Ideas for the Final Project

I’ve been kicking around some idea about how to approach this project. The notion of creating a piece of digital literature is appealing, but there are some hindrances that had been stopping me from going about it. The main issue being that I have no idea how to write or read code, and it seems that every piece of digital literature we’ve encountered thus far has either been composed by an author (or authors) who understands code (or at least know someone who does), or is, at the very least, much more versed with the technical processes of computers than I am. Like a fellow classmate, I, too, am a monkey with a banana at a keyboard.

But working on a creative piece has an appeal that I can’t shake. Maybe it’s the mediocre writer in me– I’m not sure. So what I’ve been working on may not fall into the category of digital literature (more on that in a bit), but here’s my pitch.

Several years ago in a Poetry class, Sean Hill was a guest speaker, and one of the gems he gave the class was a poetic form that he called the three-sided tornado. Its definitions are that lines A, B, C, a1, b1, & c1 form thirteen stanzas, each with three lines. The poem is thirty-nine lines long, but is only composed of six lines. A fleshed-out layout of the form is this–

A

B

C

—

a1

b1

c1

—

c1

C

a1

—

a1

A

c1

—

C

B

C

—

a1

b1

c1

—

c1

C

a1

—

a1

A

c1

—

C

B

C

—

a1

b1

c1

—

c1

C

a1

—

a1

A

c1

—

C

B

b1

—

And I think it’s a pretty cool idea, but the trouble this form runs into on paper is that something of the effect is lost– I don’t want to grasp at too many straws, but I think this form lends itself to representation other than ink & paper to achieve a fuller effect. So that’s what I went with.

Now here’s the sad part. I made the individual components on a free program called Serif DrawPlus Starter Edition, which even I could use. (While still eating a banana). From there, I (read: the computer) converted the Serif files (labeled as .dpp) into .jpeg files, and then went to work with the super-impressive Windows Live Movie Maker, and ended up with a 1 1/4 minute video.

Again, my big concern is that I’m not going very deep in the creation of this piece– I’m not delving into the poetics of how the piece is. So, is it a piece of digital literature? That’s debatable. However, I think it’s fairly reasonable to claim that the piece possesses literariness.

The authors we’ve read, as well as we as a class, have been discussing how one defines “digital literature,” which raises questions of how we define “literature” (of the non-digital variety). From what I’ve gathered, there is no definite definition of digital literature– it’s still growing and evolving, and the authors contributing to it have created pieces that are wildly different, from interactive piece, to pieces that further blur the distinction between literature and games, to videos. And my big push is in the last category.

Another aspect I feel is important to mention goes back to our first day of class, in which we were introduced to the concept of calling into question reading practices and aesthetics. The authors of pieces of digital literature are looking to do this, and (for me, anyway) I’ve been looking at how this affects reading practices of print literature. I think, though, that calling into question the reading practices and aesthetics of digital literature is something to take head-on, and that’s something I’m trying to do with this project. I didn’t write it in code. The piece isn’t even all that pretty. It’s quite basic. It has literariness. So…is it digital literature? I don’t know. But it exists, and that’s something we have to deal with, even if it’s as simple as glancing at it and dismissing it.

Here’s a link to the first rough draft. Overall, I’m not displeased with it, but there are some other things I’d like to do with it, so this particular draft isn’t going to make the final cut.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG0O3fz80RA&feature=youtu.be

While I decided to keep the same smokey background in the second draft, the biggest change I wanted to make was for each frame to have one line, as opposed to one stanza, because I think it will help blur those distinctions have give the piece a more uncertain, urgent feel. So here’s the link to the second draft (and it is not done, by the way. I wanted to test it out and get a feel for it before I went too far. It ends at line 9).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r5JL4DjUNg&feature=youtu.be

One more aspect I want to mention is juxtaposition. I’m working on a piece of (what I’m calling, anyway) digital literature, though I know nothing about code. I’ve written a piece about Vietnam, which I only know about through book, videos, pictures, etc. I have no idea what the experience was actually like, and there’s no way that I could. So I’m creating a piece whose subject I don’t know, and I’m doing so through a medium that I don’t know. Maybe this will be a trainwreck. I suppose trainwrecks have their own aesthetics, though.