Exciting pieces of net art and e-lit from the 90's that are still relevant today (Digital Fiction - Blog Post 4)

I really loved Tina LaPorta’s piece, “Distance,” because I felt like these are the same questions we still ask ourselves about online relationships and connections in 2019. I mean how many memes have you seen about kids who have a hard time with face-to-face communication because so much of their time and education is spent attached to a screen and communicating with a personality mediated through that screen?

One thing I found particularly interesting was the really personal text compared with the massive variety of stranger’s pictures in the black and white screen shots. As the faces in the pictures constantly change, you can feel a lot of tension from the narrator, whose loneliness and need of connection deepens with every new interaction. I love that the pictures helped add depth to the words and convey a sense of alienation even as the voice of the piece became so urgent. I think maybe that’s what Mark (my instructor, hi, Mark!) means when he talks about intermedia existing in-between media. Without the pictures, we’d still have a story, but it wouldn’t be the same story, without the photos attached. I don’t think that is the case for a multi-media piece. Anyway, so this one was lovely and it’s quick so definitely have a look at it, my lovelies!

Moving on,

YHCHANG Heavy Industries: “Dakota”  Can we say fecking WEIRD? So this is just me trying to make some sense of this thing, but we’ve got black words on a white screen that change at different intervals of the story, and all the while we’ve got some intense drumming in the background, and at times some tribal chanting (which was way way distracting). Because the pace of this thing was so intense and couldn’t be controlled by the viewer/reader, I had to watch it like three times and wait for certain spots to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. One thing I found really interesting about this piece was that the narrative seems to get more fragmented and non-linear as the piece progresses. At first, it’s just a dude and his buddies who seem to be gang-bangers obsessed with drinking and peeing on things (and Elvis) but then the narrative gets harder and harder to follow. Someone dies. Someone hasn’t been laid. Someone’s mom won’t leave him alone. Etc. Even after a couple of watches and trying to pause to catch certain screens, I still feel lost by the end, which might have been the point, to overwhelm the reader and bring them into the narrator’s subconscious, in which he feels increasingly overwhelmed and lost. Or something? That’s all I’ve got for this one.

My buddy @Jen covered Yael Kanarek’s: “World of Awe” and Judd Morrissey’s: “TheJew's Daughter” really extensively, so I’m going to skip those two here, but I generally agree with her consensus and share her confusion as to why one is considered “net art” and why one is considered “e-lit.”

Olia Lialina’s: “My Boyfriend Came Back From the War” was a very abstract piece that required a lot of thought and digging just to get some sort of story out. The piece is a mix of interactive narrative, which the reader/viewer has some control in, in terms of deciding where the narrative will go next, and random pictures, some of which move, that take you to new screens and new bits of narrative. I found this piece to be quite frustrating, because I had no idea what to click on and had to spend a lot of time rolling my mouse over the black screen to figure out what I needed to move to get to new parts of the narrative, or what I needed to click. Some of the art included was repetitive, so I found the piece to be quite boring after a while. I’m sure others won’t share my opinion, but I was really looking forward to this one because of the title and found myself quite grumpy at the complicated expectation of interaction and navigation. I suppose that was the point, to simulate what a soldier’s brain looks like when they come back from war, or to simulate the experience of trying to put your lover’s thoughts/stories/actions together when they come back from war. In that way, I found this to be very representative of that fragmentation. Maybe that’s why it triggered me so much. In any case, this is not a piece I’d recommend, if you’re trying to figure out what net art is all about!

Finally, Mendi and Keith Obadike’s: “Blackness for Sale” and “keeping upappearances” were especially interesting and fun to interact with. “Blacknessfor Sale,” resembles an Ebay “item for sale” page, but the description is the narrative of the author’s perception of his own blackness and the pros and cons of bidding on the item. When I first navigated to this page, I thought I’d make a mistake, but when I started reading through the item description, I became more and more engrossed in the page. I was especially interested in the fact that 12 people had bid on this item, and I wasn’t able to see who or what their comments were, though I’d have been very interested in reading that. I wonder if that was an intentional addition on the author’s part, or if that actually happened. In any case, while the words tell one narrative in this piece, what isn’t being said or can’t be clicked on I think is also a huge part of the story. I definitely recommend you check it out! “Keeping up appearances” is also an interesting piece, which also plays with invisible narratives in comparison with visible narratives. It tells the story of a young girl who befriends a powerful man she used to go to church with. The visible narrative, written in black, tells the story of a nice friendship between the narrator and a powerful man she befriends from her church. This story seems positive and uplifting, but when you hover the text over the invisible missing pieces of the story, another narrative emerges, much more sinister, of how the man manipulates and abuses the narrator. I found this piece to be incredibly powerful and relevant, especially because we are in the age of #metoo and #whyididntreport.

