Week 8: The E-Lit

I think it is interesting, from reading everyone’s posts and talking in class, how much we differ in our experiences of the different E-Lit we’ve looked at. Β I wonder if expectations play a certain role in this: We may have no problem watching an hour 1/2 film in a movie theatre with no ability to pause or control volume etc. but some found the lack of control with “AH” distressing. Where as the lack of control I found more distressing with TWoG and Flight Paths. Why? Why was I bothered by TWoG and even Data Poetics but not “AH”? Are there discrepancies for anyone else in what E-Lit they instinctively liked and what they didn’t?

There’s an incredible difference in the amount of user input these items require and a lot of difference in the kinds of input they demand. Like TWoG, I almost immediately wanted out of Data Poetics. Β I think the amount of linearity may play a role in my interest: with linearity you know how to proceed–forward. I didn’t know what to do in Data Poetics. I did not trust its info, understand it, or its purpose: being on the site felt like being out in public in a very crowded place full of strangers, random voices shouting here and there, Β everything rushing by: my instinct in those cases? Leave.

“AH” does not ask me to do anything but read and listen. What is being read is also in sync with the sound (they do not conflate i.e. the words on screen say “A B C D” and there is no voice saying “1 2 3”–that would be confusing). Unlike a lot of people, I wasn’t in public trying to watch “AH”, I was very much in a case where I could give it my full undivided attention.

As for Pry… it seemed over-whelming. I didn’t quite understand whether the blurbs were trying to talk about a story or the gimmick of the app novella. But didn’t films start out gimmicky? I don’t have an iPad or anything like that so I can’t even work the platform. It feels like a sensory overload–irregular sudden sounds, hidden words, changing text, flashing images: If I wanted to trip I’d take a pill so no thanks…that or watch an amv.

A grammatical kind of question: When it comes to out E-Lit do we italicize or use quotes? TWoG is a collection so italics seems appropriate but what about “AH”? Is it short enough to be a…poem? A monologue? Or long enough to be like a film? Data Poetics?

One thought on “Week 8: The E-Lit

  1. Very interesting analysis of your own responses to several of the texts.

    As far as the formatting of the titles goes, it’s really a matter of judgement. The general rule is that you put in quotations marks a piece that was published as part of a larger piece; examples include a chapter in a book or a poem from a magazine or collection. However, if a piece was published independently, you would generally italicize it. I agree that TWoG seems to call for italics whereas AH seems to have a less separate status. I’d give Pry italics even though a novella would often take quotation marks, simply because it is an app.

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