textual media

In his photographic and textual montage, author Jason Lewis reveals his struggle with the concepts of personally constructed and appropriated identities using nine squares to lead the viewer on an immensely abbreviated journey of his life. In his preface, Lewis compares his life to the age-old adage of cats and their “nine lives”. Lewis argues that people, too, live many different lifestyles during their one lifetime; with each temporal fragment contributing to the collective self at its most present state. In “Nine”, we are first introduced to Jason via his “native, original” identity: Edward Gutherie. However, shortly afterward we are reintroduced to him via his “white, adopted” identity: Jason Lewis. The sequential presentation of these two identities creates an opposition – who is the author? Jason or Edward?. The piece continues to argue that perhaps it is impossible to choose just one identity, and (judging by his pen-name, Jason Edward) I would say that presently Jason has combined both of his pasts to create who he is today.

In the beginning of “Nine”, we are introduced to a young man who is haunted by his mysterious past. Though he was aware of his origins, the protagonist did not reach out to his Native American brethren until 1988 while he was in college. Despite his attendance to a powwow, Jason still felt somewhat out of place. As he states, “Among other natives, I’m native…somehow“. The lengthy distance between his past and that present moment proved to be a problematic barrier in his quest for self-discovery, though. Struggling to create a connection between his two seemingly different personas, Jason began defining himself simply by his surroundings. If he was around natives, he was native – if he was in Berlin, he was somehow Turkish – and if he was in Indonesia he was some “rich guy from Jakarta”. However, defining himself by his physical and cultural location was merely a means of escape, and soon his past began catching up with him. As Jason concludes, “My brothers and my sisters from the island are chasing me”. 

There is not an obvious reconciliation of Jason’s two identities at the end of “Nine”, instead the struggle of identity replays itself for the viewer-while simultaneously morphing the images into various mismatched puzzles. If we judge by Jason’s name used in authorship, we might assume that he has come to terms with the duality of his past. But then again, perhaps the puzzle replays itself as way of saying that is never an absolute reconciliation between our diverse personas. Maybe the struggle with identity is an ongoing process, the makings of those “nine lives”, that lasts throughout our entire lifetime.

The appeal of both Hegirascope and Lialina’s project My Boyfriend Came Back from the War is grounded in not only the bizarre strings of thought that only serve to confound but also in the innate fascination of clicking one’s way deeper into an electronic rabbit hole. Though they share the medium, there are stark differences between the two projects. Hegirascope, as far as its programming goes, is far simpler than Lialina’s expressive use of technology which utilizes movable frames, flashing graphics and, in one case, a scaling picture of a window. Conversely, Hegirascope has several, very convoluted streams of thought that seem arbitrarily linked whereas Lialina’s project has a single story line, a central thought, with different aspects of the story which can be viewed in several frames at any given time. What is interesting to note about My Boyfriend is how nearly every frame cuts to black, the finals word being either a pronoun (most often “me”) or a time word (“forever” and “now”). In a few cases, the frame’s penultimate message is an image. What I find intriguing in My Boyfriend is how the text behaves when manipulated by the frames. When forced to adjust to a horizontal move, the words wrap; when faced with a vertical move, the words simply crop. Additionally, with the exception of the window, all the graphics crop when met with a frame. However, My Boyfriend’s rabbit hole only goes so far before the story reaches a conclusion, when all the frames have been tapped out and there’s just the couple, a window, and darkness. Hegirascope, not to be outdone, can loop over on itself, one of the four choices possibly leading back to a prior page. Indeed one recurring page drops its link options after it has been chosen. Though the link still exists, it hides.
Along this thought, there are several Easter Eggs within Hegirascope that make it more than a simple little game of clicking around aimlessly. Whereas My Boyfriend contains only one instance of hidden text, Hegirascope leads one to believe that an empty slide is simply that. With judicious highlighting, however, one quickly finds that there is more going on in those pages that appear to contain nothing, leading to, if one is lucky, the Index page, the inner workings. It’s these little treats for the reader that keep goading one to continue instead of causing a cascade of hands thrown in the air out of abject frustration.

Which war?  This was the main question I had, unless of course you count all of the “WTF?” moments on my first time through the text.  The credits say “Olia Lialina, 1996” and I’m not too good with dates but if she’s American I guess this could be the Gulf War or perhaps Kuwait? 

