I think I’m just doomed to experience mental fatigue every time I engage with electronic literature. I’m not used to having chapters and stanzas broken up like this. Of course, I can always go back and re-read, but I find that it’s much easier to forget every time I click off of something. Complaints aside, this work is visually very beautiful. Despite the story being about immigration and there being some themes of forced assimilation, all of the imagery is distinctly Chinese, even down to the way the shops are drawn. There are even videos showing more visuals if you click on the cameraman in the corner of the pages. I think alongside telling a story of a tragic history, each image feels like there’s a distinct aura of homesickness.
Of the seven places that serve as headers, my favorite was “Nelson.” It’s got a familiarity that I understand, from the setting to the acquiescence in the face of racism. The segregation of Chinese people in the cemetery was disgusting but unsurprising. The subject appeared multiple times in this section, with one of the stanzas being about a a non-immigrant who called Chinese people ‘lucky’ for having their own space. Meanwhile the speaker has to explain that no, this is only the result of discrimination. The shops feel like they’re representative of how Americans only cared for the Chinese within the bounds of services they could provide: laundry attendants, restaurants owners, laborers, etc.
There was also the mention of someone who was a Chinese “freemason.” I had to do a bit of background research into that. They were the people who cared about the preservation of their culture in Canada and stressed the importance of community. They’d do things like create newspapers to keep other Chinese people informed and provide essential services to newer immigrants, like healthcare and housing. I never knew that. Everything I learned from the American point of view about Chinese immigration was about how they were exploited. Never anything on their community.
This week’s reading introduced us to a much easier understanding interactive poem (in my opinion). In short, this poem explores the immigration of Chinese settlers on the west side of Canada. I thought it was really interesting that the authors used a body as the whole premise of the poem. For example, the body’s right arm was highlighted with a blue dot that represented all of Canada. But then we have other body parts that represent other cities in Canada. I guess my question would be, “Why a body in the first place?”.
And then I thought to myself, isn’t migration a physical thing? These journeys literally become embodied in peoples lives.
However, it was really illuminating seeing the different works of each other. Every point that was clicked had a different voice and led to a different aspect of an immigrant experience. My favorite part of this piece would have to be the sensory experience itself. The Chinese instruments playing in the background, followed with literal stories being told from real people. Additionally, the deeper meaning behind this interactive poem got me thinking about “having a choice”. Throughout this entire piece, us as readers had a choice on what our next move was, or what we wanted to see next. The authors gave us a choice, unlike the “characters” in the piece who had to move to another country for possibly a better life. They sort of had a choice, but also not really.
Lastly, I was thinking about how this would be such a cool project to work on with my thesis because I am sort of discussing cultural preservation. This interactive poem that keeps cultural memory alive would be such a huge part of my research.
For me each experience inside High Muck a Muck reached all my senses, engulfing me with each icon, symbol that I clicked that would trigger a voice, music, movement sometimes fading in and out or present until I decided to move on. I was engaged throughout the entire time in front of my laptop, one hand on my mouse the other on the keyboard; my instruments of how I interacted waiting and expecting to either hear the music, someone’s voice, or an object moving across my screen. At times these all happened together or in separate that presented a different experience. emotion to the piece. “A lot of small pieces broken from a long stick promises “was one of many lines of poetry that stood out to me and sparked a curiosity in me of similarity. “That anger of not having language itself-never mind the words – was another powerful line to read.
It was smart to offer the option of a video tutorial to learn how to interact by clicking on the icons that represent a particular experience, place, person and the Pak Ah Pu lottery card. The map laid out across the body reminds me of a Chinese medicine map of energy meridians in the body, similar to an experience I had when I got a shiatsu massage. The wall had various posters of our energy levels, circuitry running though our meridians and what affected or interrupted them from having a open flow of freedom. The locations spread across the silhouette lines forming the anatomy of the body or certain extensions made me feel that each experience would be something permanent, personal that happened and all that remains is the story just like a tattoo that the graphics, print reminded me of a represented location or name of a person. This even more so with the arm and the Canadian Pacific Railway interest since I worked on the railroad in the past and could relate. I enjoyed the pleasant sounds from traditional Chinese instruments being played, the tinkling then a commentary interview comes on speaking that I didn’t expect. The pop-up/poem or explanation of text that faded in and out kept me engaged as well waiting to the next poetry or information to show related to the particular icon I clicked on and presented as an addition to the experience a narrated story that made me want to know more about what I was learning about.
