Speaking of “playful” and “textual”, I’m keeping an eye out for metamorphabet.com/ to show up.
What about if a (long form) kinetic concrete poem were an app (or web page), and the elements of interactivity and narrative were included?
interesting article here
quote from it:
“Within the digital realm concrete poetry gains two more levels of expression. While concrete poetry in print combines linguistic and graphic qualities of letters, in digital media time and interaction are two additional ways of expression.”
But what I think is interesting are works that expand from this concrete poetry in digital media tradition into the more longer form narrative realms, moving in the direction of interactive fiction.
So gathering together this with some different things from the comments:
- digital media (electronic, hyper, cyber, app, web)
- linguistic (textual, text-centric design)
- graphic (visual, spacial)
- time (kinetic, motion, audio, video)
- interaction, but not necessarily a “game”
- narrative (fiction)
- playful, experimental (possibly regarding form, interface, expectations of linear narrative, reader relationship to the text, and layers of fiction and frame story/annotation)
- literary (Does this just mean “higher” art? not quite sure how to measure this; the dictionary defines it as “having a marked style intended to create a particular emotional effect.”)
- innovative (This too seems to be a more subjective measure.)
Does framing it this way resonant with people, seem interesting?
It’s pretty adorable. More toy than anything else, but with lots of awesomeness.
Now that the final chapter of PRY has been released, I thought I would bring this topic back up.
Here is a quote from Samantha Gorman, one of the authors of PRY:
“We’re hoping that no matter the response, it will start a discussion about what it means to write for this platform,”
I’m interested in this question, and have been exploring using Unity in conjunction with interactive story telling. Any more example in this vein?
So this prize is also relevant:
futureofstorytelling.org/prize/
I’m going to jump in on the back of this post as it seems some what related to my question.
Where does if end and say visual novels begin? I seem to remember in another life playing a “graphical” version of Zork would that be considered a vn or if? And what of kenitic novels they usually get limited in with vn’s much to the VN pureists destain.
Thanks for posting this article. I did not know what enhanced novel actually is. After reading this thread, I did some research & came to know that, though enhanced ebooks are being reckoned to be the future, almost every enhanced e-book start-up either bankrupt or struggling. Regarding this I do have some questions.
- At what point is it no longer a book, but a game or video with some text?
- How readers can “read” enhanced e-books? Do they have to click on those audio and video links?
Does it matter? We don’t always have to compartmentalize things. With technology there is a lot of potential for overlapping all of those different categories, but often we don’t always yet know how to handle our expectations with them.
Whatever the technology can accommodate. It could be clicking, swiping, voice activated, or any other way to input a signal.
It sure seems interesting to me. I’m working on using Twine to write long and short form texts, to try and find a way of working with the potential of structure and linkage and fragmentation. Anything from fiction to non-fiction to essays to poems and any combination in between. My experience so far is that using a tool both opens up new possibilities, forces you to consider how to write with the tool and makes different ways of expression possible. I am eager to find other people experimenting in the same space or with the same sort of attitude.
You can refer to Twining: Critical and Creative Approaches to Hypertext Narratives by Anastasia Salter and Stuart Moulthrop as a great primer on the space.
For early pioneers and precursors, see Electronic Literature Lab which has some great content. I also recommend this great article by Aaron A. Reed on Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson.
For ongoing conversations, see ELO conferences, some of which are online, and see Electronic Book Review, which continues to issue rounds of articles regarding the space.
For some literary-focused practitioners innovating in Twine, see Porpentine, or some exciting new content like BLK MTN by Laura Paul and the Hologram series by Kit Riemer.
There’s also a vibrant scene over at Choice of Games. Their primary publishing line tends to skew YA, but there’s interesting stuff happening on their Hosted Games label or in general non-commercial development through ChoiceScript. Definitely worth taking a look if your interested in innovations in the effects of linking in literature.
2 Likes