After the first few clicks I started realizing that the frames were either splitting; branching in to new paths, or advancing those paths forward a step.  It’s interesting because in a way you’re controlling the story of how this reunion goes.  The most compelling instance for me was the middle-bottom frame that appears to be about someone cheating on the other in the relationship, and it sort of becomes a Choose Your Own Adventure.  You can either say, “NO NEVER,” or “he was my neighbour,” and the path advances from there to:  “don’t kill” or “forgive” which are both pretty powerful sentiments.

I think this takes a little bit more interpretation than Hegirascope because of the fact that there is less interaction: you have fewer choices and you can exhaust them all in one sitting with MBCBFTW, whereas in Hegirascope it would take much much longer.  Also, whereas Hegirascope gives you these events that are potentially several paragraphs of text, MBCBFTW is much more simplistic with black and white images and short phrases at most.  All in all the experience is much more finite with requires much more reflection than interaction.

I enjoyed this piece much better than the “Hegirascope” because it gave the reader a chance to dive into the writer’s mind and understand her thoughts. With the Hegirascope, the pages were all random with little connection between each page. The motive and main point of the Hegirascope still seems unclear, at least to me, other than the effects of randomness in relation to the emotions of the reader.

The reader has the ability to take control of both “My Boyfriend..” as well as the “Hegirascope” but “My Boyfriend..” has a central theme and focuses on a woman’s thoughts,  emotions, and her general feelings regarding the return of her love one and their first encounter together. Unlike the inability to connect each click of the mouse to the previous one with the Hegirascope, this textual media tells a story – I think about her cheating on her boyfriend with their neighbor, whom he now wants to kill. I could be wrong though. With each click of a box or picture, new information is discovered regarding the woman’s infidelity and her fear of what her boyfriend might do. This not only allows the reader to keep up with the story, like a book or a soap opera, but prevents the reader from getting confused and losing interest because he or she cannot connect each page.

One thing I don’t understand is why the margins can be moved by the reader. Is this something the write intended to do to allow the reader to have more control of the page?

The first time I went through My Boyfriend Came Back From the War, it really confused me, and I found it difficult to find a cohesive meaning in it.  After going through it a couple of times, I started to pick up a couple of different thought processes going through the narrator’s mind.  The first frame stays throughout the story, and is unchangeable, the second frame, as I take it, is the narrator, and clicking on it takes you into her mind and thoughts.  After this, the frames progressively split into many frames, some the same size, some differently sized.  Each original frame that splits carries one line of thought, then as it splits, delves deeper into what the narrator and her boyfriend are going through.  I believe the top middle frames are discussing the issues her boyfriend has with himself and his participation in the war, and his inability to deal with those issues.  The narrator is trying to talk to her boyfriend and help him move post these issues, I believe that he does not.

The frames in the bottom middle are much smaller and thinner than the rest of the frames, and the story line is shorter than the rest.  This storyline seems to delve into a discussion where the narrator is telling her boyfriend of an indescretion with another man.  I don’t quite get why the frames split at the end with no words, but I’m assuming that it’s something negative and not so good for the couple.  The frames in the top right corner seem to be the hollywood hopes of what the narrator wants to happen, but again it’s hard to decipher and really say what the author of this piece wants to get across.  At the bottom right is the author being content with the situation, there’s very little negativity, and at the end, if you click through all of the frames, the final frame is simply her name at the bottom right, and the picture that is constantly on the left side.  One interesting aspect of this piece, though I can’t say I’m sure why it is ther, is the fact that you can change the size of any of the frames.  Larger or smaller, or you can even push the frames away from sight; maybe there is meaning behind it, or maybe it is simply part of the programming, I thought it was kind of cool.

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.

