Final Project: The Ways We Comfort Ourselves

For my final project, I wanted to examine the way our memories of events are altered by our present feelings.  To do this, I have created two separate animations, both of which feature the same set of eight scenes presented as they actually happened.  However, by clicking on the italicized words, the reader is able to see how the narrator remembers the events years later, as shaped by her current view of the world.

In one scene, the events are portrayed in a more positive light than they were when they happened, while in the other, the memories portray the scene in a much more negative light.  The point to remember is that either ending could have occured -- in fact, the way it is remembered is affected by how life turned out, rather than vice-versa.  These false recollections, then, are constructed as more of a defense mechanism, a way of comforting ourselves.  If a relationship turns out badly, we decide it was bad all along -- good riddance.  If it turns out well, we tell ourselves it has always been perfect -- that we were meant to be.

Reality gets lost along the way.  We remember what we want to remember.  But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Thinking About the Final Project

0.  "What do you want to remember from the conversations you just had?"
The one thing I want to remember (not that it'll be used in my next animation) is how the bone tool works!  I didn't know until today, and it was a very exciting revelation.  In terms of my animation, I guess the only feedback I really got so far was that it sounded like a good idea, though probably a little challenging to make.  I want to try to hold on to the former as encouragement and not let the latter discourage me.

1.  "How will your final piece be:  profound, moving, important, seriously life-changing, or life-engagingly funny?"
My final piece will hopefully be profound.  I intend to write about the way memory is distorted over time, which I think everyone can relate to, to some extent.  Not only do I want to explore how memories can get more fuzzy, I also want to explore how memories can be affected by our emotional responses to them.  For instance, if we hate someone now, our memory of our first encounter with them will probably be more negative than it actually was.  I think this is important because everyone has these sort of emotions and should recognize the power they have over the way we view the world, past and present, and how they can distort the truth.

2.  "How will your writing not be the illustration of your words?  How is your piece really going to engage with the possibilities of writing within Flash?"
I am not artistic, so for me, having my writing be an illustration of my words was never really a possibility.  I love the power words have, and so I want to have my animation be primarily text-based (actually, entirely text-based, now that I think about it).  The animation aspect of my piece will come in the interactivity I hope to embed in it.  I want readers to be able to click on select words and have them change.  This is something that can only be achieved through animation, so it is utilizing the unique possibilities of animated text fully. 

3.  "What sorts of help/support/feedback do you see yourself needing in order to make this piece of writing the one you're most proud of in your whole life?"
I will probably need a lot of help doing the buttons!  I know you already gave me a code (hopefully it works, I haven't gotten a chance to test it out yet), but I will also need help figuring out how to stick all my scenes together.  I will be able to animate my individual shape tweens (words changing into other words) on my own, I'm sure, but the new technical stuff I am almost certain I will need some help in.  I will probably drop by during office hours in the next few weeks, after I've gotten all the pieces completed and have only to put them all together.  Thanks in advance!

Short Project Reflection

From looking at other people's projects, I learned a lot about the potentials of including art with one's animated text (either photographs or drawings).  I didn't do that in my own work, and I don't intend to in my final project, either, because I prefer to focus exclusively on the power of (animated) words, but I did like some of the effects, some of which I didn't previously imagine.
As far as my own project goes, I think I learned something about controlling text speed to convey an idea.  We saw an example of text being flashed on the screen one word at a time with "Dakota," but I think that text speed didn't change too much throughout.  I wanted mine to be fast at some parts and slow at others.  I liked what I learned about how this effect can look, but most of all I had to consider what I would do if people said the last half of my animation was too fast.  Part of me wanted to slow it down as a result, but another part of me thought that would go against the entire purpose of the animation.  I ultimately decided that even not being able to read every single word of fast-paced text doesn't prevent readers from getting the general idea, which is all I wanted to convey.  I think I learned how to convey, through animated text, the way someonespeakinginahugerushoffrustratedwordscansoundlike.

If I had more time, I'd either add more of the sort of thing I had at the beginning where the words moved like they sounded (e.g. "crawled" crawled and "telescope" telescoped), or I'd cut it out entirely.  I was a little unhappy with how I was somewhat inconsistent with the usage of this technique.

If I started over, I'm honestly not sure what I would change.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  I think my piece conveys what I want it to convey (although, feedback pending, that may change).  It doesn't look very flashy or pretty, but that wasn't the point.  I guess it ultimately did what I wanted it to do, and that's all I can ask.

In a sense, I get to "start over" when I do my final project, and for that I will do something different, albeit still very text-heavy and reliant more on the words and they way they change on screen than on pretty picture-animations that could accompany them.

Short Project

Here's my short project. 

Note:  The text is meant to be fast at the end.  It is not a technical issue.

Autopoeisis

1.  "Seeking to disturb the manner in which we see things..."

This essay argues that art's purpose is to raise questions and doubts about our usual ways of seeing the world.  In doing this, it draws attention to what our usual ways of seeing the world are, as they are often taken for granted.  It then questions these ways, but, according to the essay, does not "author a new a new theoretical position, [or] illustrate an established argument."

I think this is a very interesting proposal.  I would very much like to view art in this way, and I think some works of art do achieve this purpose.  However, I think that many other works of art exist that try to not only destabilize the way readers view the world, but substitute a new world view for them.

I feel that art that makes you, the reader, think is probably the most effective art out there.  It leaves a much more lasting impression with the reader and has a greater chance of actually influencing the way he or she thinks about life.

I also think this is a very difficult goal to achieve, however.  It is much easier to say, "This way of looking at the world is wrong, because this one is right," than it is to simply say, "We should reconsider the ways we view the world."  The former inherently has a stronger argument in it, as there can be more evidence to back up something new than there will be to back up something different that remains unspecified.

I am not quite sure if all art has to destabilize "the basic belief in self," but I suppose it could do that as well.  I think it is a little short-sighted to say that's all it can destablilize, though.  I think it is probably easier for people to look at the world in a different way than for them to look at themselves in a different way.  I think we know ourselves better than we know anyone else, and this makes our sense of self fairly solidified and hard to change.  We don't like learning that we don't know ourselves as well as we thought we did.

