This week I pretty much finished my final project. I say “pretty much” because I anticipate some feedback during tomorrow’s class and will want to make some final changes before submitting. I think I will definitely need feedback on the pacing of my piece and if I accomplished a light-hearted experience. It is so crazy that we are at the end of the semester and that this upcoming class will be my last Monday class EVER.

I enjoyed using Canva for this project. I had fun choosing the graphics and writing the dialogue. I was tempted many times to purchase Canva premium but I decided against it. I ran into a few speed bumps along the way but thank goodness for Youtube and having people who know how to use Canva well. I am looking forward to getting feedback from you all and seeing all of your projects!

I hope you all had a great and restful Thanksgiving and long weekend!

This week I settled on a light-hearted story about a apartment of roommates and some missing dessert. Since class on Monday, I began drafting a bit of the story and nailing down which platform I’m going to use. I haven’t thought of Prezi in a very long time. In fact, I didn’t even know it still existed until Monday’s class. I think I will either land on Canva or Prezi. Right now I have my intro complete and one character profile. I am actually feeling excited about this project. I really enjoy creative writing so being able to tap into that side is very fun for me.

I really think creating work that feels light-hearted and fun is just as important as creative pieces with profound themes and meanings. The world always seems to feel heavy lately and I think creating pieces that just mainly entertain people is equally important. I also am leaning on the side of simplicity when it comes to design. This semester I found myself always a little lost when navigating some of the pieces so by design I want it to feel like an easy experience for my readers. Ultimately I am very excited for the design aspect (although I am not an artist or really all that tech savvy).

I have been playing around with an idea for my final project that I think I could have a lot of fun with. I want something light-hearted and fun/silly. The idea follows four roommates one of which received brownies from his grandma. He makes it very clear to his roommates that they are not permitted by any means in any circumstances to touch the brownies. Lo and behold the brownies are eaten and the piece will follow the roommates stories on what they did that evening to have the reader figure out who dunnit. My goal is to having something fun for readers to experience.

I also had been playing around with ideas of a he said/she said story story told in two different perspectives. I want one story to be told with traditional black text on a white screen and the other to be told an inverse of white text on a black screen. I am not the most technologically savvy person so my biggest concern is not the creative piece but the execution of it. I hope to workshop ideas on how I could execute my ideas in a semi easy way while maybe learning a new skill or two.

Blackout Poetry Tool: I am no stranger to blackout poetry but it does make me feel a little overwhelmed sometimes because it feels permanent to blackout someone else’s words to make my own piece. I think this is an amazing tool for people who are maybe intimidated by blackout poetry or are unsure of how it works. I’ll attach a screenshot of the first poem I created. I had a lot of fun with this piece and I liked that you can choose different ways of producing the blackout poems such as you picking or a bot or both. It actually reminded me of Maya’s thesis project a little bit.

The synthesis option where you select and the bot selects was actually very frustrating. It was not catching my vibe and the direction I wanted my poem to go! It seemed to choose prepositions mostly and made nonsensical choices for its selection. Moral of the story, AI cannot replicate your voice/thoughts and creativity!

200 Castles: It took me a minute to kind of understand what was going on in 200 Castles. It was a different experience than what we’ve seen so far. It gave me more of a clinical feeling or just overall disconnection and less immersive. The video also didn’t give me much. I would have loved a full walk-through of the storytelling even if it is “non-linear”. I haven’t experienced a lot of augmented reality or even virtual reality so it was definitely interesting to read about and kind of experience. One of the videos is removed for privacy reasons so the one video almost just felt like a trailer of 200 castles (unless I’m missing something). Overall, I was underwhelmed but maybe I’m missing something so I look forward to the presentation on Monday.

I was able to translate the text of the piece to English which was helpful but I actually viewed it first in Spanish. I don’t speak Spanish (even though I took the Spanish classes from first grade to freshman year of college). When I walked through in English, I could tell that the way it was written in Spanish was beautiful. Translating language always changes a piece but I still think regardless this piece carried so much weight. Visually I really loved this piece. The scrapbook feel made it feel personal and I want to say homey. I really loved the audio clips and the videos even though I didn’t know what they were saying, it gave a spotlight to the mom. I really loved the page with the black screen and the spotlight on the one page. It felt kind of reminiscent to how grief forces us to get glimmers of a memory at a time.

In my adult life, I had an epiphany. My parents were parents at my age and I think about being a parent right now and I just don’t even know how they did that. I like to hear stories of my parents before kids and I often find myself comparing things I am doing in my life to stories I’ve heard from theirs. Any party/gathering I throw at my house the thought of “i wonder if this is how the parties at my parents first house were” or something along those lines. I really connected with the idea of uncovering a parent’s identity before they were parents. It is so fun to think about to me but I also found the idea of the author kind of creating a life for her mom before she was a mom to be so interesting and heartbreaking. The diary entries were so so heartbreaking to me. The line “the closest thing to her left on earth are my brother and I.” gave me goosebumps. The “Planto” section was AMAZING. I loved the poetry and the interactive element. Overall, this piece not only was visually appealing, moving, meaningful but it also made room for a lot of reflection. I thought this was such an amazing piece and I’m looking forward to the walk-through in class.

