A Story of Hands- As It Is Now

So what I've come up with to work on in class today is this idea- my narrative will be told through objects found hidden within a fist. The reader will choose which fist, and since the objects in the fist propel the story along, the reader will ultimately be in control of the path of the story.

I made a list of objects, typical things you might expect to find in someone's fist. A quarter, a book of matches, a piece of candy, two Advil. I decided that time would also propel the story along, but by months. Each time the reader choose a new fist, three months would pass. The story would start at the beginning of the relationship, and, giving the reader four opportunities to choose over the course of the narrative, end at one year. Would the couple still be together? Married? Breaking up?

Since the only available hand model I could find in such short notice was my husband, I decided to tell the story from the woman's perspective (I guess it also helps that I am one!) I got Mike to pose (fists look so funny with nothing else in the shot, like little gremlin hoofs, I told him) just one good shot of the fists that the reader can choose from over and over, and then shots of alternating hands open while the other remained in the fist, displaying the various objects. I've decided to write the story organically as I go, to capture just how organic the feeling of a relationship going right or going wrong over time can seem. Already I'm excited for this. The incorporation of hypertext is pushing me in a direction I never would have gone before and I love it. I hope that it also makes me write something I never would have written before...

A Story of Hands- It Continues

After more thought on what we talked about in class in regards to the current idea for my project, I decided to change things a little. There were a few reasons for the change, not having a clear way to show the reader that the poem was continuing among them. However, I would have to say that my main reason for changing up the idea of the narrative was the fact that I didn't want to use a poem. Frankly, I wrote that poem six years ago, when poetry was still something I was mildly interested in. Now, I don't aspire to be a poet and I can't believe I ever did. I realized I couldn't feel good about the project unless I felt good about the writing at the heart of it, and it didn't matter how easy using something I had already written made the project for me.

I decided to rework my idea. I knew I still wanted to use the hands idea, incorporate some of the ideas that Adam and Jenny had brought up in class, but add elements of time and somehow, I guess because when I think of hands, I always picture my husbands, also add the element of a relationship...? I kept thinking about how....

A Story of Hands- The Beginning

So my original idea for our project was to take a poem I had written (called Hands, about hands) and to incorporate that poem into a way of reading that was interactive for the reader. What, I wondered, can we do with our hands that is interactive? That would translate well to the computer screen? (Hand holding, grabbing, touching, poking need not apply.) I thought back to a game every child has played before. Two fists are presented, and the player is asked to choose which fist houses the "surprise" (usually candy). I thought I could use this as a base for my project and instead of a candy surprise, the reader would be awarded with another verse of the poem. When I presented this idea to Adam and Jenny in class, the idea was mostly well-received with some helpful critique. Adam wondered if the reader would know how to play the game without instructions (and also suggested that I write the title of the poem across the knuckles of my hand model for the title webpage.) Jenny wondered if the reader would know when the poem was over, or that they should continue playing to get more for that matter, and also made some suggestions along the lines of exploring the surprise factor of finding something else (a ring for example) instead of candy in the hand.

For the time being, I decided to stick with my original idea, but did decide to take into consideration Jenny's suggestion that I somehow let the reader know when the poem is over.

Who really cares, though?

My biggest issue with blogs seems to not be not having anything to say (I’ve been known to talk to a wall for hours if it will listen) but really, wondering who really cares. I could go on for hours about how “real” MTV’s The Real World really is (I’ve done the research to back this up) but honestly, I can’t think of a single person who would want to read about it. Is this how everyone feels? Or do some of you think that this is the beauty of blogs, because if there is even one person out there who does care as much about it as I do, then they’ll finally find someone else who understands? I guess all things considered, it’s a small risk to take.

With that said, however, I’ve stumbled across some great blogs that are fascinating and funny and wonderfully full of interesting information that make them fun to read… and I’ve come across some that are basically page after page of someone’s loud and forceful opinions. (In these cases, I always think that the person with the opinions must not have a lot of friends with who to share these opinions.) I don’t mind a well-searched argument or persuasion to the contrary, but really, four pages of “Bush sucks!” or a whole argument on why margarine is better than butter… this is what I find head scratching when I try to imagine who really will care what I have to say.

And on that note, I think I’m done for now. I much prefer being given the blog topic. It makes me feel more… secure.

Well, I wasn't a pet person...

I was not a pet person. It was as simple as that. I guess the problem would be then that I married one. And dated him for four years before that. So you can imagine, I’ve run through quite a few reasons not to get a dog. I didn’t want to tie myself down to an animal before kids. It would be cruel to get an animal when both of us are at work all day. We don’t even have our own backyard (we live in a condo), so where was this active puppy going to have room to run? These worked for awhile, but once the wedding was over and the newlywed phase started to feel normal, he was on me again. I finally agreed to LOOK ONLY at our local SPCA about two weeks ago. Big mistake. Because Harper was there in the puppy nursery, nine weeks old, with a big spay scar on her little baby belly and although I might not be a pet person, I’m not heartless. She came home with us that day, and we haven’t had a life since.

