For my final project for elit, I have I want to say about half of it done. I started collecting photos and poems that I would like to include and with that being said I have about five slides done. I’m aiming for another 10 slides. After that, I intend to include all the hyperlinks needed, probably will only include them on five slides to connect them to two other poems to read from, which is where the other 10 will come from.

I’m really excited for the end result on this project, so far I am really happy with the way this is turning out.

The reading, Hana Feels was a very sentimental piece to read. I honestly couldn’t stop and I was debating in the end whether or not to try again and end the story another way. The story can end in three different ways, in the way I chose I assume Hana is somewhat okay. Her friend did end the friendship, her mother did call her to tell her she would see her in a month. But I’m not quite sure how Hana is doing? Like is she doing better where she may possibly stop cutting herself? Is she ever going to call Will (I think was his name) again? Like I have questions now. I don’t know if my ending kind of left it open in the sense for the reader to decide how Hana is by going based off what was read. But it does make me wonder if the other endings have more clear endings on what exactly happens to Hana health wise, and if we do get those definite answers.

I appreciate Gianna’s pre-mention and warning before the read that this piece is heavy. Because it was. This piece wasn’t necessarily a trigger for me, but I definitely feel it was very realistic. And I speak from experience and just knowing others who have dealt and struggle with mental health. This piece definitely highlights and brings awareness to how friends and family really don’t notice because respectfully, people are wrapped up in their own life. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just human nature. This piece illustrates that how someone can show signs of struggle and we may still not be able to pick it up. With that being said, friendly reminder, always check in on those that are close to you.

I also enjoyed how this piece was an easy read, you were able to also pick lines that you wanted to maybe say for that character to get more information or words from Hana. Colors always changed for each interaction as well. And I also did appreciate reading the journal entries because I feel like in the journals itself we got more from Hana then what she would tell others.

First of all what the heck? I am trying to keep this blog PG but this was my first initial reaction as I was reading this piece. My dumb self assumed that this piece was only an audio project so I kid you not, I held my phone to my ear for a minute before I accidentally pressed something and I then realized that the piece had readings available. Which I was glad because the music was kind of eerie. Anyways, the readings were sad. I felt sad immediately, it instantly gave me scary movie vibes but based on true events (and we all know those are the worst).

What I noticed with this piece was for the most part it was mainly dark, color wise. But also they music and very large text. It almost made it seem that these recordings, the inmates was sort of yelling at us for a cry for help. At least that’s what I got with the big text. I’m not going to lie, I got chills reading some of these. Like the reading of the inmate who just got a bit of hand sanitizer and was immediately hexed for it. Like what?

These stories were a little tough and sad to read like many of the other readings in this class. I think though, the reason this one effected me a little differently was the music and the big text, I honestly felt like with the large text it was a cry for help. And regardless that they are in prison, I still sympathize with them because regardless where you are, if you are sick you should be taken care of to some extent and not treated so poorly. I honestly never even thought or knew that this was going on in the jail systems. But I am honestly not surprised. Knowing people who’ve been in jail myself, I’ve heard it all. And it’s not pretty.

The elit piece, c-ya-laterrr was definitely a heartfelt piece. I remember when the bombing at the Ariana Grande concert had happened years ago and how it made the whole world feel, including myself. It was a tragic event that didn’t need to happen. Not that I have forgotten about it either, but this piece helped bring it to mind again as it created a piece centered around an individual who was going through it second hand. I believe that’s what you woulds say, second hand? Anyways, in the beginning of the piece you have a few choices (even throughout) how you would like to go about the situation. For instance, you could chose between going to sleep, or tweet something. Little choices that would lead differently. I felt in a way these choices sometimes were maybe set up to be positive or negative? But maybe in this instance, it was a lighter choice versus a not so light choice?

In the piece, as you navigate through and get deeper into the readings. The narrator (I assume that’s what you call it, not sure what you would call him) finds out that his brother was at the Ariana Grande concert where the bombing took place. After that it takes you, the reader through a whirlwind of actions, news, emotions, and messages to navigate through as he is unsure what to do but knows his brother was there, and is not being unresponsive. In the reading you see that the man is brought closer to his family during the terrible time and they are all brought to the stadium.

The stories then follows the man and his family finding and having confirmation on his brothers death as well as the days that follow up after that.

I definitely liked this piece, it was extremely sentimental and brought a bit of truth to what actually must have been taking place when the bombing did occur for those families.

To begin, while I can read in Spanish sometimes my overall understanding is just not there. It’s nonexistent sometimes. But regardless, I wanted to try this piece. Giselle made a helpful suggestion via email on translating the text with google translate. Which is what I did. I found not everything was able to translate. Not because google didn’t work but because this piece had a lot of clicking around, my computer would not allow me to copy at most times because of the fact that it would just start moving things around.

But, once I finally got something to translate so I would fully understand, I was excited. For instance this was one of the things I was able to translate;

“Te busqué más allá de la memoria, en los rincones que sólo nosotros conocemos, y no te vi.
Sólo vi, en los rincones, en la negrura de los rincones antes iluminados, el negro de tu ausencia, el dolor sin fin que sólo se puede sentir. Te busqué en los rincones de la noche.”

José Luís Peixoto / Te me moriste

“I looked for you beyond memory, in the corners that only we know, and I didn't see you.
I only saw, in the corners, in the blackness of the previously lit corners, the black of your absence, the endless pain that can only be felt. I looked for you in the corners of the night.