2. "How communication and creativity function..."

This paragraph was incredibly dense, but I think the main point concerned how we differentiate ourselves based on viewing ourselves against an "other."  Here, through semiosis, we use signs to distinguish ourselves from the other.  In order for this differentiation to exist, there must be novelty, which the essay points out.  This idea of novelty relates to how we value creativity; if something is not new to us, we don't deem it creative or original.  If we have already thought of something before, it is not novel to us; it is our thought, we consider it a part of "us," not the "other's."  If something is new and creative to us, we deem it as belonging to the "other," as it is something we hadn't thought of before.  We therefore value novelty for the way it makes us think and reconsider our own view of the world.

Independent Research Project Draft 1

    In "Digital Literature and the Three Levels of the Digital," Serge Bouchardon remarks how "the Digital offers a range of technical possibilities, notably in terms of manipulation" (1).  This idea of manipulation is something that has greatly influenced Bouchardon, an Associate Professor in Communication Sciences at the University of Technology of Compiegne in France.  Not only did he write his dissertation on interactive literary narrative, but he has also created several Flash pieces designed specifically to be manipulated by viewers.  However, it seems likely that his work has been similarly influenced by his previous work in the educational software industry.  Bouchardon's animations seem designed to teach viewers something, whether it is a more technical aspect of how to use their computers, or, more often, a theme or idea he wishes to convey.  The animations achieve this end not merely by presenting viewers with an informative block of text, but rather by giving them a chance to interact with the text, better allowing them to not only see what Bouchardon wants to convey but, by acting it out themselves, to feel it, too.
    An example of how Bouchardon strives to teach his viewers is no more evident than in his animation "The Twelve Labors of the Internet User:  An Online Artistic Game."  Created with Aymeric Brisse, this game presents players with a task they are no doubt familiar with:  navigating the Internet.  "The Twelve Labors" takes some of the more frustrating struggles Internet users face and likens them to the Twelve Labors of Hercules.  Closing pop-ups, for instance, is compared to slaying the Hydra, with its many regrowing heads.  Each level challenges viewers with a new obstacle that, when beaten, will have given them real-world practice in solving some of the more simple computer problems on their own.  From reminding viewers to make sure their Internet cable is plugged in ("The Nemean Lion") to teaching them how to delete cookies ("The Mares of Diomedes") to giving them practice finding relevant links within large blocks of text ("The Erymanthean Boar"), the game manages to impart useful lessons about Internet troubleshooting while at the same time being engaging.  However, the game expects a certain degree of technological commitment from players, who are required to have a webcam and microphone to play several of the games.  At other points, the game is vague in its instructions, as if expecting viewers to figure it all out on their own.  Although this may be intended as a parallel for the Internet, in which users have to figure out nearly everything by themselves, it somewhat negates the game's point of teaching, leaving players frustrated and not even knowing where to begin.  In this way, the animation's interactivity successfully allow viewers to experience some of the frustrations inherent in using the Internet, but perhaps more so than Bouchardon would have liked or intended in a game that was primarily meant to instruct on the technical aspects.
    A considerably more successful attempt to allow readers to experience a theme for themselves can be found in Bouchardon's latest animation, "Loss of Grasp."  From the very beginning, it informs readers what it is all about, saying:

Loss of grasp is a digital creation about the notions of grasp and control.  Under which circumstances do we feel we have a grip on our life or not?  Six scenes feature a character who is losing grasp.  At the same time, this play on grasp and loss mirrors the reader's experience of an interactive digital work.

What is interesting about this introduction is that, although it clearly introduces the theme of losing grasp, as experienced by the narrator, thus far, the reader feels no such loss.  If anything, being so well-informed from the start about what to expect might make the reader feel more in control than he or she would if he or she stumbled blindly into the first scene of the animation.  Although this may seem counter-intuitive at first, Bouchardon is quick to point out in the first scene that one can only experience a loss of grasp if one had a grasp in the first place.
    The first scene, initiated by the reader pressing any key as instructed, begins with the words, "My entire life, I believed I had infinite prospects before me."  These words linger until the reader roll the cursor over the words, causing them to scramble and rearrange themselves to form the new phrase, "'The whole universe belongs to me,' I thought."  At this point, the narrator's words may begin to feel somewhat ironic, as each touch of the cursor forces the words to rearrange themselves once more at the reader's bidding.  The narrator's confidence in his own agency belies the fact that it is the reader who is in control of this narrative.  With enough touches of the cursor, though, the text begins to take on the somewhat more pessimistic tone the reader expects as the narrator confesses, "But for a while I had doubts," then asks, "How can I have a grasp on what happens to me?"  At this point, the reader is almost in complete control of what happens on the screen.  The text is now set against a backdrop of colored stripes, and the movement of the reader's cursor dictate in which direction he or she will move through the stripes.  Rolling the cursor up or down, left or right, creates different patterns that serve as the background for several more sentences of text before the screen goes green.  The reader remains in control of when the sentences change, and when the narrator finally says, "I feel I've lost control," then once again the movement of the reader's cursor controls what happens to the scene, with colored dots originating from the spot where the reader's cursor touched.  By the time this introductory scene ends with a countdown and the command to press any key, the reader feels completely in control where the narrator is not.
    For the most part, the reader's perceived feeling of control continues throughout the next few scenes of the animation.  Of course, the key word here is "perceived."  As Bouchardon points out in "Digital Literature and the Three Levels of the Digital":  "We understand that all the sequences are based on the notion of loop, yet offer an itinerary.  Every sequence is a short story that will only reach its end with the reader's manipulations" (5).  For the time being, the reader remains in control because Bouchardon wishes it. 
    This feeling of control on the reader's part is ironic in some ways.  It exists in stark contrast to Bouchardon's narrator's loss of control.  In this way, it does not allow the reader to get immediately or fully into the narrator's perspective, since even if the reader has had prior experiences of losing control to draw on, the power to manipulate the text granted to the reader makes it difficult for the reader to draw on these experiences. 

(These last two paragraphs were written kind of on accident.  I really like where I was going with them, but I might finish describing the entire "Loss of Grasp" animation and what it achieves in each individual scene first.  We'll see how it ends up working best.)

