This week we covered two pretty cool works of E-lit. To start I want to talk about 200 Castle. This work again goes with the idea of accessibility within the context of E-lit. Augmented Reality works are really cool to experience in person. Much, if not all of their value is based on the interaction between the user and their device’s camera. Since I could only see this work through a video from author Caitlin Fisher, I feel like I am missing the point. It’s the same feeling of hearing a movie that people love to talk about and learning it’s hard to find online. From what I saw through the video, I can say that I am super interested in the work regardless. The work using a real book to flip through is a brilliant way of including a physical aspect into the work. The act of flipping through a book brings another level of immersion rather than scrolling on a webpage for example. The fact that the reader could read it out of order also added a level of control as the reader only interacted with images that they were interested in. The only issue I could consider having with this work is the fact that holding a phone or tablet while trying to see the book could be challenging, though I guess we will never know.
The other work that was covered this week was the Black Out Poetry Tool by Jazer Chand. I have to admit that I initially judged this work too harshly when I first looked at it. I am a poetry hater through and through (honestly, I just do not “get it”). Looking at this, I was kind of put off. The first setting of “Thesis” was pretty straight forward. I took my time to create a work from the first couple lines of Mary Shelley’s masterwork. The “anithesis” setting was off putting in a way. Since I took some time to pick my words, it was kind of a moment of whiplash to see the bot spit out a work almost instantly. It reminded me of my feelings of AI within the realm of writing (that’s a can of worms I do not want to even touch). It was with the “synthesis” setting was great. Working with the bot to create a work was way more enjoyable than I imagined. Rather than spitting out piece, the bot works with the user, vamping off of our selection. I liked how the bot chose words that would naturally fit with the words that the user chose. It creates the illusion of collaboration (only an illusion since the bot is not a real person, just a program). This new back and forth created a pretty interesting experience. Finally, the last setting worth talking about was “symbiosis”. While the user has total control of their word choice, the bot gives a number of suggestions to use. This felt like when word gives grammar suggestions on a paper. It ignores what the writer intends and only spits out what it “thinks” is right. Sometimes I ignored their selections, while other times it chose a word that fit into what wanted to do. This was another interesting option to use. This whole work seemingly looked to explore creatives use of tech. Some people create on their own, some use tech to think for them. But for many of use, tech is used as a tool to help our process. Creators negotiate with this dynamic today now more than ever. Super cool to see it play out through this work. The visual option was nice if you are into that kind of thing.
