textual media

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.

After reading Krisztian’s post on “Implementation” as a literary reflection of counter-cultural movements, I’d have to agree that the piece is more about how a counter culture works rather than about the social themes it claims to react against. In my opinion, “Implementation” is part of a new genre of urban literature that can include the reactionist billboards we looked at in class, as well as city-wide graffiti. Though the latter examples aren’t cohesive narratives, they still exist in order to speak on behalf of an organized minority’s ideologies. In a way, they are like miniature visual speeches that inspire a reaction that amplifies the absurdity of social norms and conventions. When I was thinking of incorporating some of the characteristics of “Implementation” into my Textual Media Experiment, I thought about trying to reinforce this idea of “guerilla” literature by creating a broken or cohesive narrative to be dispersed in an urban environment much like “Implementation”.

I definitely thought that using Google Maps as a medium for storytelling was an interesting choice. It behaved like an interactive fiction in a way, even though the reader really couldn’t directly effect the direction of the story aside from perhaps exiting the site before finishing. Yes, you could jump ahead five chapters and the story, but that would have really defeated the purpose. Why jump ahead at the expense of the backstory? It’s certainly an idea I’ve kicked around for the final project, but I’m not quite sure I could tell a story that would be as engrossing as this one.

I found the visual element of 21 Steps engrossing. The bird’s eye view allowed me to see really everything that was situated around this man, which is something a first person view simply can’t provide. I also thought the snaking of the line through the map as the main character meandered his way through life was neat. Instead of just jumping from place to place, I got to see the path or progress of the character, which really made me feel like more of a part of the story than I might have otherwise.

I believe this online database of thoughts is very much like We Feel Fine.  I feel like they could have tried a little harder to make it one of their own. I think even if they had changed the color scheme it would have made it slightly more unique. Ok I’m done with that for now. I like this database slightly less than the We Feel Fine, but I believe that is just because We Feel Fine blew my mind in all sorts of “Sarafriendly” ways.  Twistori expands its thought database to include not just the feeling “feel” but hate, love, think, believe, and wish as well. It also includes the sentance in which the feeling is stated, but instead of just displaying what is stated after the feeling, it will sometimes display the beginning part of a statement if  the feeling is towards the end, something that We Feel Fine limited itself against.

Surprisingly enough, as I observed the website I noticed that the Love and Hate feelings tended to be the most arbitrary. At first I found it slightly ironic since Jonathan Harris’s other website we were to look at (Love Lines) was formulated strictly on a set of statements ranging from love, like, to hate. Most of the feelings in these two catagories in Twistori were statements made nonchalantly such as “I love weekends” or “I love when my teens are snarky”, “I love shopping”, etc.

I found that the Believe and wish were two of my favorite feelings. While all of the sections tend to have a fair amount of both arbitrary thoughts and evocative feelings, I tended to find myself more intrigued and pesonally drawn to these sections. “I believe things ultimately balance themselves out. That simply recognizing something as a problem doesn’t obligate one to solve it”,  “Missing the one
I wish who was there for me. Wait who is that?”, “i wish that i didn’t try to fight things so hard, that i could just accept other people’s stupid senseless rules a lot easier. ” These both tend to be a collection of people’s battles with emotions.

I really like these sort of databases. I was all about We Feel Fine and this is so much like We Feel Fine that I can’t help but love it. I love the stark contrast in colors between the black back drop and bright lettering. It really helps signify the different emotions. I also love the idea of gathering feelings and thoughts. Websites like this I feel really bring a sense of humanity out of the world wide web, which is constantly being attacked for breaking us a part and nullifying emotions and important personal feelings and actions. I have probably spent years looking for websites like this without even knowing that this is what I wanted to find and now I have a plethora of them right in front of me. I think it was a great idea for twitter to come up with this variation of We Feel Fine and give its users and others an opportunity to see the collective impact of their 170 (?) something lettered blogs.

In my opinion, Whale Hunt is a database that is also a narrative.  According to Lev Manovich, a database is a structured collection of data.  Whale Hunt meets that criterion.  Manovich quotes Mieke Bal, defining a narrative as a cultural object ” ‘that should contain both an actor and a narrator; it also should contain three distinct levels consisting of the text, the story, and the fabula; and its ‘contents’  should be ‘a series of connected events caused or experienced by actors.’ ” Further, Manovich asserts that a new media narrative is usually interactive.  In the case of Whale Hunt, the work is interactive.  Since the work is a documentary rather than fiction, I’m not sure how that aspect fits into Bal’s definition of narrative.  More important to me is the fact that Jonathan Harris considers his project to be a narrative.  On the “Interface” link, Harris explains the challenge he faced related to creating the interface.  The database includes 3,214 pictures.  Harris wanted an interface that would preserve the story and minimize picture download time.  He definitely achieved the goal. 