Feedback on Short Project Draft

Mostly the feedback I got said it was a thoughtful, relatable, reflective, nostalgic, carefree piece, given the way it reminisces back on what time was like when I was young.  People also said that this nostalgia and reflectiveness was the theme that I seemed to be conveying.

For the most part this is true.  I wanted to have this feeling exist throughout the first part of my project (poem?) because it is meant to be reflective and slow. 

However, the next segment is meant to be reflecting on the present-day, in which I feel time moves too quickly, so hopefully these feelings do not carry over into that segment.

For my final draft, I will add in the fast section that will probably feel a lot less reflective and a lot more overwhelming.  I hope to have readers feel my frustration.

The only recommendations I really got so far were to slow down the part where the world blows up.  I will do that a little bit, because I don't want it to be impossible to read, but I do want that part to be faster than the rest because it is meant to show my panicked state of mind (breaking away from the calm that emphasizes the first half of the piece). 

I think it will be important for me to strike a balance between panicked-frenzied-fast text and text-that-is-simply-too-fast-to-read.  I kind of want it to be frustratingly fast, so then the reader will feel my frustration with time moving too quickly, but I don't want the reader to be so frustrated that they'll simply dismiss my piece.  It's a hard balance to strike.  Part of me almost wants it to be something the reader has to watch two or three times to catch it all, but I'm not sure if that's a bad idea.

The Existence of "I"

Of the quotations to choose from, the one that stood out to me, even before reading the chapter, was the idea: "Innovative work avoids the personalized, egocentered position of the romantic, realist, or modernist 'I.' Such a sentimentalized 'I,' often concerned with its own mortality, can be considered as having passed away. Innovative practice is practice that often overcomes the 'I' to explore material dimensions of the text" (174). Although Glazier goes on to say that "I" can exist in digital literature, he suggests that it is used differently.

I feel that this notion of "I" being absent from innovative electronic works is related to the idea of electronic writing being part of a larger network. As Glazier notes on page 175, "Writing can be seen, not as an individual personalized achievement, but as a series of strands in a larger social-spatial textual fabric (the network)." Instead of being a piece of literature that is only accessible through a book, electronic literature is immediately available to anyone in the world with an internet connection. This allows for a much broader audience that must be appealed to. It is possible that Glazier is saying that the use of "I" makes that message seem less universal, and therefore less effective.

However, although this quote interested me, I confess I do not entirely agree with it. Glazier proposes that the "I" exists "not as an omniscient narrator, raconteur, or master of things to unfold" but rather, "an initiator of a process that, once begun, 'takes over' the way a process executes" (sic). I think this can be true, but does not necessarily need to be. Literature has always been about a character or set of characters that are not the readers themselves, but are someone with whom the readers can identify. The use of "I" has not served to distance readers from such works; they don't pick up books hoping to read about themselves. Rather, they hope to read about the things that make us all human. Indeed, it is more often the second-person form of address ("you") in literature that distances readers from what they are reading. I feel as if a piece that uses "I" can be just as universal in this new digital world as in the world of print.

Of course, it is possible that Glazier is not saying electronic literature that utilizes "I" is not effective, but rather that it is not innovative (innovation is, after all, the subject of this chapter). If that is the case, then I would heartily agree that works that do not use "I" (or a similar "I"-based third-person narrator) are indeed innovative. However, this leads me to ask if all innovation is good. Perhaps I am simply unable to picture what sort of piece Glazier is speaking of, but I guess my thoughts are that innovation for innovation's sake is no better than animating texts for animating texts' sake. I think that texts without "I" could definitely be interesting, but to say that a piece is automatically innovative for not using "I," or is not innovative because it does use it, is a little unrealistic.

Glazier speaks of the way these new innovative "I"s take over the way a process executes, but I feel as if the reader has the ability to "take over" the way a poem or story is read, regardless of the formula. I feel as if all writing should be a springboard for thought – that the author presents an idea that, in turn, sparks new ideas in the reader. I do not feel as if such an "I" failed to exist before, or exist any differently now, at least not if the literature in question is effective.

Final Project Plan

I have been thinking about the possibilities of experimental text a lot throughout the course of this class.  After doing all the readings so far, the one thing they all seem to emphasize is the idea that text shouldn't just be animated for animation's sake, but rather only if the animation will add an additional layer of meaning to the words.  The idea that this was a new medium with new possibilities that should be explored, not just used to translate older static works into something more active, was reiterated time and time again.

Therefore, I have spent a good deal of time trying to figure out something that I could write that would only be achievable through animated text.  I have come up with a few ideas so far, and as it comes time to work on the project, will ultimately settle on one.

The one thing I know for-sure is that I don't want to bog myself down with anything too techincal.  I think I can still convey my point effectively through simplicity, and that excessive animation may actually detract from my words.  I am a writer at heart, and do not want my words to lose their power to something more flashy.  Also, if I spend less time trying to make my words do something highly complex, I will have more time to focus on my writing itself.

One fairly simple idea I like is doing something "Dakota"-esque.  I think controlling text speed (and to some extent, size) is something authors who write on the static page cannot do, and yet is a powerful tool at the author's disposal.  My content would probably be significantly different than "Dakota's," however.

Another thing I thought about was experimenting with the idea of movement or distance, as those are both things that could be conveyed well (probably even better) through movement.  I would probably have this be based around the idea of people being separated, or attempting/failing to communicate, something along those lines (I spent the first half of this year writing a letter a day to someone across the country, and think this could be an interesting idea to explore).

The last thing I thought about was playing my text in some unorthodox way, perhaps backwards (probably not like a mirror -- though maybe -- but rather as in the words roll onto the screen from left to right, so you read the last words first).  I got this idea from one of the animations I am researching, where changing the direction the words roll onto the screen changes the meaning of the message from a love letter to a break-up note.

I am hoping that I am keeping these projects simple enough that I won't need any (or at least, much) technical help during or after class.  I guess the only question I have at this point is, "How long is this project supposed to be?"  I don't expect strict guidelines, but a casual suggestion would help a lot.

