HiDiLi

I Thought It Was A Map...

2006-04-20T22:26:00.000-07:00

When I first saw My Name Is Captain, Captain, I thought it was supposed to be a map. Then we talked about it in class and came up with all these different options. I thought I'd throw one more wild pitch out there because I was reading online everything I could find about this piece (which really isn't very much, we said many more interesting things in class).

One of the most interesting things I found was the emphasis on Morse code. I wanted to kind of expand on what I read a bit. Some people talked about how Morse code was significant to this piece, not only for it's visual aspect and it's relation to traveling and flying and S.O.S. emergency calls, but to the fact that both Morse code and My Name Is Captain, Captain depend on technology to function. At some point in time Morse code was a very new and brilliant invention, a new piece of technology. To use it, one was required to possess a telegraph machine, right? Just like with this CD, we need a computer to use it at all. We need a monitor to view it, and all the wires and technology that go into making our computer and monitor work. I found this connection interesting, but I then I had another interesting thought:

Though it's true that both use technology, one requires (I think) or uses sound, and one has no involvement with sound at all. I thought this was a kind of significant point, but I really don't know why. If we would have heard Morse code while the plane flew by, then would we have been irritated? Would we have thought it was cool? I don't really know, I think I might have been irritated if I couldn't turn it off. Or what if there was a plane sound? That's less irritating, but maybe Judd folks thought it wouldn't really add anything to the piece. (Changing subjects now)

How about the whole lack of sound? Why? Why no sound? Are we to focus on the visual only? Is it important that we see everything and hear, feel, taste, and smell nothing? We get only one sense aroused right? Isn't that a little bit odd? Especially because we do very little while viewing the poem, though there are certain interactions. (Which, might I add, most of the reviewers/commentors/interviewers failed to mention/missed. A couple would mention the table, but say nothing of the drawer, only of the rising/falling letters/numbers. None of them seemed to find that. There were also some that said something to the tune of "this requires no interaction at all, and no other programs can be run" which isn't true (about the no interaction) the drawers need to be opened. The plane's dit-dah-dit needs to passed over. There's definitely some interaction...all right, back to my topic) We watch the poem for the most part, at first with very little color, and then, with the aviators and the colored box tops, we get SOME color. Most of the stimulation seems to occur through the movement. Movement requires energy, which is something watching this poem requires none (physical-wise) of. So why all the movement? Why so little color? Why no sound? Why so few pictures? Would pictures be too stimulating?

One thing a reviewer noted was that "His endless way" settles over the line "She was and may still be." Amelia references? God? Lindberg? I don't know. I don't really know the significance of this, but one reviewer brings it up, but doesn't explain it. Does it have to do with the story of lost love? Maybe the reviewer is just insane. (Jessica Pressman is the reviewer, by the way)

Why are there 2 little holes on the viewer screen of the pilots with the toy planes? I was wondering if the fact that pilots are "playing" with planes has any relevance. It could, because maybe Amelia was toying with fate, flying so far, so early in flight history? Maybe that baby was lost because the family was toying with its life. Maybe Judd & Lori think that all pilots play around in a way? I have no concrete stuff here, just ideas. As for the two holes, maybe it has to do with eyes. Maybe they're so we see a big piece and two tiny pieces. Big picture as opposed to the small picture (short term), like with the execution of someone with maybe some of the evidence being questionable (which I don't really know if that's how it really was).

So we came up with, that viewer thing, from when we were kids... http://images.forbes.com/media/lifestyle/2005/12/02/4_1202toys.jpg which let me say I think might be dead on. See the two small holes? And the big thing in the center? The big thing in the center doesn't show the images, but the holes are in the right places...And the color is red...the image could just be showing something aged, and maybe showing nothing in the big hole and only a little something in the small holes wouldn't really have worked well for viewing. So maybe that's exactly the thought they were going for though.

Then there’s the Venn diagram. (Which I found spelled with “nn” and “n,” and Google didn't have a problem with each) http://www.stat.yale.edu/Courses/1997-98/101/venn2.gif. This one also seems kind of significant because at some point there is the section in the middle that seems to obviously represent that crossover area. But at that time there are no pictures, so maybe at one point the poem is representing a Venn, in trying to show how things crossover, (like their medium, which is writing, a traditionally non-digital thing throughout time, but now is featured on a computer...CD) or maybe the crossover of the words, or stories, since there are 3, and there are 3 sections to a Venn diagram (as well as three holes in the Viewmaster).

Then maybe the Viewmaster section is the audience looking. We are looking at pilots playing and joking with "toy" planes. We're "seeing" something, realizing something maybe. I don't know, but maybe it just means both things, as Judd and Lori tried to find things that fit their general image ideas.

