This is How You Will Die by Jason Nelson. Once again I partook in a Jason Nelson experience, and it was absurd, and refreshingly disorienting. The way it works in one sentence is you press a button on the right labeled “Death Spin” which throws the digital slot machine into motion, which shortly weaves together a 5 part narrative of your death  including post death happenings, as well as specific and absurd death realities and you can only find the right one if you satisfy the game’s criteria that is, you must have fewer than 10 death credits to stop. I stopped with 2 death credits and therefore could not continue to “forecast my death.” I was left with an interesting post death detail: “And sperm you donated in college accidentally impregnates a tornado victim.” Even though the author is now dead, (brutally murdered by Engl376/508  a few classes ago), I can’t help but wonder about Jason Nelson’s intentions for this piece of new media art. He seems to have an attraction to the absurd in his work, and I think that dark humor is also a component as well; I feel like he wants me to bask in the rays of confusion that the death machine generates. However, thinking of Nelson as the author allows me to make more sense of the piece; it lets me place the work in a grounded time. Therefore, maybe I should not be thinking of him at all, and truly embrace the full reduction to absurdity by participating in the slot death free of authorship; as a separate entity of the internet world capable of transporting me to a place where I can ponder paradox and existential questions. I thought about making a narrative map of the many possible death sequences, but then also questioned its effectiveness: is slot death meant to be unraveled? I don’t understand the death videos, but, they are a nice bonus to getting me to that special place.