What a wonderful read through all of your blogs this past week. I must say that I had a clear feeling that many of you “turned a corner” in terms of your “warming up” to electronic literature. While the field continues to push categories/boundaries, it has become for many of you a more immersive and emotional experience. And despite the formal innovation in terms of storytelling, you also expressed a newfound relatability and accessibility in your experience of elit work.
Our agenda slides:
High Muck A Muck
We spent our class with the beautiful hypertext poem entitled High Muck a Muck, – a stunning collaborative work. High Muck-a-Muck: Playing Chinese is an interactive poem, consisting of a website and eight videos which explore the narratives and tensions of historical and contemporary Chinese immigration to Canada. High Muck a Muck is most intriguing especially because it was formed through an interdisciplinary collaboration of nine Canadian artists and programmers including Fred Wah, poet, Jin Zhang, composer; Nicola Harwood, project director and designer; Thomas Loh and Bessie Wapp, video artists and performers:, Hiromoto Ida, dancer; Patrice Leung, filmmaker; Tomoyo Ihaya, visual artist and Phillip Djwa, creative technologist. The convergence of so many gifted practitioners has produced an exceptionally rich and complex piece, which definitely pushes beyond the traditional confines of “text”.
We walked through many of the most significant images/tropes of the piece while sharing a sense of the diverse options for navigation. Here are your collective notes on this piece. Well done! The piece explores the multi-lenses of diaspora and globalism while provoking us to think further about the impact of dreams steeped in the challenges of exile or migration. We could all see the way in which embodiment (the body) is wrapped up in conflicted pasts and presents, and how the myths of immigration are often a gamble with many different resulting outcomes. The final tone of the work is ambiguous and dispersed, with a haunting lack of resolve. In other words, there will always be loss despite gains in this journey to a new world.
Your to-do list
Oct 6
Next week we will have a “break” in our rhythm in order to visit with the reference librarian Craig Anderson. He will be conducting an ONLINE WORKSHOP entitled “Library Research Toolkit Series: Digital Library Resources” at 4;30pm for us. Right now the link to register is: https://kean.libcal.com/event/14974663?hs=a
That said, the actual Zoom access link might be different. I am still awaiting an update from Craig on this information. Please stay tuned for confirmation of the link to join the online workshop on Monday 10/6. I will email you with any updates.
(**No blog due for 10/6)
Oct 13
Please read: Facade
Please read: Welcome Home
Your fourth blog post is due Oct 13. Blog about your reading experience and understanding of Facade & Welcome Home. We are lucky to have both Sarah and Maya kicking-off our Presentation Series with these two pieces.
Some blog prompts: What are some of the significant textual elements? How did you choose to navigate these texts? What visual, sound, interactive elements left an impression? What overall effect do these texts create? What themes and symbolic language emerge in navigating the text? What is literary about the text?
I look forward to our discussion on 10/13!