I guess I hope to learn from this project what sort of things I can write that are more effective as animations, as thus far, I haven't discovered as many as I'd like.

Short Project Plan

I'm still not super-certain what I want to do for this project, but from what has been said about it in class, I feel like that is ok.  We were told that we were supposed to write whatever it is we want to write as we go along, so I feel like I shouldn't have a completely concrete idea for my project yet.  If I had something concrete to type out right now as The Words I Am Going to Animate, then I feel as if I would be going against the project guidelines.

That said, I have at least decided that what I write will be a poem.  I'm not really good at coming up with jokes, and I don't know what is meant by "a gem," so I guess a poem is really my only option.  I feel as if I am fairly good at writing poetry, but not as good about trying to construct something that is more or only effective if it is animated, so hopefully something comes to me as I am playing around in Flash.

Conversations on Digital Aesthetics: Networking

The perspective that stood out to me most after reading this chapter was the one about networking and the notion of collaboration between multiple authors. Although the chapter focused more on "collaborative projects supported by corresponding tools, such as wiki servers" (51), the first connection I made with this segment was more related to our ongoing conversation project. For that assignment, there will be two authors per animation. Similarly, in the Flash piece I am researching for my independent research project, there are two authors credited, Serge Bouchardon and Vincent Volckaert.

Consequently, before reading "Conversations on Digital Aesthetics," I had already given some thought to the idea of animated works with multiple authors. Although I knew there must be many reasons authors would choose to collaborate in this way (for instance, I personally am doing it because it is what this class requires of me), one of the main benefits I came up with was that it could free someone with a creative vision but little to no technological know-how from having to learn a new program in order to create their work of art. That is, an artist or poet could collaborate with someone who could transfer their vision onto a computer screen. In the episystemological portion of this chapter, a similar concept is introduced – whether "it is necessary for users to develop new areas of competence" in order to understand art presented in this new digital medium (49). In my preliminary consideration of why multiple authorship may be used, artists would circumvent having to have any more than a basic knowledge of what the computer is capable of.

However, this chapter discusses networking and multiple authorship from a somewhat different perspective. It focuses primarily on web-based works that readers can edit, such as wikis. The chapter poses the question of whether this eliminates the assignment of such works "to one author or a known group of authors, [or] copyright, intellectual property, etc." (51). Ultimately, though, it is claimed that "authorship definitely still exists, albeit in multiple form: initiators who open up the project frame, programmers... open author groups without individual assignment of authorship, etc." (51). Still, dealing with copyright and intellectual property law regarding these "authorships" is tricky.

However, the chapter adds that in many cases people shy away from participating in online collaborations. For example, on Walter van der Cruijsen's ASCII Art Ensemble wiki, "no one really dares to take advantage of this new freedom" (53). This is a little depressing, especially if van der Cruijsen's intent was for his art to come alive through active viewer participation, and through lack of participation, the work ultimately fails. This reminds me a little of a work of art I once saw in a museum, which consisted of a stack of papers that museum attendees were encouraged to take a piece of paper from, thereby demonstrating how the stack of paper will shrink over time (I don't quite remember what the diminishing paper was meant to represent, unfortunately). I recall feeling hesitant to take one of the papers because I felt as if I wouldn't appreciate it enough and didn't want it or the slowly-shrinking stack of paper to "go to waste," even though I realize that was the piece's intent.

On the other hand, though, I found myself disagreeing with the statement that "no one really dares take advantage of this new freedom." I know with some wikis, especially Wikipedia, there has been so much collaboration that some pages have had to be temporarily shut down so they can be "fixed" after some group is prompted to edit it full of misinformation, often in response to a television or internet joke (e.g. The Colbert Report getting people to edit the page on elephants). Now in many cases, it seems to be more of an issue of keeping people from posting incorrect information on wikis (thereby making these sites fairly unreputable/not "reliable sources") rather than trying to garner reader participation. However, I understand that the situation is probably considerably different with smaller, art-based projects.

Ultimately, the quotation that most stood out to me was that "computers and the Internet differ from the 'traditional' mass media in that they can be used for individual and group use and communication on one hand, and as mass media, on the other" (55). When we work on our animations, we do it on our own computers, working alone or in a small group; it is not until we have posted them on our blogs that they become a form of "mass media" available to the rest of the world. In the past, I have tended to think of these two uses as being separate stages of a single process: I would create my work on a computer program designed for individual use, and then post it online to be viewed. After reading this article, as well as seeing such Flash animations as Serge Bouchardon's "Loss of Grasp" that require viewer participation, I am beginning to realize that the "creating my work" stage doesn't have to end when my work is published online. Just as my classmates can post contributions on my blog, the beauty of digital pieces is that they can continue growing and adapting after they have been published. Although, the more I think about it, I feel that the way a viewer perceives a work allows it to constantly keep evolving, even if it is printed statically on the page. A seemingly-unchanging thing can change simply in the way it means something to each individual viewer.

Serge Bouchardon's Loss of Grasp

I found the Flash animation "Loss of Grasp" while browsing the Electronic Literature Organization's Directory.  I found the piece interesting because of its interactivity -- the viewer has to do different actions with the mouse or the keyboard in order to make the animation progress, giving him or her a feeling of control.  I also liked how the piece didn't give you instructions beyond the initial "press any key" order; I had to figure out what to do on my own, and sometimes it was a little tricky.  I feel like, in this class, we have to try pretty hard sometimes to read into a piece of experimental literature -- this piece seemed to take that effort to the next level.

After developing an interest in "Loss of Grasp," I went on to see if the author, Serge Bouchardon, had been involved in any other works.  It turns out he contributed to two others available on the Directory, as well as wrote a journal article about digital literature and its values.  I thought that looked promising, as, from what I gathered from a brief perusal of it, the article is another one of those pieces that explains the values of experimental literature.  I feel like, even if I can't find much biographical information on Serge Bouchardon, knowing his values and perspectives on this matter can tell me a lot, and help me in interpreting some of his animated works.

