human emotional connection. While I can appreciate the artistic elements of the different pieces, I think it really comes down to the fact that the less I see of my (human) self in a piece, the less emotional connection I will feel towards it and the more apprehension I will feel towards approaching it.

The iStory Creator is an application that can be used for creating interactive stories that can be uploaded and read on iPods, but I believe there is a way to run it as a computer program as well. Here’s the link:

http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/iStory-Creator-Download-21036.html

It might look a bit intimidating at first, but the program is actually really easy to navigate once you get the hang of it. Basically what you can do is create a number of different pages with text, and link them together in any order. When it is run on an iPod, it works is very similar to a CYOA book. The text appears at the top of the page, and the different links appear at the bottom.

I haven’t really explored what limitations there are in terms of text/page limitations. It does look like there is a limit of 18 links per page, but I can’t imagine that being a problem.

I’ll upload any other information as I find it, but feel free to make corrections/clarifications/suggestions.

*A cool feature that this program has is that when run on an iPod, sound can be added to each page. This could be pretty cool if combined with sound effects or spoken word tracks, and obviously music as well. The only problem is that I don’t think this is an option if only run on the computer.

Here’s a poem I found by poet/storyteller Rives:

O}-< Q<= 10018 MTWThF 02.28.08 7:55pm |* *| Q<= O}-< ½?…1/256? Omg! <3 lol! {u} (_)3 =<”>= H207xNaCl yllambywlaw Q<= “?” O}-< ..-.etc jv *\o/* #*@%! “— —” aabb O}-< :(|) xXx })i({ SW .+ 5^th/42^nd ___ No.2 –> ]?

If you can’t figure it out, here’s the link to him performing it live: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/rives_tells_a_story_of_mixed_emoticons.html

It obviously works a lot better as a live performance (It’s obvious that certain parts don’t fit perfectly, or would be indistinguishable otherwise), but at the same time I found it really interesting how he decided to illustrate this piece using only letters, numbers and punctuation.

            The theme of the story is that there are at times limitations to the spoken language—a guy sees a girl he wants to talk to, but doesn’t know what to say. Instead of saying something generic, he decides to try and convey his feelings in his own unique way, and because of this the girl is left puzzled.

            The illustrations, on the other hand, do the exact opposite. Letters, numbers and punctuation—the building block of written language, are essentially only symbols (similar to what we’ve discussed in class and read in Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics). Because they are symbols, they don’t actually “mean” anything. Therefore they have the ability to convey more than the role assigned to them.

For example, when Rives writes this *\o/* it does not mean “asterisk, backslash, lowercase O, solidus, asterisk,” it means cheerleader. When Rives writes (_)3 it doesn’t mean “parenthesis, underscore, parenthesis, number three” it means coffee mug. No one could say “parenthesis, underscore, parenthesis, number three” and think “coffee mug” without first constructing the image (_)3. There is really no actual relationship.

Rives’s performance of this “typographical fairytale” is not just a simple poem or story, but a commentary on language, communication and symbolic capacity.

I recently came across a clip of a videogame demo called The Unfinished Swan, a first person maze game where the player must navigate through levels of whitewashed walls by shooting black paintballs. (it’s kind of hard to explain, but here’s the link: http://www.kottke.org/08/10/the-unfinished-swan).

            I thought that this was a pretty good analogy of what I’ve felt like we’ve been doing a lot of this semester; paintballing my way through a lot of these textual media pieces, not really sure what to do or where to go. And I think what I’ve struggled with the most is having the patience to take the time to explore the different new media works, and giving them the amount of time necessary for each to be fully appreciated.

I think the main difficulty with most textual media pieces is that I don’t know where to start. The rules to new media aren’t set in stone the same way that they are for more conventional works of literature, such as a novel. When looking at a work of new media, if the question is: “What is it about?” the approach to the answer is much different then if it were asked about a novel.

In a novel, the answer can be found by reading the text printed on the pages of the book. It’s not necessarily a matter of novels’ content being easier to decipher, but a challenging novel is still a novel (and the conventions of the novel will generally guide the reader on the path toward understanding). What is it about? –I’m not sure, but I know where to look, and what to look for.

For a piece of new media, like the Bomar Gene—where there are no set standards or rules—the first challenge if figuring out how to find the answer (the actual finding of the answer does not come until after). The real difficulty lies not in the medium (its navigation, features, limitations, etc.), but not knowing the rules; what to look for, what to focus on. It’s much easier to invest time with an aspect that will yield results (text on the pages of novels), then to take time exploring a completely new frontier. This is because there is a lot more risk involved; readers run the risk of investing time in a potentially fruitless effort. There is the fear that the “wrong” aspects will be focused on, and his or her time has been wasted. This is the same reason that some people feel so strongly opposed to modern art, and why critics exist in society.

