Jackson/hypertext

Hypertext is something that can be a very confusing task and can be mind boggling at some points throughout stories, but it definitely beats having to just sit and look at a book that goes one way. Having electronic hypertext in your reading makes it so much more enjoyable allowing you to explore stories in different ways on your own just like that of a game. It takes you to random places that are sewn together, with each click to a  different piece of fabric to pull together to make a story. In this case of Patchwork girl and hypertext links from a drawing or a list of parts and pieces a variety of roots through the work. Patchwork Girl’s story is a piece in which you have to do a lot of backtracking  and finding out the connections of the story. You have to find where it goes next and think of themes and ideas that constantly come up. The hypertext gives you many different choices that you can click on making there be a web of possibilities , making it a different story each and every time that you click a new hyperlink, where the reader has the influence on the way the story is told. The idea of hyperlink is that you are able to interpret different parts into a whole.

It is important to know Shelley Jackson’s five main sections of hypertext, before I move on. “The first one would be the body of text where you are able to find the monster’s narration and certain theoretical speculations about hyper textual and human bodies. The second section being a theme in the story which is the graveyard. This section contained the stories of the different donors which was told by the monster. In the grave yard you were able to click on different organs  and you are able to see a bibliography of the donors.Here is a screen shot on where you would come upon in the graveyard where you would start off by picking the first organ, like a puzzle.

 When you see the inscription of the headstone it reveals the nature of the contents an example being in this screen shot

 The third section would be the journal that Mary Shelley recorded her relationship with her creature in. The fourth main section is the story itself where Mary Shelley’s  Frankenstein is interacting with the female monster’s modern adventure. And last but not least the crazy quilt, which is made up of two parts in which the same content is repeated. One difference of the quilt is being that is the second part the quotes used are not documented or presented with different typographies as they are in the first part. In other hands the lexias are presented with different colors in order to evoke the idea of that “crazy quilt” which is the governing metaphor.” (Gathering The Limbs  Of The Text In Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl). This is a screenshot of an example of the quilt and how it has two parts to it.

In this case Patchwork girl takes different body parts from different people, that have a totally different story to them, from all different kinds of people and then are sewn together to make this “monster” as a companion for that of Shelly. Through the story the “monster” had to be able to identify on it’s own it’s own identity and what she was really set out to do. Seeings that patchwork girl’s body is made up of random parts of different people. Making her a metaphor of a quilt that is sewn together with a bunch of unrelated parts, making the curiosity inside of the cabinet of who she really is and who she wants to be.

While Patchwork girl struggles through creating her own identity to fInding a way to fit in, she wants to find a coherent single past. Therefore, she ends up finding a photo album,looks at it and decides she is going to borrow someone else’s past. She ends up going to America to try and establish her new identity there, starting at the East and ending in the West coast. While in Frankenstein  he was taught through the means of education, and was able to learn things by someone, instead of having to do it all on his own.

Patchwork girl talks about what she is going through and adds depth to it throughout the story and what she goes through. One example being throughout the story and talking about feminism and how Patchwork girl feels like she is being pushed by society, because of the way that she looks and is sewn together. She was such a big girl that she couldn’t control her body to be the feminine ideal women, because she wasn’t just made of female parts, but male parts as well. The feminist perspective chooses to exaggerate to make a point about how squeamish we are to talk about certain things, such as the way they put some things in the reading. They have many hyperbole and exaggerated  to explode taboos about the bodies of the people and the genatalics throughout this story. She likes the masculine and stronger parts of her body, making her have the male side of her.

Another part that caught my eye that added depth throughout the story was the whole point of even bringing patchwork girl to life. The main illusion of this story revolved round Frankenstein. Bringing the point up of the unusual by-line of the piece. This screen shot is an example of the by-line. 