For this project, I plan on mostly focusing on Bouchardon's work in the context of his "Loss of Grasp" piece, though I want to spend some time comparing it to themes found in his other pieces and in his article.  I think looking at all these different dimensions of his work will allow me to easily write five to seven pages of analysis.

To be honest, I'm not really worried about getting the work done on time, as I tend to work ahead anyway.  The first draft isn't due until November 11th, and I plan on starting my research into Bouchardon's other works and possible underlying themes as early as this weekend.  When I do such research, I inevitably take notes, so after that, it will simply be a matter of organizing my thoughts and connecting them in a coherent way.  It looks like I have almost a month before the first three to five pages are even due, and two before the final polished version is, so I don't think I will have any problems.

I guess the only thing I may need from you is further clarification on what exactly I am to be focusing on in my research.  I think I have an idea now, but if what I have outlined above is not the sort of thing you're looking for, I would like to know.  Otherwise, I'll let you know if anything comes up.  Thanks!

Talking About the Conversation Project

For this project, Tobias and I plan on researching and presenting different sides of the debate over the ethicality of genetic research. Specificially, we will probably focus on stem-cell research, as it seems to represent a more real possibility for the near-future than many other areas of study (and therefore a more pressing and controversial issue), although we also considered investigating the ethics of various eugenics practices (trying to eliminate genetic diseases through gene manipulation, choosing the "best" genes for one's fetus, etc.). We think these are also very interesting topics, though we're not sure if they fit the parameters of this assignment (whether or not they're really "current").

The research we will need to do will include, obviously, the different arguments on whether these scientific advances are really positive or negative. We will also look up some of the science behind whatever sub-issue we choose, so we are better informed on the facts.

We thought about having our two "voices" talk over the phone, with the classic zig-zagged line down the middle to indicate who is saying what (as well as using font shape, color, etc. to better illustrate the speaker's character). We also talked about taking pictures of each other's reactions to each statement (confusion, outrage, disgust, etc.) and having our words appear in front of our reactions. We can figure out the reading speed easily by trying a number of different fps speeds and seeing which is most readable, both to ourselves or to others we show it to for feedback.

Mimsy II: Feedback

I guess the only thing that surprised me in the feedback was that I was told I put "a very heavy emphasis on shape tweens that could have been motion tweens or something else."  I would agree that I put a lot of emphasis on shape tweens, but I feel like that was especially necessary with the way I had one word morph into another and, ultimately, had two crash together to form a portmanteau.  I guess I don't quite see how motion tweens (or "something else") would have been as effective in this situation.

If I had more time, I might have tried to make "mimsy" do something other than morph into a borogove.  As it was, I couldn't figure out what I would have it do, as "miserable" and "flimsy" already kind of did all their own expressing, and "mimsy" isn't really any more than just a combination of those two words.  Maybe I would have thought of something more to do with "mimsy" if I had more time, but at the same time, I'm pretty happy with the way I shape-tweened it into the image of a borogove.

I would like to learn more about the various motion presets, I think, for future projects.  They looked pretty neat, and might be easier in some instances than using a bunch of motion tweens.  I think in future projects I will use a lot more motion tweens than shape tweens, but for this project it just worked out that way.

In terms of learning more about how to compose expressive animated writing, I guess I would like to work on text size and speed.  I feel like from some of the examples we have looked at in class, that can really change the way one reads the piece.  I feel like I didn't really do much of that in this piece, but I think I will have a lot more opportunities to do that in the conversation project and in the final projects.

I would also like to maybe play more with stream-of-consciousness and word associtation.

Mimsy

Here is my word animation.

To Be, or Not To Be...

This reading was incredibly dense. Reading most of it, I felt as if I lacked the basic knowledge of various art movements and concepts to really understand this text 100%. That being said, I feel as if I managed to glean the main idea Drucker seemed to be trying to convey in this writing.

The point that seemed to be reiterated time and time again was the idea of artistic forms beginning "to be," rather than being used "to represent" (50). This was evidenced in Mallarme's A Throw of the Dice, where "the textual elements forge links of meanin in their visual and verbal relations but those relations function as their own gestalt, not as the trace or image of some other figurative form" (55). This idea appeared over and over in this piece of writing; in fact, the following May Sinclair quote was thought to sum up the main point of this article so well that it was quoted twice within the piece: "Presentation not representation is the watchword of the school" (64).

Of course, this raises the question of what experimental texts, as a work of art, should be. On page 58, Drucker describes Mallarme's A Throw of the Dice as "underscor[ing] the randomness and inadequacy of human thought and action in the face of the Ideal." This description makes sense given the way Mallarme's work utilizes text size, alignment, and spacing. However, given what was said above about the aims of experimental art, it can be supposed that what Mallarme was trying to do was not to write something that imitated human thought, but rather was it.

This was probably the hardest concept for me to grasp, even though it was the most basic and reiterated one in the article. The idea that a poem doesn't just represent thought, but is thought, is really difficult for me to wrap my mind around. It challenges the way I think of poems and words and thoughts. Which is good.

Black Blocks, Concentrating Constellations, and Books as Frigates

For my analysis, I chose to compare the poem "Outward Bound," by Hamish Whyte with Colin Dunning's two poems, "Cluster" and "Icon."

When I first read this assignment, I was a little unsure what poems I would write about this time around, given that the list of options was the same as that for our first analysis of an example. I was fairly certain I had already chosen what was in my mind the "best" option, or at least the one I best understood. When I reviewed (re-reviewed?) my options, however, I was excited to find much more meaning in Whyte's "Outward Bound" than I had last time, seeing the poem as a much more artistic and intricate piece than what had originally seemed a jumble of letters. After settling on this piece for my first choice, my second seemed almost immedately clear.

I decided to compare these two (or rather, three) pieces on the basis that they have a fairly large commonality (that is, they are both derived from a single line of text [or a word], within which much more is embedded), while still having some clear formal differences.

"Outward Bound" consists of what is essentially a single line from Emily Dickenson: "There is no frigate like a book." Using this pre-arrangement of letters, however, the author is able to create a considerable thirty-seven line poem, merely by deleting the letters not needed for that particular phrase. For instance, phrases as dissimilar as "is fate like" and "take the risk" coexist in this lines, otherwise hidden until Whyte deleted the unnecessary clutter surrounding. (What is most interesting, is that the reader does not realize that the other words and letters from the original Dickenson line are clutter until they see what Whyte has done.)