What I find most interesting and engaging about all these pieces, is that we were supposed to take a look at pieces of “older’ net art and e-lit this week, but each of the pieces we interacted with are still incredibly relevant today. So maybe something important I learned is that it isn’t enough to choose a technological platform that will still be accessible to future generations, you also have to find a narrative that will remain relatable and accessible to future audiences, and provide narrative paths that pull the reader in and make what they are reading a little bit of their own story. Super fascinating!

That’s about all I’ve got for now, my lovelies. Really enjoyed the reading this week and look forward to seeing you all again when I get back in town next week. In the meantime, hope you are all having a joyful week!

Until next time, hope you all have the most joyful week and I'm really looking forward to seeing you when I'm back in town next week!

😼😼~Bree😼😼

"Queerskins" by Illya Szilak: A presentation by Bree Pye.

Sorry I couldn't make it in today, my lovelies. Here's my presentation on "Queerskins" by Illya Szilak!

Until next time, 

😼😼~Bree😼😼

Get Your Read On (Digital Fiction - Blog Post 3)

So, this week we got to explore the ElectronicLiterature Collection (which is about the coolest thing on the planet) and interact with lots of different kinds of digital fictions from lots of different decades. I’m pretty sure that site is going to take up a significant amount of my time for the rest of my natural born life. Still, you HAVE to check it out.

I started off with Caitlin Fisher’s “Everyone at This Party Is Dead,” which pretty much reaffirmed that titles are super important, as I know Jen tried the same one. Because the technology on that one was a bit out of date, it required you to download an entire game file, which definitely wasn’t happening on my satellite interwebs, so off I went in search of something else.

Next, I was drawn to a digital fiction called “Umbrales,” from Volume III. The concept seemed really cool and I was stoked to get started, but alas, when I clicked on BEGIN I discovered that the entire thing is in Spanish! And while I’ve got some Spanish skills, they aren’t nearly sufficient enough to interpret Spanish word art.

At last, I landed on a digital fiction novel and interactive experience called “Queerskins” by Illya Szilak that ended up gobbling a day and a half of my life and is probably one of the most amazing things I’ve experienced on the internet (or in life) ever. But I’m putting together a presentation about that, so you’ll have to wait to find out how many boxes of tissue I went through while reading its 62 chapters.

I thought I’d finally landed on something viable when I discovered “Fitting the Pattern” by Christine Wilks, which is this awesome little memoir that uses adobe flash and requires you to use tailor tools on a pattern on the screen to uncover the text fragments of memoir underneath. As you went along, you could follow the progress of your cutouts and see how many more pieces you had left of the pattern. This one was so much fun and I was really excited to figure out what I was making, but right before the last piece was completed, the tool I was using (some kind of stitch ripper) wouldn’t go down far enough to rip the stitch I needed and thus I could not progress in the memoir. Talk about frustrating! I’d made it to the very end and was loving every second of the thing and then I was robbed. Like, I want to send a strongly-worded letter full of expletives to whoever is maintaining the site because I was madder n’ a wasp in water. In any case…

But whatever, I don’t even like baseball… so I kept on digging.

Next, I moved on to “Strings” by Dan Waber, which is a really nifty little animation that uses the concept of human handwriting in cursive, which is represented on the screen as a single string that spells cursive words and is animated to give the word emotions. Okay, that was a mouth-full, I know. But here’s an example, you click on the word “flirt” and the string forms the word “yes” and the word “yes” bounces in and out of the frame, mostly not visible at all, flirting with the reader who is trying to grasp the word. Pretty cool huh? There’s another one where the string spells “Your” then “arms” then it turns into a circle that spins around, then “me.” Self-explanatory, right? But the emotions these words and experiences evoke are visceral because they require so many parts of me to put them together and interact with them. So while this one was really short, I really found myself attached to it. The piece ends with “Words are like strings that I pull out of my mouth,” which is a final thought I can definitely relate to.

Finally,

I explored a lot more of these digital fictions, but I don’t want to give too many of them away, and I’m at my word limit. So for now, I’ll just highly encourage you in my scariest sergeant voice to go check out the Electronic Literature Collection. You won’t be disappointed!

, my lovelies.

