Electronic Literature

"An examination of the theory and practice surrounding the genre of electronic literature and exploration of its major works and authors."

Reminder

Remember that on Monday you are turning in two versions of your video elit piece: a web-friendly .mov that is 320 x 240 and a full quality version. Please do not try to email me your work. You must put it on a CD/DVD. IF you need a CD or DVD, I have some to provide you.

--Dene

posted by: grigar at 02/29/08 09:00 | link | comments |

Elit Works Featuring Video

"After Persephone"
by Ingrid Anderson
http://www.poemsthatgo.com/gallery/winter2001/persephone/after_persephone.htm

"The Bedpan"
by Janet Buck
http://www.bornmagazine.org/projects/bedpan/popup_flash.html

"Cruising"
by Ingrid Anderson
http://www.poemsthatgo.com/gallery/spring2001/crusing-launch.html

"Dervish Flowers"
by Nicolaus Chauss
http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/feature/flyingpuppets/dervish.htm

How To Survive Night Class
by Jennifer Kocher
http://www.bornmagazine.org/projects/nightclass/

"Sky"
by Christine Manning
http://www.bornmagazine.org/projects/sky/

posted by: grigar at 02/19/08 22:00 | link | comments |

Great Jobs!

I want to say again how wonderful your first works of electronic literature are. All of you turned out such great projects. Some of you talked to me about plans you had for the work if you were give more time. So, I would like to invite you to continue work on them for submission to the Yellow Cat Gallery, if you would like.

There were three URLs that did not work. I am guessing it is because I cannot decipher your handwriting. As soon as I get the correct address, I will post these as well.

You may be proud today. Thanks.

--Dene

posted by: grigar at 02/13/08 21:51 | link | comments |

WII

Hello Dr. Grigar and WSUV gamers,
I'm a features writer for The Columbian and am working on a story about Wii-related injuries. I know it's great for getting people active and has also been used in rehabilitation for stroke and accident victims, but we have heard that some people have fallen or accidentally hit another player or strained a muscle playing Wii. Have any of you gotten hurt or woke up really sore after a rigorous round of Wii? If so, please contact me as soon as possible. My direct line is 360-735-4507 and my e-mail is maryann.albright@columbian.com. I hope to get this story wrapped up by the end of this week.
Thank you,
Mary Ann Albright

Mary Ann Albright
Features Writer
The Columbian
360-735-4507

posted by: grigar at 02/11/08 13:02 | link | comments (2) |

Web Instructions

Go to this site and follow the directions for setting up your space on the WsUV webserver:

http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/vis/vit/webinstructions.html

posted by: grigar at 02/11/08 12:09 | link | comments |

Web Instructions

Aaron Thorne and the wonderful folks at VIT created this quick and easy directions for setting up your webspace on the university server. It can be found at http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/vis/vit/webinstructions.html

We will use this document on Monday for getting all of you up and running with uploading files. Please make sure you have filled out the request form at https://mail.vancouver.wsu.edu/accounts/, which I asked you to do in class on Wednesday. Then walk over to the Drop In Computer Lab in the VMMC building and PICK UP YOUR UNIX INFO. Have that sheet in hand for Monday.

Be sure to have your project in a stage that can be worked on during class. We will spend Monday in studio mode.

See you then!

Dene

posted by: grigar at 02/07/08 15:39 | link | comments |

Wednesday

On Wednesday we will work more with Dreamweaver. I will show you how to make an image map and how to insert media like videos, animations, and sound files into a webpage using Dreamweaver.

--Dene

posted by: grigar at 02/05/08 19:55 | link | comments |

Deena Larsen's Entry

Blog entry
Deena Larsen

Throughout history, there have been brilliant composers--people able to express complex emotions and ideas in music. But music has only been able to go as far as the insturments would allow. Bach was able to write fugues (where one instrument follows another in a counterpoint) because there were enough instruments capable of producing the notes he needed. Imagine if Bach had lived during the Stone Age when he would only have had a drum or two and maybe a pipe at his disposal. Or if Bach lived now--what would Bach do with a Moog synthesizer? When people create, they create with the tools at hand. Of course, it is a lot more complicated than that, with many other factors, including the zietgiest and the undercurrent of thoughts and likes and dislikes of a culture and people at that time and place. Imagine what kind of welcome Phillip Glass would have gotten in King Henry IVs court--even if he did use only flutes, organs, and violas?{side discussion}