Mary, being the creator of Frankenstein, Shelley, being the writer of Patchwork girl, and Herself being Patchwork girl, in Patchwork girl. They all go together in some way and relate to one another revolving around the story.  Mary Shelley and patchwork girl having a very close relationship, as if they were seeing one another, as a companion. This screen shot show's an example of how they were to one another.

 Just like that of Mary Shelley did, she wanted a companion as well, going off of the Frankenstein story, the author put it into different context. This screen shot is just something to prove how the two are similar by having to be put together.

 But the same kind of topic, wanting to have a "Monster" come alive for themselves, as a companion they could be with, because they couldn’t find anyone else and making these “monsters” on their own and thought it could lead them to someone or something who is exactly what they are looking for in every way possible. 

One other hypertext literature that we read was by a person named Wunderkammer called  My Body-. 

This story takes different parts of the body, where all the body parts have a different story to them. My body uses the HTML hypertext form to revitalize the memoir genre and makes you explore the body. You are able to pick a hypertext on the page and click it, it tells a little story and then you constantly have more and more hyperlinks to pick from, making your own story by what hyperlink you click. However, in some cases on some of the pages it only has one hyperlink to choose from, this screen shot shows, how you can only have one hypertext on a page sometimes.

 The hyperlink that they have on the page is something relates to the story they are talking about on the page. I also noticed that the hyperlink colors were different on some of the pages, some being blue and some being red, and other other pages when the backgrounds are a different color the hypertext, but even be a different color. This screen shot shows the two different colors.

 I also noticed that some of the hypertexts go back to pages that you have already been at before, making you possibly get stuck and have to think and backtrack to find the connections of the story. I also noticed when clicking a hyperlink and then going back it would change the color of it, so I would know i had already went there. Here is an example of what happens when you click a hyperlink and backtrack it

 “As the reader selects images of what looks like woodcut images of parts of the authors body, meditations and anecdotes associated with each of the body parts are revealed.” 

Overall, hypertext really gets you through reading in a fun way, instead of just having to sit there, read a book, and flip through page after page. Hypertext is absolutely a great way of having to read, making it kind of like a game as you have to backtrack, and find connections to the story, so you can understand it a little better. This makes it fun for that of students who like doing puzzles and mind games, because it can involve a lot of thinking.


CITATIONS:

Shelly, Mary. "Patchwork Girl." Web.

Gathering the Limbs of the Text in Shelly Jackson-

"Patchwork Girl Jackson Download | .:: FitriPDF.com ::. | Manual Owners." Fitri PDF - Free PDF Portable Document Format Files. Web. 02 Dec. 2010. <http://fitripdf.com/search/patchwork-girl-jackson-download>.

My Body-  A Wunderkammer

My IF/Inform 7 thoughts

Interaction fiction, was definitely something different, at some points i didn’t know if i really got the whole concept of it, and didn’t know if I really enjoyed it that much. During the process of learning what interactive fiction was however, I started to get the hang of it through readings, discussions in class, and getting to play and make my own. I learned that interaction fiction was just like a game. You have to be able to play and interact with the story as a game. There are obstacles that the reader must overcome to reach their goal, as well as you getting to be the character in the story, there is so much i felt like i had to learn about interaction fiction, before i could even make one on my own.

There were many different secondary readings that helped me along the way first off in “What is interaction fiction?” It made me realize what I was going to be doing the next weeks ahead of me, and gave me the overall gist of it. It talked about how (IF) or interaction fiction was a computer- mediated narrative, where you can “Choose your own story” to me that was a true fact, because in some of the interaction fiction we did, it either ended with different endings for a lot of people, along with knowing not everyone was going to play it the same exact way as everyone else. Also while reading this you find out that the computer displays a few lines or paragraphs of text, after that the interactor types a command (which would be you, the person playing the game against the computer) and then the computer describes what happens next, and gives you hints on what to do, then finally waits for additional input.