I think maybe a map, glasses, eyes, the MasterCard logo, the woman (maybe not so much, I can't seem to get any of my other friends on the bandwagon on that one, just the one chi....girl...girl...I said GIRL Sheela!), the dials or instruments in (or on the instrument panel of) a plane. I also though, after I kept being reminded of the Morse code by reviewers, thought "hey, maybe it looks like a telegraph," and I'll be damned if I didn't find a telegraph that kind of looked like their poem layout from the top view http://www.greatdreams.com/telegraph.jpg! I thought that looked kind of like it with the two circles and kind of tiny gap between (which is different, being that the two circles don't overlap, but this was the only picture of this kind of telegraph I could find on a couple of search engines, so maybe there are other, similar looking telegraphs, with closer together circles, and maybe Judd saw one of those), and I thought it did look like the poem and since the Morse was so significant (to these reviewers), I thought I'd throw that out there.

Well, I hope people took a break at some point during reading this. I was just trying my best to let all my thoughts and comments out at once. I tried to include those links to spice it up, I don't know if you have to copy them or you can just click them. Hope they all work when clicked on. I think I was a blog or two behind, so I wanted to write something thorough! See you guys next week. – AJ

Oh, and Jessica’s review is linked here: http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/feature/morrissey_talley/.

The Joys of a Double-Braided Text

2006-04-04T11:11:00.000-07:00

In chapter seven of Writing Machines, Katherine Hayles discusses the importance of allowing personal experience to inform and transform texts. She argues that the application of broad literary theories through the specificity of personal perspectives will allow “scholars to read old texts in new ways and seek out new texts that cannot be adequately understood without the theory” (Hayles 106). This was a refreshing take on literary criticism, a form that can be thought of as being very impersonal, scholarly and aloof – an obscure analysis floated down from the Ivory Tower. I wonder if what Hayles is proposing might be something along the lines of the gritty analyses especially noticeable in the fields of post-colonial and post-modern literature. Could Candace Fujikane’s response to Blu’s Hanging be one such example? If memory serves me correctly, that response combines the formal structures of literary theory with the personal realities of racial stereotypes and cultural attitudes.

Hayles goes on to propose that “now is a good time for a double-braided text where the generalities of theory and the particularities of personal experience can both speak, though necessarily in different voices. A text where both voices can be heard, at first very different but then gradually coming closer until finally they are indistinguishable” (106). It occurred to me that this is precisely what Hayles does herself. In Writing Machines she switches back and forth between the first and third person voice, and it is easy to hear one in the other. It would seem that House of Leaves could also be considered a “double-braided text.” Johnny’s voice and experiences inform Zampano’s writing (in the form of extensive footnotes), while Zampano’s experiences seem mirrored in Johnny’s personal/mental breakdown. So far however, the voices are very distinct from one another (both visually and audibly), and since I haven’t finished the book yet, I’m not sure if they ever merge to the point of being indistinguishable.

Ultimately, the form of analysis that Hayles discusses seem to speak to the possibility that literary criticism can be both scholarly and personal. It can represent the best of academic thinking with the best of complex realities, offering a richness and depth that is accesible to those of us who choose not to reside in the Ivory Tower!

Last Week's Post This Week - Fun Stuff!

2006-04-03T01:29:00.000-07:00

House of Leaves presents a puzzle for its readers. The layers of fictional characters give the book a “real” feel and left me trying to sort out what was what. Part of my experience had to do with the author’s use of editors, a fictional author, and a narrator who used footnotes extensively. The use of different typefaces added to the sense of credibility of the story. Even though I knew everything from the title page on was fiction, I found myself getting drawn into the story and started wondering about some of the external sources that were cited. The fact that some of publications mentioned are real, The New York Times for example, gave the story a sense of weight, made it real. I stopped reading on page 72 and flipped to Appendix II-E. Later, I noticed the checkmark in the bottom right corner of page 97, the signal that Johnny’s mother asked him to use if he gets her letters. This threw me because page 97 is from Zampano’s notes. Is Zampano Johnny?

After reading Hayles’ analysis of the book, I thought I might have enjoyed the rest of the book better if I hadn’t read it. At the same time, having read it after reading part of House of Leaves I had a better grasp of the nuances the book. More importantly, I gained a better grasp of the ideas that Hayles talks about in her writing. I find her writing has a little too much jargon for my taste. Even with Hayles analysis in hand, I found this text ergodic. The layers of characters and the length asides - what did Thumper have to do with this story? - drew me in and at the same time required my complete attention so I wouldn’t miss too many clues or signs or symbols.

This was a dense book, I need to add it to my re-read list.

House of Leaves: Unholy discourse

2006-03-21T16:44:00.000-08:00

I have never read a novel with so many levels of discourse, nor such explicit narration. At its heart, we have the story of Navidson and his family, though our experience of those events is shaped by Navidson's film editing. Furthermore, we don't actually see this film, but are fed only excerpts from critical literature, which describe the scenes only as evidence for a certain reading of the text. All of this is assembled by Zampano--so much commentary on a film compiled by a blind man! But it has been organized from fragments by Truant, who also reveals up front that the entire Navidson video is a fabrication. Truant presents Zampano's work as nearly unchanged (except perhaps for the addition of the word "water" before "heater"). Yet, from his footnotes we see that Truant is practically a compulsive storyteller (aka, bullshit artist; ie, unreliable narrator). As frosting on the cake, we have the nagging question of how much change was affected by the anonymous "Editors".

