Mark Amerika
FILMTEXT 2.0
http://www.markamerika.com/filmtext
Flash, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator
Protools, Live, Audio Gulch, Final Cut Pro
iMovie, QuickTime
FILMTEXT 2.0 is an elaborate work of net art that investigates emerging
forms of electronic literature in relation to interactive cinema, live
A/V performance, games, and remix culture. It remediates formal experiments
from older media like film, video art, and the visual/metafiction novel. This
is partly why we decided to use technology that enabled us to a) build a
serious library of audio/visual assets for the "reader"/interactive
participant to remix as part of their own journey through the site and
b) create a customized interface for reader-triggered narrative performance.
As with much of the metafiction published in the 60s and 70s, the work
self-consciously refers to its various technological adhesions and the
prosthetic aesthetics that are often at play in the construction of
electronic literature. There are even self-contained "text readers" that
deploy some of the early instances of the "codework" writing style that
suggest how authors "tell target" their source material for emotional
manipulation. In FT 2.0, this is generally achieved by defamiliarizing
the early action scripting language that enabled early versions of Flash
to create unique animation effects and behaviors.
Stefan Muller Arisona
Exploding, Plastic & Inevitable
Soundium, Ableton Live, Modul 8
Since Steve Gibson and I are going to present the Exploding, Plastic
& Inevitable show (also accompanied by a live audio and visuals
workshop) during the conference, it might be best to give some background
for the software used there.
Authoring tools we're using
- audio: Ableton Live
- visuals (Steve): Modul 8
- visuals (Stefan): Soundium, see below.
Steve may have to add a few things, he did a lot of custom stuff for
for other projects, such as Virtual DJ.
At this point I can give more information about the custom software Soundium:
- Soundium is a research multimedia authoring and processing
framework. It has been used for many live visuals performances and
several digital art installations. However, it is not really an "end
user product" and requires a quite a bit of multimedia processing
knowledge in order to use it.
- written in java and c++, and based on open source software: linux,
gcc, x11, ffmpeg, etc.
- available for free download
- further infos are at:
http://www.corebounce.org/wiki/Soundium/Front
- a publication list is available at:
http://www.corebounce.org/wiki/Main/Publications
Alan Bigelow
What They Said
http://www.webyarns.com/WhatTheySaid.html
Flash, Sound Studio, Photoshop
Work Description:
What They Said (2008) is an online work which is a commentary on
mass media and its use of authoritarian messages, both outright and
subliminal, to influence culture and political will. The work is
created in Flash and uses a synthesized combination of text, images,
video, and audio; its interface is a hybrid of television and radio
visual elements intended to enhance the user experience and require
their participation in the viewing of the work.
What They Said is meant not just as a commentary on mass media, and
how it is used, both intentionally and by media programmers' blind
acquiescence to current political paradigms, to distort meaning and
manipulate citizens worldwide. It also suggests our own culpability,
as the ones who turn on the media devices and listen to the messages.
We bear some responsibility for the perpetuation of these messages,
and we are the ones, if we have the will, to turn them off.
To progress through What They Said, the viewer must first turn on
the media "device." They then use a slider, reminiscent of an
old-style radio channel indicator, to "read" the various messages.
These messages--instructions for work, family life, cultural beliefs,
and aesthetics--are archetypal in nature and use a linguistic
double-speak favored by many governments, present and past. The
viewer's choice of messages is random, snatched, using the slider,
from the static ether visually (and auditorially) presented in the
piece. When the last message is read, the piece automatically
generates a short closing visual followed by a subtitle. Total
viewing time is approximately five minutes.
Media:
This work, like all my other work, was created in Flash, with imported
files that were edited in Sound Studio and Photoshop. Flash is a very
resilient and robust application that is relatively easy to learn and
remarkably obedient to the unusual demands of digital storytelling.
Right now, the most interesting challenge to me (other than creating
new work!) is how to move online Flash works into the mainstream of
gallery shows. In the United States, at least, it appears that many
galleries are not used to considering online works as representative
material for exhibitions; when asked, though, many are intrigued and
ask to see the work, even when it is not within their usual call for
submissions.
Part of their reluctance to accept web works/Net Art is the difficulty
of pricing such work for sale. Rhizome.org has a revealing interview
with Aron Namenwirth of artMovingProjects on this topic
(
Interview with Aron Namenwirth of artMovingProjects
)
Jay Bushman
The Loose-Fish Project
http://www.loose-fish.com
Twitter
The goal of the Loose-Fish Project is to use various web-based media --
ideally free or low-cost -- as a platform for telling stories adapted
from classic and public domain works. Ideally, the fictional story
content becomes embedded in the non-fictive world of the wider web.
One way of describing it is like an Alternate Reality Game, without
the Game portion. The media for each story is chosen to mirror or augment
some aspect of the story.
Loose-Fish #1: "The Good Captain"
http://www.goodcaptain.com
"The Good Captain" is a science-fiction adaptation of the Herman Melville
novella "Benito Cereno." Since the story relies heavily on the realtime,
flawed POV of its main character, the medium I chose to use was the web
service Twitter. Twitter limits its
users to updates of 140 characters of text.
In writing the story, I relied on an adaptation method that I use regularly
-- I downloaded a public domain e-text version of the original story, and
pasted it into Microsoft Word, increasing the font to 16 point and the
line spacing to Double, then printing out the story on three-holed punch
paper and putting into a binder. The large text and double-spacing allowed
me to focus on the line-by-line, beat-by-beat of the original, and the
facing blank page is where I wrote the adaptation of. That text was then
entered into a specially formatted Word document, using a monospaced font
and tweaked margins so that 140 characters of text took up exactly 2 lines
of text. When the full story was written, this text was transferred to an
Excel spreadsheet, where each grid equaled one story update. Once the story
began, I would copy a spreadsheet cell into the Twitter interface and update
the main page
http://twitter.com/goodcaptain anywhere from 8 to 15
times per day. The full story took four months to unfold.