The Pacific Rim was filled with electronic noises, tinks, and nautical sounds of the ocean and movement of a petrol cargo ship moving across the screen with small type print Made in China barely visible in the background representing the waves, current and ocean. This for some reason reminded me of the experiences when sitting and watching which I don’t do much the instrumental theme music of a Netflix original movie during introduction to gain your attention while they show brief clips while it is being played. Words associated with trade such as cheap labor, global while music celebrating an event or I assume strong economy was ironic. The pains of their labors, the ones who don’t have a choice or voice due to economic struggles, insufficient dispersing of wealth, oppression, are for me realties not discussed in public or heard outside of their own surroundings. At least some of the narrative in various parts of this project provides that voice allowing me to realize its effects on the culture of the people there in China throughout history.
The idea behind the Pak Ah Pu lottery card is brilliant. While interacting with the Chinese lettering characters I enjoyed waiting to see where it brought me to. Being exposed to Hanzi lettering I research it some on my own as it seems to be part of a Logographic system where its difference compared to traditional alphabet letters I am used to using. Each character of Hanzi which is referred to as a logogram contains its own particular sound, shape, and meaning to it. This provided a better understanding of the importance and significance of the Chinese characters being used on the Pak Ah Pu lottery card in relation to the experience and what was being told, shown to you once I clicked on the stained dotted circle on the card. There is so much to take in and experience each time I go back to the screen and click on another symbol. I found that even though I visited a few over and over again I didn’t mind as the experience felt fresh and new each time.
Welcome to The World of Writing. This is my little corner of cyberspace where I will be writing interesting topics about the world of creative writing, narrative, expository, persuasive, and descriptive writing. Exploring the world around us through articles that may inform you in an impactful way. So, again, welcome to The World of Writing. Get cozy, sit tight, and explore my journey of writing engaging stories, just for you to enjoy. See you soon!
Going into High Muck a Muck, I wasn’t sure exactly what I was doing. Though, once I started navigating the website, I sort of understood just from a few clicks in. My first click, along the pathway of the posterior view of the human body, was at topmost blue dot, or the neck. This brought me to a video of an older man which slowly zoomed in until his eye takes up most of the screen. Then, his eye transforms into a baby’s eye, which then zooms out. What I understand from this is that when you are older, the world seems to have come at you already, and you have a chance to reflect on what you have done while you await the end. When the video transforms to the baby’s eye and zooms out, I understood this to be the world is awaiting this new person, and there is so much at their feet already for them to explore. From here, I recognized transformation as a theme as I continued to navigate the website.
Staying with the topic of videos, I found the video containing the strips of “Made in ____” to be very intriguing and also emotional. Strips of tags with “Made in China”, “Made in Japan”, “Made in Indonesia”, and several others make their way across the screen in many ways. First, only a few strips trek from the left side to the right side. Then, these strips make shapes such as stars and circles, leading up to the wave of strips encompassing the whole page. At this point, two ships make their way against the grain of the strips, with one ship floating on top of the strips, and one making its way through the middle. Then, the strips fade into the background. The video ends with an image of people seemingly in an airport, with the window view being the earth. I thought this was a very intentional way of describing immigration, specifically from Asian countries. We constantly see these labels on products we use everyday, yet we never consider the process the product goes through to eventually find its way into our hands. The same idea applies to immigrants: they are constantly moving through a process and its ramifications that a native citizen does not grapple with. There are obstacles that overpower immigrants, and push them back, as the boats may represent. Even when the immigrant arrives in the new place, they still may feel they are othered, and from an otherwise otherworldly place that has soon become unfathomable, as possibly represented by the aerial view of Earth.
Another aspect of the literature I really enjoyed was “Canada”. Moving from the Pacific Rim section into this one, it allows the reader to consider the themes of Pacific Rim, leaving a place of comfortability, in a more urgent manner, as Canada brings in the idea of family. At the far-most right point, the text appears, “Like a family / Are these trees / Abundant, / dense.” By bringing family into the equation, the interactor (I didn’t want to say reader because I didn’t feel like a reader in this moment) can understand the movement across the screen, of the close proximity of the strips, to be members of a family: parts of a whole meant to stay planted together like a hoard of trees.