At the same time, this new frontier characteristic and the “Unfinished Swan Effect” add some of the appeal to pieces of new media. I think most would argue that part of the initial fun is figuring out the rules before figuring out the meaning, but how do the two balance each other out? If pieces of new media become “conventionalized” would they then lose an important part of their appeal? For instance, if someone wrote Cliff Notes on The Bomar Gene—the meaning, how to find it, etc.—how would it be changed? If the mystery behind it was diffused, would it become more appreciated or less? Above all, is thinking about new media in this way obsolete? Does any of this “old media” analysis still even apply? I really don’t know.

Chapter three touched on a reoccurring theme in this class: the reader’s desire for closure. However, the author didn’t just focus on closure in the sense of story’s end, he also examined human ability to “fill in the gaps” when looking at an incomplete image, and tying that back into human symbolic capacity.

This chapter is useful because it can be applied to just about any form of story telling. With comics, there is a spin on the idea of ‘showing not telling,’ since comics are primarily made up of images (I imagine it’d be quite difficult to tell instead of showing). With comics, it is more of a question of: “How much do I need to show?” In a lot of actions movies made today it seems like the directors try to compensate a weak plot or flat characters by putting in a lot of explosions and really graphic sex/violence. But after the smoke clears there is little resonance and no one cares anymore.

Any good story telling—no matter what the medium—is going to rely to some extent on the reader’s ability to “fill in the gutter.” It forces the reader to commit to the story and become an active participant instead of just a passive observer. This is basically what Hemingway was doing with his ‘iceberg technique.’ I believe this participation leads to a story’s resonance more than anything else.

Along the same lines, on pages 84-85, McCloud tells the same story four times using a different number of panels each time. In all four cases, the first and last panels are the same, so the basic plot remains the same even though one comic has fifty two panels while the other has only two. This is a great demonstration of how to determine what is essential to a story. The first comic has a lot of extraneous information, while the third and fourth comics leave the protagonist flat. The second comic seems to be a pretty good balance of the two (though I may have chosen to do it a little differently). By breaking a story up into these panels, it is easier to see what information is essential to the plot, what is important to character development, and what is extraneous. Cross-medium experimentation—whether from short story to comic, or comic to movie, etc—could be a useful technique in getting to the heart of a story.

On page 61 of Electronic Literature, Afternoon, a Story is described as “a work driven by a mystery that, once solved, gives the reader the satisfaction normally attained through a conventional Aristotelian plot structure.” The question that first came to mind was: “Is this supplement enough?”

It’s difficult to argue the importance of the three act structure because it works so well. But there is also the question of why it works so well. While Aristotle was the first to write it down, and analyze the begin-middle-end structure, it is reasonable to assume that it existed long before this. As Dwight Swain pointed out: we are born, we live, and we die—three acts seem natural. However, it could be the case that since we have generally been hit over the head with this structure from the day we are born—in stories, TV, Movies, etc—it only seems natural through process.  Whatever the case may be, the three act structure works because it satisfies.

The main problem is that Afternoon, a Story (which is over twenty years old) still seems so far ahead of its time. Afternoon is not just experiment with a new computer medium; it also experiments with plot, structure, and navigation. Without a clear introduction of an ultimate goal, a series of events, or a clear resolution there is no way for readers to know what is important. Navigating from page to page can produce a collage of non-sequiturs, which ultimately lead to my exhaustion.

In a game like The Baron, the goal of was presented at the beginning of the text. It was not clear what needed to be done in order to accomplish the ultimate goal, but it gave me a reason to continue reading/playing the text. I wanted to reach that final resolution. I got confused at times, but what kept me motivated was the anticipation of a conclusion.

The main problem that I experienced with Afternoon was that there were no stepping stones. While I can appreciate the artistic advances and experimentation, without any supplemental information it seems unlikely that I could read and enjoy this story simply on its own merit. As we are today, I feel like the gap between literary tradition and Afternoon, a Story is too wide to expect that it can easily be appreciated outside of an academic environment. (That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised to find these stepping stones, in a sense, retrofitted through a gradual adoption of different aspects of Afternoon into future new media works.)

