Category: Miscellaneous Works

Eng. 335-01 Reflection #10.

I connected more closely with Taryn Hubbard’s piece this week over that of J.R. Carpenter’s for a few different reasons. Carpenter’s piece felt a little stale, and somewhat boring for me. yes, it was aesthetically pleasing and the animations that were incorporated were appropriately constructive to the pieces themselves, but I found them to be somewhat boring in regard to their artistic challenges. Hubbard’s piece, however, came across as an interesting and unique take on utilizing code as a literal language rather than a collection of symbols for computing purposes. It is an interesting take on the use of symbols as language, as we as a society have come to accept certain level of association with symbols, to the point where we n longer need to “read” the symbols themselves, we just see them and understand them. A prime example is the symbol of ampersand, or &, as the word “and”. We are so ingrained with the meaning f the symbols that we begin to gorget the actual translations or names of the symbols themselves. Her use of the words for symbols such as < as “less than” bring a whole new connotation to the meaning of the symbols that may have been lost if she had stuck with the coding symbols themselves.

I would like to do a written analysis project (option 2).

I would like to focus on the work of Andy Kubert (and Neil Gaiman), specifically the graphic novel “Marvel:1602”. their specifically detailed art style, as well as Neil Gaiman’s intense writing style and storytelling, provide an interesting and unique story that is intense and extremely addicting, Additionally, the book itself has recieved several awards, and has had several articles written about its postmodern tradition.

Formalist: How things look and are put together (framing, composition, etc.).
Sociocultural: What they mean in a broader sense (culture, society, etc.).
The Icon: Any image used to represent an idea, person, place, or thing.
Amplification through Simplification: Simplifying images can lead to broader association and stay more universal.
The Realm of the Concept: How the world within us is portrayed.
The Realm of the senses: Realism, sensory stimuli, how the world outside of us is portrayed.
Closure: Observing the parts, but perceiving the whole.
The Gutter: The space between the panels of a comic or graphic novel; where two separate images are transformed into a single idea. It can connect or separate space and time.
Mono-sensory Medium: Information in comics can only be conveyed visually.
Zip Ribbon: The motion lines in comics.
Synaesthetics: Utilizing different art to unite all of the senses.
The Word Balloon: The contours of a word balloon can depict tone of voice or even volume.
The “Visual”: Resemblance, color, light, etc.
The “Invisible”: Sound, smell, etc.
Word Specific: Pictures illustrate, but do not add to the text.
Picture Specific: Words add a soundtrack to a visual sequence.
Duo Specific: Words and pictures do the same job.
Additive Combo: One or the other adds to, or elaborates on each other.
Parallel Combo: Both images and words follow different directions without ever intersecting.
Montage: Words are integral parts of the picture.
Interdependent: both words and images convey an idea.
The Six Steps:
-Idea/ Purpose: The content, the reason for doing something.
-From: What holds the content.
-Idiom: Style, gesture, genre, subject matter.
-Structure: How the separate parts are brought together.
-Craft: Doing the job utilizing skills.
-Surface: The finish, the production value.

Eng. 335-01 reflection #9.

The use of augmented reality is a really interesting and unique style and execution of poetry that i never would have expected. Augmented reality technology is such a new and current innovation that it is surprising to see something so artistic being projected via this platform. I must confess that I am not a fan of abstract poetry, or the vast majority of poetry in general, but this project really jumped out at me. I do not really care for the poetic aspects that are being presented, but more so of the presentation itself. This seems to be a very unique method of displaying something so intrinsically artistic and couched so heavily in tradition. Poetry is often stereotypically viewed as a very traditional and boring style of literature. However through this use of augmented reality, poetry is being presented in a method that is very much in the here and now. This kind of interaction between literature, technology, and reality is such an innovative platform that it really brings concepts of literary reality to the forefront. We as an audience are so used to having the disconnect between the page and reality that something of this caliber is a real breath of fresh air.

Eng. 335-01 Response #8

The use of twitter as a platform for electronic literature, as seen in “Black Box” is an interesting one. It certainly fits within the scope of electronic literature, in the sense that this form of literature is next to impossible to re-create in a paper medium (short of crowd sourcing and individually publishing snippets of the story one at a time and making them available to participants in the same fashion as twitter posts), making it a uniquely electronic form of literature. However, where things become muddled and potentially fragmented has to do with the intrinsic problems of the format itself; timing can become fragmented and incoherent due to the regularity that people interact with twitter. I am by no means an expert in social media, and certainly not an authority on twitter, but I cannot help but feel that people would not check their twitter feeds with the same level of regularity that they would another form f social media, like facebook or instagram. While this may be intended as a commentary on the disconnect between social media and real life, it also comes across as fragmentary and difficult to follow. It feels as though, in order to follow the posts as they were happening in real time when this project was live, must have taken a fair amount of time and effort. This is by no means a criticism of the project, but more so a reflection on potentially shifting the platform for this style of piece for future iterations.