Hayles does a nice job pointing out how each of these levels of narration have also affected a change in medium, from film, to scholarly article, to a box of notes, to a novel.

Also, we are constantly aware of the narration. (This book reminds me of The French Lieutenant's Woman, which is my only other major experience with this sort of thing.) Footnotes inherently break our reading of the text for the purpose of commenting on that text. (Though in House of Leaves, it's so easy to slide from the text into a footnote!) Each level of added narration comments on how the previous narrators were unreliable or biased, adding levels of their own experience to the mix. And the text wanders away from the story for pages at a time to make an abstract argument for a certain reading--such as the discussion of the mythological and symbolic nature of echo.

Certainly a very dense and somewhat unsettling read!

Mind Games

2006-03-21T15:43:00.000-08:00

For me, HOUSE OF LEAVES, acts as a complex and intriguing set of mind games - a literary work that forces me to question my perceptions of what is real and what is imaginary. Never before have I read a book that tricks me so thoroughly into believing that the characters and events are real, only to have me reminding myself in the next minute that it is all fictitious. It is not so much the descriptions of darkness nor the dangers of nothingness that frighten me the most, but rather the ability of words on a page (words on these pages) to so thoroughly mess with my mind!

Katherine Hayles refers to this phenomena as it relates specifically to the “realness” of the characters. She notes that “the text emphasizes that people within the represented world – Will Navidson and Karen Green on one level, Zampano on another, and Johnny Truant on yet another – exist only because they have been recorded” (116). My relationship to the various characters – i.e. my willingness to believe that they are real – is precisely determined by the unusual nature of what is recorded on paper, who is recording it and how. I believe Will Navidson and Karen Green to be real because some character name Zampano dedicated his life to writing about them and referring to others who wrote about them. I believe Zampano is real because some character named Johnny Truant has found his writing and writes in turn about him. I believe Johnny Truant to be real because some anonymous authors have written about him and his desire to publish his writings as well as Zampano’s. Each of their writings – distinguished by location on the page, typeface and the addition of footnotes – further confirms the apparent validity of what they are writing about.

This cycle is one that transforms the traditional “unreliable narrator” into a “remediated narrator” (116-117). And it is the multiplicity of these remediated narrators that tricks me into believing, almost unconsciously, in the reality of what I am reading. While HOUSE OF LEAVES is definitely not one of my all-time favorites, I do recognize the value of a literary work that remediates reality so completely.

Creative Projects

2006-03-20T23:01:00.000-08:00

I'm hoping you've all been thinking about what you'd like to accomplish with your creative projects for this class. We'll go around and hear from each of you in class tomorrow. I'd like to emphasize the importance of archiving your materials as you generate them, even early drafts/attempts/test-runs you don't especially like. You will be asked to account for your process at the end of the semester, and having a collections of previous versions and "cutting-room floor" sweepings will help you describe your trajectory and assess your final project in relation to your initial goals.

I'll refer you to Acid-Free Bits, an excellent resource for digital artists and writers that focuses especially on the problem of preservation. It's co-authored by Noah Wardrip Fruin, who is the editor of First Person, and Nick Monfort, a writer of interactive fiction and author of Twisty Little Passages, a critical book about IF.

I'll also invite you to take a look at one of my creative projects. Ask Me for the Moon is a combination of a poetry chapbook and a critical essay on Waikiki. It appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of The Iowa Review Web, but I'm giving you the direct link to my site to save you having to hunt through the IRW archive.

comments for "New or Recycled?" by Michael

2006-03-20T17:06:00.000-08:00

Michael-

I'm still in awe on how far the design of your site has evolved from its initial stages!

Navigation/Organization: I love the organization of your site--how you incorporated different ways to navigate through the lexias, with the navigational bar on the side and the links w/in the text. They seem to complement eachother-one is good for the type of person who needs some kind of linear organization, and the other for the type of person who doesn't mind the nature of hypertext (in that you are able to jump around from screen to screen). I'm kind of embarrased to say that it took me several visits to realize that the green and blue (non-underlined) links are activated by the rolling-over of the mouse. (I kept thinking...did I accidentally click the mouse? That's certain evidence that I'm an "old dog"!) I also like how you incorporated the definitions with the red links--it cuts out on the time spent waiting for a new window to open.

Content: You provided a very deep analysis of Hermeticon in relation to the philosophy of the past (Bruno) and present (Hayles). You also discussed concepts I never would have came up with on my own, such as conning, consumerism, alchemy...etc. There was one part that I found a little confusing...on the "Fifthly" screen, you start off with, "The importance of this can be seen with a few kewstrokes." I was a little confused by what you mean by "this," is it the importance of the screen capture/what you captured in it? Or is it another concept you discussed in one of the previous screens?