This was interesting, at first read, I was like he is possibly talking about someone he misses, maybe a lover. Then I read it the second time, and I thought how dark looking in the corners of the night could be, and I thought maybe he is talking about a sleep paralysis demon too. But I’ll keep my thoughts light and assume he was talking about someone he misses who has left or left him.

This piece was very interesting and I feel like most of the time, this piece was talking about family and referring to maybe specific family members. I liked how these was also a photo album that was included to show the mother and children and describe features that were passed down.

I’m assuming that this piece was sort of a digital scrapbook/diary of memories and a tribute to family. This piece was very nice to read and very nice interactive touch that wasn’t overwhelming or confusing.

Hi no blog post this week but you can read my thoughts on Dan Waber’s piece, A kiss here!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1poWJU5xi7D2mM7sG788_tUSdFHWKWJbyI7qhHcc7B44/edit?usp=sharing

Thank you! xx

I like to first say what a unique experience of poetry this is. I never heard of this style before but I am glad I did. I loved how the music played as the reader basically reads the poetry. I assume just like its stated in the statement that the music is paired for the poetry. I feel just like they do in movies/shows it is important to find the right tone that fits the scene, in this instance, it would be a perfect song that suited the poem.

When I first clicked over the poem I had no idea what was happening. The music does not play for long and if it stops as you are reading you have the option to play it again. After the second time I had muted my computer not because I hated the music but for a second there was a lot happening on screen that I felt I didn’t want to miss anything. Kind of like when you are driving and you turn down the music to find a street or place; same thing. The poems are in Chinese but if you hover over certain letters you get the English translation. The screen has little black dots that align with the poem itself. They jump around, at first I wasn’t sure that when the dots move that was what I had to read and follow those dots but maybe they are just there and moving around to signify that there is translation.

Anyways, after reading and regenerating a few times I came across a few different poems, well a lot actually. I’m not sure how I was suppose to read them to be completely transparent and maybe that’s because they are suppose to be read in the original language? Or maybe I am just simply reading them wrong. But I look forward to the presentation to get a better feel and see what I was doing wrong. Overall, I found this interesting and I would like to learn it.

Letters to X was a fun and sentimental read. At first I was sort of expecting to read letters to an actual ex from one writer. But before reading I read the preview of what the Elit would actually be centered around and it grabbed my attention. Knowing that these were all collections of letters to someone, anyone was fun to read. Most of the time my mind wanted to think these letters were romantic. But the more that I read, the more I saw that wasn’t the case. Some of these letters didn’t all seem romantic even though they mentioned the word love. Some of them I assumed were letters to friends, mom or dad, siblings, and partners.

When I first started to read, I realized there was the handwritten version as well as the typed version. Which I am happy about. It’s not that I can’t read in cursive but the messy text almost made it kind of harder to read. Then I noticed there were blank lines through the text. At first I thought things were gone in order to maybe protect the privacy of the person writing the letter. It wasn’t towards half way reading the letters I got curious to see if the blank spaces did anything. I moved my mouse over the spaces and saw nothing, so I clicked the spaces to then find out I could type in the blanks. So I went back to reading the letters again. I read them slowly and carefully as I placed my own words in the blank to create the same or now a new version of the letter.

I enjoyed this piece because it was sentimental and cute in my opinion. And I liked how I was kind of able to also create my own letter to X. Here’s what I did.

I found the readings in, “Blackout Poetry Tool” to be interesting. At first, I just went through the readings as so. Read the stories of what it seemed to be mainly centered around family history or the story of the writers immediate family, more specifically his dad and himself. Once I got through the readings, I was confused. Where was the electronic literature component of it? Usually other readings were more interactive. Well I was wrong. You can kind of almost miss it if you’re not paying enough attention.

On the sides of the text where it’s labeled “thesis” and so forth, in subtle text there is instructions of the electronic literary part of it. You where either selecting, or the “bot” is selecting the words for you. When I was selecting, I kind of just played around with the system and selected random words to feel what was electronic about this. But I didn’t notice much or maybe I wasn’t aware of what was actually happening.

When the bot was able to chose the words from the reading for me, I noticed not a pattern but maybe a poem was being created? For instance, In the last reading, Visual I noticed when looking at all the blackout words that the bot chose for me came out to read;

For of to thing man beaten alone cooked man helplessly had

Not sure if this is meant to be coded or if this is in some way a poem in itself. Regardless I found it interesting but I didn’t want to spend too much time thinking of it and making it into something it’s not. But I would like to know what was the purpose and meaning of this?

I found the Elit readings of High Muck a Muck to be my favorite thus far. I am a huge poetry fan so being able to walk through the readings of more and more poetry was quite enjoyable. My favorite section as I was navigating my way through all the readings was Canada. In Canada, there were quite a few poems that liked. One in particular that stood out the most to me was,

“Trust ugly words

To show how heavy

Beauty.”

This one was interesting. It was also the first little poem that was introduced in the Canada section. I believed it was to be written by FW. Like the rest of them. This Canada section of Elit seemed to me to be little poems of advice. Each blue dot you clicked on were also some other little poems that were short, but straight to the point and impactful. Seemed to be little reminders of advice, or at least that’s how I took it. Overall, I really enjoyed this Elit and reading through the thoughtful poems.