novel – textual media

Coherence / Lialina

Focusing on: Can Coherence Be Saved?

An intriguing read, I tend to agree with the author on most of the points expressed in this article. One theme that is visited repeatedly throughout the text is the idea of hypertext vs. the standard novel. Will hypertext replace novels in the future? Games, hypertext and interactive CD-ROMS are given as examples how they compare to a standard novel but also how they will most likely never replace it.

As stated in the text, most readers “read on” to find out what happens next in a novel, moving linearly, page-by-page, the reader knows what to expect at least in terms of context of a novel. With hypertext and other forms of electronic literature, you have multiple forms as are outlined in the end of the article. Some forms of electronic literature as defined by hypertext immersion, go way off, leaving the reader lost, which in turn relegates that piece of literature to academic study and not for the masses. Spatial immersion would seem a better choice giving the reader some context and control over the text itself. Followed by emotional immersion, which is described allowing the user to choose different outcomes based upon his or her own personal interests.

I have to concur with the conclusion of this piece. Currently, people usually books when they want to read a story. I do not believe interactive textuality is quite there yet in terms of it replacing the book to tell a story. If history to judge, look at the recent products that are best sellers, such as Amazon’s Kindle or Sony’s eBook Reader, these products demonstrate that people still enjoy the concept of a book that can be read linearly. The next logic step may be to incorporate a type of interactive textuality within the pages of an electronic book; this would help to bridge the gap between a regular novel and selective interactivity.

Focusing on My Boyfriend Came Back from the War:

In Olia Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, the work itself has more context than Hegirascope in that the text and imagery relate to the title of the work. However, after the first viewing of this site it appears to follow the hypertext immersion model, as one can traverse multiple paths where one can easily get lost. Like Hegirascope, some paths lead to empty pages such as the following URLs: http://www.teleportacia.org/war/150.htm and http://www.teleportacia.org/war/152.htm.

Unlike Hegirascope, My Boyfriend Came Back from the War seems to differ in a few ways. First, the work appears to be black and white throughout the entire piece, where Hegirascope was a mixture of colors. Hegirascope is a simplistic online text in terms of what one can do with HTML. With My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, it utilizes the characteristics not found in Hegirascope. First, it used blinking text, where I do not recall seeing in Hegirascope- although I did not traverse every page on Hegirascope. Second, it uses images where Hegirascope only used text. Third is the use of frames in addition to allowing the user to traverse further by clicking in the frames themselves. Hegirascope was a set of standard HTML pages that one could traverse but it did not take advantage of any advanced HTML features.

Hegirascope took a different approach. There appears to be some sort of randomness accompanied with an automatic meta re-direct to the next page. Second, in some cases the text is the same color as the background. Third, the links around the text also seems to change if the same page is re-visited at a later time. My Boyfriend Came Back from the War is more interactive and coherent than Hegirascope in that the user controls his or her path through the work itself and need not worry about the page changing automatically.

Orson Whales and Evocation

As Orson Whales guides viewers on a scrambled hunt for the white whale, it carries through different meanings. To watch it straight through gives only a scattered narrative, almost like a fragmented stream of consciousness. Still, anybody familiar with the story of Moby Dick can gather its intentions as a video. As the images cycle and hit their cues along side the music, everything comes together to form the end result. Still, however, the parts of the whole can tell–and no doubt have told–their own stories, from the very literal novel, serving now as a canvas, to the song, setting a tone and a tempo.

But these separate stories are not all told simultaneously, nor do they converge to tell the same story. Instead, they all come together to form a new journey. This is a path that is unchanging in its presentation, but likely not the same for any two viewers. As such, the majority of the video’s impact is, I feel, evocative. To those more familiar with the novel’s plot, this may be a gripping hunt for the white whale, riddled with vengeance and music fueling rage and confusion. to those that haven’t read the work, the video still combines various arts to produce different feelings and interpretations.