Similarly, in "Cluster," Dunning has the syllables "con" and "tion" bookending "stella" and, below it, "centra" (thereby forming either the word "constellation" or "concentration," depending on how you view it). In "Icon," he does the same thing, only with "bl" and "ck" on either side of alternately "a" and "o" ("black" versus "block"). In these pieces, too, the reader is shown the many different options inherent in a set of letters, even as few as five.

I think this notion of possibility is something both Whyte and Dunning wished to convey in these pieces. Using only thirteen letters, over half of which are matched in the same formation, one can create words as different as "constellation" and "concentration." (Or, similarly, given only five letters, four of which are the same, we get "black" and "block.") In this way, readers are shown just how much of a difference one letter can make. It reinforces the idea of the power of language, the power of sounds. In the same way, given only one short line of poetry (only seven words, twenty-five letters in total), an argument to get caught up in the world of a book, to let it carry you away to a new place, can be found in its arrangement of letters, an argument that one wouldn't even notice unless it was formatted as Whyte has done. All three of these poems encourage the reader to read more closely, to think about the potential contained in each word, each syllable, each individual letter. There is so much one can do with so little.

At the same time, these poets' pieces are not identical. Whyte chose to focus on a phrase, while Dunning's poems were even simpler – containing only two words. I think the poets made these choices because of the more specific focuses they wanted to consider in their overlying themes.

In "Cluster" and "Icon" we have two pairs of words juxtaposed with each other for contrast. I think Dunning chose to arrange his poems in this experimental way because it emphasizes the similarities and the differences between the two words all at once, without having to provide a written explanation of why they are both similar and dissimilar. Both words in each poem share many letters with each other; however, they are not the same idea. In "Icon," I felt like the two ideas being contrasted, "black" and "block," are very fundamentally different. "Black" is a very abstract idea, a colour, while blocks are about as concrete a noun as you can get (some even being made of concrete). I appreciated the way Dunning exposed that the difference of a single letter can lead to something very concrete to become very intangible. At the same time, these words can be used very much together – it is very possible to have a black block. In "Cluster," on the other hand, I feel almost as if Dunning is emphasizing the similarities over the differences. Obviously, the words "constellation" and "concentration" are fairly alike in spelling, and although they are somewhat different ideas, I feel as if their pairing, especially in the context of this poem's format, stresses the way they can be used in conjunction with one another. One must concentrate to pick out the constellations in the night sky. Similarly, one must concentrate to find the hidden meanings and possibilities inherent in words and letters. In this way, I feel as if "Cluster" best emphasizes the theme of possibility I mentioned earlier.

I feel as if the reason Whyte chose to work with an entire line of poetry, as opposed to a single word like Dunning, was because he wished to emphasize the possibility inherent in poetic structures more complex than merely a single word. Interestingly enough, the line of poetry he chose to manipulate was not even his own, but Emily Dickinson's. This seems to reinforce for me the idea of finding power and significance in preexisting literature that one may have missed the first time (just as I missed the significance of this poem the first time I glanced at it). Of course, Whyte does not make this search particularly easy, even when he has taken measures to show the reader the potential in these lines. While he has deleted the unneccessary letters, he does not shift them together (or, in some cases, add the necessary spaces between letters), partially to show the reader where he is deriving these letters from, but probably also to show how reading into words takes a certain degree of effort. The first time I looked at this poem, it seemed like a bunch of gibberish to me and I was a little daunted by its form. Now I not only am able to read the text without much difficulty, but I also understand the purpose for writing it the way it is. Upon having the inner meaning of the text revealed to me, I felt a certain degree of satisfaction I would not had it been easier to decipher; referring back to Dunning, I had to concentrate to get to the underlying meanings, but it was very much worth it.

Writing: Changing Language, Changing Consciousness

I like to think of myself as a writer. In the course of a typical day, I will jot down to-do lists or copy notes during lectures, but when I think of the word "writing," what comes to mind is setting down a story on paper. When I think of writers, I think of authors penning novels or crafting poems, something permanent to be left behind for others to read. What stayed with me most to me after reading this article was the fact that writing did not always exist for this purpose.

Although somewhere in my subconscious I was aware that writing has not always existed for the purpose of creating works of fiction (especially given the relatively young age of the "novel"), the idea that writing wasn't always intended as a permanent means of recording information had never occurred to me. As Bernstein points out, in early Greek scripted writing, "The page is not the final destination but a preliminary stage, a prompt for final presentation elsewhere" (506). This distinction between these "holdover" writing practices and the more textual ones we are familiar with today is that, with our newer transcriptive practices, "the writing takes on the work of memory rather than being an aid to memory and this function is not compromised by writing that is difficult or impossible to memorize" (506). That is to say, once writing started being an end in and of itself, it did not need to be as lyrical as, say, Greek epics, and gradually shifted in form.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it gradually broadened in form. For as Bernstein points out, "Alphabetic technology does not replace oral technology anymore than cars replace walking" (508). These older forms can exist alongside these newer possibilities, just as Bernstein notes on page 513. We still have performed poetry, alongside books, alongside digital animated texts. The birth of newer forms doesn't cause the death of older ones; instead, it marks the creation of new possibilities in writing.

These new possibilities seem to be the reason Bernstein advocates working with animated (electronic) text. Havelock and McLuhan, he notes, not only "draw attention to what it means to work within a medium, but also. . . acknowledge the value of using a medium to do what can only be done in that medium" (514). A work could be written in poetry or prose, read or recited, and it could be good; however, there may be a power to it that comes only when it is animated, only when the text flashes before the reader on a computer screen. That is to say, what we write is not limited by the technology and mediums available to us, but what we convey may be.