“Richmond” really brought these aspects together for me. Between the mentioning of immigrating to another country for the sake of family and future generations truly hits home for me as a First Generation American. The imagery of the people, whether it be a man with his children, two people holding tools, or even a plane in the sky, it shows the massively different purposes of people who choose to leave their home country for a perceived better life. As remarked in “Victoria” by the man in the lower left corner smoking, many immigrants must “fake it”, as we commonly know to “fake it till you make it”, to be somewhat successful in a land in which they know nothing of, and continuously have to learn about for the rest of their time there.
Our last class was the beginning of a semester-long conversation about literature, reading, writing, new forms of literacy. As I think back to what we covered together, there really is so much to consider when thinking about the act of reading in our lives. This quote from Jessica Pressman’s early article entitled “Navigating Electronic Literature” makes us all think further about how the act of reading might be changing: “Electronic Literature demonstrates how navigation is not only a central characteristic of the digital literary work and it’s aesthetic but also a primary source of its signification.” Where is the source of meaning produced when we read? How is the role of the reader changing? Can a reader also be a part-author of text? How so? I decided to have you all read Michael Joyce’s Twelve Blue in tandem with Pressman’s article as a way to build an early foundation for our journey into the world of electronic literature, and as a way to signal new experiences in reading and writing. We developed some collaborative notes on Twelve Blue and Pressman’s article. They full of insight and help set the tone for what is to come throughout this course.
New ways to read…
I want to share that I am impressed with you all. You are willing to share your earnest impression of new ideas and new experiences …..and you have even expressed anxiety, and discomfort. Your openness is a good sign. Learning is often linked to forms of vulnerability. And so your admittance of these unforeseen experiences in reading (at the start of our journey) is a sign that we are in for a great deal of authentic learning together in Elit class!
Our class slides:
“12 BLUE ISN’T ANYTHING, THINK OF LILACS WHEN THEY ARE GONE.”
everything can be read, every surface, every silence, every breath, every vacancy, every eddy, every current, every body, every absence, every darkness, every light……
Some ideas to consider from our discussion last Wednesday:
Michael Joyce’s Twelve Blue = a reading experience; a conceptual exploration.
Many expressed frustration, and many felt a sense of exploration and discovery emerge after some more time spent with the text. Perhaps we could claim that the piece was “writerly” but the story was never compelling because there was no cohesion. You observed a lack of any discernible pathway to reading. You also admitted that a lack of any identifiable closure was unsettling.
Themes/Motifs: reading & flowing; water- upstream/downstream, stillness & turbulence, being submerged, fluid and changing; memory; color; nature/seasons; traces; generations (young vs. more mature); major vs. minor; history; perception (looking); multiple paths/multiple meanings; “skyways” (routes, infrastructure, mobility); self-referencial elements
Character, plot and relationships: there are relationship “networks” but there was definitely some confusion – some readers knew some characters, other readers knew others, some of our knowledge of the text overlapped, some did not, etc.
Reading strategies: Some click on threads or the hyperlinks within the text randomly, some readers decide to stick consistently by a certain thread color, while others might discover the titles for each of the lexia tabs and use this as an attempt to “frame” possible meanings. Some readers think about the number 12 as a clue to a reading strategy, some decide to follow a numerical number pattern, while some attempt basic “note taking” and/or “mapping” in an attempt to discern patterns or meanings.
Assessment: 12 Blue reminds us all of the active role of the reader in creation – we are “navigators” beyond just readers; There is an underlying structure that cannot necessarily be apprehended but is determined by the code of the work. (This is the central illusion – that readers have agency through navigation, but still, the world is a closed design determined by the underlying code).
I think the idea of an illusion will be a keyword for us to consider throughout our exploration of Elit. With Twelve Blue, we struggled to apprehend an ending, but perhaps there is beauty in the fragments.
Some critical/review articles
This is list of links below is sinoly a follow up if you are still curious about this piece. These articles give you an idea of how critics/scholars write about a text like 12 Blue (this is optional reading, but thought it might be interesting for you):
-All of you have selected a date for your presentation. One more student in the class needs to add their elit piece/selection into our Course Calendar.