😼😼😼~Bree 😼😼😼

Time To Dive Into Some Actual Digital Fictions! Hurray! (Digital Fiction - Blog Post 2)

Digital Fictions:

Stuart Moulthrop: “Hegirascope”

Shelley Jackson: “My Body”

Caitlin Fisher: “These Waves of Girls”

Adrienne Eisen: “Six Sex Scenes”

Mark Z. Danielewski: House of Leaves

Questions for Consideration:

Write about the compositional style of House of Leaves and how the author visualizes the narrative. For this particular "reading," try and view the novel as a work of art - in fact, don't read it, unless you can't help yourself. Instead, write about its structure and design i.e. it's compositional status as a work of visual fiction but also the way it refers back to older forms of postmodern writing like meta-fiction while utilizing some of the narrative tricks associated with hypertext fiction.What is the conceptual framework of a particular work or works? How does the narrative "structure" of a story like Jackson's My Body or Patchwork Girl differ from traditional print-based writing? What happens to text when it goes digital? (Opening screen of Hegirascope: "What if the word will not be still?") Can images be read as texts and texts be read as images? How does the meaning or the "reading" change shape when the visual and the textual collide in ways that break convention? Digital technology moves fast. Whereas the material difference between holding a book published fifty years ago in your hands and one published last year is relatively insignificant, the digital works linked to above must be taken in their techno-historical context. The 90s floppy disk / CD / web-based fictions are different than the 00s web which are way different than the VR experiments of today. What associated risks must a digital artist / writer take into account when creating their digital-dependent works for today and into the future?

A Penny for My Thoughts?

So, this week’s reading/viewing/interacting was quite the adventure! If you want to jump in a rabbit hole, I highly recommend you start with “TheseWaves of Girls,” by Caitlin Fisher!

But first things first: I’ve been assigned Danielewski’s “House of Leaves” multiple times since I’ve been in grad school, but have only ever made it to page 42 because that thing gives me the heebie-jeebies of doom! It was really interesting to open it back up and look at is as a work of art, rather than a work of literature. Because structurally, it really is a work of art, isn’t it?  The text often mirrors the thing it’s talking about, like the font being typewriter font for the report, and Times New Roman for the narrative. Additionally, the text itself is written in different colors, the page numbers are different sizes, the structure morphs from a normal page of text to actually having to physically turn the book to read the words in the right order. And speaking of order, that must be why we’re studying this thing as digital fiction—it’s got more footnotes than text on the page and the footnotes are full of footnotes and you almost have to have a strategy to read the book as a whole because each footnote is a potential rabbit hole! I’ve already mentioned how the book is a work of visual fiction, but it’s also meta in that we’re given different angles of the story from different perspectives. The footnotes make it like hypertext fiction because you have to stop reading the narrative and physically change the pages to go read a bit of information before you can return to the main narrative. Really interesting to think of it that way!

Moving on to the digital fictions we read for today. I’m not really sure I know what the conceptual framework of these works is, other than to force the reader to interact with the author’s stories in a way that we normally wouldn’t, couldn’t even. The narrative structure of these digital fictions differs from more traditional sorts in that they are not linear. That is to say, they don’t have a beginning, middle and end the way a normal story would. Rather, the intent of them is to offer the reader fragments and allow the reader to do the work of piecing them together in more interesting ways.

It’s interesting that when you add the digital factor to text, the text itself can become part of the story, like in Fisher’s “TheseWaves of Girls,” where the text changes as you hover your mouse over it (which was really cool, by the way). Because we’re able to interact with the images or with the text, we’re also forced to think of it beyond its basic function, which is to impart information. Instead, we have to consider the story of how these moving bits of text were created, and why they were programmed to behave a certain way when interacted with. And isn’t that an odd that to consider, that text now has behavior? That’s also the case with Moulthrop’s “Hegirascope,” though I have to admit, I could only stand that one for about 20 minutes before I wanted to punch my computer. When considering WHY I wanted to punch my computer, it occurred to me that in dictating the amount of time the text remains on the screen before changing, the author has taken away a bit of my agency, as a reader. And in not providing some index or direction in which to read the text fragments, the text itself left me feeling confused and fragmented, which is something I think traditional literature can’t do on the same scale.

The obvious risk a digital artist must take into account when creating digital-dependent works is choosing the medium of technology in which the work will be constructed and distributed. As we discussed in class, there are many original internet platforms and plugins that are no longer supported as our technological advances have surpassed their viability for use. And with new technologies being developed at a break-neck pace these days, that’s a lot of work to put into a piece of art that is only viewable or readable as long as its technology is functional. Another risk includes trying to figure out how to keep the work relevant for future readers. So many things to consider when making digital art!