Before deciding on The Vine and The Fish, I thought about choosing Writers Are Not Strangers. I was excited to walk through this one this week. My story was one about a girl named Alix whose mother is dying. I don’t think we all end up with the same prompt at the start or really at all during the piece. The third page I ended up on in (and second of a cohesive story) gave me choices on what the character does next. How cool is that! You all know I love a choose your own adventure kind of thing. At one point one of the choices said something along the lines of “What does this have to do with the story I rated?!” But I didn’t click that so that I could stay with one story. I was afraid clicking that option would have brought me somewhere else like Twelve Blue. Alix’s father had died and she had obtained his notebook. She is a writer who posts her work to be rated online (interesting). A line I loved from this section is in reference to her dad’s notebook and it reads as follows: “he was aware of the preciousness of writing with a real pen on real paper”. We have spoken about why writing is important and I think this line here kind of dictates how I feel about writing which is that it is precious and it’s immortal. Overall, I think the two pieces this week had a lot of parallels. I really enjoyed both of these pieces and I look forward to the presentations!

Since my presentation last Monday, I have done some reflecting on The Vine and the Fish. In my reflection paper, I talked about how the story felt a bit disjointed to me but after discussing the piece with the class and hearing some insight, I don’t really feel that way anymore. I really appreciate the conversations we had in class and talking through my own thoughts and ideas. I often do come to conclusions better when talking out loud and collaborating with others. I think any feeling of disconnection may have been purposeful to fit along with the message of the piece.

I really enjoyed All Your Time-Tossed Selves! I’m looking forward to Tyler’s presentation on Monday. I went through it two different times clicking “the world is ‘freezing’ and then ‘burning'”. I had so much fun going through this and the “choose your own adventure” feeling this piece provided. All Your Time-Tossed Selves also gave me an idea for my own piece of e-lit we’ll have to do by the end of the semester. I love a choose your own adventure piece. I looked back to compare answers with the other responses which was a lot of fun. My first walk-through I picked haphazardly and the second time I was a little more intentional with my answers but not entirely. I will say the storyline isn’t so in-your-face obvious other than the fact that we are in a city that has been either burned or frozen to ruins. I can’t wait to hear more about this piece in Tyler’s presentation.

Hana Feels reminded me a little bit of All Your Time-Tossed Selves. Although you couldn’t pick every response, it still had the essence of a choose your own adventure which as I said, I love. A part of me wishes there was audio with this piece but I also kind of enjoyed imaging what the characters would sound like. I think I enjoyed Hana Feels a little more than All Your Time-Tossed Selves only because I understood the story more. I’m not sure why but I felt more responsibility in Hana Feels. I wanted to make Hana feel better and I was more thoughtful with my responses. I think this piece did a great job of displaying the complexities of general relationships especially when one person is struggling mentally. The ending I got to was that Hana went to a support group, confided in her friend and planned on confiding in her mom as well. I’m pleased with my ending! I had a lot of fun going through this piece, I almost felt like I was watching a tv show or something. I can’t wait for Cindy’s walk through!

The Vine and the Fish :

Reaction Paper

Presentation

Ask Me For the Moon: This piece felt overwhelming to me. I am excited to see Ava’s presentation to help me understand the piece better. The lines moved and disappeared too quickly that I couldn’t really keep up that much. I understand that the work covers the tourism in Hawaii and the threat it has on native Hawaiians. I thought it was beautifully written. I also thought the notes section was the most fascinating. The statistic about the number of employees to visitors was mind blowing to me just on Waikiki! I enjoyed hearing the narrative as well it really helped to tie the whole thing together. The note section in my opinion was critical to the piece. I felt like it made the poems more powerful when learning just how much work goes into the tourism there for example, the Zamboni-like machine that smooths out the sand and the works that go out with shovels and rakes to manicure the beach for the next day. It took me a second to get into the swing of things with this piece but overall, I found it to be very moving and insightful.

Yardley, PA 1997: I thoroughly enjoyed this piece. I loved that it was a multi-sensory activity. Initially I just clicked through but I did notice sound-wise something sounded off so once I read the little description about the “score” and all that, it made a lot more sense. I really loved the actual poem itself but I also loved that it was also interactive in performance of the piece. It was more simple and effective as far as electronic literature goes. It was straightforward as far as what to expect going into this piece. Before this piece, the other pieces we walked through so far have had hidden like “easter eggs” somewhere within the piece and having many ways of navigation. The different approach to navigation of previous pieces could be fun but it is also overwhelming at times. Being in class and realizing I missed a whole section because I didn’t click the small illustration in the top left that unlocked the entire meaning of the piece could feel discouraging. I think this is a good entryway into the world of electronic literature. Yardley, PA 1997 had a very nostalgic feel and a layer of melancholy.

