Digital Project

Project Overview

Every student will design one expressive digital object, emulating the examples we study and using the tools we encounter in the workshop part of the class. The work may be created from “scratch” or through remixing an existing digital work. Some possibilities include generative digital poetry, interactive fiction, a small videogame, a Twitter bot, and so forth. The digital project will be accompanied by an Artist’s Statement. A prototype of your project is due in class Wednesday, November 14. The final version (and Artist’s Statement) will be due Wednesday, November 21.

More than technical innovation, I’ll be looking for creativity, an awareness of the issues at work, and a sense of serious playfulness. The degree of narrative coherence and interactivity you aim for will be up to you. But remember that even works that are narratively diffuse should be thematically coherent.

The subject of your digital work is also up to you. It may be wholly original or it may make use of existing texts or media (within copyright limits). It may be a personal memory, a creative story, a manifesto, a mashup, a parody of some official discourse, and the list goes on.Your audience includes our class, and since this project is digital and likely online, it may eventually be seen by a much larger audience—something to keep in mind as you work on your project.

Baseline Requirements

  1. The new media object itself. This may be purely text, or it may incorporate images, video, or audio. There is no minimum length requirement in terms of words. Instead, consider how long you want to engage your readers. Aspire for a work that is not instantly over. The best experiments will invite exploration or contemplation, as well as the sense that there is both representational and evocative meaning at work.
  2. An artist’s statement. This is a 4-5 page essay that outlines the goals of your project. You should consider the following questions (not necessarily all of them or in this order): What were you trying to achieve? What effect or meanings were you after? What subtextual meanings were you trying to evoke? Why did the project take the form it did? Explain why your design decisions and how the platform used afforded narrative opportunities that meshed with the themes of your work. Here I’ll be looking for evidence that you’ve absorbed and thought about many of the issues we discussed throughout the semester regarding authorship, readership, narration, points of view, database, texture, etc. Finally, conclude your artist’s statement by evaluating how your project lived up to your initial goals. What difficulties and epiphanies occurred along the way as you created your project, and what would you do differently next time?

Possible Tools and Platforms

Possible Source Materials

Possible Places to Host the Project

  • GMU students are able to create and host their own websites on a GMU server. If these instructions aren’t enough, the staff at the STAR lab in the JC can help
  • Smaller projects can be hosted directly on this blog. I’ll work with you on figuring out how to do this.