E Lit Blog #3
Last week, in our discussion of Joyce’s Twelve Blue we touched on the idea of navigation and how it can play a huge part in our enjoyment and understanding. E-lit allows authors to control how the reader interacts with a work. High Muck A Muck is a work that is much more organized and curated. Its set up allows the reader the freedom to choose how they will unravel the complex project. In addition to this, the project makes it easy for the reader to navigate. The ink blots that are used for the reader to click on are easy to see and vary in size depended on their importance. Another thing to point out is the fact that many of the pages include an arrow that puts you into the previous page. I found many of the navigational tools to be way better than Twelve Blue. Now it is important to consider what both works are trying to do. High Muck a Muck much more straight forward compared to Joyce’s work, so the navigation essentially matching up with the presentation.
My experience with High Muck a Muck was a great time overall. I really liked how this work found alignment between its many different facets. Combining art, poetry, music, video, and audio is somewhat of a daunting task for anyone. The collective that worked on this project did a great job of mixing different types of medias to build a story. Speaking of the content, High Muck a Muck felt like walking through the shared histories of many people. The myriads of stories, perspectives and settings throughout Canada presented through different perspective was intriguing. Working through this project felt like unraveling a shared history. Seeing how these Chinese immigrants found their way through Canada and built their own spaces was captivating. And presenting this shared history through the multitude of mediums only served to improve an already interesting topic.
For me, the standout vignette for me was combing through Nelson. Given the fact that you could choose any point of interest when you begin, I chose the Nelson tab since it was separate from the rest. In looking through this section, I fell in love with the project. As someone who not a huge fan of poetry, I liked the writing and the feeling behind the words. I liked to see how the writers characterized and visualized the many important cultural spaces that their community had built over the years. In addition, the audio files that were present added even more depth to the narrative. The poem at the cemetery was definitely a standout for me. See just nine lines of poetry holding so much cultural and historical context was great. The Nelson section was a standout to mee since it really showcased the creativity and the execution of the project as a whole.
Before the class began, I really did not know the full scope of E-lit. High Muck A Muck has showed me the heights this medium can reach with the right execution. While I did see the value in Twelve Blue and its confusing nature, I overall enjoyed this project since it was more creative and straightforward. Obviously High Muck A Muck was competed more recently so it may be an unfair comparison. In viewing these two projects back-to-back I can guess that more recent projects are easier to navigate while also pushing the medium forward.