–Read High Muck A Muck (we will do a walkthrough together in the beginning of class)
-Your third blog post is due by next Monday. Blog about your reading experience and understanding of High Muck A Muck.
When I first opened Michael Joyce’s Twelve Blue, the words “Follow me” pulled me in. I remember pausing over that phrase, realizing that I wasn’t just being invited to read, but to move, to let myself be carried somewhere unknown. Those opening words became a promise that I would be taken on a journey, one that might unfold beyond my understanding, and that my navigation, the simple act of clicking, was already shaping the story I would receive.
Reading Twelve Blue felt like drifting in and out of moments, sometimes clear and vivid, sometimes strange and elusive. One thread brought me into September, with a girl in new blue Mary Janes repeating the rhyme, “September’s embers never ending.” The scenery shifted from winter to fall, and I felt as though I were traveling through both time and space. When the link asked, “As if the seasons were whose fault?” I laughed a little inside because, in that moment, it felt like I was the one responsible for where the story carried me. I was no longer just a reader, I was also complicit in the movement of its seasons.
Another passage led me to Samantha, who dreamed of hosting a tea party, her imagination blurring between memory and delirium. She saw the tin cups with blue flowers, the kind passed down from her mother. This part lingered with me. In my own culture, tea is the answer to everything, headaches, stomach aches, even heartbreak. Reading Samantha’s memory, I was struck by how the hypertext asked me to carry my own memories and associations into it. I wasn’t just following links; I was weaving my world into Joyce’s fragments, letting my own history seep into the story.
And then I arrived at a finale that felt more like a chorus than a conclusion: every surface, every silence, every river, every lover, every daughter, every death. A list that seemed to gather everything, objects, bodies, gestures, whispers, into a single woven tapestry. It was overwhelming and beautiful, a reminder that every detail carries a story, that nothing is too small to be part of the whole.
Reflecting on this experience, I think of Jessica Pressman’s ideas about navigation in electronic literature, how moving through hypertext is not just a way to read but a way to produce meaning. That felt true with Twelve Blue. Each click was a choice that opened one thread and closed off another, reminding me of all the paths I wasn’t taking. Sometimes I felt lost, uncertain if I was missing something important, but that disorientation became part of the story itself. The work isn’t meant to be held all at once, it’s meant to be drifted through, to remind us of the patterns that form when fragments come together.
For me, Twelve Blue was less about “understanding” and more about surrendering to the weave. It taught me that navigation is not just about moving through a story, it’s about noticing the ways our choices, our memories, and even our frustrations shape the experience of reading. And maybe that’s what makes electronic literature so powerful: it doesn’t just tell stories, it reminds us that stories live in every thread we choose to follow.
This explores how user actions like clicks, movements, or commands influence reader engagement with digital texts. Electronic literature is essential for understanding navigation. Unlike static, linear print materials, digital literature is interactive and evolving, involving interfaces that guide avatars through virtual environments.
Pressman highlights hypertext fiction, where readers navigate nonlinear stories by clicking links to explore different sections. This method introduces new interpretive possibilities and challenges traditional reading habits. For Pressman, navigation goes beyond simple technology, acting as a literary device that reshapes storytelling and comprehension in the digital era. Concepts like reading with colored text, browsing pages via hypertext, and experiencing text changes with a click are innovative. They offer a creative and deliberate way to read and produce content online. Digital media fundamentally changes how we interpret and create reading and writing.
Twelve Blue
In 1966, Michael Joyce developed “Twelve Blue,” a hypertext fiction made up of 269 interconnected parts spread over ninety-eight sections. It functions like a digital mosaic, encouraging readers to explore its complex network of links. The narrative is nonlinear and fragmented, highlighting the impact of cyberspace on memory and perception. Readers move through the story by clicking on links inside the text or on a colorful sidebar, enabling them to switch between segments.
Joyce described it as: “A drowning, a murder, a friendlily, three or four love affairs… twelve interwoven stories and a thousand memories… like the web itself or a year, day, a memory, or a river forms patterns of interlocking, multiple, and recurrent surfaces.” The story features twelve characters, each with complex and mysterious lives. As expected, the increased demand of making decisions and visual processing in hypertext can hinder reading performance.