Though the work is unchanging, unlike the other two works, it is much the same in that interpretation from one person to another is likely always different. All the various elements come together to form an experience that anyone can access, but that nobody can experience like anybody else. It is the difference between seeing the video, hearing its music, and then stepping back and taking it all in. The cumulative effort of all the different mediums transforms a song, or a book, or a series of paintings into a collaborative work, and takes all the evocative meaning from those works and combines them into an amorphous thought, which can then be molded to any viewers’ tastes.

Blog 1: Focus on Firefly

Overall in comparison:

Jabberwocky relies on random moving bits of language and Orson Whales utilizes an animation-like presentation, both of which seem to be created to entertain or entice the user and try to make the user make sense of the work. However, if the user is not interested, he or she may not delve into it any further. In the assigned reading, it was noted that while electronic literature may be the new and next best thing compared to regular printer literature; it also noted that one must not become misguided in the “media” itself, otherwise the meaning is lost.

Representational meaning:

Firefly is contextually based like a book, the user interface is shaped like a novel and it has arrows to flip to the next page. There are clear instructions directly to the right on how to navigate the piece, giving the work a sense of direction that gives the user an idea of what to expect. While the work itself can express many stories depending upon on the selections of the user, the interface is somewhat normalized compared to Jabberwocky for example.

Evocative meaning:

When the user first loads the page they are presented with a nice daytime picture looking through the woods at a nice patch of grass. Soon thereafter, it becomes very dark and the title is displayed “A tale told in 180 degrees of separation.” The animation change from day to night could represent a degree of separation even before diving further into the content. The other question or detail I ponder is the “fog and green light,” is that represented by the ghostly green image backdrop throughout Firefly? It appears to be décor for the tale itself but is it supposed to represent something or someone? In the very first page that is loaded, the “green fog” appears on the right side. When the user moves to the next page, it is flipped to the left side as if one was looking at the “green fog” in a mirror. When you click to go to the next page, the fog is flipped to the left side. Is this intentional? Is there anything to be gleamed from the change of the fog backdrop throughout the tale and that it stays on the left side all the way to the end and does not change after the first page? The color also stood out to me, nearly all the text and components of the user-interface are some shade of green and “fog and green light” is also stated in the first part of the tale. What is the relationship between the color green with this author? Is there one? Even the text on the side of the page, which is the instructional text, not a part of the work, is also green.

Blog 1: An Introduction to New Media

In class, we were introduced to the concept of New Media. It is a medium in which there are seemingly endless possibilities. What exactly qualifies as New Media, anyway? I mean, you could make the argument it could range from scanning a book in upside down to personal photos. The three examples we were shown today were just the very beginning of the many, many different avenues we will be taken down in the coming weeks.

Perhaps the most fascinating example of what’s to come was Alex Itin’s “Orson Whales”. It was a personification of today’s “mash-up” culture, combining Herman Melville’s masterpiece of a novel “Moby Dick” with original artwork, a dramatic reading (and some drunken liquor commerical outtake soundbytes) from Orson Welles, and a song from arguably the greatest band of all time; Led Zeppelin’s “Moby Dick”. Now, on the surface, this may not sound like the most satisfying experience, but it truly was a sight to behold. The timing of the images shown and the rhythms and speech patterns were synced to perfection and made for an exciting 4 minutes.

This begs the question, what was Itin trying to tell his viewing audience? After all, we naturally make the assumption that all art has at least some meaning behind it, whether it be representational or evocative. Representation meaning is defined as the meaning that the work shows or tells its audience directly. In this instance, I think the message was that art is subjective. Now, it may not sound like much and I may be way off, but I think this piece was his way of showing that you can take elements from many walks of life and throw them together to create something new and, in this case, something special. This piece was a medium for him to showcase how to make art using New Media.

In terms of evocative meaning, I walked away from this wondering about the rights to art. Does he have to credit all the original artists? Is this indeed something new? Sure, the paintings were his, but he was not responsible for either audio recording or the text. That’s what I walked away with, which leads me to believe this qualifies as the evocative meaning obtained from “Orson Whales”.