Users of Twitter have many ways of getting their content. The best -- for
purposes of this story - are desktop-based clients that display a feed of
the user's friends. Embedded in between these updates, they would get a chunk
of story. Other users can get their Twitter messages on their phones via text
messages or via IM. This was less successful for the story, as these users
tended to mute their Twitter responses while asleep or while doing other
activities, and not go back through their cache.
One thing that using Twitter for a storytelling mechanism required was a more
frequent restating of the given circumstances of what was going on. When
giving the full text to a couple of friends for comment, they read the whole
story in one sitting, and commented that there was a lot of redundancy. But
what might look like half a page of text on a page would actually dribble out
to readers in the course of two weeks.
Another interesting thing that I encountered was that many readers apologized
to me because they were unsure if they were "reading it correctly," which I
took to be a by-product of expanding storytelling to an unfamiliar format. For
these readers, I put together a paperback book version of the story --
(
http://www.lulu.com/content/2322661 ),
a downloadable PDF, and a version for the Amazon Kindle.
J. R. Carpenter
Entre Ville (2006)
HTML, DHTML, javascript, Quicktime
http://luckysoap.com/entreville
The most important authoring tool used in the creation of Entre Ville is the
pen.The main interface was drawn with a pen in a notebook in 1992 while I was
apartment-hunting in the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal, the neighbourhood
Entre Ville is set in. I saved the physical notebook because I liked the
drawing, though I had no idea what if anything I'd ever do with it.
I also used a pen to write the poem, "Saint-Urbain Street Heat," which Entre
Ville is based on. I almost always write with a pen first, before editing on
the computer. In particular, a Japan Sailor fountain pen. "Saint-Urbain Street Heat"
was written in 2004 during a record-breaking heat wave in Montreal. I went down
to Vermont to escape and wrote and rewrote many drafts with the Japan Sailor
in a hammock with no computer access. Although I did eventually edit the
poem slightly in Microsoft Word, I think the poem retains a certain structure
that might have been quite different if I'd been working on the computer all
along.
The poem "Saint-Urbain Street Heat" was published in an online journal based
in the UK called NthPosition in August 2005. The response was overwhelmingly
positive, so I decided I wanted to do more with the text - expand it into an
electronic literature project. I borrowed a video camera and started shooting
footage in the network of back alleyways referred to in the text.
In the fall of 2005 I was commissioned by Oboro, an artist-run center and new
media lab in Montreal, to create a new web based work for the 50th anniversary
of the Conseil des Arts de Montreal. The commission included a month's worth
of time in the Oboro New Media Lab, which is where I edited the 17 Quicktime
Videos included in Entre Ville. I edited in FinalCut Pro and used Cleaner
to export and crop the videos - approximately half are cropped to unconventional
shapes.
As I was editing the videos I uncovered the old notebook with the line-drawing
of Mile End apartment buildings that I'd drawn in 1992 when first moving into
the neighborhood. I decided this would be the interface and planned all the
rest of the content around it.
I used a now ancient version of Photoshop to splice the notebook drawing
into small sections so that they could become roll-overs. I also used
Photoshop to process all the other interface images. Some images were
made from scanned objects, but most of the interface images were derived
from digital photos taken expressly for this project, and/or video stills
taken from the footage shot for this project.
For the web implementation I used Homesite, an old web authoring tool that
has since been absorbed into the Dreamweaver codebase. I prefer the text
only web authoring environment of Homesite and have been using it for so
long I see no reason to change. When I first started making web-based work
there were no WYSIWYG editors and I never got used to them. I spent a number
of years working in the software industry and came to loathe the version
release sales model. Since then I have been working entirely independently -
I have no money to update software and do everything possible to avoid
software solutions.
In Entre Ville I use a number of found, recycled and re-purposed DHTML and
javascript scripts. I enjoy hunting down scripts, adapting them, and patching
them together. This recycled and collaged sensibility is in keeping with the
visual aesthetic of the work. It's also part of the do-it-yourself culture that
first attracted me to the internet. I learned everything I know about coding
from "View Source" and continue to enjoy figuring out new scripts by taking
them apart and putting them back together again.
The text of the poem "Saint-Urbain Street Heat" appears in an < iframe >
overlapping the notebook drawing. It scrolls with a DHTML script that I've
used in other projects. The main interface component, the notebook drawing,
uses a simple image rollover script to call up popup windows containing
Quicktime videos and other subsections of the poem. Other small images
float around the notebook drawings in relative position < div >. A number
of these small images, as well as a few text areas (such as the description line
under the main title) are nested in data arrays set to display randomly, so
that whenever one views the page one sees a slightly different combination
of images and texts. I intend this to mimic the way the neighbourhood always
looks a little bit different every time one goes out into it.
I have been told over and over again that Entre Ville should have been made
in Flash. I have no interest in Flash. For one thing, I like the idea that
the internet is all made out of text. I'm a writer so I want my texts to be
text in internet terms. I also like the vagaries of HTML, DHTML and javascript.
I aim for cross-browser / cross-platform compatiblity, scaleablility and graceful
fails. It seems important to keep in mind that everyone will see things
slightly differently - because of their browsers and platforms and also because
we are all human beings.
M.D. Coverley
Egypt: The Book of Going Forth by Day
http://califia.us/avegypt.htm
Toolbook, Director
Toolbook Version
As I look at the Toolbook version from 1998, I am struck with how antique
it seems a mere four years later. The small screen resolution contributes
to this - but more indicative for me is the awkwardness of the navigation
and flow. Part of that effect is due to my own lack of expertise in the
medium - but I had already done most of Califia by that time, and I
remember I was still struggling with authoring features that did not lend
themselves easily to a long, fictional narrative and ready access to a large
database of material. My experience has been that the navigation
structure is one of the most difficult aspects of writing hypermedia
narratives.
The differences between the Toolbook version and later versions is most
vivid in the employment of the graphics. My ideas about what the graphic
environment needs to contribute to the overall "text" has evolved over time.