Now that all the question answering stuffs is out of the way, (I’ve skipped the article questions for the sake of the word count) I just wanted to give my general reaction to the pieces I read for today. Of them, my absolute favorite was “My Body” by Shelley Jackson. Not only was it visually stunning, but I loved the depth of the digital fiction itself, in that the writing was about Jackson’s drawing, but also about her life. And can we talk about her gorgeous prose? *SwOOn* I also loved the main page, which is a picture of a body, and you can click on any body part to go to a new text fragment in addition to being able to simply click on links within the text itself. In this way, I felt her work was the most intuitive, accessible and agreeable to work with! What I disliked about it, was that it trapped me in a loop more than once, and I had to click on the original link to get back on track. That might have been cleverness on the author’s part though, because it trapped me in her body of work, as she describes being trapped in her body! Ohhh. Fascinating!

Least favorite? Moulthrop’s “Hegirascope.” Talk about a hot mess! Not only was I confused about how I was supposed to interact with that text, but I also had no grasp of what the narrative was supposed to be, so I lost interest quickly. Additionally, the background colors made that one a little hard to read at times, and the moving text made me pull my trashcan a little closer, just in case I lost my cookies trying to read the damn thing. I think I’d better leave it at that!

Eisen’s “Six Sex Scenes” was probably the briefest and easiest to navigate, but the experience as a whole was sort of “meh.” I don’t think I’m supposed to enjoy reading about child molestation, but that made the pink background an interesting choice on behalf of the author. I wonder if it was supposed to balance out the material or somehow make it easier to digest?

In terms of story, Fisher’s: “These Waves of Girls” was my favorite, because I got to follow some sort of narrative arc in addition to getting to know the character, her conflict, and her growth, which is what a story is supposed to give me! And I know my fellow writers are going to double take at this remark, but I love how poetic her language was in that piece. The cadence of the words added a whole different level to the experience of interacting with the work as a whole and I found myself not minding at all when I had to re-read bits I’d already clicked on. I’m now madly jealous of her prose and her art skills!

That’s all I’ve got for this week. My post would have been longer and a bit more involved, but I’ve been without power for a couple of days now and I just wanted to get something up while I had a shot at it.

Looking forward to seeing you in class, my lovelies!  Until next time,

😼😼😼 ~Bree 😼😼😼

Disclaimer:

All of these questions and links were first posed by Dr. Mark America in his Digital Fiction class, Spring, 2019, at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Links and questions have been posted with his gracious permission.

!!!(Huzzah to you, Mark, for getting the brain noodles juiced)!!!

The Future is an Interactive Hologram Bree Who Reads Her Own Work (Digital Fiction, Blog Post 1, Part 3)

Disclaimer:

All of these questions and links were first posed by Dr. Mark America in his Digital Fiction class, Spring, 2019, at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Links and questions have been posted with his gracious permission.

!!!(Huzzah to you, Mark, for getting the brain noodles juiced)!!!

Articles:

Ted Nelson: "The Xanadu Project (An Overview on"The Future of Information)" - first conceived in 1960

Natilee Herren: "The Crux of Fluxus: Intermedia,Rear-Garde"

Dick Higgins: "Intermedia" (February 1966, Something Else Press)

Dick Higgins with an Appendix by Hannah Higgins: "Intermedia" (1965, 1981 and 2001)

Questions for Consideration:

How can some of the ideas developed by Higgins over 50 years ago be translated into 21^st century digital art and writing practices? To what degree do you operate as an intermedia artist and/or writers and/or performer? Does the advent of new media technologies make it easier to work “in between” media? What are the advantages and/or disadvantages to working as an intermedia practitioner or, to put a slightly different spin on the same question, what are the advantages and/or disadvantages to composing new work from an interdisciplinary versus discipline-specific practice?

Finally, how can we look at these initial readings as intellectual triggers to further develop our own creative investigation of digital fiction?

Penny for My Thoughts? (I read them to you this time) Click on the sound file below!




Thanks for reading and listening along, my lovelies! 

Until next time,

😼😼 ~Bree 😼😼

Who Needs a Magic 8-Ball When You Have Vannevar Bush? (Digital Fiction, Blog Post 1, Part 2)

Disclaimer:

All of these questions and links were first posed by Dr. Mark America in his Digital Fiction class, Spring, 2019, at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Links and questions have been posted with his gracious permission.

!!!(Huzzah to you, Mark, for getting the brain noodles juiced)!!!

Article: Vannevar Bush—“As We May Think” (July, 1945 Issue of The Atlantic)

Questions for Consideration: What are some specific sections or phrases that Bush uses that remind you of something we experience in our “always connected” lives today? Bush is writing as a scientist over 70 years ago, but you are encouraged to try and decode his language into today’s techno-jargon by pointing out things we know exist in the world today but that he was only projecting.