One other secondary reading that really helped me was “Twisty Little Passages”. The main reason being because it gave me all the terms for interaction fiction that i needed to know what to look for in interaction fiction, but also how to understand it better and get to know each and every important term out there that you should for this kind of literature, some of the terms being prologue, output, diegetic initial situation, and player character. It also gave a perspective of the interactive fiction and explains how the interaction will result in a text that can describe something that the IF world, and certain events will help to move a main character past different obstacles, making it seem like it could be an “arc of the plot”. It also talks about you as an interactor that can win a game just by solving the puzzle pieces to the story on what you have to do to win the game. As it it explains there is also times where you can give commands to the computer to do something for example saying “look at the stone” or “pick up the guidebook”  then they will answer to what you have told them to do. 

You are also able to tell the player character to save what you have done so far, as well as telling them to quit when you thin you are finished and do not want to go on any longer. You are able to tell the player character what direction to go, such as, north, south, east, or west, as well as making direct commands such as “kill the troll” then they might ask you to be more specific and you could say, “kill the troll with the knife” or they might just as you kill the troll with what? and you could just say “knife”.

To me this whole IF is very complicated and confusing to take in all at once, but as time goes by you will find out more about it, making it a lot easier then you had expected it to be from the beginning. You might realize it is like a mystery( as I see it) because you never know what is going to happen next and what clues are going to come up next, making it a puzzle and having to put each piece together. It is really important to pay attention to the clues that they give you, some of the clues you would have never though about which i will explain later. To me these IF’s are a huge adventure and your goal is to find the treasure at the end of the quest.

One piece of interactive fiction, that i found the most exciting out of all the other IF’s i tried was “All Roads”. This was a game that lead you through Rome, and it made me think that you can’t get away from fate no matter what you do or where you are. It had many chapters to it, and it brought you through a story type game. One part of the game that i can remember was when the whole you have to pay attention carefully scene game into play. The intro when they told what was going on in that chapter they mentioned a wine bottle, and how a man was tied to a chair with his hands behind his back with rope. The first obstacle I had to over come was getting him out of the chair and the rope untied so he could escape from the cell. I tried for about an hour just trying to get him out of the chair thinking of anything i could do to get him undone, then at the end i realized there was a pile of dust there for a reason. I then thought about what i could do with dust and realized i could blow it.

 After blowing it they said there was a wine bottle under it. So i had him smash it on the ground and cut the rope so that he could be free and then kill the guard, as you can see some clues aren’t very easy, forcing you to work extra hard and pay extra close attention to what is going on in the story. This story was very eye catching when i did it, compared to any of the other IF’s we did for class. This was the only story that made me not want to stop and actually see what happens next. It was a puzzle to me and i love being stumped to the point where I have to keep going till I get it. It made you use different directions throughout the game, as well as you having to use commands to get the player to do anything. Such as in the first part of “All Roads” you can command them to escape from the hanging, when i did it, most of the time i just kept saying “escape” 

and i would get a new response each time telling me what was going on and what people were saying in the background, till i finally reached the reached the next level. I will tell you that I never got the chance to finish the whole game, because i forgot to save it. However, it did seem to get a little tricker each and every level, even though the huge stumper to me was the dust and wine bottle. This literary fiction reminded me of James Bond and all the obstacles he had to overcome without getting himself killed. “All Roads”, has everything that I have learned that a IF should have, including all of the terms to make a IF. The game elements worked really well together, besides being stumped a few times, but in that case times does not pass unless the player “waits” or “acts” getting stuck and unstuck. If getting stuck you can always type help for getting some help on what to do next and continue on your journey to complete the game.

The last step we learned about IF, was creating our own games for IF on inform. However, before starting inform you learn that having a map is the key to making your own, along with having a synopsis, so you know what your place is going to look like as you take your player through many different rooms and tasks.