My Boyfriend Came Back from the War seems to provide a relatively more concrete narrative than Hegirascope, allowing the reader to pursue different branches of what appears to be a young woman’s thoughts.  The key difference is how MBCBFTW creates a sort of picture at every stage, not simply revelling in the interactivity but clearly making a visual statement as the different paths into the character’s thoughts reveal a progressively more pock-marked, fractured whole.  What comes to mind here are the multiple levels of thought that occur simultaneously and unrealized in, for example, Freudian psychology.  Allowing these tangential but ultimately relatable ideas to create a visual chorus makes the pursuit of the narrative all the more compelling, knowing that each decision will only make the image more fractured still, as each thought or branch leads eventually to blackness.  While Hegirascope offers a similar degree of interactivity, the picture it paints is one more dependent upon the individual choices made.  MBCBFTW leads always to the same destination, and the choices one makes function mainly to put together the story from the bits and pieces of information stored in the different branches.

The physical differences in Hegirascope versus My Boyfriend Came Back From the War were obviously because the colors weren’t as vibrant, but I think that played into the story for MBCBFTW. It was interesting to start exploring MBCBFTW because I had this preconceived notion of what I might expect, since we were going to be comparing it to Hegirascope. In the new text, I found that there were more links and more opportunities for progressing the blocks on the screen as well as more evolution for the story. In this, I mean that MBCBFTW had slightly more cohesiveness than Hegirascope, because all of the links could be related back to a scenario that would fit into the situation of someone’s boyfriend coming back from the war. For example, in the first blocks, it says, “Where are you? I can’t see you.” And when you click on it, it says “FORGET IT.” I took this as the girl trying to delve into her boyfriend’s odd personality and why he’s not the same as when he left. As the viewer gets deeper into the text, it is up to them to chose a link, just like Hegirascope, but the option to go back and chose another path is easier to do.

I think the layout of MBCBFTW is interesting because it starts out with limited items on the page and it expands. The images of the couple in the bottom left hand corner remain there along with the window in the same box. The viewer is not allowed to click on either of the images and they are seemingly secluded from the other boxes. I feel as though they represent the couple in conversation and the window represented an exit that you couldn’t escape from, like a blocked fire escape. I felt myself wanting to click on the window to do something, but there was never a link connected to it. This could represent the fact that when a loved one comes back from such a traumatic situation as war you can’t just run from it, it has to be dealt with.  Also, when the middle column of boxes became split in the middle, it seemed that the girl’s side of the conversation was on the left and the guy’s side of the conversation was on the right.

Overall, I found this text to be more entertaining than Hegirascope and definitely less frustrating. This is not to say that I was more understanding of the piece, because I can’t tell if I understood it more or less then Hegirascope. I only know that it was easier for me to make assumptions of what the author intended.

I found this work to be the most interesting one that I’ve seen so far. It seemed strange to me at first that the pacing was so slow, but then it made sense- the few words revealed upon the clicks did tend to complement the photos on the site. It surprised me that there are actually relatively few words in the narrative- it seemed much longer than it actually is, due to how it’s split up. The images on the site look very morbid, formal and creepy. The all black-and-white motif was a special touch.

I enjoyed reading the narrative, and determining the plot of the story by clicking through. It was akin to overhearing a phone conversation- including the parts where you wish that you could hear the other person in order to better understand. I’m thinking about the “tiger” part here… that was the only part of the work that stumped me. The girl seems relatively young, but of dating age. I got the feeling that she was being supervised in a fashion- “After dinner, they left us alone”, with “they” being her parents or guardians. It seemed ironic to me. She is only left alone when in the safe company of yet another guardian; in this case, her boyfriend. The tone that the conversation takes seems to be quite topical and shallow at times- she asks if he likes her dress (at least I hope she’s the one saying that part- if not, the war had a greater impact than anticipated) and is giddily excited for their wedding after he proposes. The part that intrigued me the most was the part that may have addressed infidelity (“He was my neighbor/ it was only once/ forgive me). There seems to be much depth to the relationship presented here: guilt and defensiveness play right along with faux-joy and confusion.

Plot was what drove me to click through “My Boyfriend Came Back From The War” more than once. While I enjoyed the photos, it was the plot narrative as well as guessing which dialogue parts were missing that made the piece fascinating.

This seemed to be to be completely different than Hegirascope.  In the latter, some of the pages may have seemed briefly connected (think Amanda) whereas others were entirely different.  They were scattered and impatient.  Making sense of it all was near impossible and the possibilities were near endless.  Also endless: Hegirascope.

