Four Memes

Borrowed Image/Orignal Text    

Original Image/Original Text

Borrowed Image/Borrowed Text

Orignal Image/Borrowed Text

Carnevali on Clifford's interpretation of Cummings

       In Alison Clifford's "The Sweet Old Etcetera" we are given the ability to interact and watch some of E.E.Cummings most famous poems. While he was known for his use of "white space", he was also known for his ability to create the image of the thing itself he was trying to write about. Clifford uses five of his poems and two of those poems really show us thing Cummings was writing about. Even though he successfully showed these images without the digital world, Clifford has given life to his work and has helped to enhance the purposeful spacing and unorthodox line breaks that Cummings used so well.
        Clifford allows us to watch the poem unfold as if a leaf has literally fallen from a tree and has created the poem. We are given the opportunity to see this famous poem come to life. After we see the whole poem fall from the branch, the poem also disappears through itself and we return the beginning tree that holds the certain poems that Clifford had chosen for the piece. When one reads this poem for the first time, it seems confusing. I first ran into the poem my freshman year of college when I was still a young and was not aware of the true beauty of this poem.
        Whether you read this poem on a sheet of paper or you see the poem unfold in Clifford's complex landscape you will still see the simple beauty that it holds. A leaf falls in loneliness. That is exactly what the poem does. We can see that inside the word loneliness a leaf falls. It is brilliant and simple. And that is why it is so inspiring. You get a strange feeling inside when you read it. You question whether or not this is really poetry and that is exactly what a poet wants. Or even an artist. They want you talk about their work. They desire for their readers or viewers to react to the thing they have created and say to themselves, "hmmm is this really poetry?" or "what defines a poem?" Just as we can ask the question, "what is the point to Clifford's piece?" She is repurposing older poems that may have been forgotten. (Not that E.E.Cummings is forgettable.) She almost gives a new generation the access to these poems in a way that they will enjoy them. Most people do not read books of poetry, unless they have to for school and even then we are given online assignments. But I truly digress.
        Back to the poems involved in this digital landscape. One other poem I feel the need to mention is "Grasshopper". A poem that was written to give the reader the experience of watching a grasshopper hop into the air. Cummings tried to capture the wild nature of the grasshopper through this poem. He used a lot of white space and different line breaks to create this image for his readers.
        Just as Clifford creates the image of a leaf falling and creating the poem, she has taken the letters and had them jump around until they have formed the poem. It even helps the reader to understand what the poem actually says. My best interoperation of the poem is as follows. -Who as we look up now gathering into the leap, arriving rearrangingly to become grasshopper-. Cummings takes us through the act of the leap, and the strange image of the grasshopper flopping through the sky. He shows us how the grasshopper is wild in the air, almost coming apart and then coming back together in the end to be exactly the same as it was before it jumped.
        When it comes to the idea of taking these classic poems and turning them into something digital, I almost cringe because you  should not fuck with Cummings. But Clifford almost pays homage to the poet by creating such a beautiful landscape out of his own words. It is something I believe Cummings would enjoy, only because he tried to emulate these real pieces of nature into his poems and Clifford has created an image of nature from those poems. She honors him in her work. This is the kind of Digital Humanities that I both love and hate. I love this because like I said it really captures Cummings work and it is beautiful to watch unfold. But then I hate it because it has taken something that was meant for paper and has taken it and made it part of the digital world. Yes it appears as it does on paper, so really this is ok in my book. But I feel like I'm cheating on the hard copies of Cummings work. Still I will continue to not so secretly enjoy The Sweet Old Etcetera.

     

Curiouser and Curiouser: We Are One!-derkammers

Shelley Jackson's My Body a Wunderkammer takes the hypertext to the next level. Even though there is no real end to this text based digital narrative doesn't mean there is no point to the story. Like so many Digitally based stories we are given the freedom to search throughout the text to move forward or in this case simply go back and forth, connecting and learning about the writers body. Jackson takes on subjects that most women or even people have problems talking about, let alone writing about. She does a wonderful job at taking something uncomfortable and making it beautiful.

For example, one does not normally talk about touching themselves and masturbating but Jackson does, and she does it rather elegantly.

"I had already found that I could rope more into my orgasm than the clitoris itself. If I dug my fingers into the muscles of my inner thighs while I masturbated, my orgasm had a different flavor than if I rootled in my belly button. Once I had established a fingerhold somewhere else, maybe I could let go of my clit and proceed to unassisted thigh orgasms, elbow orgasms, earlobe orgasms. In the meantime I kept one hand between my legs" 

Her open curiosity invites her readers to be curious with her. The format of this narration allows us to click our way through a body and the way the owner of the body feels about certain aspects of it. Each body part is handled with such care and as the reader you never know where Jackson will take you through all of the hypertext links that connect each body part to the others. It almost seems like one giant loop of flesh and voice. Telling readers how to feel about themselves while creating art and inspiration. 

"With a sharp pencil I incise an arc into the paper to mark the crease where the mass of the buttock wedges into the back of the thigh. The fat swells on both sides of the crease, then smooths off down into the back of the thigh. If I smudge the whole area, I can take an eraser and slather the top of the buttocks with light, wrap a faint shimmer of reflected light around the undersides, run a little gleam down the curve of the tailbone. Could I mistake this doting attention for disinterested curiosity? Drawing is almost sex."


I would like to boldly say that in this moment and other moments Shelley Jackson's writing is sex! She is very fluid in her writing and her ballsy approach to speaking about the body is pretty inspiring. Looking at the digital aspect of the piece, it really would not be the same if somehow Jackson put this on paper, allowing us to leaf through the body instead of clicking on it. The best part of this piece is that you almost get lost in the text, you are not able to find your way back to a text that you really liked. It is almost as if we are becoming one with Jackson. 

