Viewing the works assigned for this week’s class leaves me wishing for more. Not more of the same thing; rather, I would like to see a work of electronic literature that provides more impact to the reader/viewer.
I visited each of the links listed in the assignment, but I found little that I would feel confident classifying as literature. I found some of the works by Jason Nelson to be artistic, particularly the Weather Visualizer. I found nothing, however, that moved me emotionally or intellectually, nor that changed the way I think about myself or others. I do believe that electronic literature has the potential to rise to that level and accomplish such things, but the authors need to reach higher.
The subject matter is not the problem; Nelson has chosen for his works some weighty issues, including the meaning of life and death. The Bomar Gene begins with the claim, “Inside our codes are unfinished thoughts, ideas half formed, lives existing as brief and unsolvable equations.” This certainly touches on rich territory for literature, but my scientific mind bristles at the attempt to create a pseudo-link to genetics. Moving beyond this quibble, I eagerly click on the seemingly endless links, but eventually figure out that there are only nine distinct subpages. Some of these pages have the potential for creating moving short stories, such as the tale of Gabriel whose voice is understood only by trees, but too much of the reader’s focus is directed to the array of distractions that Nelson packs into his Flash application, and not enough on developing a coherent narrative.
With all of the text and sounds and images in Jason Nelson’s work, the viewer initially imagines a level of complexity that withers away upon closer inspection. For example, “sydney’s siberia: a digital poem” purports to be “infinite click and read,” and leads the viewer to suppose that all of the images expand into infinite other images as one clicks and zooms in. It is quite a clever concept. Alas, the number of unique images is rather small, and the site relies on a trick: clicking on an area does not really zoom in on that part of the image, but instead leads to a new image that takes you back to some of the tiles you’ve seen before. This is easily demonstrated by clicking repeatedly on the same spot, such as one corner – doing so usually eventually puts you in a loop cycling the same 4 images (although I found one special spot comprising an 8-image cycle). Although the movement of the image after clicking implies that you are zooming in on it, you can occasionally notice a color change or pattern shift as an entirely new image comes into view. Again, ignoring my quibble, I seek meaning, and find only lines of poetry presented in random order.
The best use of randomness I have seen in this class so far may be Nelson’s “this is how you will die.” Not only are the resulting death narratives mostly coherent, but the connection of life and death to the spin of a wheel is a time-honored concept sure to resonate with the viewer. It is certainly more readable than the poetry on “Taroko Gorge,” as it takes into account coherence, and includes user interaction.
Overall, I think these works are too limited in scope to have much meaningful impact upon the audience. They are like bonbons – small, tasty, but quickly forgotten. The authors may be confusing complexity with depth, because there is certainly a lot happening on some of these sites, but in the end it means little. I challenge authors of digital literature to expand their vision, and to boldly strive to produce work with more lasting impact.
Having said that, I do appreciate this assignment for exposing me to an unfamiliar genre, and inspiring me to try to meet the challenge I identified above.