Author Archives: jcurry7

Social media as data

Posted on by

Lev Manovich’s article “Trending: The Promises and Challenges of Big Social Data” discusses the emergence of vast amounts of data that may soon be available to researchers in the humanities field.  In particular, he addresses the problems and complications which could arise with this data, one of which was particularly interesting to me.

Although social media sites will soon prove to be a great resource in terms of data for the humanities, Manovich urges that we must be careful when interpreting this data.  While it does allow for a much larger sample population than many past studies, social media information is largely biased and in many cases does not represent the actual thoughts and emotions of the people posting it.  While some users may be posting their real thoughts and feelings, others may post only things that their friends want to see, or will refrain from posting things that they think do not fit the social norm or which they might be judged for.  I know that I myself would be an example of this case; there are many times when I do not post things on social media sites that I feel like my friends would not want to hear about.

This point of his article made me realize just how different the data used in the humanities is from the data used by sciences.  The large amount of data that can be obtained from social media sites can almost all be biased in one way or another, whether a person is simply posting a status that is different from how they really feel, or taking pictures that only portray a more positive image of themselves.  The data used in science, on the other hand, can be thoroughly researched and proven to be true.  Although this may have been an obvious difference to some, I had never before considered the possibility of researching vast amounts of social data in the humanities field that is taken from people’s personal profiles, rather than from facts collected by the government.  When data from social media is analyzed, it seems to me that it should be read more as trends of what other people want to make their peers think about them.  While it could be used to analyze social trends, I believe these vast amounts of emerging social data should also be analyzed carefully, and taken with a grain of salt.

“The Dreamlife of Letters” and code

Posted on by
     “The Dreamlife of Letters” is a digital poem by Brian Kim Stefans, created from words that were written to him by a colleague during a roundtable collaboration (http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/stefans__the_dreamlife_of_letters/dreamlife_index.html).  He took her words, alphabetized them, and created a short series of poems based off of her words.  The words of this poem move in various directions upon the screen.  They appear in response to another word or letter many times, but at other times they seem at odds with the rest of the words, and only have the first letter in common, rather than the first few letters, or patterns of letters within the word.
     This text was interesting to me, because the author specifically states that it is not interactive.  On many levels, it is not.  However, after studying Hayles’s arguments about print and code recently, I am able to see elements of the poem that I could interact with.  There is a version of the poem which the reader can view as plain text.  However, “The Dream Life of Letters” as a digital work relies upon the code behind the poem.  The author explains it as more of a movie, rather than a poem; if you do not view the plain text, the only way you can view the whole poem is to sit through it for about 11 minutes as the words play in front of you.  At some points, the actions of the letters correspond with the word; for example, the word height expands and grows taller at first, then shrinks away, while the word “drip” appears as the letter D falls down the screen.  While the author states that the straight-through playing out of the text makes it non-interactive, a practiced reader of digital media may be able to undermine this assertion.  The code that the author created for the work could be seen and the idea replicated, with a different source for the words which it includes, or the original text could be altered; someone could chose to have it go in reverse alphabetical order instead.  While the author does intend for his text to be seen, rather than manipulated, reading Hayles’s works have made me register more of the underlying elements of digital literature, rather than simply what I see on the screen.

Interactive Fiction- “Bad Machine”

Posted on by

The part of “Interactive Fiction’s Fourth Era” which was most interesting to me was the IF created in 1998 titled “Bad Machine.”  The author tells us that the story begins with the question, “What do you want to do?” which differentiates this work from others at the very start.  Montfort tells readers that IF will normally give the readers a bit of background story before having them jump into the story, but this is clearly not the case with “Bad Machine.”  In this way, this text seems to me almost more interactive than even the others that came before it.  The person using the program is allowed an immediate opportunity to interact with the story, rather than having parts of it laid out for them, without allowing them a chance to choose what they want to do.

The bit of the story which Montfort includes in his article is almost incomprehensible to me.  He states that it includes a mixture of English and code, which I immediately found interesting in relation to the topics we have discussed in class.  Hayle discusses the importance of textons and scriptons in her article, and their usual separation in digital works.  Readers are usually allowed to ignore the underlying code, or textons, and focus primarily on the printed text on the screen.  In “Bad Machine,” the mixture of English and computer code within the interactive fiction reminds the reader that there is indeed an underlying code which makes the experience of any work of interactive fiction possible.  To me, the bit of text from “Bad Machine” made me uncomfortable because I am not used to looking at computer codes, and I was unable to understand the bit of story and how I would interact with it.  While this may not have been the case for many users of this interactive fiction, it does still make me wonder if the inclusion of code language had some effect on the limited success of this work.  It seems possible to me that code on the surface of a work of interactive fiction reminded users too much of the code underlying the story they were supposed to be interacting with, which could have taken away from there enjoyment of the story by constantly reminding them that they were talking to a computer and not entirely creating their own adventure.