What on earth, you are now asking yourselves, does this have to do with hypertext? Well, it is easier to see how music is engrained in a culture and in technology than writing. After all, we didn't expect Bach to just go out and invent violins (we have other experts to do that). We don't expect writers to go out and invent language, although some have done that, too. All of this is a long winded, windy way of asserting that creating hypertext is only really possible with the inventions we have now and the culture that is willing to think contrapuntally and beyond (multipuntally?).{Objection, your Honor!} There have been people creating hypertexts before now, but their contemporaries regarded them as mad. Now that the conditions are right, we have seen many fine writers popping up in hypertext. As in music, we can't really point to one work or one invention or one instrument of connectivity and say : this started the whole thing.{Back in my youth...} And you can't keep hypertexts in a well defined box as you can sortof kinda almost do with music-- the hypertexts insist on going feral.

So, after all that, what about creating hypertexts? Ahh, now we see where the analogy to music diverges. In music, instruments create sound, and you play with sound. In hypertext, instruments create possibilities, and you play with possibilities. This is like playing Calvinball, where the rules of the game are actually to create the rules of the game--an instant expansion of symphonies and fugues and raps and traps into infinity and beyond. Hypertext writers not only fill the work with meaning and language and images and sound and video and semantic navigation{what the @#$ is semantic navigation?}, they explain what the work is and they create the format of the work. The fun starts here {but does not end here}.

When I think about creating a work, I usually create the structure that will best convey the meaning that I want. For example, I wanted a very formal encounter with an incomprehensible lover/firefly/stranger/death/. So I elaborated on Raymond Queneau's Cent mille milliards de poèmes in Firefly, where I have 6 stanzas with 5 lines (for 180 degrees of separation between the two main characters/life and death/insect and human/alien and familiar). This cycle shows that even if we approach the matter of mutual incomprehensibility from other angles, we are no closer to breaching the wall of alienness between lovers/life and death/human and nonhuman/me and you). I have not really calculated out how many billions of poems are possible from this, but it is probably along the magnitude of Queneau's, as each line has 6 possible lines.{Warning}

Or I stumble upon a structure and ask what meaning it wants. For example, I am fascinated by ideographs (kanjis) and the idea that the image itself conveys the meaning of the word. So I created a few of what I call "kanji-kus," which extrapolate the meaning of the kanji. For example, Children's Time shows the character for child as a brightly colored, running child, arms outstretched, ready to slide and laugh.

Hypertext allows me to tell stories multipuntally as well, and explain who I am a bit to others. I was legally blind (lasik is a miracle!) until I was about 35. Because I did not see faces when I was growing up, I do not recognize emotions on people's faces. I also do not recognize people (the fancy word is prosopagnosia). Yet I have been forced to function in a world where people actually recognize other people in a matter of nanoseconds. (It takes me a lot longer, usually about the time the conversation is done I will have amassed enough clues to figure out who you are.) So I wrote a story about a simple incident in my life and told it from the point of view of someone blind in a world where all people are blind, someone who has just gained sight in a world where everyone has always been able to see, and s! omeone who has just gained the ability to detect heartbeats and pulse rhythms in a world where everyone has always been able to gauge each other's emotions by their heartbeats. Each of these episodes shows how someone without these skills is lost in a social world where the skills are taken for granted. (And yes, I did write this in a fit of pique after the episode in the sighted world happened to me{at work}.) This story is one of the few I've written that could possibly be told without hypertext. But the links and navigational structure allow readers to go through the text and compare experiences in a way that I think would be much more intiutive and explain much more than a simple recounting of the episode three times. {Free lunch}

But you wanted to know how to create hypertexts. Well, go to someone else for a discussion of tools .{Tool rant} Basically, you have to sculpt something out of words--you have to look at the three (and sometimes four) dimensional aspect of the thing you are creating. Hypertext isn't just about forking paths, it is and can be much more than that. You as hypertext author not only see where the trails and nodes are, you see the entire map at once. You have to envision your reader embarking on any one of the nodes and having this information --but not that information--when she reads the next node or follows this path versus that path. (I have identified at least 500 ways you can read Disappearing Rain. The only way I could follow all these paths myself was to put the whole thing up on a wall a! nd follow the connections with specially colored threads. I then had to take 3 months off of work and do nothing but remember all of the links and all of the possible readings and who followed what and when. And then I tried to edit it....and I confess, I missed a few spots...{and now I've forgotten}) So you have to approach it holistically as well as atomistically.