She’s a boxer mix and even though the SPCA said they didn’t know what she was mixed with, around the time our ten year old neighbor exclaimed “A baby pit!” we had heard it enough that we finally had to accept it. We’ve gotten a crash course in raising a dog, from volumes of literature on boxers and pit bulls, to the best feeding schedule and treats, to crate training vs puppy pads. The lessons that really stick with me though, are these:

Puppy teeth are like needles and not only will they break the skin, they’ll break the blood vessels under the skin, resulting in your arms looking like you have heroin for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They might say that puppies are as hard as newborns, but given the fact that newborns actually sleep for longer than 20 minutes at a time and stay put when you put them down (and have no teeth to chew) I might venture out and say that puppies are harder. But even when they are making your life ten times harder and more complicated, you can love the furry ball of needle teeth more than you thought possible. (I think this is why they were designed to be so cute.) The maternal instinct kicks in right away because you are 100% responsible for their well-being. Case in point- Saturday found me opening Harper’s jaws and prying out duck poop without a second thought. With my bare hands. And I used to say I wasn’t a pet person…

My First Taste of the 'Weaver

When I was in undergrad, I took a class called Professional Communications with the lovely Julia Jasken. Julia wasn’t a day over 29 and though she has taught college courses before, she had never taught that particular course with that particular curriculum at my particular college. The course combined resumes and professional letters, along with website design and a limited Photoshop introduction. It was, to put it mildly, far too much to pack into one course. . Julia could be found crying in her office most days after class. I suppose it was overwhelming, being only one of her to so many confused students. We all had seemingly never-ending questions and technical problems, she later told me that it was rare we got back the first step in what she had planned for that day’s class.

One of our assignments was to design a website for a member of the English department faculty. My partner and I chose the one professor who knew less about designing a website than we did. Dr. Panek was the kind of person who might have referred to it as the “world-wide interweb”.

Strangely enough, the site is still up and you can visit it here: http://www2.mcdaniel.edu/english/faculty/lpanek/leroypanek.htm
although it is not much to look at. I cannot believe we spent months on this. To our credit, this was back when Dreamweaver was still owned by Macromedia and every single thing we attempted to use to for was a struggle. I’m often reminded of that class in this class, and seeing what Dreamweaver can do now, watching Professor O’Grady swim along in her lesson plans with only a small snag or snare, looking at that old site and knowing what a piece of crap it is… Well, it all helps me to be not so scared of this wildly advancing era of technology and see it for what it really is… and advancement towards something better.

The Garden

http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/~jdouglas/reader.pdf

This is easily the most basic and understandable piece of writing I have seen on the topic of hypertext narratives. What J. Yellowlees Douglas has managed to do in this piece is clearly explain, point by point, what hypertext can do that print narratives cannot. (This is also the title of his piece.)

So, according to Douglas, what is an interactive narrative?

• "non-sequential writing with reader-controlled links"


• representatives of the most revolutionary form of hypertexts-as examples of hypertexts which most directly challenge our definitions of what the act of reading entail

What are some common characteristics of a an interactive narrative?

• most have no single beginning


• cannot be held


• often contains "places" or "paths" that the reader can choose from

In addition, according to Douglas, all interactive narratives must contain:

• interruptibility – participants should be able to trade roles during the interaction, as speakers do in conversation, and not simply take turns in occupying the more active or more passive roles in the interaction


• fine granularity – participants should not have to wait for the “end” of something to interact, with true interactivity being interruptible at the granularity level of a single word


• graceful degradation – participants can still continue the interaction without interruption
  even if non sequiturs or unanswerable queries or requests enter into it


• limited look-ahead – goals and outcomes in the interaction cannot be completely predetermined at the outset of the activity by either of the two parties, with the interaction created “on the fly,” or coming into being only at the moment gestures, words or actions are expressed


• an absence of a single, clear-cut default path or action – participants in the
  interaction cannot have definite recourse to a single or “default” path, one available to them throughout the interaction without their having to make any active decisions for action


• the impression of an infinite database – actors in an interaction need to be able to make
  decisions and take action from a wide range of seemingly endless possibilities

Very good read, very interesting, and a good jumping off point before starting interactive narrative design or study. Douglas also discusses The Garden of Forking Paths, specifically Malthrop's online narrative of it. (Which I was unable to locate. Anyone?)

Of Forking

http://www.cyberartsweb.org/cpace/theory/canete2/garden.html

This site, aptly titled "Navigating in the Garden" is interesting because while it doesn't display the story in hypertext narrative form, it discusses it as such. The author states that "Rather than over accentuating a specific writing technique, Borges couches the concept of hypertextuality within his own linear narrative." I find it fascinating that Borges was writing about something that didn't even exist yet... that is, not in the form that it now exists, with websites, and hotspots, and links, and browser windows.... And yet, you cannot read "The Garden of Forking Paths" without considering how brilliant Tsun's great grandfather's novel would have been if it had been able to be displayed in this way. It was the limited choices the reader had in the linear work that made the novel seem so "incoherant" to those who read it... Like the author of this site states, it was impossible to read the story in any other way than by turning the pages, proceeding from paragraph to paragraph according to the authors preconceived organization of the work, and then close the book. But the web, the hypertext narrative as my generation knows it, makes this preconceived organization unnecessary. The story can unfold as the reader wants it to.

