My Elit piece will be a video showing a few of my experiences and feelings about studying and living in the U.S. for the first time as a foreigner. But it won’t be a video like a documentary. Instead, it will be something like the Peaceful Dream which combines moving texts, music, and pictures together, mainly conveying a vibe. I’m now working on the text part. I’m trying to make it concise and easy to read because it will be something shown in a video where the audience won’t be able to control the reading speed unless they pause haha. I will start working on the music and picture selection this weekend and editing next week.

Hana Feels is a fun elit. I like how its pages are designed. He really resembles the Orange Light game that was so popular when I was a kid. Our dialogue choices point to different outcomes. In Will’s part, I tried to play the role of a patient operator trying to help Hana, and what struck me most in this part was actually Hana’s diary. It was a vivid representation of the mental activity of a girl with mental health problems before and after she tried to get help. I began to wonder, can everyone with a tendency to self-harm receive effective and patient psychological guidance when seeking help? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Will’s professionalism as a professional operator was such that he was fortunate enough to give Hana the comfort she needed. But just think, not everyone who needs help can seek it properly or get it effectively. I’m reminded of the story I read a few years ago about a stressed high school student who finally tried to get help from his parents and had a conflict that led to the high school student’s suicide. It was heartbreaking. When a desperate child cries out for help to those closest to them, those close to them don’t realize it’s a cry for help. Too many of these problems happen every single day. It is my sincere hope that everyone who is prone to self-harm will receive timely and effective psychological help even though it is difficult.

So far, I have almost completed my final project. What a relief! Finally, almost there!

For my final project, I choose to do a Traveling Map. I love to travel a lot and have been to many places, so I think making a traveling map is a great idea to keep memories remembered, like a travel journey. Each place has its special memory, whether it is good or bad. When you click one destination that is highlighted, there should be some pictures and an interesting story behind it.

For the tool, I have used Prezi to help present my project, which is very easy to begin!  Even though it’s my first time using it, it doesn’t take me much time to how the tools function. I am recommending it if you want to make your project more interactive!

I divided the map into two parts: Asia and America. I have already finished the American part but still working on the Asia part. I am so happy I am almost there!!!

This piece of elit is much more like a game I have played called Role-playing simulation and I have always enjoyed playing it. Hana Feels is a conversational hypertext. In this hypertext, something is bothering Hana, and we takes the role of four important people to explore what that might be and to help her work through it. I think it is very interesting to learn that the story is designed to build empathy and encourage conversations about the mental health issue involved.

In the story, the character I most enjoyed is Will, who is a new volunteer for the charity Head Line. It provides a free twenty-four hour service for people to talk about mental health issues in confidence. Will is an artist and often works very late hours anyway, so he normally covers night shifts.  He’s been through the training, like every volunteer, and passed the selection process. But he still worries about saying the wrong thing. Being Will is so funny because if he said something wrong, he would make a huge mistake and made Hana sadder, so I need to be careful.

Until I read this piece, I had never thought such problems existed in modern prisons. I don’t know the American prison system, but I’m sure this kind of problem is happening in prisons worldwide. The entire work is documented in chronological order. The author uses all capital letters, huge font, and frequent subdivisions to tell the story, which made me feel like I was watching a trailer for some movie. I skimmed through half of the stories, and they were eye-opening. I can’t imagine how desperate it would be to be in an enclosed space without air conditioning and fans in July. During a pandemic, while people on the outside are trying to do what they can to prevent the spread of the virus, these people in prison who have done wrong have to endure such torture. It is deplorable.

As a public record of the pandemic’s effects on prisoners, EXPOSED exposes the all-too-familiar cruelty of a system built not on justice but rather on control and absence — on quarantine. There are more than 100 statements from inmates who have the virus or who are going through a lot of stress, anxiety, and difficulty on July 8, 2020, alone. Families complain about not having access to information, such as chatting to an inmate one day and then being called in by prison officials to identify a body the next.

It is so sad to see people die under poor management in prison, which reminds me of when the pandemic outbroke in China. A Chinese lawyer who requested anonymity told the BBC that since the outbreak of the epidemic, most prisons have implemented a 14-day working system for police officers, during which they are not allowed to go out. If a police officer has been infected outside, it will infect other colleagues who are also working in closed work and the prisoners under their management during this period.

“There may be underreporting, but it is limited to prisons and local governments.” Hubei Provincial Health Commission said, who believes that once the relevant departments obtain data from one prison, it may be necessary to review the situation in all prisons. Therefore, this timing, while it may seem political, is more a result of the data collection and reporting process.

Since late January 2020, many places in China have implemented a community isolation mechanism. Most people returning to their places of residence from other places are required to register and isolate themselves at home for 14 days, hoping to prevent the virus from spreading locally. Hubei Provincial Health Commission pointed out that the prison outbreak shows that these places have “systematic loopholes” in self-isolation procedures, personnel tracking, and virus detection.