In 1998, I was still hesitant to allow the graphic elements to support
themselves. But in order to allow the graphics a greater autonomy, they
need to be not only background and local color, information and orientation,
but also to embody the essence of the structure and context. This Toolbook
version is a good example of graphics that are not fully integrated into the
concept of the whole. [The change from a white background to a black one
(later) was occasioned by my testing of Califia and problems with
the background color for that novel. White is very harsh for a long piece
- and off-white tended to fight with the brilliant colors that are so
characteristic of Egyptian art. So, the subsequent versions with black
backgrounds not only changed the look, but dictated a different set of
graphics.]
If one reads the beginning of the narrative, however, the text seems to
start out much the same in all of the versions. However, the opening
sequence has been altered slightly, but significantly, to reflect what
has come to be a change in the entire direction of the plot. In the
Toolbook version the narrator begins her journey in Cairo and proceeds
upriver to Aswan. In the later versions, the journey is downriver -
Aswan to Cairo. Moreover, in the early versions (Toolbook, HTML, and
DHTML) - the Jeanette/Ba narrator is alive (both symbolically and really)
and she comes to Egypt to participate in the Osiris drama as a
helpmeet/witness for her brother. In the Director version, we discover
that Jeanette is probably already dead, and that her Ba, Ka, and Akh
are reunited in the process of accompanying Osiris on his journey
downriver and through the symbolic underworld.
The use of hieroglyphs as navigation features is only rudimentarily
developed in the Toolbook version. One major problem was finding
a hieroglyphic font that would produce robust glyphs and could be
imported into another program. In the end, I bowed to necessity
and made separate .gif and .jpg files for each one - but at the time
of the Toolbook version, I was still trying to avoid that.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HTML and DHTML
Oh dear! I find it very hard to think about these versions, since
they are obsolete before even being born!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Director/Shockwave
I have been grateful to Barry Smylie, Jim Andrews, Deena Larsen and
other hypertext writers for their explication of the process and
thinking that has gone into their works. It's far easier to move
on to the next problem than it is to write about the labyrinthine
details of construction. The Director/Shockwave version that you will
access on this disk is not only unfinished, it is at the very stage
that the multi-media artist junks the whole thing and starts over.
In the new version which emerges, the features that need to be there
will stubbornly remain, and the jetsam of several exploratory drafts
will be pruned out. The process of starting over is particularly
important in this case, because I was learning Director as I went along.
for M.D. Coverley's complete paper, click here
Steve Ersinghaus
The Life of Geronimo Sandoval
http://www.steveersinghaus.com/SSP/Sandoval.html
Storyspace
The Life of Geronimo Sandoval, a novel in hypertext, took
approximately four years to complete. I had originally begun the work
with a fairly conventional plan: to write a book-based novel. I began
with an image, two people talking by a river in southern New Mexico, and
quickly realized that the novel and its characters wanted a different
form: the novel needed a form appropriate and implicit to the voice of
its first person narrator/hero, Ham Sandoval.
I found the form with the help of Eastgate Systems'
Storyspace.
The initial image of The Life of Geronimo Sandoval became not
merely a place to begin writing the novel but an episode within a larger
narrative that could appear at any appropriate time given Ham Sandoval's
method of storytelling. Storyspace because the appropriate tool to
explore Ham Sandoval.
Storyspace is hypertext authoring software. I would also call it an
authoring framework. It provides not just the requirements of a word
processor or a means of reading and presenting hypertext, but an
environment for creating, organizing, revising, visualizing, and
distributing hyperlinked works. I could also write the previous
sentence this way: Storyspace can be the proper tool for works of art
that demand hypertext as an implicit form. What Storyspace provided for
Sandoval was a means of finding the voice and logic of the narrative.
In Storyspace's work environment I could find sequences and sections
swiftly and accurately and work with multiple writing spaces
simultaneously. With Storyspace, the writer may employ a variety of link
types to the text as well as control how links behave under certain
conditions. Storyspace provides map, chart, and outline views that
provide flexible means of examining narrative space. Keyword
assignment, search facility, and the ability to import other digital
media into the environment make Storyspace a powerful creative tool with
ample aesthetic possibilities not just for the study of technology but
of the human lifeworld.
Susan M. Gibb
Paths
http://smgct.typepad.com/hypercompendia/2008/05/storyspace-path.html
Storyspace
My introduction to hypertext was in a contemporary fiction course and there
was a bit of resistance to what appeared to be a jungle of story. However,
it intrigued me enough as a writer to want to master not only the reading
but the writing of narrative into the hypertext environment.
With the
Storyspace program offered by Eastgate Systems in mind,
I prepared by planning out what I felt was the perfect story to be told in
hypertext. Paths is a story of a couple who fell in love in college and
who may or may not have ended up together. What other medium could so entwine
the coulda's, woulda's, and shoulda's of such a basic choice in life?
Once I got the Storyspace software, it was a matter of transferring what were
basically four paths of stories into the format. Very, very easy to do. Even
though the manual is one of the best I'd ever encountered in its pointed
instructions and illustrations, the software was so well arranged that it
wasn't necessary to consult except for specific maneuvers.
I soon realized that the structure I had envisioned for the story was not
using Storyspace to its optimum performance capabilities with its
opportunities for exploration into time and character. The excellent Map
View was the best to work into as it enabled the placement of the parts
within the whole. All the originally planned links were severed and I let
the stories flow into each other from more natural intersecting points.
Past and present have no certainty in this narrative and the interplay of
memory and perspective opened a playground for true character development.
75 writing spaces -- or text boxes -- stretched into 300, all because
the event of hypertext invites the author to tarry in an area of the
mind that might otherwise be kept from the reader.
I am working on more in the Storyspace software and find that as with the first
effort, the format focuses on what is vital to a very small portion of story without
hindering the creative flow. Particularly in editing, I've found that the writing
improves as it seeks the most concise yet imaginative manner of telling a tale; each
box of words being self-contained and asking the writer, as much as the reader,
to linger a bit, just as does the form of a poem.