Avenue S: This piece executed the chaotic and uneasy feeling of the COVID-19 pandemic. I don’t think we acknowledge as a society how traumatic that time was like the world really shut down. We witnessed people dying, the feed of misinformation, fear mongering, divide, isolation, and so much more through our screens and in our lives. We simply could not escape anything (and still really can’t). We cannot move through the world without acknowledging that the world is different post-pandemic. I was definitely feeling overwhelmed with so many different things to click on but my favorite piece that I got to was the collage titled “THE GREAT EMPTY”. It gave a very disjointed feeling but still conveyed exactly what was happening during that time. We lost many things at that time but I think one of the hardest things we are struggling with to bring back is a sense of community and socialization. I thought the artwork was very effective as well as the pieces of poetry that were embedded through the piece for example the haiku called “Covid haiku” by Sally Stein on the section titled “mask culture”. Overall, this piece made me feel very overwhelmed.

Welcome Home might be my favorite piece of e-lit we’ve walked through. I was a little confused at first when going through the website. When I came across the “About Us” section I didn’t quite understand what they meant by “The Welcome Home Restoration Project is a team of anonymous individuals dedicated to compiling, restoring, and archiving what few remnants of Welcome Home have been uncovered.” because I had never heard of Welcome Home. I did a little bit more perusing through the website and saw that it was a puppet show. I then had done a quick Google search and got a little bit more detail. I then dove deeper on the restoration website and looked through all of the characters and how fun! I love that they included sound bites but my absolute favorite part of the website was the “discoveries” tab.

I’m not sure what it is but I love seeing stuff like that like the old Valentine’s Day cards, cereal boxes, cookbooks, etc.. I would love to know why the show was abruptly pulled from the air. One moment that made me feel eerie was when I read the quote “Slowly but surely, we have begun to uncover media that confirms Welcome Home was once on the air!”. In today’s world we have proof of things that existed with physical artifacts sure but digitally as well. When this show was on air, they didn’t have a website or the internet to archive the show/episodes, products or merchandise. The creators of this have probably had to search high and low and dedicate so much time to uncovering these pieces of media and merchandise to even prove the existence of the show. I absolutely adored my experience looking through this website but it also somehow gave me a slightly unsettling feeling (which I weirdly still enjoy).

I did have trouble accessing Facade but I did watch some videos that were sent to us. I found the second one most helpful since the user spoke to the audience. The first link I watched was still entertaining but I really liked watching him play through and talks us through it. For some reason, most pieces of elit we walked through have given me an uneasy feeling I’m not sure why. Facade seems like iconic piece because of the way users are able to interact with it. The piece obviously has some structure like the Grace and Trip bringing up the paintings from Italy, the wine/bar, etc.. But it is so fascinating to see that Grace and Trip interact with whatever the user says. The last video was cool because the user interacted with the space and seemed to have a lot of knowledge of the game based on the text he was putting in. I thought each of these videos brought something new to the experience which was very cool because it shows how many different ways you can approach it.

What a switch-up from last week! I had such a fun time going through this interactive poem. I appreciated the intro page that told us what to do and how to explore while still giving us the freedom to click around in any order. I will admit the first time I played around with this it was late and I was tired and wasn’t fully grasping the idea. When I took another swing at it the next day, I think it kind of clicked for me. I will say one thing was that I felt rushed reading some of the poems because they often disappeared by my second read through. I was getting kind of frustrated because I couldn’t absorb the poems right away before the faded. Which led me to thinking it was part of the experience. Migrating is an incredible feat with many challenges including language. I am unsure if this was intentional but I felt like perhaps the fading of the poems after a short duration of time with them felt symbolic at one point. I actually loved that I didn’t know what to expect when clicking around. Was I getting a poem? A video? A piece of audio? A poem with images?

One thing I really enjoyed about this was the immersive experience. In this piece, we have poetry, music/audio, and artwork. The colors in the artwork and the style were soothing and beautiful. I started out with Pacific Rim and when I first got to that page, I was brought to a video of various images with phrases like “Made in Japan” “Made in Hong Kong” “Made in Thailand” etc. and the ending was a photo of what appears to be business men at a meeting. As I clicked around this page, it brought me poems about Chinese-Canadian migration and language barriers. When I looked at the list of locations, I see that Pacific Rim is not near the top so I’m not sure if I was supposed to start there but I did. After I realized there was a menu, I went in order down the list. I loved the imagery of the body that the creator used but was surprised that it didn’t continue throughout

Second location was “Canada” which was an arm. I thought we would moving through various parts of the body until I got to “Victoria”. Out of the three sections, I started with, Victoria was my favorite. I loved the audio features of this page. The fragments of audio on this page were helpful in making connections for me. I appreciated the insight of chinatown and what it currently represents in contrast to its past. The “Nelson” section’s music was unsettling to me. The one poem about the cemetery made me feel sad but it also sort of conveyed the experience of migration and feeling misplaced.

Overall, I had a more enjoyable experience navigating this than Twelve Blue but I still am feeling unsure of my understanding of the piece. There were moments I felt like I understood and then moments where I was a little lost. Maybe that was the point though.