It is important to recognize that the purpose of writing has changed over the centuries and continues to today. Our human capacity for inventiveness has only opened the doors to new ways of expressing ourselves and our ideas, never limited us. As Bernstein says, "Poetry in a digital age can do more than simply echo the past with memorable phrases. It can also invent the present in a language never before heard" (516). Still, it is important to remember that this new medium, while preferable in some instances, may not be the best way of conveying one's message in every situation. I think this is the point I should try to hold onto most in the weeks to come – I can't just write something and animate it (or rather, I can, but it won't be as effective); what I write must be created with animation in mind, with the idea that it is something that would not be as powerful if printed statically piece of paper.

All mimsy were the borogoves...

For my next project, I plan on animating the word "mimsy."  This word first appeared in Lewis Carroll's "The Jabberwocky," where it is but one of the many words Carroll invented for the sake of his own writing.  In the first stanza alone, a fair number of these words can be found:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

A preliminary read-through of this poem may be very confusing for the reader.  Eleven of the twenty-three words in this stanza could be construed as pure nonsense.  However, Carroll when Carroll later explained the definitions of some of these words, it was realized that many of them were portmanteaus.  Portmanteaus are words formed by blending two or more words and their meanings together to form a new word.  For instance, "slithy" is formed by combining "lithe" and "slimy," while "mimsy," the word I chose, is formed from "flimsy" and "miserable."

My plan for animating "mimsy" is to play off of the idea of this word being a portmanteau.  I plan on having the words "flimsy" and "miserable" collide and then transform to create "mimsy."  In this way, I will not only be able to convey the meaning of the word itself, but give the viewer a lesson about portmanteaus.

After viewing my word animation, I guess I hope viewers will understand how it is pretty miserable to be flimsy.

Q: A Love Story

Here is my final animation of the story of Q.  Enjoy!

"The death of fire is the birth of air..."

For this assignment, I chose to analyze the piece "from Heraclitean Variations" by Ian Hamilton Finlay. As this piece is a whopping twelve words long, I thought it might be helpful to also analyze the title, so as to give myself more to work with. The first and last words of the title seemed self-explanatory enough, but as I didn't know the meaning of the word "Hericlitean," I decided to start there.

With a little research, I found out that the word derives from the name Heraclitus, who was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher [site wikipedia page, probly]. Among other things, one of his major beliefs was in the unity of opposites. He believed that everything that exists is characterized by pairs of contrary properties, and in the idea of transformation as the replacement of one element by another (e.g. "The death of fire is the birth of air, and the death of air is the birth of water.")

Armed with this knowledge, not only did the title of the poem make more sense, but also Finlay's choice of structure. Although he could have easily written the poem in two horizontal lines across the page, having the two intersect suggests a sort of connectedness between the two otherwise opposing ideas. Where the notions of life and death meet, there we see an archer's bow, which symbolizes both. This idea of two opposites coming together to create something is key to Heraclitean philosophy, giving Finlay's choice of form all that more significance.

In terms of how these two intersecting lines look, I also thought Finlay made some wise artistic choices. The line "The name of the bow is life but" is curved and meandering, having an overall softer appearance than the straight horizontal line "its work is death," a much harder truth. It is also important that the line about death cuts through the line about life, as opposed to life interrupting death. In this way, the poem's format more accurately reflects the work of an arrow (death) piercing something alive and killing it.

In an even less in-depth analysis, one could simply describe the poem as being in the shape of a bow and arrow, which it is. Although an analysis this brief would severely fail to take into account the symbolism inherent in the poem's form, I do find it interesting to note how simple it is to create the shape of a bow an arrow with only two lines of poetry. This reflects not only how simplistic the bow is in design, while still being very capable of inflicting death, but also reminds the reader of the power that can be contained within just two short lines of poetry.

Obviously, in order to fully appreciate the intricacy of this poem's structure (not to mention, title), one should understand the basic premise of Heraclitean philosophy (i.e. the unity of opposites). However, in order to understand the text itself, one needs to consider the context in which this poem's content stems from. In the past (and in the present, in some places), bows were used both for hunting game and in battle. In both these circumstances, the archer in question had to kill or be killed: if s/he did not kill an animal, s/he would starve; if s/he did not shoot his/her foe, s/he would be shot instead. In this way, the bow represents life to one being, while at the same time, represents death to the other.

In terms of the text, I also thought it was a good stylistic choice to have the conjunction ("but") be contained at the end of the first line, rather than the beginning of the second. In this way, not only are you encouraged to keep reading by the cliffhanger of the first line, but the second line is also much more concise and to the point. The harshness of the idea "the bow is death" comes quick, giving the reader little time to prepare. Death comes quickly and suddenly, and it is very apt.

Overall, I very much appreciated the author's use of opposites in unity, not only in the text of his poem, but in his form as well. I really liked the way two intersecting ideas look when formatted in this way, and may try to use this as a template for future works of my own. I think this inspiration is probably what Finlay was hoping his readers would feel after reading his poem: an interest in finding unity in opposites, just like Heraclitus. The reiteration of this idea, in both his form and text, suggests little else.

Artistic Choices

Although my initial letter animation was not super-complicated thus far, I feel like it still possessed some expressive capabilities.

I don't think the part where the Q is rolling is particularly expressive in itself. Rather, it is the part where Q encounters difficulties that it begins to be more expressive. Once stuck, it rocks back and forth a little, like a person fretting or a overturned turtle trying to right itself.

Failing in this endeavor, it hunches down, like a person's shoulders drooping or a sad animal, and lets a lone tear escape it.

As far as choosing its colour went, I mostly just went with what felt instinctive. I read somewhere that round shapes are associated with cool colours, such as blue and green, which is probably why it felt so right.

The font I chose according to how rounded the Q was and what shape the tail (which it would get stuck on) was.

In terms of other people's artistic choices, the two that stood out to me the most were someone's letter L and someone's letter V.

The L in question was an uppercase L, written in cursive. It appeared on the page as that particular student writes it, which I appreciated, as I too enjoy the way some letters feel to write, particularly if they have such twisting loops. It then morphed into a butterfly and flew away. It felt like it was drawing off of the letter's shape and its mental association very nicely.

I also liked the letter V, just because it was very different. It bounced around the screen and eventually grew to consume the whole thing until you couldn't tell what letter it was. I like the way it allowed one to feel as if a camera was zooming in on the letter.