The full journey of writing in Storyspace has been documented in my
Hypercompendia weblog and can be read at Storyspace Index
Chris Joseph
Inanimate Alice by Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph
http://www.inanimatealice.com
___
http://www.brad-field.info/
Photoshop, Premiere, Sound Forge, Acid, Flash
Inanimate Alice is a series of multimedia short stories depicting the life
of a girl growing up in the early years of the 21st century. Across ten episodes,
the story of Alice, games animator, and her one true friend in life, Brad, the game
character she has created, is told using a combination of text, sound, and images.
"Episode 1: China" begins with Alice aged eight and subsequent episodes track her
through adulthood until her mid-twenties. Each episode becomes increasingly
interactive and more game-like, reflecting Alice's own developing skills as a
game designer and animator.
Inanimate Alice represents a project that could not have been created or
distributed without the software developments of the past decade. The series uses
manipulated photographic images, illustrations, video, sound, and text to tell the
story. These elements were created using a PC and various softwares: Photoshop
(graphics), Premiere (video), Sound Forge and Acid (sound effects and music).
Finally Flash is used to combine these elements and create the final work.
Flash offers a method for creative artists to produce high-quality multimedia at
a relatively low cost, and even more importantly, it allows a cost-effective
and simple method for distributing the piece to a worldwide audience.
More specifically, Flash was chosen for the following reasons:
1. It has a very wide user base, so represents a great way to distribute
work online without putting off those users who are unfamiliar with installing
software plugins;
2. It allows the relatively simple creation of randomized, non-linear and
eractive elements. For example, in each episode there are elements that are
generated at random from a set of pre-defined possibilities (such as Ming's
paintings, and the motion of the texts) -- possibilities that can be explored
with this kind of digital animation, as opposed to a linear (filmed) animation;
3. It offers an extremely wide range of animation styles. Movement between scenes
in Inanimate Alice is generally very dynamic, employing slides, pans and
zooms to suggest an animated graphic novel, in a style that blends comic, animation
and film. But techniques and elements of classical animation can also be found
throughout, for example Alice's hand-drawn animations of Brad, or the looping desert
backgrounds in Episode 1 that are reminiscent of early Disney cartoons. All these
styles can be easily explored within the Flash authoring environment.
Rob Kendall
Pieces
http://www.wordcircuits.com/pieces
Flash; XML, X-Lit
I created this work in Flash. It makes use of drag-and-drop functions and
transitional fades that very few other delivery systems can create. The
method I use for text-handling is not the one normally employed by Flash
authors. All the text is stored in an XML file, which is read by the work's
SWF file at runtime. This means that I can edit or expand the text of this
work freely without having to recompile the SWF file. I can also easily
organize it into paths and sections/lexias. It's very difficult to work with
large quantities of text in Flash, unless you put the text into external XML
files in this manner.
Pieces is the first step in a large-scale project from which I hope will
eventually emerge an X-Literature XML specification--an XML format that will
allow me and other authors to create complex Flash works solely by creating
content in XML that will be rendered by a Flash-based X-Lit Player. I will
be working in conjunction with the ELO to work out the details of the X-Lit
spec itself. In conjunction with developing a preliminary version of the
spec, I am also building an authoring tool in AIR (a new programming IDE
recently released by Adobe) that will let people create Flash works without
having to use or even own Flash. My XML format currently handles only text,
but ultimately it will also handle graphics, video, and audio, and will
store elements defining animation, interaction, styles, and interface
elements. Preliminary details about the project, which is in its very early
stages, are available at
http://www.wordcircuits.com/xlit
Prior to working in Flash, I used the Connection Muse to help create most of
my Web work. This is a JavaScript-based authoring system for adaptive
hypertext, which I codeveloped with the French computer scientist,
Jean-Hugues Réty (
http://wordcircuits.com/connect). This system allows the
components of a hypertext to respond dynamically to a reader's progress
through the work, changing links and content to suit the current reading
situation. Many of the features of Connection Muse have already been
incorporated into my XML format, and I hope eventually to port all the
system's features to the X-Lit authoring system.
When the X-Lit spec, player, and authoring tool are fully developed they
will allow an author to store in a single XML file all the text and pointers
to external media content for complex hypertexts, interactive pieces, and
animated works. Features not supported by X-Lit can still be implemented
directly in Flash, so an author won't lose any functionality by using the
system, even if it doesn't directly support all desired functions. I'm
excited by the prospects of this system and its new approach, and I hope it
will someday see wide use.
Deena Larsen
Pines at Walden Pond: Trellix
I have used a lot of authoring tools, but if I have to choose only one,
let it be Pines at Walden Pond, which I did with Trellix.
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/deena/pines/
Trellix was/is an early software for the web--before Dreamweaver.
It allows users to show node maps and trails between nodes.
The squares and lines on the tree are generated from Trellix.
I spent a day at the Trellix office and betatested their software
by putting Pines together. It went surprisingly fast--this was the
only work that I have ever created where I actually spent more time
composing than I did re-coding and re-editing and bug fixing.
For more information about Deena Larson's work, visit
http://www.deenalarsen.net/
Judy Malloy
Afterwards
HTML NarraStructure
http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/feature/malloy/afterwards/begin.html
(Iowa Review Web, 2003)
Mirror site:
http://www.well.com/user/jmalloy/dorothyandsid/begin.html
In my work, I usually begin with an idea of content -- the characters,
the setting, the narrative or the poetic situation that I want to convey.
I than consider how to structure and interface the narrative. Over the
course of over twenty years of creating electronic literature, I have
developed a series of authoring structures and interfaces that work in
tandem with the content, and I utilize these systems to create the
architecture and interface that houses each new work. But, after I have
made the decisions about what the work is about and the basic architecture,
I work on structure and content simultaneously, so that they evolve
together. In general, my aim is to compose a work of literature where
the interface does not overwhelm the content, and the whole is somewhat
seamlessly integrated into the World Wide Web where it resides.
The content: In a series of conversations and parallel thoughts,
Afterwards chronicles the relationships of three couples: the young
couple Tina and Jerry, who are unsure whether to begin a serious relationship;
Gunter and Gwen, who in their lives have at times between unable to separate
reality from virtual reality; and the recently married couple, Dorothy,
a painter, and Sid, a curator. The work takes place immediately after
Dorothy and Sid's wedding celebration, and thus the content reflects
the aftermath of a wedding.