 While it is important to have a synopsis, so you know what your story s going to be based on, so that you can follow that theme as you  complete your game. When writing my IF, i realized it was a little complicated at first, but it made me able to explore so many possibilities and open them up on having my own IF experiences. It allowed me to see how some things would work in the story and how some just wouldn’t fit, Inform letting you know that as you wrote it. I enjoyed being able to stump myself and work around the issues i was having as i wrote my IF.  In my opinion, I found playing IF more expressive then if i was just reading a book,because it made me want to keep going to see what was going to happen next. But I would have to say i think i would have enjoyed expressing my pages in a book, because some of tasks you had to do, over and over and over again, made you so annoyed and overwhelmed. It also had to be perfect, so you always had to be fixing tasks and finding out what to put to make it work. I can say maybe if I had a little more experience with IF then i maybe would have liked expressing myself more on IF. I know while writing it I had my idea going in the right direction, until the next class a bunch of my work got deleted and i started getting stuck on what i had said before that incident making me start writing in a whole different path, which was very overwhelming. Overall, I think that IF is a fun type of electronic literature for some people, but not for others. For me it was i liked playing them, but i didn’t like writing them. Therefore, this has experience has influenced me in a way that I know a different kind of electronic literature now, and when i’m bored and have some spare time, i’d love to fool around with it, but on the other side of the experience, I don’t think i would like doing it so much anymore, that part didn’t suit me as much as the playing part did.

E-Poetry

Walking into the classroom, the first day of class, I was in great confusion to see what this class was really going to be about. Once we got handed a little pamphlet, i thought to myself “oh great, reading poems the whole semester” knowing that poetry can be like bending over backwards for me, and just not my cup of tea, to say the least. Some poems i have always found to be hard to even understand, while reading them, as was it to understand some of the poems we got handed in class. One being called “Nine”, it was as if this poem could mean a million different things, it was like a math problem having to put the bits and pieces together to even understand it a little, if not completely. At that point i was dreading what was soon to become of me and what i was about to put myself through. Until, the same day about 30 minutes later after talking to our partners and discussing the poems, when we were asked to go onto blackboard and click on these links. At first i was puzzled to see what we are about to look at. As soon as Professor Liu asked us to click the name of the poem we were just looking at on a white plain piece of paper, i clicked and become instantly amazed. Clicking each puzzle piece as i read “Nine” again, but in a different way. To me, it made the poem so much more clear to me, as if i could understand what the meaning of the poem was really about now. Breaking up the poem while showing pictures to represent each line, as if it told a story. After that one i checked out another poem online, that was in my pamphlet that we were handed in the beginning of class. It was called “The Best Cigarette”, this poem was so different. The poem was read to you by a voice that made the poem come to life, it was as if i was there and knew exactly what he was saying as he read it, with a clip of a flame burning in the background like a video to show what was going on, throughout the whole poem. In aw, the class was told what this different type of poetry was called, “electronic poetry”.

Every class so far, I have learned so much about electronic literature, not just from hearing, but getting to experience it in so many different ways, by seeing it. Getting to experience it, i have realized that “electronic literature tests the boundaries of the literary and it challenges us to rethink our assumptions of what it can do or be”( “New Media Poetics” ). Electronic Literature is created in symbiociations, meaning  that the poem can be associated with symbols,  form, movement, imagery, navigation, and a non-linear structure. It takes you into this whole different world, away from that boring piece of paper with black ink on it, and let’s you experience such an incredible way of being able to experience a poem in a totally different perspective of then what you are used to.

