Reading Twelve Blue is a brand-new reading experience. It demonstrates how electronic literature challenges expectations associated with and codified around print-based reading practices.
The confusion is inevitable: why is the font so small, everything is blue, do the 12 lines represent 12 different stories, why is there a hyperlink in each text, and what stories are they connecting to? What’s the connection between these stories?
When I clicked Begin, I was first attracted by the 12 colored lines, so I click on one of them connected with a kind of sexual story of a man named Ed Stanko. I noticed that there was a large gap between the two texts. I move the mouse between these two paragraphs and find a line of hidden text that blends in with the background color “She was nutty as a fruitcake, she thought she was a queen.” This design is fun. I mean not everyone will find this hiding text (not saying I’m smarter lol). So the story could end there or it could continue by clicking the link, the link in the link…
It just reminds me of what Pressman stated in Navigating Electronic Literature: “Some hypertexts may not even contain a definitive ending but instead continue in endless loops of lexias; such works depend upon the reader to resolve when to finish reading the work”.
The process of reading was interesting, except that it made my eyes tired. But to be honest, I didn’t really like the content of these stories. Their tone, like the color of the page, was blue. Overall, the beauty of E-LIT for me from this reading experience is its interactivity. It allows reading to move beyond the scanning of the reader’s eyes, and makes the reader aware of the power of the mouse as a navigational tool to drive changes in the work.