Taking each of Bal’s criteria one-by-one:

• Does Whale Hunt contain both an actor and a narrator?  In my opinion, Jonathan Harris is the primary actor, and Michael Moore, through the lens of his camera, is the narrator.
• Does the work contain the distinct levels of text, story, and fabula?  It is commonly expressed that a picture is worth a thousand words.  Although a text does not accompany the pictures, enough information is given in the “statement” that a story naturally forms through the sequential presentation of the data.  Related to the term fabula, I cannot find a definition for this term. 
• Is the content a series of connected events caused or experienced by actors?  Whale Hunt definitely fits this criterion.  The entire narrative relates to the experience of Jonathan Harris.

Based on my application of Mieke Bal’s definition of narrative, Whale Hunt conforms to the model and is a narrative.

Whale Hunt is truly a spectacular experience.  As a person who loves nature and the outdoors but also respects the unique ways of life represented by indigenous peoples, I was spellbound by this piece.  Harris’s trip is the experience of a lifetime-an experience that everyone can share through the database of Whale Hunt.

Like Birds Singing Other Birds’ Songs, Nio empowers the user to cue the sounds and determine how many will play simultaneously.  Each time I clicked and initiated or clicked and froze a chorus, I felt like I was conducting an a cappella group. The music created by playing a combination of the choruses reminds me of Rockapella, but there is a difference.  Nio sounds more like an amalgamation of tribal music and contemporary jazz. I like the clock-like arrangement of the visual cues.  For me, it represents the order of the piece.  As the introduction states, the artist purposed to create layers of expressive, primal sound that he calls music poetry.  That is accomplished.  Just as Maria Mencia associated the visual representation of the birds with the phonemes related to their calls, Jim Andrews applies the same technique.  The letter graphics that accompany the sounds relate to associated phonemes or their syllabic nuclei. 

The “Song Shapes” experience is similar.  The “Round Poem” is created with a counter clockwise motion that begins with syllabic nuclei.  The motion is continuous and, in time, creates a visual image that is basically round but has the dimension associated with layers.  On the left side, there is a slight deviation in the continuum that possibly represents the end of a line in poetry.  As the graphic progresses, the deviation becomes less and less noticeable.  “Ound Poem” presents a continuous, winding ribbon of phonemes that creates a textured blue mass.  For me, the addition of “Mango Approved” bridges the divide between the cold and distant electronic world and the reality of the warm, human blood-coursing-through-our-veins world.  The fact that Jim Andrews would include this link convinces me that he cares about the connection people make with his art, unlike other artists who have an “I don’t give a damn if you get it or not” attitude.  An artist who appreciates the response of a user through the eyes of his kitten is not a cold, distant machine.

“Now and Then” reminds me of x-rays or MRI images.  Generally, in an x-ray, the densest tissue is the darkest in the image.  Modern technology can capture one area of the body from many different angles, like the images in these frames.  For me, this link evokes the idea of the anatomy of a poem. 

The Source Code link tells me a lot about Jim Andrews.  The fact that he makes his code available to the public proves that he is an unselfish artist.  It is inspiring that he is so willing to share his hard work with others. 

By the time I finished exploring this work, I realized something that I greatly appreciate.  I WASN’T A NERVOUS WRECK!  Nio really is an enjoyable experience.  Again, I attribute this effect to the fact that the user maintains control of the pace of the experience and therefore is not forced into sensory overload.  Also, the graphics in the work are orderly and peaceful.  The flowing blue images in the visual poems are calming and remind me of the gentle movement of fish swimming in an aquarium.

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 found some of the compalints interesting while reading the blogs on Young-Hae Chang’s hypertexts. One that really stuck out was when somone said it “made me feel stressed and anxious.” this comment was said as a negative towards the piece. but i found this interesting becuase i feel it shows how well the piece works. the mixture of the fast paced words and music are suppose to convey these feelings to the viewer. I think Young-Hae Chang wants you to feel stressed and anxious so you can be put in the place of the characters in “bust down the doors.”

the hypertext works on many levels and the combination of text, pace and music all help to accomplish this effect. if you were to just read the peice as a book it would be completely different. your emotional reaction to it would be lacking because you would be reading the text at your own pace and you would set your own tone to it. But by taking this power away from the reader and by adding things like music and flashing text the power is given to the machine and your emotional reaction to it is elavated, making you feel stressed and anxious. i just thought it interesting that what someone didn’t like aobut the piece was what the creator wanted the person to get from it.

