We continued our Review Series this evening with two informative and engaging presentations by
Debbie and Heather-
Debbie opened up the evening's discussion with the beautiful flash poem "Faith". She shared with us that she was drawn to the poem due to its stark simplicity. As she stated - "Faith" provides clear sense of an ending. After our earlier experiences exploring hyperlink texts, this poem's recognizable "closure" was just the reassurance Debbie was seeking as a reader (and I am sure she is not alone in this admittance). But we all soon discovered through Debbie's comprehensive and thoughtful presentation of this work that the perceived simplicity was indeed deceptive. "Faith" can only be described as "layered" in the literary sense. This kinetic/animated flash poem thrives on movement and punctuations with sound. We discussed the allusions to the sacred (read "illuminated manuscript") and the signification implicit in both it's use of font color and audio track. The flash elements foregrounded a playful exploration of textual logic, and an editor's sensibility. We agreed it was a beautiful and complex poem.
Heather introduced to us to another beautiful text entitled "In the White Darkness". This poetic mediation on the nature of memory was a piece that Heather said she was drawn to right away. The text resonated with her, and she understood it's meaning instinctively. "In the White Darkness" is a flash poem using pulsating nodes layered over a veiled screen of nature. The reader is immediately drawn into a gentle but sad world of fleeting references, like the pieces of experienced time and space that we catch glimpses of, and sometimes lose altogether. Heather shared with us the Japanese aesthetic influences she noticed (and the faded kangi in one nodal link). The overall effect of this flash text is "a presentation of one person's present" - the fragmented nature of what we can re-member in the present, and the traces of what might be lost (or is being lost). We agreed that the tone of the piece invokes a kind of sorrow, and it prompts questions about the erasure of identity when our memory cannot contain our experiences throughout time. Heather did a great job of articulating the power of this text.
I am really enjoying our "Review Series" thus far. Each one of you is doing a thorough job of taking us through a new discovery in Electronic Literature.
In the second half of class, we had "lightening round" presentations of your hypertext projects. Wow. What great work you did! Innovative, stretching the boundaries of what hypertexts do, fun!
For those of you who were not in class or have not presented- you will have an opportunity to present your work next week.
Class next week - we will start with a twitter discussion with "guest scholar" Amanda Starling Gould from Duke University. We will be discussing her article A Bibliographic Overview of Electronic Literature
Please prepare comments and/or questions for Professor Gould who will be tweeting with us for the first hour of class next week (this is your blog assignment for next week - see below). While tweeting next week, please remember to always use the #elitclass hashtag so we can easily archive our class discussion. After we finish our discussion with our guest scholar, we will continue our Review Series. Stephanie C. will discuss "Fitting the Pattern" and Vanessa will discuss "Like Stars in a Clear Night Sky". We will then have a short "lightening round" of the remaining Project 1 presentations. With the remaining time left, I will discuss Project 2 as I review the assignment requirements, projected timeline, etc.
Your blog post for next week:
Please write a reflection - your thoughts/questions resulting from reading Amanda Gould's article on Electronic Literature.
Have a great week, and see you next Tuesday.
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