Unfortunately even today people in China are not allowed to travel otherwise they will isolate themselves at home for 14 days…

Created in the context of the physical and social isolation caused by the 2020 global pandemic, Dial expresses the tenuous lifeline offered through text messaging and instant messaging, according to the editorial statement. Dialogue is generative, shifting through emojis and brief phrases conveying the weather, seasons and the passage of time, the two voices fusing into a monologue. This work is a deeper reflection on the malleable time experienced during the blockade, when minutes felt like days and months passed without discernible memories to separate them.

I found similarities between this work and the interactive mechanics of peaceful dream that I had previously reviewed – capturing text and image changes through the eye. The rapidly changing background colors and the text in the dialogue bubbles show the passage of time. Most importantly this work reminds me of how people lived during the height of the pandemic. I was reminded that I spent my entire freshman semester at home during the beginning of the pandemic. I spent 90% of my day on my phone and computer during the initial lockdown. My message dialog was just as this work shows – rapidly changing and sometimes confusing. The sense of time also seemed to change during the pandemic. The difference between day and night seemed to be the same except for the presence or absence of the sun – the streets were always dead. I started reversing the days and nights to escape the abnormal days, because the nights seemed to go by faster. Those were the days when I found the least meaning of life. I was grateful that people worked hard to make the blockade permanent and not come back.

To me, c ya laterrrr is more like a game than an elit. Much like A Kiss and Twelve Blue, it is a piece based on the reader’s choice and different clues leading to different plots.

C ya laterrrr is a hypertext game based on a real experience. In May 2017 the author’s younger brother was one of the 22 people killed in the Manchester Arena terrorist attack. According to the author’s statement, this game expresses some of the experience, along with exploring some of the what-ifs of choices he ultimately didn’t make.

At first, I would think it is a funny game. However, as I click, I feel a sense of sorrow inevitably. The sentences are like “life is too short” and “we fall asleep, same as many nights,” which makes me think that in the face of time flying by, there is nothing we can do about it. We can only enjoy life more in the limited time, do what we want to do, and not waste time. But the latter sentence makes me feel that every day we are sitting in the repetition of things, such as brushing our teeth, washing our face, eating, and sleeping, all of us want to be like robots, go to work and go to class, not to be defeated by life and live their own life is a very difficult thing.

 After reading the background of the piece, I will more pain and sorrow about it. c-ya-laterrrr is a deeply emotional autobiographical Twine game conveying the experiences of the author on 22 May 2017 and the days that followed: the day of the bombing at an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena in Manchester, England.

The prose is written devastatingly, showing how language’s influence endures in interactive technologies. The work is completely pared back to highlight the language and is presented as black text in lexis centered on a white background.

The chat dialog box, Google engine, video games, Amazon, map navigation, and various apps are so close to life despite the theme of robbing a bank, which is unusual. The background music and sound effects of the whole work are also very appropriate to the plot, giving people a sense of immersion.

Although the whole work is about a young Bonnie and Clyde-esque love story, but when I was reading it, my biggest feeling was the influence of electronic products on people or we can say people’s deep reliance on them. The main character uses Google engine to search a lot of information about “how to rob a bank”, “test your morality”, “how to walk in the woods “ even “how to keep a man”, which reminds us that we live in a world of ready-made information. Everything we can think of can be searched using engines. This is likely to lead to one result – the solidification of thinking.

Also in the last chapter: sister sister, there are some weird Chinese recipe pages.

The picture was keeping flashing. This left me with some confusion. In fact many of the plots leave me confused and they seem to be illogical sometimes. I’m looking forward to a more in-depth discussion by Nicole in class.

First of all, I want to thank Nicole for selecting such an interesting piece for us!!

The piece, How To Rob A Bank, is different from any piece we have learned before. According to the editorial statement, How To Rob A Bank is a young Bonnie and Clyde love story about the mishaps that befall a young male bank robber and his female accomplice. I have no idea what Bonnie and Clyde is, so I googled it, then I realized they are two criminals who are known for a series of bank robberies, murders, and kidnappings that took place between 1932 and 1934, the height of the Great Depression. The story is an immersive experience generated through readers’ hands-on use of apps, maps, imagery, animations, and audio.

There are five parts to How To Rob A Bank: research, escape, romance, home, and sister, sister. I find this immersive reading experience very interesting, and I especially like the novelty of informing the reader what to do next through the Google search engine. Also, it feels like playing a very new game, robbing a bank with a partner, and then experiencing the whole process from preparation to real action. The piece also shows a scene of a certain game in the game center, adding a sense of entertainment and tension.

Above all, very interesting piece. I am looking forward to Thursday’s presentation about it!