“Birds Singing Other Birds’ Songs” was a breath of fresh air to me amidst so many hypertexts that stretch your mind and vision to the peripheral. It was a relief to find that I was more in control of this hypertext than any of the others we have recently done. It could hardly be considered overwhelming in the face of Young-Hae Chang’s fast-paced works that leave me feeling as stressed as finding out all my financial aid had been revoked or something. The hypertext games just had so many other distracting features I found it difficult  to get past the first level without getting stuck in my own frustration about the “deeper” meaning of the task at hand.

The foreward of “Birds Singing Other Birds’ Songs” is very informative and you can see right away that there was a lot of thought, consideration, and research involved in the creation of this hypertext. I like that this explanation is given and we are not left to fend for ourselves as is the norm with Nelson. I like that this hypertext is not meant to confuse you, but instead wants you to appreciate the art and techniques themselves. The texts that fly across the page correlate with the bird sounds you chose to play. It is perhaps a much more soothing form of Young-Hae Chang’s use of music and pace of words. But this is instead formatted to move across and around the screen in a more artistic, peaceful, and correlating way. The sounds and texts rely on each other, the bird sounds being altered as the text bumps along with other bird sound text. You can see how some bird calls remain in form, only being altered by the inclination of sound within its fixed form, while others flow from chaos to be merged together, and even others fall a part with the clickclucking of sound. It is interactive in that you get to chose which bird songs are being sung, how many are sung and overlapped at once, and when and if you want certain songs to stop.

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.

I tend to not like the fast pace of Young-Hae Chang’s hypertexts. The constant flashing of words at such rapid speeds and the black and white block lettering leave me feeling as if I am asking for a seisure to be granted to me. I find these hypertexts leaving me feeling stressed and anxious. Although there is slightly more going on than in “Bust down the Doors!” which only adds more strain to my being, I do tend to prefer All Fall Down over “Bust Down the Doors!”. The music gives it a much more cheery feel and instead of being entirely stressed out about the text the music aids in giving the hypertext a more “game-ish” feel. I want to be able to read as much as possible more as a competition for myself than out of music instilled fear which I found as one of my main motives when studying “Bust Down the Doors!”. Flipping the colors of the text and the background also gave the text a more positive feel and helps in understanding what the text is actually saying better. Upon first viewing it in class I was included in the group that had to watch this top part. It felt almost as if the text was lyrics to the music playing. The text moved with the music and it seemed as if it had the same amount of syllables as notes in the music. The structure of the text and the way it flashes, moves, and disappears at such a rapid rate gives off a sense of chaos, the inability to gain control, at the hands of the elements presented to you, and confusion.

Originally, I thought that the text was lyrics to the music I pictured a little banjo band sitting outside a stoop clapping their hands to the music, with the “Ah, Yah, Yup, Right, uh-huh’s” being sung words of agreement to the main lyrics/singer. Then I got the little banjo band image out of my head and I thought that the black background with white text seemed to be a commentary on what the phrase proceeding it in white background and black text was saying. The text starts out playful but as it became a little less light-hearted and instead kind of crazy and weird, the image of a crazy person saying these things popped into my head. The phrases were all so nonsensical yet still correlated in some strange way. You always hear about how crazy people sometimes have extraordinary mental capacities and can process some things in ways that no other human can and that is kind of the feeling I got from what I imagined the speaker of the text to be. I finally came to the conclusion after sifting through all of my initial guesses that it seems as if it is one speaker blaming himself on mistakes he himself has made, and humanity as a whole has made.

Rather quickly though the text begins to take on a different tone. It gets kind of mean and vulgar. It says something positive or cute, reminiscent of playfulness  or cute eye catching phrases like “beautiful town”, but then follows it with things such as “too damn late”. The text mentions some girl looking drunk and good in red lipstick, her looking good even as she falls down drunk and how “you” never even spoke to her, “you” fool.

It gets faster and faster to the point where really it becomes nearly impossible for me to read the black background white text, and instead only the white background black text. the text continues with negativity and talks about emails falling down, servers falling down.. everything that could possibly fall down is mentioned to do so. Basically, the demise of everything humanity puts its trust in is just falling down. No sunshine, lose your mind, flame out… these are few of the phrases that make me think of nothing but the end of hope and complete loss of faith.

So then I went back and read the bottom part of the page as it scrolled at a soft and steady pace across the bottom of the scene. The text is much more poetic and thoughtful and you can see the speaker is distraught and deeply emotional over the loss or being unable to obtain this women. He writes about her thoughtfully and carefully about the way he longs for her and the things he notices about her.  But he also writes about himself as well, “have you ever felt if you be youself just like they tell you and it isn’t good enough”. This section seems to be the logical stable side of the speaker that gives some explanation to what it was that ticked him and sent him in the crazy uncencored downward spiral we see in the text above.