How the work was created: I structured Afterwards using hand-coded
HTML in the Narrative Data Structure (NarraStructure) system that
I first created and implemented for the three character narrative, Wasting Time.
(published on disk in After the Book, Perforations 3, 1992)
In Afterwards, to portray moments of intimate shared conversation and
parallel thoughts, I used HTML frames and Meta Refresh tags to produce a series
of episodes of narrative text that at times simulate conversation -- the
words of each speaker appear slowly in separate columns -- and at times connect
static columns of words that simulate parallel thought patterns.
I keyed the collected episodes that comprise the work using graphic icon squares
that I first used in the 1995 web version of
Uncle Roger.
For Afterwards they were color-coded -- ie to follow one couple, the reader
clicks on one color of squares in the interface. This use of color to follow
different characters was an interface approach I first encountered in
Cathy Marshall's work at Xerox PARC.
The work is multi-sequential in that beginnings are accessed at the top of the
array, and the end of the array offers closure. Although most of my work is
designed for laptop screens because I believe that laptops work best for in
depth computer-screen reading, Afterwards, which is a relatively short
work, was designed for optimum viewing on a full screen.
Working like an artist-composer, I prefer to hand code HTML rather than use
a commercial tool because for my work I find this method allows the kind of
control of the look, feel and structure of the work that most closely
approximates my vision.
Mez
Poetic Game Interventions [V.1]
[from the Twittermixed Litterature Series]
Twitter and
World of Warcraft
Method of Creation: Poetic Game Interventions are manipulations
of pre-set game parameters in order to disrupt or comment on various
aspects of a game's function or outcome, often within a wider sociological perspective.
I began my MMOG interventions in the 90's using the
_Everquest_ game interface 2 project/interject in2 the conventional
game-chat stream by riffing off other players chatlines and reworking
chat sections via poetic manipulations. I'd also mangle logs of these chats
and project them into a wider networked sphere by reposting them to various
email list forums.
I'm currently extending this type of poetic intervention/textual reworking of
game_text during my time playing
World of Warcraft. My latest
intervention is titled "Twittermixed Litterature" and involves
WoW characters ["toons"] on the Bloodscalp Server standing in
Ironforge [an in-game location] + live remixing [in_game] chat that
occurs between players and guild/character names that rotate past.
I then remash these lines [+ any feedback I receive in-game from the
players themselves] into a live Twitter stream, making a multi-access
channelling or [as I labelled it in the press releases]: "Twittermixing
prefound identity marker texts from live-time character actions in
World of Warcraft" and "MMO Voyeur Aggregationistic Rem(H)ashing
Ethan Miller
Narrative Units --
http://ethanmiller.name/projects/narrativeunits/:
Code based, networked data visualization
Software tools used: Written in the Python programming language,
and depends on the Python libraries PyGame (for rendering graphics)
and BeautifulSoup (for reading HTML).
Interface/authoring tools are an interesting question to me...
For the last three years or so I've worked almost exclusively within
a command-line interface. My code editor is Vim. Like many CLI users,
I find it efficient and simple - it allows me to think through the
keyboard without a lot of hunting and clicking with the mouse to interfere.
From the perspective of media practice, I see the interfaces I use while
working as very much a part of the work. Here is a screenshot of Narrative Units:
http://ethanmiller.name/media/images/uploaded/narrunits_.png
which may explain more visually than I can articulate verbally.
I think the relationship, on the one hand, may have to do with the
parameters/biases imposed by software: Programming languages and
plain-text/code editors offer relatively more freedom of movement
than 'wizards' and options panels (more possibilities for errors isn't
a bad thing either).
Beyond that though I think a plain text interface in the context of a
visual/auditory/networked practice speaks to the soft borders between
those forms and the codes that run through them. The relationship, say
between code that creates an image, the image file, and how it's represented
on a screen, is complex and fascinating. The transformations all happen through
'languages' which are comfortably represented in plain text. I guess, for me,
keeping my working interface within the confines of plain text, while creating
visual/auditory work, keeps me situated within that "boundary" area that I find
so interesting.
Nick Montfort --
http://nickm.com
Lost One: nn, Python
For your blogbase, I will mention my piece Lost One, which has not
been released but was first publicly read at the Open Mic & Mouse, The Future
of Electronic Literature Symposium (sponsored by the Electronic Literature
Organization and Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities),
University of Maryland, 2 May 2007.
This piece was written in the interactive fiction system nn, which is also
unreleased. I developed nn as part of my dissertation work at the University
of Pennsylvania. The system is itself written in Python. nn is currently a
research system -- good enough to prove some points that I have been trying
to prove, but not complete and stable enough to be useful as a released piece
of software. I hope to release nn within about a year, but it is proving difficult
to find time to work on it.
I'm most interested in writing e-lit in programming languages that are capable
of general computation. nn falls into this category, while also providing
specific facilities for varying the narration of a story independent of what
the underlying events are.
I can supply you with information about other pieces of mine if you like. I have
also written electronic literature in Inform 6, Perl, Python, Processing, HTML,
and the Windows 95 help system. In the last case it was not, of course, because
I was interested in the capabilities of that authoring system.
Judd Morrissey
The Last Performance [dot org]
http://www.thelastperformance.org
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, Drupal
Project Information
The Last Performance is a constraint-based collaborative writing,
archiving and text-visualization project responding to the theme of
lastness in relation to architectural forms, acts of building, a final
performance, and the interruption (that becomes the promise) of
community.
This project was conceived in response to the work of the
Chicago-based performance collective, Goat Island, (of which
I am a part) and their decision, after 20 years of practice,
to create a last performance. The electronic work is evolving over
two years in parallel with the creation and performance of the
company's final performance work, The Lastmaker.
The structure of the project is taken from my research with Goat
Island into double buildings, a phrase we are using to describe spaces
that have housed and survived multiple historical identities, with a
specific concern for the functions of churches, mosques, and museums.