Hegirascope reminded me of a website I used to go to all the time when I was in high school: SuperBad.com (no relation to the movie). I don’t remember exactly how I came across it (it was probably featured on Bored.com or a similar website), but after the discussions we’ve had in class and the different readings we’ve done I went back to check it out with a new perceptive.

The site operates basically the same way as Hegirascope: click on links to navigate through a labyrinth of oddities and non-sequiturs.

The most obvious difference between the two is Superbad’s use of pictures and animation in addition to text. It also has a variety of “anti-games,” which are basically scroll-over-manipulatable picture patterns (I’m sure there’s a technical or at least better term). They’re not really games at all, in the sense that there is no purpose or goal, but for some reason being able to change the colors and pictures of the page brings a inexplicable sense of satisfaction to my life.

The pages on Superbad are also less uniform than Hegirascope. Instead of four different links per page, there are anywhere from one to forty-two(+) links per page. Some pages will have only one that redirects you to the same page every time and sometimes the same links will randomly redirect you to a completely different page every time. The pages don’t automatically refresh either, which gives you more time to ponder the eccentricities.

According to Wikipedia (citation needed) it was created by Ben Benjamin in 1997, and received a Webby Award in 1999 in the “weird” category. Benjamin is quoted as saying that “he didn’t really start thinking of Superbad as art until the art people started finding it.”

Here are just a few examples of the different kinds of pages:

http://superbad.com/1/trunk/trunk.html: Like Hegirascope, the index seems a good place to start until you realize that there is no way to know what you’ll actually be taken to. But I suppose you have to start somewhere…

http://superbad.com/1/heaven/heaven.html

http://superbad.com/1/fall/piano.html : Here’s an example of a page with only animation.

http://superbad.com/1/plumbing/index.html: Here’s a good example of one of the many “anti-games” on the site, accompanied by an intriguing micro scene.

I’m not sure where Superbad.com ranks in terms of textual media credibility, if there is even such a thing, but I really enjoy this site and I think it’s at least worth a look.

The aspect that was most crystallized by my CYOA map was the potential of finding out more information about the characters through the different storylines. While I don’t think that this was used to its fullest extent, it was interresting to see what could be discovered about the characters through the different threads. I think that if the author had given the reader something to gain from each individual storyline, it would encourage the reader to try a different path to better understand the overall story.

It’s difficult to determine exactly what a piece of digital media is really trying to say. With “My Boyfriend Came Back From The War,” it seems as though the author is giving readers a fragmented view of a sort of post war loss of innocence. This piece reminded me of Hemingway’s short story “Soldier’s Home,” Both seem to deal with the psychological effects of war (PTSD) and how it can affect one’s personal relationships. The disjointed nature to this narrative of this story is reflected in the structure of the page: the hard contrast of black and white, and the separation of the text into different boxes.

The story doesn’t exactly unfold the way a regular story would, with a set beginning/middle/end, but rather works with a more flexible structure. There are a few beginning links that must be clicked on first, and the order of links inside each box is always same, but the reader is given the opportunity to manipulate the order of how the “middle” events occur. What makes this so interesting is that, in reading this way, different parts of the story are highlighted each time, and likewise different parts are downplayed. Because of this I think that it could be argued that, to a certain extent, order determines relevance.

It seems like there really is so much going on in this piece. Instead of attempting to sum up the entire narrative, I wanted to try to focus in on the theme of sight. There were a lot of interesting visual references running through the dialogue, including:

I can’t see you

Don’t you see?

You don’t trust me, I see

Look!!!

Look it’s so beautiful (x2)

Please look at me

They never saw the snow

Haven’t you seen tigers there?

Maybe you look at me?

On a broad level, I thought that maybe this meant that the boyfriend’s change could have been a physical loss of sight, but it could also stand as metaphorical; eyes being the “window to the soul” sort of thing.

I think that this idea of having two fronts, in sense, is expanded on in the line:

“Red

Green

Blue”

On a scientific level, the way that the human eye receptors work is through perceiving light through three different color channels. The three color channels are red, green and blue. Using the combination of how each of these three primary channels perceives an object, subtleties in hue become apparent; kind of like a complex system of mixing and un-mixing the three different colors (Most electronic devices with color displays are based on this model).

This line is the only part of the page that contains color other than black, white and gray. This gives the sense that there is some sort of loss of color, either physical or metaphorically in the life of the boyfriend; some sort of deficiency.

I don’t know if any of what I have gotten out of this piece was put in purposefully or not, and I don’t know if I should care.