Ok ok, now that I've scared you guys, come back here! There are ways you can create hypertexts for cheap and do a grand job of it. It is better if you don't start with any idea in mind, but free associate to create your hypertext. Get a large piece of posterboard and some pictures. Then get a bunch of embrodery thread or different color connectors (I've used straws, grass, empty long sugar packets, tape, colored strips of paper, yarn, and wet noodles.) Put the pictures on the posterboard and arrange them in some way that works for you. Then write about the pictures. Put the writing on the posterboard and then make connections--show them with your different color connectors. Then you can ! either post this on your door for your parents to worry about your sanity {my mother actually wondered}or you can type it up, use HTML for the links, and voila. A hypertext. Do this a few times and you will begin to get the ideas of semantic linking embedded in your psyche. Be creative. Have fun.

This is probably a longer winded explanation than you wanted, but now I am curious. What do you think sets a hypertext apart from other kinds of writings? What is "permissible" or even encouraged in a hypertext that is not in other kinds of writing? {not your 3 paragraph essay} How has texting, twittering, blogging, changed hypertext and other writings? What kinds of hypertexts have you seen--and what have you attempted to create? What works for you? What doesn't?
Side Streets

{side discussion} This would be a great place for a spirited argument about what makes up and influences creative thought--how bound is creativity to the culture? Then of course, we need to segue into the relationships between a culture and its creative products, and someone should then have a side argument about how long it would take before King Henry IVchained up Phillip Glass as a madman and how long it would take before we committed King Henry IV on a 72 hour hold as he posed a danger to our society, but all of this would probably not advance the class discussion at hand very far..

{Objection, your Honor!}The hyperlink in this sentence is a really sneaky way of asserting that we can only have hypertext with the web. The author of this piece vehemently disagrees with this underhanded attempt to redefine hypertext, and is going to have a really good talking to with herself about that nefarious bit of hypertextual rhetoric. Dene, whose pieces engage far more interesting technologies than the web is also probably going to argue this point.

{Back in my youth...} I'll volunteer a few of the early works--Izme Pass and Storyspace embody the node/link paradigm in the early 90s. Jim Rosenburg's experiments with asyntactic poetry stretch back to the early 60s. When I was getting my MA in English, I interviewed most of the people we knew about writing fictional hypertext at the time: Carolyn Guyer, Michael Joyce, Mark Bernstein, William Dickey, and Stuart Moulthrop {where are they now?} . Now I couldn't list all of the authors if I wanted to.

{what the @#$ is semantic navigation?}Ahhh, semantic navigation. My favorite tool, and one that does not translate into other types of writing. You need to consider all the parts of a link (the linked on word, the navigational method, and the linked to text) as holders for meaning. For example, in Ferris Wheels, the link on "out there" reaches to a possible suicide. This embues the possible suicide node with a deeper meaning--the narrator wants to explore what is out there by dying. It also does a reverse embuing of meaning--by coloring the text with an additional layer of seeing infinity-- seeing life and death (Even though death was never mentioned in the first node). Further, the departure point is highlighted, and the anchor text is made special. What would the change in meaning be if I had linked to the possible suicide node from the words "by surprise" in the first paragraph?

{but does not end here} We have never embodied the full visions of what is possible--from Vannevar to Ted, there are too many real life issues like copyrights and dead links.

{Warning}Getting the meaning to remain constant and or slippery but still retain meaning was a bitch. Don't try this at home unless you want to spend six months or so looking at a tiny grid of lines...

{at work}(I'm a technical writer for the government by trade--you can't make a living off of hypertext, so don't even try.) Also, hypertext writing takes longer than other writing (crafting the links, figuring out all the fiddly bits on the code, etc) so you really do need to make a good living before you even try this stuff. If you are looking for a career in hypertext, may I suggest you get an MBA and own a company and then retire off the profits, or something like that...

{Free lunch}If someone wants to go through the trouble of reading the story linearly, follow the numbers (1.1. , 1.2, 1.3...3.7) and then read the story following links, I'd be grateful for feedback. Let me know if you think it could be/or is even better told linearly and why and I'll buy you lunch.