The central structure of The Last Performance is a virtual dome, based
on the cupola of a particular Croatian double building, a construction
of circles within circles consisting of 4,680 glass lenses. The lenses
of the cupola have been transposed as compositional spaces that will
be populated until the dome is complete. The dome writings are also
processed as source material to create a constantly evolving textual
landscape.
Technical Framework
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, Drupal
I wanted to situate The Last Performance [dot org] in relation to the
overall dialogue and data-flow of the web as an evolving collaborative
space -- to engage "web 2.0" as a site for composition, a readymade
environment, a foundation for responsive practices. It was important
to me that the project be more or less transparent with current
open-source web standards and protocols.
For the basic functionality of this project, I used the PHP/MySQL
content management system, Drupal. This enabled me to rather quickly
lay a foundation for handling participant accounts, session tracking,
built-in RSS aggregation, content tagging, and many other useful
and/or ubiquitous features. The overall visual architecture and textual
processing is handled using PHP for database queries, parsing and
re-composing, and mathematically determining the (CSS) positioning of
elements based mainly on the geometry of circles. Some text imaging is
also done with the gd graphics library for php. Many of the individual
pages are HTML files using Ajax to communicate with PHP.
For some time, I have been working mainly with an integrated set of
web-based languages, so this project continues to extend this
approach. For writers or artists interested in experimenting with PHP,
I recommend the MAMP / LAMP / WAMP applications for a very quick and
easy development environment.
Stuart Moulthrop
Flash
Since the turn of the century, I've been working exclusively in Flash, with
an increasing emphasis on code-intensive, object-oriented projects.
Also important are various tools for generating 3-D images and animations,
including 3DStudio Max and Poser, tools for converting text to artificial
speech, such as TextAloud, and the sound library at Freesound.org
My most recent projects are:
"Deep Surface"
http://www.smoulthrop.com/lit/ds
"Under Language"
http://www.smoulthrop.com/lit/ul
My headlong dive into ever more elaborate code structures has brought my
work closer to the thermocline between e-lit and computer games. Both the
most recent pieces have explicit game features, such as end-of-play
conditions (game over), and scoring systems. You can probably tell that I
spend much time in my day job (which, oddly enough, happens mainly at night)
teaching aspiring game designers how to think with code.
Withal, I remain a compulsively verbal artist, and can't shake the type off
my boot blocks, even as I seem compelled to invent "new disorders" of
writing (as I recently heard John Cayley quote Derrida).
Flash remains a convenient choice for many things -- though it bears noting
that ActionScript 3 demands significantly more patience and attention than
its precursors, and turns casual scripting into something much more like
industrial-strength programming. Adobe seem to assume that graphic
designers and application developers will be happier if their tools clearly
delineate their job functions (i.e., the designers are discouraged from
touching code). I think that's a terrible development for ARTISTS.
In the future, I'd like to build with materials that aren't Adobe -- using
things like Processing, especially the excellent RiTa system from Daniel
Howe at Brown, or a fascinating utility called Dasher, which is a gestural
substitute for keyboard input. Also on my do-list are Inform, the venerable
authoring system for traditional interactive fiction, and of course,
HTML-JavaScript, where I still have deep roots.
Alexander Mouton
Velvet
http://www.unseenproductions.net/velvet.html
Flash, HTML, Java Script, Photoshop, Final Cut, Logic, QuickTime
As a visual + sound artist working also within the form of the artists' book,
I understand net art as a virtual extension of a much older physical tradition
of self-published artists' books. I began working with narrative/poetic artists'
books in the early 90's and began experimenting with Director in 2001 as I was
able to incorporate motion and sound into the mix. I moved thereafter to the
Flash programming environment because it affords a better possibility for
compressing video, still images, and sounds to sufficiently small sizes for
web publishing without sacrificing the aesthetic integrity of the media.
I work with Final Cut and Quicktime Pro for video editing, Adobe Photoshop for
image editing, and Logic and Audacity for sound editing. Currently, I combine the
raw materials from these programs using Flash, and with javaScript and actionScript
I can customize the users viewing environment, incorporate interactivity, and
program randomization features to break from traditional linear narrativity
For the piece Velvet specifically, my goal was to produce a highly
interactive environment which was very personal in nature and which immerses
a user inside the mind and identity of the artist for the exploration of
states of mind, dreams, and memory. I was also interested in incorporating
as many media as possible - text, still images, sounds, & video - and to do
so using a diverse body of work from over the past 15 years of my active
art-making. The interactivity plays a significant role, not only for
navigation, but for the generation of meaning. Velvet was designed
with a non-linear narrative in mind, with an overarching structure in place
that allows for a degree of authorial direction amidst the user-determined
sequencing.
Kate Pullinger
Flight Paths by Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph
http://www.flightpaths.net
CommentPress, Netvibes
We've been working on Flight Paths for around five months now, and a lot
of that time has been taken up trying to figure out how to make it work.
Despite massive advances and changes on the web over the past few years, it
still remains fairly complicated to create an open access site that can
include multimedia.
The first version of Flight Paths went up in a WordPress blog, with the
add-on of CommentPress, the widget created by the Institute of the Future of
the Book that allows us to foreground comments on the right-hand side of the
page, instead of buried beneath each post. While this seemed like a good
idea at the time, this widget was actually created for people to comment on
works that were already written; CommentPress works best when you've got a
draft of a text that you want to allow people to comment on paragraph by
paragraph. It doesn't work so well when the project, like Flight Paths,
is being created afresh.
At the same time as working on the public face of the project, Chris and I
have been busy in the background making links with other organisations,
collecting submissions from interested people, creating our own submissions,
visiting the supermarket in Richmond to make recordings and take photos and
videos, interviewing the journalists behind the original project, etc etc.