Getting lost in our bodies as if it is out very own Wunderkammer. 

P.s 
Wunderkammer- A place where a collection of rarities and curiosities are exhibited.

Deviant: The intelligent and Creative Way to Waste My Time.

          Being relatively new to the idea of DH and having never really spent anytime reading such things as electronic literature or clicking on hypertexts, I found navigating my way through Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw rather tedious and unnecessary. Now having spent many of my days playing video games, I believed that I would be able to make my way through the story without a problem. But in the end my gaming instincts are what caused me to prematurely lose my mind.  

           Now due to the fact that while playing a video game, which I believe is a form of electronic literature, you have to accomplish something in order to move your way up through the levels of the game and so when traveling through the world of Christian I believed I had to do just that. I made every flower explode, or leaf grow. I cut strings, and caught things on fire. I even made creepy naked creatures with bulbous heads pop out of perfectly normal trees. No matter how many flowers popped out of the ground I had no idea how to continue on through the story to finally make my way to the end. Yes this made me very irritated knowing that I could not finish the story, but in the end I learned a lot about electronic literature. 

            Spending so many hours trying to get through the story made me contemplate on how much time and effort one has to put into creating something like Deviant. I for one would not know where to begin to even attempt creating such a story and that is what I really enjoy about this piece of electronic literature. Yes, I will reiterate that this was excruciating trying to figure out, but once I managed to make my way through, I appreciated the strange beauty of it. There is no doubt that a lot of thought had to be put into all of the creatures, scenes, and ever changing nature that filled the narrations. As frustrating as it was, one cannot deny the pure obvious level of skill that was needed to put this all together. The same thing goes for all forms and pieces of electronic literature. I could never see myself working with codes and texts to create an interactive, thought provoking, sense evoking story. I would like to believe that if I tried hard enough I would succeed and maybe I could one day. But for now I will remain in the passenger seat, enjoying the numerous and plentiful creative fruits that so many artists create for me (and everyone else I guess). 

           Each piece of electronic literature holds something new for its viewer/readers. With some of the interactive stories, every reader may end up with a different story, Almost, Goodbye by Aaron Reed is a good example of that. The reader will end up with the same end to the story, but while going through the text the reader has the choice of who the protagonist meets first and where they will meet, slightly changing the story each time. Deviant focused on choice and sight, sometimes giving the viewer/reader some sound to accompany the text, and Almost, Goodbye gives the reader a sense of control over the story. Each one allowing the reader to become a part of what they are reading and watching. Taking the act of reading a story and making it into so much more. 

          I particularly enjoy the use of sound in these digital stories. Public Secrets is an interactive, sound based narrative of women who are locked up in a prison in California. Hearing their actual voices makes the story seem very real. I think the same thing goes for most electronic literature. I defined Digital Humanities as something that is interactive and evokes other senses such as sight and sound, making the reader a part of the narrative. And that is pretty bitchin'.

What the Hell is DH?

            While reading up and learning about Digital Humanities I realized that I am quite honestly a digital virgin. At the first mention of Digital Humanities I scoffed at the idea of Literature being in the form of text and code instead of black print on white paper. As an old fashioned kind of girl, I believe the best way to spend ones time is by sitting somewhere peaceful and reading a great novel to unwind (possible beer in hand). But regardless of my preferences, and my pre-determined opinions of Digital Humanities, my eyes have been opened to the large possibilities that lie within the realm of DH. As I rack my brain trying to create a sufficient definition to pair with the great DH, I find myself almost at a loss for words. Not because I am unable to comprehend the subject but because there is so much to say regarding the field of study.

            I refer to myself as a digital virgin because as I first heard the words Digital Humanities, I believed the whole thing to be too revolutionary for myself. I was ignorant to the numerous possibilities and to the vast array of genres that can be found within the digital world, as a virgin is ignorant to the idea and emotion of sexual arousal. As I delved deeper into the digital world I accepted the reality, that DH is going to change the way people read. The interactive literature is rather perfect for the generation of today. The over consumption of technology in youth leaves reading novels and short stories without a fighting chance. As the times become more digital and computerized less and less people are actually picking up books to read them (it’s so sad). So in my words, I believe Digital Humanities are exactly what these next generations need. In short they will now have access to digitally born literature as well as digitized literature through their cell phones that are connected permanently to their palms. Digital Humanities is the future for next generations who will have no idea what a novel looks like. As morbid as that sounds to all hard copy analog book enthusiasts, there will always be those who prefer the hard copy to hold and turn pages. The joy and love for the fresh smell of ink on pages will not die out completely but in the technologically driven world we live in, Digital Humanities will keep the arts alive in the young ones as they grow old and eventually turn into robots due to all of the electricity generated through their use of technology. But I digress. 

What is Digital Humanities? In my own words. 

           

            Digital Humanities= The creation of interactive, real life stories by using digital tools. Re-creating literature in a digital form, providing readers with actual experience through their senses of sound and sight, opposed to simply reading and using ones own imagination.

           

            Hayles brings to light this very question in her essay "Electronic Literature: What is it?", is literary quality possible in digital media, or is electronic literature demonstrably inferior to the print canon? I do believe that electronic literature does not have the same quality of plain old beautiful literature, but that is due to the fact that they have different qualities. I am almost tempted to look at these two subjects as two very different things standing on their own. Both have their own quality, not allowing me to compare them very easily. Yet again, I digress. But what is Digital Humanities?

             Digital Humanities= Fascinating