{Tool rant}All I can say is that the best tools do not yet exist or are expensive. Flash and HTML are the only things we really have right now, but you have to KNOW what you are doing and how you want to link and what you want to do with all the theories of linking and navigation and hypertext-making, as these tools do not provide any intuitive interfaces for this. If you really don't have a complex/multiplex vision of what you want to create and you are playing around, start with Storyspace to play with nodes and links (save early and save often.). Other types of hypertext/electronic literature/digital literature can work with other tools, like text rain or caves or text dancing. B! ut right now, if you are not in a university or other institution with the money for these instruments, it is mighty hard to play with them. If you know someone who is good with programming or flash or video or... hypertext is great way to collaborate.

{and now I've forgotten} It is extremely easy to forget what you were doing in a hypertext piece. A student asked me about the "ending" of the work and where Anna and Amy end up and how Bill met Sophie, and I had to actually reread half the work to figure out what I'd been doing and remember it enough to answer the questions. And to think, once I could have told you every single link, where it went, where it was from, if it was an outside link or an inside link, and on what character trail it was on and what it meant in the whole of the work! (I wish I'd interviewed myself then, or had an imprint of my mind).

{my mother actually wondered} I never did take Disappearing Rain off my walls, mostly because it was being discussed for publication at a major firm but we could never figure out the details of publishing. I was terrified that if I took it off the walls I would forget how to edit it and what the #@!$ I was doing. My mother came down to stay a few days in my apartment after seeing A Beautiful Mind. She saw the threads on the walls, with a bunch of papers and sticky notes and drawings. Then she casually asked if I had had any visits from the CIA lately. So, yes, being taken as a loony is definitely an occupational hazard in hypertext writing--even in our culture that understands these things.

{not your 3 paragraph essay} After all, this hasn't been one of those three paragraph essays where you introduce the topic, talk on it, and then repeat it again...

{where are they now?} Well, William Dickey's hypercard works are still in draft form over my laziness and copyright issues and now we need a translator because hypercard is deader than dead. Micheal Joyce has moved on to other things, but the others are still extremely creative. Creating hypertexts is a lot of work, but you also have to be nimble enough to jump to the newest technology--and figure out all of its complexities and abilities and write to that. But this would be an entire other conversation {link under construction...}

Tour

I wrote this piece to illustrate the types of links you can have in hypertext and explain how to create them.

The first paragraph uses the typically found news/fact links (which I'm grateful to see are being used in the mainstream media.) To write these effectively, think about your audience--what would they need to know for a background in your piece? (In the old days, we used footnotes and references and Cliff notes and now we can just embed these in the text.)

The second paragraph goes a bit farther to use inferential links. These are links where if you don't follow them, you won't get the whole thought. For example: "although some have created their own language" could mean Esperanto or Klingon or another language, but here I really want to say that authors are using language to create so much richness that it becomes another language. So I used the example of James Joyce and forced that to the fore by using the link. Use these kinds of links when you want to get across some idea that is not the mainstay of your argument. You can abuse these links pretty easily, as I have done by inferring that the only tool we have is the World Wide Web.

The third paragraph uses expectations of links and plays with that. We used to do this in allusions and foreshadowings--Eliot is a master at this. Since this is a scholarly blog, you do expect Calvinball to be an explanation. But as this is in a playful mood, I am also linking my allusive phrase to a site for stickers. (If I were a real entreprenuer, I'd figure out a way to get paid for all those through-clicks...)

The links in the next two paragraphs just take you to the works themselves so you can delve deeper and see what I mean. In the old days, you would have to trudge over to the library to read these, assuming they were available. So play to the strengths of the web and direct people to your first level sources. You can even do this to bring in scientific concepts (such as prosopagnosia) when that concept is essential to, but really not relevant to, your point.

If you are afraid your readers will not immediately see the connections (such as doubting someone's sanity because a character in movie has the same odd quirks and is schizophrenic, you can bolster your argument with a side node.

The side nodes, too, should add to the whole of the argument--even when they seem to distract the reader from the main point. These can be used to channel opposition, anticipate arguments, bring in side arguments, go off on even longer trails of tangents, and even just engage the reader's attention. (I'll let you figure out which note does what or if it does that at all).

posted by: grigar at 02/04/08 09:29 | link | comments |