All in all, besides what I mentioned above and a few spelling/grammar errors, I think you provided an excellent, insightful analysis of Hermeticon and covered topics an average net-surfer would not pick up on. I don't think what I said will spark any new ideas but I hope you feel very accomplished in a job well done!

-Kanani

Justin's Critical Review

2006-03-14T15:27:00.000-08:00

Hey Justin.

I apologize for how late this response to your work is. I held off on responding because I kept waiting for you to put up more sections of the essay, thinking that all you'd posted were screen shots. It wasn't until just now that I realized the screen shots were themselves links to individual pages!!! Once again...I forgot to do a sweep of the page!! Grrrrrrrr!!

In any case...here are just a few thoughts and reactions to your scholarly review:

Organization
I like that you've used individual, chronologically ordered screen shots. Given the style of "Faith" itself and the importance of each individual screen, this seems like the most logical and comprehensive way of approaching the work. This clear, simple way of organizing your review made my life as a viewer pleasantly easy. All I needed to do was click on individual screen shots to view your analysis of that section of the work.

Navigation
However, I would consider using some type of navigation bar or hypertext link so that the viewer has multiple ways of navigating the site. As it stands right now, the only form of navigation available to me is the back button. Was this intentional, or have you just not gotten around to it yet?

Style
Again, I enjoyed the simplicity and legibility of the site's style...but you could always toy around with different color combinations and maybe a slightly smaller/more interesting font.

Critical Analysis:
I appreciated your detailed analysis of each screen shot, but was also looking for some tie-in to the criticial theory we've studied. Maybe some theoretical arguments from Hayles' work or from First Person might complement and flesh out your own personal analysis.

Other Screen Shots:
As it stands now, I believe the last three or four screen shots do not lead to linked pages. I guess you'll be finishing out these screen shots in class? Are there any other screen shots from Faith that you plan on analyzing?

Well...that's about it for now. Hope I've not been too nit-picky and that some of this is helpful. Best of luck as you complete your review!

See you in class! :)

text wrap with external style sheets

2006-03-08T02:00:00.000-08:00

Aloha!

I learned how to wrap text around images but still be able to use an external style sheet.

You can use an inline style. If you look at my home page, you can see the coding. Resize your browser and you'll see it works.

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~mesulliv/

Of course, if you have a lot of images, an internal css might be the way to go.

Also, if anyone wants to create a personalized/custom background for their page, I have photoshop. Let me know if you want to play!

Aloha,
michael

Flash Movie Contest

2006-02-22T19:24:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, just wanted to tell all of you about a flash contest...if you have time in between all of the school work. The info is at this site Flash Movie Contest 2006.

CSS Contextual Selectors and Colors

2006-02-22T12:30:00.000-08:00

At the end of class yesterday a few of us were talking about ways to specify different styles for different parts of a web page. I put together a very simple (and very ugly) example page on "contextual selectors" in CSS. Compare the source code (which you can find by following any of the hyperlinks on the page) with the HTML source to see how various "class" assignments and nesting techniques can give you more flexibility with your styles. There are a few different approaches to this issue, each with its own problems depending upon the structure of the particular page. Experiment and find what works for you.

I've also added the contextual selector example to the Web Resources page for our class, along with a link to the Visibone Web Safe Color Table, a handy way to look up the hexidecimal (six-character) code for colors.

My Own Errand

2006-02-21T20:17:00.000-08:00

I decided to post about the language of Errand Upon Which We Came because I realized a couple things shortly after leaving class, one of which is, upon returning home, the link to Mez’s piece does not work anymore for me, it says “file not found,” so I was kind of stuck with the Errand piece, but I did find some interesting stuff.

One thing I enjoy about this piece, that I had not noticed before is that you can freeze it with the silver butterfly. You do not actually have to read fast, you can enjoy the imagery and the words. The silver butterfly is a device some other pieces of weberature should take into consideration. I think some (or maybe a lot) of the pieces do not let me stop them when I want. I can capture the image on the screen with a screen capture, but sometimes, on the go, I want to experience something longer. I guess, maybe, the whole point is that the person or author of the piece can choose whether to allow a stop or not, therefore that is part of the decision making process that goes into the piece itself. I think a pause button and a rewind button would be really helpful with a lot of the pieces, like the Heavy Industries’ pieces especially. I think something like, “Press the P key to pause during the presentation, or press the R key to begin rewinding,” would be helpful.

Something I noticed about this piece, that has little to do with it being online, more with the literature of the piece, is the language that begins the piece. “Gentle reader, begin anywhere. Skip anything. This text is framed fully for the purposes of skipping. Of course, it can be read straight through, but this is not a better reading; a better life. You are being asked to move with great rapidity. As if it weren’t there. As if you were a frog. A frog that since it’s disappearing thinks to ask, for the first time, in which element it really does belong.” Part of the poetry of this piece is it talking about how to read itself. The piece adds to itself by explaining itself, and I do not know how many other times I have experienced this with a piece. The comment about “a better life,” is kind of weird, I do not know what to do with it. It is saying the poem is not better when read linear, though I heard Kanani say she thought it kind of was. (or maybe I was misunderstanding her) The reader is then told to read with great rapidity, which is kind of obvious, unless you are using the silver butterfly, then you could read as slow as you prefer. Then there’s the comment about in which element the frog really does belong. This is kind of like her piece, does it belong online as weberature, or in print as literature? I think this is the question a lot of people ask when making a piece online.