My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, on the other hand, was not at all like this.  From the first screen, we are presented a situation, and the obvious assumption is that everything that happens thereafter is based around a boyfriend coming home–from a war.  Thematically speaking, it makes most of the ideas that come up fall into place, even when they are overall fragmented or broken thoughts.  Those ideas such as infidelity, mortality, and lasting love are all skimmed over in an unsettling way, but the reader is able to perceive the meaning, as opposed to Hegirascope’s often random, forced redirection. 

Hegirascope also became frustrating in that it made you choose an option of multiples presented.  MBCBFTW, however, allowed the viewer to explore all possible options at his or her own pace.  It was not necessarily linear, and could be just as fragmented, but it was never hurried or involuntary.

MBCBFTW seemed to me exactly what it was presented as with the first link.  I was able to imagine a couple, torn apart by way, reunited and going through the process of coping with the things that can happen in that kind of time.  The highs, like getting married, and the lows, like “you don’t trust me, I see” and the resulting “But… it was only once…” string of thought.  I was able to see two people going through all of this, and in that way, this became more of an active “choose your own conversation” piece.  Eventually, the whole conversation is covered, but the path you take to the final box is almost certainly not the same as anybody else’s.

When first exploring Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, I found it very similar and yet very different from Hegirascope. It found the two similar in the sense that they both contained a sort of jumbled structure. There was never a point in the hypertext where the entire paged contained one single meaning. With My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, I found it much easier to follow and a much more pleasant experience in general when compared with Hegirascope. I felt that although it was Lialina’s story I was the one who controlled the path it took. As we read, we all make our own interpretations and take our own meanings from the stories we read, but with hypertexts such as My Boyfriend Came Back from the War and Hegirascope it almost seems as if their story is shaped by your own experiences. I think when most of us read we approach the work with certain expectations that may sometimes limit us. With these hypertexts, I think it is very difficult if not nearly impossible to approach them with any sort of expectations becuase they are so structurally different. With Hegirascope, I found myself very confused throughout the whole experience. Like I was going through a maze or solving an unsolvable puzzle. However, with My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, I found the structure of the piece much more appealing. With the author’s use of frames and the different links in each frame, while still keeping the old frames, I was able to follow each sub-story until it finished and then move on to the next. That made it much easier to understand what message the author was trying to convey and how each of the smaller messages pertained the bigger picture.

Constance

My first impression of Olia Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back from the War was that it was similar to Hegirascope in that both hypertexts are a bit scattered and disjointed.  As interactive readers, we form our own meanings and interpretations about these works, meanings that are formed through the different experiences we might have, or rather, the different paths we choose to take.  But it gets more complicated than that.  If we control the order in which the texts and images appear on the screen, are we molding Lialina’s story and thus making our own stories out of it?  Or, is the story the same although it can be read in a different order every time?  I’d say we uncover bits and pieces of Lialina’s story as we go through and click on different links and images.  We “fill in the blanks,” if you will, wherever the blanks need filling.  This is Lialina’s story and nobody else’s story.  What can be pulled from the hypertext, on the other hand, depends on the reader. 

As readers, we often approach stories with the expectation that there will be a back story.  In the case of MBCBFTW, there is no back story – We’re just thrown right into the mix.  Therefore, we approach the hypertext with our own back stories, stories that affect how we interpret Lialina’s own personal narrative.  What really happened while her boyfriend was at war?  Did she cheat on him with her neighbor?  Who knows.  We also approach stories expecting them to have a clear point of view.  In MBCBFTW, however, the point of view is not clear.  Is this a dialogue between two people?  Are these the innermost thoughts of two different people?  Just one person?  If so, who?  You can see that the work raises a lot of questions. (I have a lot of blanks to fill in.) 

The format of the hypertext reminded me of a puzzle.  If you click and follow the links in a particular frame all the way through, you’re left with an empty frame.  This could be a representation of the work itself.  Although you feel like you’ve accomplished something when there is nothing left to click, like you’ve completed that part of the story, you’re still left with just a bunch of empty boxes in the end.  The work leaves you without a sense of closure. 

I agree that the images help in establishing a sort of dark theme, as someone mentioned below.  The images also offer readers even more opportunities to create their own meanings or form their own assumptions about the story.  That’s actually what I thought of when I saw the image of the window – the work is a metaphorical window of opportunity that we have to open.