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.)
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