The last thing I noticed and I wanted to mention (very briefly) is the leaves moving over the words in the first frame. I had watched this piece and messed with it a bunch of times and never noticed this movement. I like how the leaves move from the background to the foreground, covering the words, moving the reader forward in the poem, whether they want to or not. I like these kinds of aspects of weberature, where the author gets to do more with their stuff as opposed to mess it up.

Even though Errand was a busy piece, that at first seemed a bit intimidating and unnecessary, I have grown to enjoy it. Even though none of us defended it in class, its opening stanzas are kind of beautiful in their words, even if the pictures and images are kind of cliché and busy. I think the piece is not a horrible piece, just a piece trying to do too much. I really do think the silver butterfly pause button makes a huge difference though.

Until my next post, hopefully coming BEFORE the class meets - AJ

Simplicity is the Key

2006-02-21T05:31:00.000-08:00

Of the three selections for today's class, I enjoyed "V:Vniverse" the most. The simple design and random navigation sequence complement one another without compromising coherence and meaning. It struck me that "V:Vniverse" also illustrates Matt Gorbet's point that "the success of [a work] depends precisely on the sense of control afforded by the simple and phsyically familiar interactions" (FP 218). Relying solely on lines and numbers, constellations and stars, this text does not make use of complicated graphics, as "][ad][dressed in a Skin C.ode" does, nor does it visually abuse the viewer as "Errand Upon Which We Came" does. The viewer is left to enjoy the constellations, to read the coherent and legible sentences in peace and to navigate via mouse and/or number pad.

It is refreshingly relaxing to be in control of a piece through simple actions for which I am responsible. In this work, I am not at the mercy of the whims and wishes of my computer's clock nor do I have to race to keep up with a rapidly flashing Flash program. Instead, I can sit back and explore at my own pace, enjoying each visual and literary element. Like a few previous works, the navigation of "V:Vniverse" is determined by my random actions and the numbers I choose to key in. Unlike some previous works, however, this one is able to maintain some level of coherence. Phrases are often connected to one another or have some kind of other correlation that does not leave me feeling completely lost, dazed and confused.

I also appreciated the work's visual simplicity. I found both the other texts to be visually abusive with color combinations, graphics and fonts that combined to create a less than pleasant reading/viewing experience. "V:Vniverse" was a welcome change - simple colors were used and delicately simple images were created. It helped too that I recognized many of the constellations, that I was familiar with the images that were appearing.

Altogether, familiarity and simplicity were beautifully combined in this piece. It was not so much that there was anything wonderfully thrilling about the work, but rather that it was user-friendly and easy on the nerves! A simple and enjoyable read! :)

Examples of what not to do

2006-02-21T00:06:00.000-08:00

][ad][dressed in a Skin C.ode repeatedly hung-up on my computer all weekend. As this it the first piece that I have had problems with, I'm guessing it has something to do with the way it was constructed or written. That being said, the little that I was able to see before Explorer stopped responding had too much code looking stuff for my taste. I disliked dealing with code in 1980 when I had a vic-20 and that hasn’t changed in 26 years. Like other forms of art, it’s not my bag so I’m tempted to skip trying to make some sense of this work on another machine.

I thought V: Vniverse was the most interesting of these three pieces. The star chart reminded me of Myst. At first I randomly selected a star but then I started entering the numbers and reading it in order. I noticed that some of the pages/paragraphs/sections could be read with the title and/or number included which gave an added dimension to the text. Other times, one or the other or both needed to be skipped because they made the sentence nonsensical. I didn’t recognize the stars (not that I have much knowledge about astronomy!) or the “constellations” that appeared when a star was selected. Nor was I able to notice any type of image that had anything to do with the written part. If I haven’t explored/read some of the essays that are linked to this piece, I’m not sure I would have grasped the link between the nomads reading the stars and my reading text by selecting a star. This one needs to be added to my places to explore page!

Errand was a rather annoying piece to me. The soundtrack was short and repetitious. The background images made the text hard to read. Thankfully, it was very short! Or maybe I intentionally overlooked some links that would have made it longer. The links I did follow looped back into each other quickly so getting lost wasn’t an issue. The text - both as objects and as words with meaning - and the images appeared to be working together - possibly there is a pseudo-subliminal eco-message in the piece. But the basic design flaws (intentional?) I noticed negated any interest I had in going through it more than twice - once in order and once using the links. Maybe it would be less annoying with the sound turned off.