So just a few observations on Twelve Blue by Joyce based on the Navigating Electronic Literature article by Pressman:
This piece has hyperlinks which are the mode of navigation. New windows that open up are called “lexias” as per Pressman’s article “Navigating Electronic Literature”
The reader is “writing” the story as they go along.
Is there a correct order to read this text? For example, did the author have a specific narrative order in mind? Is there a wrong way to read a text such as this?
Does the author know all the possible paths that we can take through a carefully calculated behind the scenes method and therefore can control the narrative order in a subtle way? Such as the links we click offer different bits of the story, but we eventually get the same overall picture each time?
Next are my notes I jotted down regarding Twelve Blue as I was reading it:
I wonder if there is a difference in navigating with a mouse like I did or with your finger like you could on mobile? What would the mobile formatting look like compared to on a computer screen? This is one way electronic literature is different from print based materials is that we can use different devices to view them which may impact how we navigate and interact with the work. Think about playing a game on your phone vs playing it on your computer or video game console.
Not an easter egg per se but if you hover over the hyperlinks on the right hand side, the text that has the address of the link has a number at the end. The first link ends with a 2 and all the other links follow in numerical order. So is the “click here to begin” page #1 and all the other pages go in order from top to bottom? The hyper link text is purposely obscured by the writer, but the links reveal hidden info.
Also the 1st hyperlink at the top has an address that ends in “sl1” and once you click it the address of the links on the next page end is “sl…” with some being “sl5” “sl6” and some even being “sl7_4”. This is definitely something as the author used these address to help themselves stay organized and probably didn’t want the reader to see them? Or did them?
I’m gonna navigate the story by trying to go from “click here to begin page” and then follow the link address on the left to go in numerical order. Are the hyperlinks in the text and not on the right side red herrings? Maybe put there to be little sides quests so you don’t analyze the hyperlinks on the left so much?
Nevermind, can’t navigate the way I wanted. When I open up a new window and go to the “Begin” page now I am hovering over the hyperlinks and the address is some variation of “sl_…” like “sl_2” “sl_3” “sl_4” etc. So maybe randomness is at play? Or just the illusion of randomness.
OMG when I started on the begin page “follow me” in the story was hyperlinked. I closed the page and started again and now it’s not hyperlinked. Glitch or intention?
I think this piece might be less about the narrative of the story and more a meta meditation on how the reader navigates the electronic text. I feel like this could be a psychological experiment. And the content of the narrative is bizarre and strange so it seems like there is more than meets the eye here. What if there isn’t even a central narrative and this text is a bunch of stories put together, but because the reader has to navigate with no map, they are reading different parts of different stories?
I feel a certain discomfort reading this and it’s more pronounced knowing that my navigation is what is moving me through the text. I didn’t write the words in the text, but I can choose what happens next even if it is like stumbling blindly in the dark. About 20 mins in and I just want to get to a few pieces that make sense. I am no longer assuming there is a concrete narrative here which allows me to navigate in the style of “enjoy the journey, not the destination.”
I got back to the “Begin” page. I just realized that I began with that page because it told me to. Is this part of how navigation in an electronic text changes the way we engage with a text? I didn’t have to begin with that page just because it said so. Maybe I lost something important by starting with that page. After many clicks, I made it back to that page and I feel a sense of failure like when you are lost and end up back where you started.
If I didn’t start with that page and didn’t know it was the beginning, would I feel that same sense of failure. So in this case, navigation of the text had a direct effect on my sense of self. Very interesting.
There is so much different information regarding characters, actions, and settings that when I click on a hyperlink and it brings me to a picture, I almost feel a sense of relief. I can look at the picture and get a general understanding of what it is so I feel grounded. It’s kinda like stopping at a bench before going on. I click the hyperlinks in order to navigate to safety (the pictures) when I feel overwhelmed.
It seems the pictures can only be in the intext hyperlinks, but not the left hyperlinks. But the intext hyperlinks can also be more text so I never know if I’ll get a picture or not. This causes a sense of apprehension when clicking the intext links and also a sense of relief when I come to a picture.
Since I am the navigator so when I get to a picture it feels like I accomplished something significant. Putting me in the driver seat makes this text less overwhelming. If I wasn’t able to navigate this text on my own, I don’t think it would be fun or interesting to read.