After a few months, it began to become clear to us that the wordpress blog
wasn't really the right venue for this project - a blog is a blog, even with
the fab CommentPress widget - and what we are trying to do is not create a
blog. Neither of us are natural-born bloggers, and this project isn't about
writing a blog. Around this time, Netvibes, a homepage application that we
had both been using, launched Netvibes Universes, and this seemed like the
ideal platform to move 'Flight Paths' to - we'd always wanted to be able to
curate the web for this project, to be able to collect things from all over
the web, as well as collecting submissions. The Universe does in fact work
well as a curatorial platform, although, inevitably, we've had mails from
some of our contributors saying they can't get the Universe boxes to open.
However, quite apart from whether or not the Universe works across various
browsers and operating systems, another issue for us is where to house the
discussions that arise out of the submissions and from the various issues
and themes behind the project. With the CommentPress widget the blog was
almost okay for discussions, though we have never used the blog as a blog
and have always manipulated the posts, using the Table of Contents the
CommentPress widget created, trying to keep numbers of posts to a mininum in
order to stop entries from being buried in the blog archive. This was quite
labour intensive, and also counter-intuitive -- again, trying to make a blog
resemble something that isn't a blog -- so recently we've decided that, for
discussions, we should use a forum. We've put a forum up in the Flight
Paths universe, and are currently pondering how best to organise it.
All of this has been slow and time-consuming; I've found I've needed ages to
ponder it all and get my head round how best to make this project work
online. Doubtless we will continue to tweak it as it grows.
Jim Rosenberg
http://www.well.com/user/jer/
Squeak
I have come to believe that authoring systems are the problem, not the
solution; the short answer to what authoring system I use is: I don't.
The authoring system should be smashed -- to smithereens. Let the
smithereens loose. What I use is not an authoring system but an
ecosystem for nurturing feral smithereens.
This means: the object of attention is (surprise): the object. Authoring
is not something you "do" in an "authoring system" -- as opposed to
some other habitat of the object as encountered by the reader; authoring
is just something naturally there, as a normal function of what an object
does. It is not something you turn "on" but something you might decide
to turn "off". "Playing" is not something that you do in some separate jail
called a "player" or something you do inside that prison otherwise known
as "web browser window", it is something the object naturally does. In
place. Feral. Loose on the desktop, perhaps. Or if it's in a specific place,
a place that you made -- the place is itself an object. Everything is an object.
Including zero.
In this environment there is no boundary between "playing" and "authoring".
There are only objects that behave. Some behaviors modify the object,
some don't. Some behaviors modify other behaviors, some don't.
Some behaviors I had to code myself, most I didn't.
The concern is not authoring, but doing: What does the word object do,
what can you do to it, with it, for it (or even against it.)
An object space. An open object space. Generic enough that I don't
have to write all the code, but open meaning I can write my own
code and insert it into the space so there is no boundary.
So, of course there is "a system"; I'm not supporting my poetry
in an environment I programmed 100% myself in machine language
from bare metal -- no one would do that. The object system I use
is called Squeak. You could argue, I suppose, that there is no real
difference between Squeak and an authoring system, but most authoring
systems are not so generic. The list of packages which have been
produced in Squeak is quite broad, resembling a scaled-down list
of packages available for a generic operating system. The Squeak
"World" could easily serve as the main GUI desktop for an operating
system, as Gnome or KDE does for Linux.
This is just a snapshot. For a more serious write-up, I still stand by
"Questions
about the Second Move", which appeared in Cybertext Yearbook
2002-2003, and for the technicalities, "Hypertext in the Open Air: A Systemless
Approach to Spatial Hypertext", (pdf) from the Third Workshop on
Spatial Hypertext at Hypertext '03.
Stephanie Strickland and Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo
Vniverse -
http://vniverse.com/
slippingglimpse -
http://slippingglimpse.org/
Director; Flash
1-Why did we use Director for Vniverse and Flash for slippingglimpse;
or, what is the relationship of interface/content to the tools we used?
V: VNIVERSE: Our original thought was to use VRML, or to make an installation,
to actually seem to move in a three-dimensional star space-to turn to look at different texts
as you turn in space and trigger the stars. Perhaps, today, were we at Brown or someplace
with a CAVE, it would be possible to work out such a piece for a CAVE.
But in fact in 2000, we used Macromedia Director because it was the most widely
used multimedia authoring tool at the time, and it was what Cynthia was using
in graduate school. The biggest problem was drawing the constellations, getting
the lines/diagrams to be dynamically generated whenever anyone rolled over or
clicked a star.
The biggest ongoing challenge is to make sure our projects are up-to-date and
viewable as hardware and software changes at such a fast pace.
SLIPPINGGLIMPSE: The main reason for using Flash for slippingglimpse
was so that we could dynamically animate and visually layer text on top of videos.
Director can't do it. You can track motion and layer text on video in Processing,
but Processing requires a Java applet on the viewer's machine that is not as widely
adopted as the Flash player, and we wanted the project as accessible online as possible.
As well, Cynthia was interested in learning Flash. However we wished to do things
that Flash barely supports, certainly not Flash 7. Fortunately Flash 8 came out
just in time to do our project. There is a new bitmap API in version 8 that
facilitated the motion capture script. We continued to have problems with how
many pieces of text we can use at once. Doing multiple things at once and drawing
them is something Flash 8 is still pretty clunky at. Therefore we had to break
down the poem text and select something like 10 to 15 phrases ranging in length
from 1 to 7 words to be dynamically chosen and drawn in the full-screen
(water as reader) mode of the piece.
2-How has our use expanded new media practice?
V: VNIVERSE: To our knowledge it hasn't, but we believe the Vniverse
interface is capable of being generalized. At a reading at U. California Santa Barbara,
an audience member felt it was a widely usable data visualization. It combines diagrammatic
structures with text in a pleasing way.
We feel the most interesting aspect of the programming is that the whole program happens
in one frame, and therefore time is generated via coding and not a timeline.
Sticking to one frame allowed us to dynamically generate the animations of text and
of constellations, as opposing to predetermining and then animating them. We wanted
to create a space that would allow infinite possibilities for interaction and not
one where we had to predict how users would interact.
SLIPPINGGLIMPSE: We haven't seen any other video-based Flash pieces
with dynamic layering of text elements. We have seen motion capture programming
in performance and installation work, but not much online and rarely with text.