Getting to wonder what the next poem is going to be like, as you travel through the internet, seeking all the many possible worlds that they have out there for E-poetry. To me every poem, has something special to it to make it, in it’s own special way a unique piece, I have not yet seen one piece that is identical in anyway. The uniqueness of the poem could be anything from colors, fonts. imagery, and other visual effects that no piece of plain white paper could let you experience (“A Quick Buzz”). You can’t hear sounds from a plain piece of paper right in front of you. If we didn’t have e-poetry we wouldn’t be able to experience poems in a totally different, yet exciting way. Being able to see a poem so differently off a sheet of paper, and on a screen. Sounds can make the E-Poem unique. Like i said earlier about the e-poem called “ The Best Cigarette”. First reading it off the sheet of paper was a lot harder to understand, but also it didn’t come off as anything special to me, it didn’t catch me eye at all. However, as soon as i got to the e-poetry part of it, i instantly had a totally different perspective of it. The e-poetry part of it made me want to hear more and more, wishing it would never end. The voice in the background of the poem fit it just right, having different harmonies as he read it. The theme in the background of the flame burning and video going on completed the mood of the poem and made you able to feel like you were in his place experiencing what was going on.

There are so many different necessities that you can put into an e-poem to make it stick out to someone. One other poem that i can recall, reading for homework one night, that was totally different then any other e-poem i had seen before, was called “Catch the Land minds”. The reason this poem stuck out to me was because they made this poem into some sort of a game, while it seemed to be trying to make a political statement at the same time. This poem came off as a ad for the internet, such as when something pops up on your screen and it says something like catch the runaway hamster, by clicking with your mouse and win a free laptop. This was just how the land mind  game went all except if you caught a land mind, or missed it, you would get all these interesting facts, as if it were a political statement.

Another poem that i recently found while looking through websites, was this poem called “Diver”. It starts out with just a pretty background of colors, soon words start coming up from the bottom in stanzas, some words bigger then others, as if they mean something more to the poem, then the other words do. This poem is trying to tell you what happened to a person that passed away,while at the same time making it easier to understand, with not a lot even going on. Simple functions added to the piece to make the words go upward. Even the simplest actions added to the poem make it easier to understand, just the littlest bit, while it being so much more entertaining then just a plain piece of paper with ink on it sitting in front of you, for you to read.

While attempting to write my own E-poetry, i came to the conclusion that it is a lot more work then you would expect (well for the more characterized poems with more transitions). Such as making each individual letter have their own transition. Doing just one word with 5 letters could take you up to 5 minutes. Now think about if you wrote a whole poem, with 75 words, with each individual letter having its own transitions. Just that could take you over a hour to do, not even including writing your poem up first and then adding whatever else you want to add into your e-poetry poem. I attempted to write  e-poetry in class on Microsoft powerpoint, there was so much to do with it, that it just started becoming so confusing, while learning new things, i forgot how to even use them and re-find them when i needed to accommodate them into my poem. However, my poem that i ended up starting for homework, i am not using Microsoft powerpoint seeings that my mac has a different program called keynote. This program to me, seems a tad bit less confusing, and it is probably only because i got taught how to do a lot of additions in keynote when i bought my computer by one of the people that work there. I also noticed while using key note some of the options are a lot more efficient then that of powerpoint. I realized when trying to get the white off the background of a picture from the internet that it was a lot more accurate with getting just the picture on the background, then having the pictures background on it as well as mine in my poem. While in powerpoint it wasn't accurate at all, it would just turn black and only do a certain amount even how much i tried to play with it, to make it look better. Even though, it was a lot more work then just handwriting a poem, i found it a lot more fun and meaningful, making me realize my poem could mean even more to myself after making it an e-poem. It allowed me to actually express myself more in someway, by adding little things to it, then just letting someone sit there and stare at a piece of paper. 

To me, e-poetry had made me have a huge change of mind in poems, to thinking poems were so boring and a waste of time, to making me want to go and watch and understand what they are trying to say in a poem. I could have never imagined something i absolutely had no interest in, could suddenly be at the top of my list, just because of seeing something in a  different view that I was able to experience. “ To see electronic literature through the lens of print is in a significance sense, not to see it all” ( “New Media Poetics”).

Citations:

Poems:

Nine

The Best Cigarette

Catch The Land minds

Diver

My poem

Readings: 

New Media Poetics

A Quick Buzz

Sites:

http://www.poemsthatgo.com/gallery/index.htm