On a side note, over and over throughout my years of schooling I've been so impressed with how the lessons in two seemingly unrelated courses would overlap. For example, in 10th grade, when I was learning about dominate and recessive genes in biology, we were using in grids to chart the probably of say, brown eyes vs blue eyes depending upon the parent gene. In math around that same time, we were also using the same grids, albeit numberically, the chart the probability of certain numbers. Anyway, the other course I am taking this semester is "Experimental Forms". Many of the works we are reading in this course were designed by the authors so that they could not read conventionally. In fact, in my last class, we discussed "Encyclopedia" and many of the student admitted to reading it backwards or from random places in the middle as it made it easier. Interesting...

Paths

http://www.geocities.com/papanagnou/cover.htm

Okay, I'm not proud to admit that I had to play with this site for a bit before figuring out exactly what was going on. "Is it trying to make sense?" I asked myself. "Will it make sense in a certain way? Can I make it unfold that way?" The answer? It does make sense, if you've already read the story. Because while at first glance, this site has The Garden of Forking Paths reading as "incoherant" (just as Tsun describes his grand grandfather's novel in the story) but you come to see that through different screens, it splits the story into many different sequences, orders, and outcomes. Just as the book within the story did. This site is maze or labyrinth of the story, created from many different chunks of text, and if the reader can get through, the big picture will click. Just like an actual labyrinth, when you become too lost, you have to stop and start over at the beginning all over again. Many times while exploring this site I had to click back to the home page (always available as a "back key", at times I even forgot for a moment and thought I was clicking to the previous page as I think the designer wanted us to") and start over again, trying to figure out if the same choices would take me to the same places or if it would just keep changing, over and over and over again.

My only suggestions? I'd like to have seen a map of the ENTIRE site, so that I could have read the story in it's entirety if I had wanted to. Because if you stumble upon this site without knowing the whole story, the meaning is somewhat useless.

253 works for me...

The third interactive site I looked at was http://www.ryman-novel.com/, a site dedicated to an interactive novel titled 253 written by author Geoff Ryman. Why 253? The novel is about an underground London train and its 253 passengers. (7 cars on the train x 36 seats per car + 1 driver = 253 passengers.) Much like the television show Lost, this novel is told through each passenger’s story. By clicking on the car, you are taken to a “car map”, where all of the passenger’s names and seat numbers featured. Once clicking on and learning about a particular passenger, you can select another passenger, consult the journey planner, or visit another car’s map. And, just like Lost, while at times this novel might read as one big unsolvable puzzle, numbers do make sense here. Each passenger story runs approximately 253 words long.

While I thought the concept and execution of this online novel was very creative, I’ll admit that here, just like with the tea narrative by Joe Davis, I was a little disappointed with the aesthetic quality of the site. I can’t hold this against either author though, because words are their thing, not necessarily decorating them. However, in both cases, an illustration or even the use of bright colors would have done wonders in contributing to the overall effect of the narrative.

One in 8 million...

http://nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/1-in-8-million/index.html

This interactive narrative site, part of the New York Times newspaper website, profiles 8 random New Yorkers with professions ranging from a wedding wardrober to a urban taxidermist. As the narrative plays, black and white photographs of the subjects at work flash in the background. What makes this site really work, however, is that the narratives are told by the subjects. As you listen to the corner druggiest or the bridge bicyclist tell their stories, you realize that they do so in their own voices. The pictures might paint an accurate description of what these people do, but hearing the voice creates an experience. Very tastefully done site, with a new story added each week.

What would I add to this site? Not much. Replacing the black and white photographs with black and white slow motion video might allow for a more dramatic presentation, but it doesn't get in the way of experiencing what these people have to say.

Precisely my cup of tea...

I've spent the last few days scouring the internet for creative and original online narratives. I started my search the way I presume 75% of the class did. I Googled "creative online narratives" and clicked and linked and clicked and linked until I finally came to something I felt was worth mentioning. It is: http://www.telescopictext.com/

This online narrative about making a cup of tea is by Joe Davis (or, as you'll find as you click your way through the the narrative, Joe Michael Lambert Davis) and I like it for the way it quite literally unfolds. It is a simple piece, and even completely unfolded is still simple, but something about the way Davis, (a self-proclaimed illustrator, filmmaker, animator and dreamer,) takes a piece that completely consists of sentence "I made tea" and manages to transform it into a piece that has hardly begun with the sentence "Yawning, and smearing my eyes with my fingers, I walked bleary eyed into the kitchen and grabbed the kettle, unhooking it from the switch, and filled it" makes a writer like me appreciate every little nuance in every little surprising added adjective. My only advice for Davis would be to possibly add some color or images. Simple is good, but something might be needed here to keep it from falling into the danger zone of TOO simple.

One down, two to go....