I think in this case, this text could be seen as showing how navigation is a central feature of electronic literature and the act of navigating the text without fully understanding it is okay because each of us had a different experience navigating the text and how and why we navigated the way we did along with how it made us feel which can be an important topic of discussion and dissection that will remind us to always keep the idea of navigation in mind when interacting with electronic texts.
Jessica Pressman’s essay, Navigating Electronic Literature was a definitely needed for this attempting to read through Joyce’s Twelve Blue. Before going into Joyce’s confusing story, I want to bring up an interesting aspect of some of Pressman’ s essay. To start, I liked the way she explained the aspects of navigation. In addition to this, she also drew attention to how a readers interaction with navigation can affect the performance of a work. As someone who loves traditional books (physical books are one of my addictions) I find the act of navigation as second nature. The most interaction with a book is reading and turning a page; two things that do not have much impact on the narrative’s “performance”. Though within the context of graphic novels and comics, navigation does play a role. How a reader wades through the myriads of dialogue bubbles, text boxes, art and composition of the specific panels does force the reader to navigate the story to see the intended way to read. I see this as a bit of an unspoken agreement with the reader and writer. The writer paves the road of understanding for the reader to drive on. In electronic literature, there is not much of a guarantee. Instead of paving the way for the reader, and work of E lit gives the reader the tools to find their way through the narrative. This aspect of E lit is something I will have to get used to as the class continues.
Another thing worth bringing up in terms of the Pressman essay was the difference between hypertext and interactive fiction. While I initially though that I did not have much experience with E lit, this essay made me more aware of the types of things that might fit into both categories. In terms of interactive fiction, the work I chose for my presentation, Writers are not Stranger, fits into this genre of E lit. From my early interactions with Writers are not Stranger, I have to say that I really enjoy playing around with it. Being an active part of the story, based on predetermined choices made by the author is really gripping and placed more power in my hands as a reader that I am accustomed to. As the semester goes on, I will play with it much more, but my early thoughts are very positive in terms of the genre of interactive fiction. While I do have thoughts about hyperlink text, I want to share them when talking about Joyce’s story. Overall, Pressman’s article was a nice intro into understanding two genres within e-lit.
Micheal Joyce’s Twelve Blue was interesting to say the least. Before I get into the E lit aspect of the piece, I wanted to give Joyce his flowers a bit. One of my reactions to the work is how good writing can be in this context. Chopping a story up and relying on it into pieces is not new but it is effective. In terms of this story, it was great reading Joyce’s great prose. His writing made me want to continue on in uncovering how to make sense of it all. The repetition of the color blue and its uses throughout the story were a great motif to use. The overall narrative was compelling despite the fact that I was lost for most of it. I can definitely say that the navigation aspect of the story did not take away how I felt.
As a reader, I like “boring” stories or stories with normal structure. I find myself gravitating towards classical literature avoiding more contemporary literature because unorthodox stories can be. The idea of a reader having to navigate through a story compared to just turning a page is confusing and a bit dauting to me. Reading Joyce’s story was a struggle for me for the most part. As I said before, a narrative bouncing around is not a new thing, but a story moving rapidly while only giving the reader crumbs was new for me. I feel that the story and its composition were a match made in heaven. It forced me keep tabs on the information that has been presented (characters, setting and the “plot”). It also surprised me many times, as the story would shift in tone, and perspective at the click of your mouse. One second, we are reading about Samantha and her dream, and the next someone’s father is buying a carnival ride. This narrative wipe lash was just not for me. As we continue through this semester, I hope I see the light in the hypertext genre.
One side note from the story I want to add was a part of the story that I felt got me. One of the parts that I read contained three separate hyperlinks that jumped into three distinct parts of the narrative. While I did struggle to piece the story and its element together, I did really like this little wrinkle. One question for all of you guys was what aspect of this story was better, the overall narrative or the act of uncovering the narrative through the hypertext?
While i may not see the greatness of hyperlinks as a genre, Joyce’s story at least has peaked my interest and has made me a bit more open and exited to see how the genre has changed and improved since the 90s.
The official class site for Dr. Mia Zamora's Fall 2025 Electronic Literature course.