3-What is the relationship between the print work and e-work;
or, what is the relationship of interface and content?
SLIPPINGGLIMPSE: There is an ecologic-philosophic practice of threeing
(described in Paul Ryan's book, Video Mind, Earth Mind) that is related to the
three-mode structure of slippingglimpse. In this digital poem, we aim to give
equal weight to two kinds of language: to weight natural languages and human readers
equally with non-human languages-and non-human readers. The computer is, of course, a
non-human reader; but, in this piece, so is the water-and the water, as well, is a
non-human text, a text affected by gravity, by chaotic attractors and catastrophic
changes in state, patterning itself, resolving its interior motions into forms that
continuously renew. These forms are called chreods.
In slippingglimpse, water (in the 10 ocean videos) is the first reader.
We track the water reading by using motion capture coding that assigns the
text to locations of movement in the water. The metaphor is that the water's
motions provide a scanning, as our eyes scan text. This aspect is best read
in the full-screen mode.
In turn, in the scroll-text mode, the poem-text tracks, or reads, image/capture
technologies by sampling and recombining the words of visual artists who use digital
techniques. It combines their words with Strickland's own-and with words from an old
folktale, The Passion of the Flax, which explores the very oldest capture
technologies, such as harvesting plants for food and flax for paper.
Completing this "round-robin" of reading, image-capture videography-and-video-editing
read the water's flow pattern, reading for and enhancing these patterns to which
dynamical systems return even as they continuously change. The high-resolution mode
shows the chreod patterns best.
With respect to V: Vniverse and True North, versions of question 3
were posed in Jaishree K. Odin's Iowa Review Online interview
http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/feature/strickland/stricklandinterview.pdf
Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Screen: Cave Writing;
Role Playing Games
Probably my most interesting work, from this perspective, is Screen.
When we were moving the Brown Cave from the SGI/Irix machines to
IBM/Linux machines, we knew we had to do major work to translate
the piece. So we decided to start over from scratch, creating an
approach to literary work in the Cave that became the basis for the
Cave Writing software project that continues today.
Here's a SIGGRAPH sketch on the initial work:
http://www.noahwf.com/texts/nwf-caveWriting.pdf
Here's the website with some information on the current effort:
https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/wdm/cave+writing+resources
And, in terms of my writing, you might be interested in these sections from
my forthcoming book that talk about the platforms used for story/game RPGs
and how they shape the experience:
http://grandtextauto.org/2008/02/05/ep-32-role-playing-games/
http://grandtextauto.org/2008/02/06/ep-33-an-example-star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic/
Finally, yes, the Software Studies initiative is quite connected to these questions.
We're hoping to have a meeting next year to discuss the platforms/software used by
elit authors. I'm really looking forward to hearing more of what you find.
Joel Weishaus
The Way North: Dreamweaver; Photoshop
http://web.pdx.edu/~pdx00282/North/Intro.htm
Mirror site:
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/weishaus/North/Intro.htm
Dreamweaver is the central program I use for digital projects, an apt name for work
that goes a-dreaming, and everything seems to end up there. I also use an old version
of Photoshop, mainly for sizing photographs, and an array of smaller programs.
It's not the technology that interests me, and certainly not the interrogation of code,
but how language finds itself somewhere else, and sheds its limitations.
The Way North was originally titled "The Idea of North," as homage to an old
CBC radio broadcast by a genius named Glenn Gould. I chose "The Way" over
"The Idea" to indicate movement that's not only in the head, but kinesthetic too,
actual walking.
The project's theme is climate change, the importance of which I suggest visual
artists and poets haven't touched yet in any meaningful way. Focused on the
folkways of the Inuit People, whose culture has been the hardest hit, their
experience is one indicator of the future distress this planet is facing. A
northerner by temperament, who exiled himself in a southwestern desert for
23 years, The Way North is also a celebration of finding my way home.
I call the genre of my digital work, Digital Literary Art, which is the dream of
combining text and image begun during the Upper Paleolithic on cave walls
and itinerant rocks, and realized here primarily with text: how to write it
across and down a monitor; how to work it into a larger vision of itself.
There are also photographs, some sound, and animations, with text boxes
triggered by hidden links. In fact, all the links are hidden, my request being
that the reader caress the page to see what opens up.
I am a first-generation digital literary artist. Having grow up in front of a typewriter,
I was dragged to the computer, where I now comfortably live. For now at least,
what holds the two paradigms together is the keyboard, whose basic layout
remains the same. Like the land bridge that once spanned the Bering Strait,
we have something solid over which fingers walk and minds leap, so far.
Nanette Wylde
The Qi Project, 2008
http://qiproject.net
Flash, Final Cut, Perl, CGI
When I began working with interactive technologies in 1994 my
software of choice was Director. Changes in both the software and OS X
have made Director less workable for me. Some of my early projects
created in Director became inoperable in OS X or technical changes
were too big to remake them and maintain the original aesthetic of
the project. This has made me a bit wary of overly specialized and
system dependent software. Currently for interactive projects I
primarily use Flash. I respond to its flexibility and stability (for
now).
However, the technology I use is very dependent on the needs of the
project. I still find myself working in web-based programming
languages: HTML, Perl CGI scripts, and JavaScript. Although I am
using Director to revive some of my earlier OS9 projects, I haven't
begun a new project in Director for at least five years.
About The Qi Project
The Qi Project is an inquiry into the nature of humanity and what it
means to be human at this moment in time. Qi is a Chinese word which
literally means 'air' or 'breath.' It is considered to be the
circulating life force. The Qi Project exists as (1) a gallery
installation (2) a website (3) a process-based intervention. The
gallery installation includes: two channel video, text and audience
participation. The website: represents the interventions; includes
elements in exhibition; and invites participation. The intervention
is the process and residue of questioning: What does it mean to be
human? What is humanity? This was done via postcards, email,
telephone, website, and in front of a camcorder. The Project was
launched at The Krause Center for Innovation Art Gallery in Los Altos
Hills, California in February 2008. Continuing is the companion website.