Mez generates "code"

2006-02-19T23:57:00.000-08:00


public class Mez extends CodePoet {

  protected Text generate(Text orig) {

    orig.insertInitial(this.getNextEmailHeader());

    while (orig.isCoherent()) {
      orig.insertRandom("][");
      orig.insertRandom(Dictionary.COMPSCI);
      orig.insertRandom(Dictionary.BIOLOGY);
      orig = this.obfuscate(orig);
    }

   return orig;
  }
}

Hollowbound Book - I'm Lovin' THAT!

2006-02-17T13:18:00.000-08:00

"Hollowbound Book" has to be one of my all time favorite works! The elegance and 'class' of the work as a whole made experiencing it and interacting with it an absolute joy, while the music, graphic details and actual content complemented one another beautifully. It was also especially satisfying to see three major themes of digital literature, as laid out by Hayles, brought to life by Loyer. Those themes - remediation, kinesthetic involvement and materiality - were subtly intertwined in the work, yet concretely thought provoking.

What better way to illustrate remediation than by using a computer to simulate a book voicing its thoughts on books and computers? Talk about a "cycle of remediation!" And of course in talking about such a cycle, one cannot ignore the materiality of the work. This is a book talking to us; a book running away from its author and from the invisibility of its print existence. And where does it arrive? Center stage on our computer screens where it is subject and object, character and voice. How can we possibly ignore its materiality now? The answer is, we can't! We're forced to notice it as we interact with the work, as we use our mouse to manipulate the binding and open and close it as we would a real book.

The "Hollowbound Book" also makes the point that it has to be always on the run. That it's not safe, even here in its computer form. To me, this speaks to the fact that both books and computers are ultimately forms of containment. As such, digital literature is a means of breaking free of such bindings and of stretching the boundaries of what we consider iterature and art.

I'm Lovin' It

2006-02-16T19:25:00.000-08:00

Sorry that I missed your presentation Sheela Jane, wouldn’t have missed that for the world, except it was an emergency. Hope you (and everyone else) had a great Valentine’s Day!

This is my post for this past Tuesday, I just wanted to make sure I put something up after having a very distracting day.

These pieces were amazing! I found these pieces to be, by far, the most interesting and engaging. I first watched Hollowbound Book, or experienced it as the case may be.

Hollowbound book was my least favorite of these three pieces. It was kind of boring, and a lot of the scenes at the beginning and end were just the glowing dot. I kept thinking I could manipulate the dots, but to no avail. Also, this piece was kind of short, especially compared to the other two. When it ended, I felt like I was left hanging. I wanted more, even if I didn’t really like the format. I liked the part where the three-prong thing changed from steps 1a, 1b, and 1c to 2a, 2b, 2c all the way to the fourth step. This took me awhile to catch onto because at first I was just bouncing the thing up and down until I saw the words had changed. It was fun to manipulate at times, but I think “Writing Machines” the book was a much more fun experience.

I knew I would like the Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries piece, so I watched it in the middle, twice over. It wasn’t as much fun for me as Miss DMZ, but it was interesting. They, once again, force us to move forward at their speed, and this time I watched it a second time because I missed a couple of words the first time around. This one had some times where I found myself frustrated because I had missed a word or two and then felt like I was not getting the whole experience. When he asks whether Kim Jong-Il has a website, I cracked up. It was funny to see the URL on the screen for that one moment. At some point there seemed to be some word play with “soul” and “Seoul,” and I thought that was kind of fun. The thing about these Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries pieces is that you do not have as long to get caught up in the wordplay because it moves so fast. I like how they both think though, their pieces seem to be consistently fun to experience.

The last piece I experienced was The Dream Life Of Letters. I clicked on this one first, but after reading that it took eleven minutes I chose to do Hollowbound Book first. This piece was fun. I read the letter that it came from first, which I had a very time understanding. Were there other languages mixed into it, because I really got lost on while reading certain parts that appearing to be in another language. Then I read his original poem, and I am very glad he chose to make it into what he did, because the original poem is extremely bland. This was fun because you could feel yourself moving forward, if by no other means that realizing that “z” would be your final stop and watching yourself approach that letter. There was so much movement, but no sound (on my computer) or colors other than black, white and orange. I thought the lack of sound helped me to focus on the moving words and on the images themselves, rather than music. I liked when the “Y” filled up with words, which then overflowed. I also liked the “O” with the word, “outside” rotating around its outside. This is something I plan on watching a couple more times, just for fun. This piece might be my favorite of all the pieces we have read so far.

Well I will probably do another post before Tuesday, but I just wanted to get one in for these pieces, which were so great. I do not usually praise pieces this much, but these were really fun, and not what I was expecting. The Hollowbound Book could have done more though with “Writing Machines.” The Dreamlife of Letters could not have done more with less. It was just alphabatized words and I was fully engrossed. Thank you Professor Zuern for exposing me to this piece! Amazing!

So until my next post: Shoots! ------AJ

Traces

2006-02-14T16:46:00.000-08:00

These pieces of digital literature reminded me of previous works that I’ve experienced. Each one seemed to use a devise that was used in my earlier reading. The advantage to this was that I needed to spend less time learning how to interact with the pieces and could spend more time reading, interacting with them and reacting to them.

