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!
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 😼😼😼
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)!!!