“Twelve Blue” and hypertexts

Posted on by

“Twelve Blue” by Micheal Joyce is a web hypertext which was written in 1996 (http://www.eastgate.com/TwelveBlue/).  From the home page, the reader can begin following a series of narratives by either clicking on a link within the story itself, or clicking on a colorful thread off to the side of the story.  For me, this made the stories hard to follow.  While you could choose the simple path and click on the text within the story, clicking on the various threads would allow you to change which narrative you were reading.

Although this was somewhat of a frustrating read for me, it was also very interesting in light of things that we have discussed in class.  These short stories being presented in a digital format allows the reader the freedom to choose the order in which they read the narratives.  In theory, you could also do this with a book; you could pick it up and turn to any page in it, and skip around reading only the passages you choose.  However, the book is not set up for this format, and readers have been trained to read printed books in a linear manner.  With “Twelve Blue,” the threads on the side are readily available to click in whichever order you want, and the viewers may be more likely to try this out because they are used to clicking on things on the screen which interest them.  At points, clicking on the threads becomes the only option; some screens do not have links within the text, and in this way the story forces you to choose a thread to follow, with no way of knowing whether it will lead to a continuation of your current narrative, or another part of the story.  This reading reminded me specifically of Hayle’s nine points about electronic hypertexts, especially point seven: “electronic hypertexts are spaces to navigate” (Hayle).  “Twelve Blue,” as a hypertext, is designed as a story to navigate your way through, not a series of narratives to read in a standard, linear manner, and the threads and links within the story constantly emphasize its digital properties.

Pictures and Print

Posted on by

Bolter’s article “Seeing and Writing” offers several different ways that writers in the digital era have both changed and brought back older forms of writing, such as varying their font styles, and incorporating notes into their work which further explain the points they are trying to make.  However, the aspect that I found most interesting in this article was the ways in which pictures can be involved in and influence how we read printed text.  Bolter explains that the inclusion of an image and where the picture is located on the page can have an effect on how we process the information.  In past texts, the image (if there was one) was often put off to the side, so that the reader could move from a line of text to the picture and then back to the text in a fluid manner which would not disrupt the reader’s thought process.  The overall lack of pictures in printed books made the reader focus primarily on the information or the story, and forced them to imagine the printed words without a visual representation.

In the digital age, this is many times no longer the case.  Websites or online books and essays can and do incorporate pictures in their pages.  In some ways, this can enhance the work of the author.  Readers can take breaks from long stretches of printed letters and numbers and rest their eyes upon an image that directly connects to what they are reading.  However, to me, it seems that this could also detract from the work, especially in the case of fictional stories.  For example, instead of allowing a reader to visualize a character based only upon the author’s description, they now could easily incorporate an image of exactly how the author pictures the character in their own mind.  This, while allowing the author to portray the story in exactly the manner that they wish, also diminishes the freedom of imagination given to the reader.  The easy incorporation of pictures could not only change the way our eyes focus on the printed word, but could lessen the effect of the printed story when a visual story is also present.

Creative Response- “Endemic Battle Collage”

Posted on by

The Endemic Battle Collage (http://collection.eliterature.org/2/works/huth_endemic_battle_collage.html) is a set of digital poems created by Geof Huth, which was displayed in the simple style of the original Apple Basic program.  While it is indeed a form of poetry, at times the images challenge this idea.  For example, at one point the screen fills up with repeated lines of only the home key letters.  While Huth then transforms these lines into actual words, the typing out of the home keys reminds those viewing his work that they are not simply experiencing a poem on a printed page in a manner that they are used to.

The computer-poetry link is further reinforced by certain sounds which happen at different intervals of the poem.  At some points, the sounds make sense, such as the repetitive tapping sounds that accompany the appearance of the word “thread” on the screen, and which put the viewer in mind of the sounds which might be made by someone who is sewing or knitting.  However, at many points the sounds are simply random, robotic beeps which do not emphasize the words that they are accompanying, and which seem to only be there to again reinforce the idea of the link Huth is making between a literary work and a digital form of communication.

In this way, it seems that the Geof Huth is both critiquing modern poetry, and at the same time putting his own spin on it.  Many contemporary poems can, to some readers, seem to be random collections of words with no meaning, which he imitates when he flashes not only random words, but even random, disconnected letters across the screen.  At the same time, he is furthering modern poetry by taking it from the printed page to the screen.  This allows him to use poetic elements such as imagery in a different way; for example, the word “inchworm” slowly grows and moves across the screen in a way that resembles a living inchworm.  It is also fitting that he imitates more modern poetic styles on the computer; the effect of his digital poetry may not be the same if he had tried to type out and imitate older poetry styles such as sonnets.

Through the use of both typed words and computer-generated sounds, Geof Huth manages to move modern poetry to the digital screen, and offers viewers a new way to immerse themselves in the sounds and sights of his modern poetry.