The Dreamlife of Letters is a fun piece even though I’m not sure I completely understand it. After reading the introduction and following the links to read DePlessis’ submission and Stefans response, I understood how he constructed the piece but, I’m still in the dark about the project, its purpose, and its meaning. In spite of this I like the poem. In some ways the kinetic text and mimetics reminded me of Faith. For example, when chimneysweep swirled on the screen like I picture a sweep’s broom in a chimney and when steep and split appeared together, steeply angled down the page and then splitting into two distinct words.

The title of Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries Artist’s Statement No. 45,730,944 told me about the piece and gave a hint about what to expect. Naturally, the work employed their trademark big, black, bold text flashing on a white background. But the message in the work is one I think anyone who is involved in creating art goes through, questioning the whys and the purpose of creating art. However, I also thought there was a deeper meaning to it - what is the purpose of our life? Why are we here? Questions I think most people ask themselves at some point during their life. So in a sense, the age old questions haven’t changed, just the way they’re asked has.

Hollowbound Book

2006-02-14T16:37:00.000-08:00

I really enjoyed Loyer's piece. I think I found my heart beating to the same beat as the red dot that appears in the beginning. I like how the music makes it seem like there's something more to expect...the music makes it seem like something is going to pop out of somewhere.

The level of interaction is just right for me, it wasn't a total movie type like The Dreamlife of Letters or Artist's Statement No. 45,730,944: The Perfect Artistic Web Site. Although it took me some time to figure out how to read the text of some of the pages, I was amazed when I did.

It's interesting to see that it can become a never-ending loop--Hayles discusses an electronic text in her book and Loyer discusses her book in an electronic format. It's also interesting to see the relationship and the effect each type has on a reader.

"Interrogating the inscription technology"

2006-02-14T13:05:00.000-08:00

A common theme of this week's works seems to be that they highlight their own "inscription technology", the medium in which they are conceived.

"Artist's Statement No. 45,730,944" does this the best. For me, it achieved what "Lexia to Perplexia" failed to do--effectively questioning the effects of technology, and the Web in particular, on our existence. It reveals how we are defined by people looking at us (our work); it explores how we understand and interface with the world (our neighbors) through the Web. And the entire work is a prolonged self-reference--another Web denizen's work calling for attention, just another cycle of uploading, waiting, and playing. (I imagine the sock-tasting is also a interesting reference, though not apparently one to the inscription technology!)

"Hollowbound Book" highlights the materiality of Hayles' book--particular it's bound nature. It expands this metaphor into the conceptual realm, holding that Hayles ties her various arguments into a single whole in a very similar way. Yet, interestingly, all of this reflection is done through interactive, electronic examples. It's a nice return--Hayles reviews such digital works in a physical book, only to be reviewed in turn by the digital.

I did not find "The Dreamlife of Letters" to be particularly enriching. Indeed, it is little more interesting than its original source material "poem(s)". However, what effect it does achieve beyond simply being a list of words, it achieves entirely through interesting animations and combinations made possible by the animation medium.

Experience Counts

2006-02-14T03:40:00.000-08:00

[I apologize for this being late. I guess I was busy reading my classmates reactions and forgot to post my own. I realized when looking for feedback that I hadn't posted yet.]

Experience helps when viewing digital literature. After several weeks of looking at and exploring a variety of digital literature, I’m starting to develop an understanding of how to view the sites. Like printed literature, digital literature makes use of earlier works. For example, I realized (probably because I took ENG-253 last semester and we read parts of it) the painting of the bull and women in Miss DMZ was connected to Greek mythology. However, I didn’t pursue it beyond that recognition.

While reading Dakota, the use of Americana in the beginning made an instant connection with me. It seemed to draw on or reminded me of early Springsteen, specifically “Born to Run”. I also connected with the images because my friends and I used to cruise with the top down and a case of beer. Having looked at other pieces by Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries, the blinking black text on a white background wasn’t as distracting as it was earlier in the semester. This probably allowed me to connect to the imagry more easily.

I thought the frames in These Waves of Girls - while distracting and not something I would use - reflected the segmented aspect of the story. Each section seemed to start with an age statement or a defined block of time which the frames reflected and forces the reader to move though them as though they were going though that block of time. I thought this idea of moving though the story was picked-up in the chapter of First Person that we read. I was intrigued by the idea of Card Shark and look forward to experiencing a piece written using it.

Screen Captures

2006-02-10T02:28:00.000-08:00

Oddly, I had to write up something for my ICS students about how to do a screen capture today. During that, I found out that Paint on Windows XP will now save GIF, JPG, and PNG formats! In the past, it could only handle BMP (bitmaps), which are huge files that you don't want to put on any website.

Anyway, Paint is found under Start -> Programs -> Accessories. Just hit Prnt Scrn or "Alt + Prnt Scrn" to copy the image (as demo-ed in class). Then open Paint, and hit Ctrl-V (or go up to Edit->Paste). And save!