A Penny for My Thoughts?:

Okay. This Bush guy? He is like a 20 on a creepy scale that only goes 1-10. We’re talking like, Nostradamus creepy.

Rather than type out all the creepy digital-age things he predicted (Bush, not the guy with the Bush on his chin), here’s some screen shots of my notes: (BRACE YOURSELF)

1.

2.

3. 

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

Okay. Take a look at those. Creeped out yet? If you aren’t, I need to check you for a pulse.

I’ll admit, dude lost me on all the math stuff. My eyes roll when I even READ the word math, but it’s really interesting that a dude from 1945 was able to foresee our current digital age when the rest of world still had their eyes on Hitler’s bunker and the images coming out of places like Auschwitz and Dachau… right?  I’ll leave it at that.

Thanks for reading, my lovelies!

Until next time,

😼😼 ~Bree 😼😼

Decay in the Age of Pokémon Go (Digital Fiction Blog Post 1, Part 1)

Disclaimer:

All of these questions and links were first posed by Dr. Mark America in his Digital Fiction class, Spring, 2019, at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Links and questions have been posted with his gracious permission.

!!!(Huzzah to you, Mark, for getting the brain noodles juiced)!!!

Article:

Walter Benjamin—“The Work of Art in the Age of MechanicalReproduction” (1936)

Questions for Consideration:

How is digital work composed? What is it made of? How does it get distributed? How is it received over the global net? What happens to the “aura” of art works distributed over the net? How does the digital apparatus at our disposal today alter the way we locate and engage with audiences? What about issues of remix, copyright, appropriation and so-called originality?

A Penny for My Thoughts?

You didn't really think I'd write about Pokémon Go, did you? Talk about decay ;) 

I suppose if we’re going the literal route, digital art is composed with fingers and brains, the same way it’s been composed for centuries. The difference being that digital art uses a completely different set of tools than painting, photography, film or architecture. So, it’s made of ideas and pixels and networks. It has to navigate firewalls and viruses and search filers before it ever finds an audience, and even then, it’s in competition with an increasingly flooded market of other folks’ art and ideas. It’s distributed through emails and ads and lists and search engines until it finally catches a consumer’s attention, and then it continues working to keep that attention. I think because of that, the “decay” Benjamin details happens infinity-fold for works of digital art. The aura attached to these works is created in a certain time and space, but isn’t limited to one time or one space, so the intent of the author or artist is always morphing, always changing—thus further removing the final project from one definite time or one definite space. Additionally, once the audience or viewer gets involved, those times and spaces of consumption are multiplied, causing further distance from the artist and the audience.

Mediation of a work’s meaning also further deludes a digital fiction’s “aura,” or uniqueness, because the method of delivery will automatically alter a viewer/audience’s perception. I mean, if I’m getting some multi-media story emailed to me by a professor, I’m already going to be worried that it’s going to be boring or over my head or … things. You know how it goes. But if my good buddy is like “Yo, Bree, check out this dope Vimeo essay” I’m going to be like “Hell yeah!”  Because my buddy knows me, knows what I’m into and what I’ll toss in the trash bin, so when I open that email, I’m already more excited and engaged with my buddy’s email. This means that now, more than ever, the platforms through which digital art is mediated matter more than ever. Feel me?

In terms of remix, copyright, appropriation and originality, my first thought is to take a look at the very first few lines of the link to this article. Especially the line that reads “Translated: by Harry Zohn.” Before I ever get into the beans and bullets of this article, I’m already being told that it’s been appropriated by an academic other than the one who wrote it, because it’s being translated, right? Which means that for every word that doesn’t translate from the original language into the translated language, the author’s original meaning is being appropriated by a translator. So already I’m like, huh. This is smart stuff. But is it this Walter dude’s smart stuff? Or is it someone translator’s smart stuff and he’s using Walter’s name to give himself a quick boost in the world. And what does it mean if something was lost in translation (as happens in all forms of translations, which is why language itself is an “aura”). And how does the fact that this article is 83 years old change the seriousness with which I critique it? How do I make relevance out of an artifact? And how does the fact that this is an article, which scholars normally write to engage and inform other scholars, change the way I feel about reproducing it, or sharing it, or remixing it?  The fact that it was shared with me digitally, and I printed it out and marked it up and made notes on it and am writing this blog post ABOUT it is evidence that it already exists in many times and places, which Benjamin would argue has decayed its originality and value to the point of uselessness. Interesting idea to try to wrap my noggin around!

These are all considerations for our lightning-paced digital age, and things I hope to dive further into as I navigate this class!

Thanks for reading, my lovelies!

Until next time,

😼😼 ~Bree 😼😼