Kate Pullinger’s piece “Jelly Bone”, and the Oolipo platform altogether, provide a rather interesting new form of electronic literature that tackles one of the largest issues with the concept of electronic literature as a platform; it solves, or at least seeks to solve, the problem of accessibility. Electronic literature, as a whole, is typically less accessible than regular literature as it is typically interacted with via a computer. Oolipo solves this connectivity issue by taking the platform of electronic literature and placing it in a more mobile and accessible format: the handheld mobile device. This takes the one major drawback of electronic literature, the immobile aspect of needing a computer to access it and turns it on its head. While yes, it still requires both internet access and the privilege of having a mobile device that can access internet, it does open up the field of interaction substantially. With other platforms of electronic literature, one was typically immobilized within their own home or someplace that had access to both the internet and a computer. With Oolipo, and with the ever-increasing movement of free, public wifi access, electronic literature is becoming more and more accessible and easy to consume.

Eng. 335-01 Reflection #6, Cody Peters.
The “Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0” raises a few interesting points about the nature of literature and the ever-evolving platform of thought and text. The primary point that interested me was the concept that “print finds itself absorbed into new, multimedia configurations” (pp.2). I have always been interested in the concept of intertextuality: the concept that each work that we as readers produce and consume is connected and influenced by the works that we ourselves have read previously. Everyone knows of this concept on a rudimentary scale; if you interact with something and it reminds you of something you have seen/read/done/or watched in the past, those experiences will influence how you react to your current one. The article goes on to attribute the shift in writing practices and literary mediums as being part of this evolution of previous experiences. It mentions that “the first wave of the digital revolution looked backwards as it moved forwards” (pp. 2), reinforcing the concept that we always relate thing back to our past. However, it takes it a step further. The manifesto urges the reader to “practice digital anarchy” (pp. 4) by ignoring things such as copyright. My issue with this come in a very literal sense; if we all were to practice “digital anarchy”, what would be the point? If whatever I produce can be reproduced, recut, or reduced by anyone at any time, why would I create anything? If we are to remove the usage of copyright, then why stop there? Why not remove the concept of intellectual ownership? Of authorship? Or of individual originality? The level of digital anarchy promoted by the manifesto references that we should “pirate and pervert materials by the likes of Disney” (pp. 4), but how can we draw the line at a large corporation? What about the illustrators or artists that put work and effort into those drawings that are owned by Disney? Are we meant to “pirate and pervert” their work as well? Why or why not? What gives me the right to take someone’s work or image that they have worked on or put effort into, and pervert it a present it as my own? I am obviously taking the concepts of this manifesto an extreme, but this should be done to all manifestos; how else will we learn the downsides or the negatives of any form of movement without taking into consideration the potential extremes of it?

Reading response 19/02/2018, Cody Peters
Aleph Null 3.0 is an incredibly interesting piece of work by Jim Andrews. However, I am unsure of what level it qualifies as a piece of electronic literature. While yes, obviously there is a written component with both the word-brush option, as well as the coded aspect of the program itself, it feels more like a visual piece of art rather than a written piece of literature. The concept of the reader supplying the written piece themselves in regard to the word-brush option of the program is interesting, but at the same time it feels like providing a blank canvas for an art show; an interesting concept, but it has some inherent flaws. There is an odd play on logic involved with this. The possibilities of the work are literally infinite, as there is an exponential level of growth provided by the more people that are introduced to it being able to apply whatever words they wish. However, the opposite is possible as well; there is the potential that no one will provide any words whatsoever. This brings back the concept of a blank canvas being considered a piece of art or if it is not. If no one makes any marks on it, it is logically not a piece of art. The same goes for Aleph Null 3.0. If no one provides any words, then it is a blank page, and thus not a piece of literature.

The works this week are all quite interesting, one in particular stands out to me. Jason Nelson’s “This is How You Will Die” is an intriguing piece to analyze. While I am not certain that this work is strictly speaking a purely E-Lit piece, as it is mostly text-based with the software and online utilities mainly being utilized as a function to randomly generate passages for the reader (this could be achieved in a paper form simply by flipping randomly through pages), it is still an interesting piece. The part that stands out to me the most with this piece is the uncomfortable nature of it; the passages generated for the reader are often gruesome, if not simply murderous and melancholy, which forces the reader/participant to decide how long they are willing to interact with this type of literature. In this sense, the fact that this is an online work makes it unique; if one were to read these in a paper or printed medium, they would still be in one’s possession after one stops reading it. However, once the viewer closes the internet window, it is effectively out of your life. This makes it potentially possible to push the limitations of discomfort for one’s audience, as they are free to completely remove themselves from the work at any moment. With a paper medium, they would still have to interact with the work, simply by having to return or dispose of the work itself. This has a large amount of potential for further exploration.