Now you don't need to mess with downloading, installing, and using the GIMP, which is rather troublesome. Paint doesn't do much more beyond what I just described though, so if you need to do any thing fancier than just saving, I still think the GIMP is still worth learning (since it's free!). Also, Paint seemed to produce a rather crappy GIF image. PNG turned out okay though.

Anyway, just thought I'd share my discovery of an easier way to do it!

The Jew's Daughter

2006-02-07T16:35:00.000-08:00

I can honestly say that I admire this site. It works with sentences in a way that makes a reader realize that by changing one sentence in a paragraph the meaning of the paragraph changes also. The navigation system reminds me of the Don't Click It Project. It takes additional thought to not click on what I perceive as a link versus clicking on the link to move on or change lexia.

When I first started "rolling over" the highlit word, I didn't notice that the paragraph changed. I think I clicked on the word and just saw that the word was no longer blue. Once I got the hang of rolling over the highlit word, I found myself also looking for the next highlit word as well as the change in the paragraphs.

Miss DMZ

2006-02-07T14:19:00.000-08:00

Since Miss DMZ moves at a slow enough pace to allow people to comfortably read it, as opposed to DAKOTA and many other of the Young Hae Chang narratives, I managed to sit through the whole thing. I have no doubt that the design of the page was to allow for easier reading, although it may move fast enough to turn some people off. One helpful tip to reading Young Hae Chang sites... move your head back from the monitor. The text is often so large, that your impulse to lean forward in order to read the speedy text is counteracted by the fact that the text is often so large, it becomes harder to read the closer your head sits to the screen.

It is also important to note that DMZ refers to a Demilitarized Zone, most likely the one separating North and South Korea. There is also one in Vietnam, but from reading the narrative, the subject lives in Palpan-dong, a city in Seoul, it is probably the Korean DMZ that is talked about in the story. Another key point is that the long tunnel that the subject goes through to get to the "Duty-Free" store, most likely refers to the long tunnels that were discovered running underneath the Korean DMZ. There are two in total, spanning such a length that it would take roughly an hour to traverse the length. Seoul is located in South Korea, and since it is hard to imagine anyone wanting to get from South Korea to North Korea, I can only assume that the narrator was at the Duty-Free store right underneath the DMZ, and therefore was only on the border.

This factual basis fits well with the idea of the Duty-Free store and the European Luxury hotel motif. The idea of a "Duty-Free DMZ" area also fits well with the correlation between DMZ and a store that is "duty free," or free of taxes and tariffs. Here we have the narrator entering a place of seeming freedom, but he cannot stay because he doesn't work there. It isn't clear exactly who "Miss DMZ" is, I suggest that she is symbolic of a kind of ideal representing a truly united Korea. A place where the "new customers" can blend in with the existing workers. As truly horrible a place as North Korea has become, I have no doubt that in the minds of many, a united nation is something coveted by all. Especially if you consider that the separating of the two Koreas wasn't necessarily due to internal hemorraghing, but more due to the politics of nationalist America and the Europe. The wars in Vietnam and Korea were largely political terraforming wars; we were seeking to liberate Korea and Vietnam from the Communist menace, a threat that was blown largely out of proportion by propaganda and McCarthy.

Given the history of Korea, I can imagine a largely liberal company such as Young Hae Chang wanting to get this kind of message across through its work. Miss DMZ delivers.

Enjoyment in spite of structure

2006-02-07T14:05:00.000-08:00

I liked These Waves of Girls in spite of its hypertext structure, largely due to the grace of the writing and the power of the underlying "story" (or rather, the "narrative images"). The hierarchial overview found on some of the pages, with short linear stories from there, were the easiest to comprehend. I found the mix of images and sound to be somewhat discordant, since the text and formatting was so different between pages (and the sound wouldn't play through my plugin). However, some of them were enjoyable. The trip though the glass window of the security door was memorable.

I enjoyed the jumble of memories--short and interweaving. Many of them continue to haunt me this morning. However, I felt this experience was due more to reading them together and having them refer to each other, than due to the actual hyperlinks themselves. I felt the links were too numerous, and the relationship between their source and destination texts was often obscure. This may have been the intent--as if modeling a stream-of-consciousness recollection. But I question its use as an interface. The user is not making a real choice if they have no idea of the consequences of their actions. And each time they make a choice, they have to give up on the thread (often unfinished) that they're currently reading. The user is going to take a single (albiet, perhaps branching and looping) path through the work. The author of a hypertext work does not provide a coherent path, favoring instead a user-constructed experience of naviagation. But fumbling around blindly through a work is frustrating, not enriching. The connections should be evident in content of the work itself, not only in its technical structure.

Jew's Daughter was a very neat trick, playing with the notion of a page. Also a sort of stream-of-consciousness, the page seems to model a current moment of thought. But the writing did not keep me interested. After about 15 to 20 morphs, I bailed.

Miss DMZ was wonderful, my favorite Young-hae Chang work yet. A great story, great music, nice use of *, all brought together into a single piece. Here, I didn't feel I had to overcome the structure to enjoy the content.