I chose these two because they were both very distinct styles, and therefore provided me with two very different ways I could manipulate my own animations in the future.

A Preliminary Proposal

After pondering this letter and performing a thorough investigation into its history, I am delighted to say I have several ideas. Or rather, I have one idea for a story with many twists and turns for poor old Q.

However, I worry somewhat about the size of the endeavor I am thinking about undertaking. What I have in mind will probably be too long or too complicated for this particular project.

That in mind, what I have so far, and will no doubt tweak and build off of (or rather, reduce), is as follows:

1) Open on a lineup of the Greek alphabet. Q drops out, left all alone.
2) Q is dazed and confused, shakes self, morphs into lowercase form.
3) Little q makes friends with p and g, but as it grows up, they have less in common.
4) Q tries to make friends with O.
5) O rolls away, leaving Q disheartened.
6) Q spies u and excitedly inches itself toward it.
7) Once together, we briefly see Q flash into its cursive form, which looks like a 2 (representing the pair).
8) Q wags its tail happily.
9) The end!

Q Through the Ages

The letter we now recognize as Q began originally as the Phoenician letter Qoph. There are several hypotheses about why the letter is named this:  one story suggests that it came from the pictogram of a monkey (with the letter forming the monkey's rear end and hanging tail), as Qoph was the Phoenician word for "monkey;" others suggest that it came from the proto-Afro-Asiatic word for "neck," which is "qaw." By looking at the shape of the letter, one can see how both of these conclusions make sense.

The Greeks then adopted this letter, renaming it Koppa, slightly modifying its shape in the process. However, they already had the letter Kappa, which was their older letter for the /k/ sound, and ultimately preferred it. They eliminated Koppa from their alphabet, retaining it only as their number 90.

However, it has been suggested that the Greek letter Phi, which we pronounce as /f/, also originated from Koppa. As I am currently studying the Russian language (whose Cyrillic letters drew from the Greek alphabet), I find it interesting to note that their /f/ sound looks very much like Phi and, similarly, Koppa.

Ultimately, though, the Etruscans and Romans kept Qoppa. The Etruscan Q retained the vertical tail, but the Romans eventually gave it the curved tail we recognize today. However, so as to not have the same dilemma as the Greeks (who decided they did not need two /k/ sounds), the Romans dictated that it was only to be used before a /w/ sound or, more simply, the letter U.

I found it interesting to learn about how this letter was ultimately eliminated from the Greek alphabet because it was a redundancy, as our modern-day Q still feels that way sometimes. I had hoped to play off of the notion of Q having a hard time finding its place in the world before I read Q's history, but learning about its origins only reinforced this idea in my mind. Q had, and still has, a rather hard time of it.

Sources:
"Alphabet Letter Q" http://www.alphabetandletter.com/Q.html
"The Letter Q" http://www.fonts.com/AboutFonts/Articles/Letterseries/LetterQ.htm
"The Origin of the Alphabet" http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/alphabet.html
"Q" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q
"Qoph" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qoph

The Problem with Q

Click here to see my first attempt at animating the letter Q.

Q

On the first day of class, when given only a few moments to scribble down my favourite letter, I impulsively chose the letter G. When asked to explain my reasoning, the only rationale I could provide was that it was the most recently modified letter in my handwriting and, therefore, still new and fun for me to write.

On further consideration of the project at hand, however, I began to feel that this was not sufficient reason to choose a letter. If I am to fully explore the expressive possibilities of a letter, I would rather begin with a letter that I have stronger mental associations with. With this in mind, I chose the letter Q.

When I think of the letter Q, the first word that comes to mind is the adjective “unique” (which, interestingly enough, contains said letter). It is the second most rarely used letter in the English alphabet. In addition, unlike other letters in the English alphabet, its presence in a word almost always depends on the presence of the letter U (which in turn has no such dependency on Q). It is not your everyday letter.

Despite my fascination with Q, I confess to feeling rather neutrally towards it. Perhaps it is its absence from everyday words that has led me, over the years, to not give it much thought one way or the other until receiving this assignment. I suppose, though, that asked to give my opinion, I would respond more positively to the uppercase Q as opposed to its lowercase counterpart (probably due to the lowercase's similarity in appearance to a p or a g). Uppercase cursive Q's have always vexed me for looking too much like the number 2.

I feel that the letter Q is often used in conjunction with question marks, probably due largely in part to its commonly serving as the abbreviation for the word “question.” I therefore feel that the letter Q instinctively has an air of being quizzical or inquisitive. I hope to play off of this in the way I make it look, as well as maybe trying to emphasize its distinctiveness from other letters.

If the letter Q was capable of movement, I imagine it would inch itself forward, pulling itself by its tail. It could try to roll, similar to an O, but would inevitably get caught on its own tail and probably get stuck, like a bike's kickstand. If happy, it would probably wag its tail.

Martha Mae: An Introduction

If I had to describe myself, I would like to think that I could call myself a writer. Even if I am less prolific than I would like to be, it is a passion that has extended through enough of my life that, by now, I consider it part of my identity. Over the years, my life aspirations have changed a half dozen times, but, inevitably, I always return to that which I concluded when I was still in preschool (penning stories about dinosaurs and insisting, despite what anyone told me, that all words had to begin with a capital letter) – I want to be a writer.


Now here I am, seventeen years later, three-quarters of the way done with a college degree in creative writing. Although sometimes I wonder what I am going to do with such a degree upon graduating into the “real world,” I realize the importance of the advice, “Do what you love,” and that is exactly what I am doing.

I am never so fulfilled as when I have just completed a piece of writing I am immensely proud of. Lately, this has been in the form of short fiction, though I also occasionally dabble in poetry. I like playing with narrator voice, exploring the role of the imagination, and having fun with words (adding unnecessary capitalizations less frequently than before, though still every once in a while to change its inflection). I am taking my second fiction workshop this semester, before advancing onto my capstone workshop.

I vaguely recall studying Flash about six years ago, but I doubt any of it stuck so this class will be a new experience for me. The most I have every really worked with in changing the shape of, say, poetry, is adding line breaks, so even studying static shapes of writing should be interesting as well.