Author: sakline

Dysfunctionality is no pleasant experience. As a student I, like many others, work tirelessly to avoid dysfunction — we carry planners and complete assignments to perfection striving to look as fully functioning as possible. Thus, we have painstakingly mastered the art of form never mirroring content. What I mean by this is no matter how dysfunctional our brains are on the inside (content), we rarely let it show on the outside (form).

That being said, I found A Perfect World by Ansh Patel most intriguing due to its desire for form to mirror content. One example of the content we are given in the piece is of the disconnect between the narrator’s “body” and “mind.” Therefore, because the interface, or “readability,” of the work performs what Ryan calls “experimental dysfunctionality”, which makes it difficult for the reader to distinguish between what they are seeing and reading and what is happening or not happening, the dysfunctional workings between mind and body in the story is mirrored though the text’s linguistic and aesthetic confusion. Additionally, the reader of A Perfect World experiences similar psychiatric dysfunction of the narrator via the way the piece limits the readers understanding of what is actually happening and the seeming lack of control over the outcome. While we get to pick which way to go, those decisions do not necessarily match what happens. For example, at one page our options are: “Continue silencing the mind” or “Separate yourself from the body.” Both options lead to an end of the game. The game itself ends, like the life of the narrator.

A Perfect World is a rather dark game and shouldn’t be read lightly, but in looking closely at it, it reveals a potential relationship between mental health and dysfunction as bodily dysfunction that can be played out through experimental forms of literature.

What does the sublime, or the absence of sublimity, mean during a quarantine? As of late, following the onset of the global pandemic that is COVID-19, many Americans are choosing, hopefully, to stay within their households cooped up avoiding nature and avoiding exploration in fear of (what feels like) a bio war-zone outside. Or rather, they fear the impending doom feeling associated with what seems like an inevitable contraction of this virus. Now that I am unable to seek out the sublime in my everyday life, I have come to realize on a more personal level how capturing the sublimity of nature in the “primary form” of experience is vastly more significant than the “secondary form” of rhetoric than I previously thought as “many English writers on the sublime agreed” before me (Nye 2). Indeed, experiencing the primary sublime is an American privilege taken for granted until we are locked within the confines of our homes reading old National Geographic copies in attempts to recreate the feeling of utter astonishment when viewing nature first hand. As Dr. Sample mentioned in his YouTube video regarding Kant’s dynamic sublime, we are even unable to experience the short, electric spurt of fear caused by an enveloping spring thunderstorm because we are within the safety of our households for who knows how long. Something cannot be truly sublime without a little fear.

Additionally, due to the confinement engendered by this pandemic, not even the technologically sublime fills the void created by the absence of experiencing primary sublimity; the senses are stunted. While playing Sea and Spar Between by Nick Montfort and Stephanie Strickland, even with the enormous number of the fish in the sea, 225 trillion, and therefore the enormous number of potential poems created by words from only two works of literature, it was clear to me that it does not pass the Longinus sublime test that Nye draws out: a work “cannot be an example of true sublimity—certainly not unless it can outlive a single hearing. For a piece is only truly great if it can stand up to repeated examination” (Nye, quoting Longinus, 3). Sea and Spar lost its intensity after one view. Therefore, I argue that human beings, as figments of nature, are inherently programmed to connect with the physical manifestations of nature’s majesty, and while we create computer programs that seek to simulate that exact majesty found within nature, our simulations fail to compare to the emotional response that occurs when viewing an indescribable landscape.

This idea that no experience compares to that of the primary, visceral experience of observing the sublime in the flesh is reaffirmed by what I am calling the resulting insignificance of trying to articulate or capture the ultimate experience and its effect on the viewer. For example, I am thinking specifically about my time in the Grand Canyon, or any other sublime geography such as amongst the Tetons or under a perfect sunset, and I try to capture the sublimity of the scene with a photo or with a description, and it never turns out as good as the real thing. Thus, I believe when trying to make artificial the connection between one natural being (us) to another natural being (forces of nature) the resulting product is necessarily insignificant. It is insignificant because that connection is so personal it cannot be replicated or reproduced. Indeed, it is simply “not only visual but also visceral” (Nye 12).

The genesis of electronic literature began with the kind of combinatory poetics seen in “House of Dust” by Allison Knowles and James Tenney, “Stochastic Texts” by Theo Lutz, and “Love Letters” generator by Christopher Strachey. All of these works were released as early as 1952 but no later than 1967, and by looking at the extent to which understanding the historical context of combinatory poetics facilitates a greater appreciation for the works, we being to understand how that type of electronic literature might not be as applicable or effective as it was at the time of its creation.

What struck me most about the historical context was the way artistic movements such as the Dadaists heavily influenced creativity taking place. The cut-up technique adopted by many within this movement rejected notions of common sense and unoriginality by taking an article, cutting up all of the words, and then drawing randomly from the pot to create something new which became a common practice amongst creative writers (Rettberg 21). Thus, digital combinatory poetics’ connection to print forms of poetry lies within the same principle—feed the computer random words and have it arrange them in a random order to create a distinctly original poem. Rettberg highlights the way as well in which “computers provide a variety of ways to easily select at random” material that can be used for randomization within poetry (23). This aspect of randomness, however, as a reader located well within the 21^st century, doesn’t as easily trigger my sympathies considering my externality from the original culture the text was placed in. Consequently, the randomness’ interjection in my ability to easily understand the text proves rather frustrating.

As a result, I am moved to ask: does the importance of combinatory poetic works lie within the text itself or rather within the process by which the text was created?

Simultaneously, the search for originality in the mid-20^th century not only gave rise to the cut-up technique but also the distinct form of the works. The text becomes more indecipherable, I argue, due to the way in which electronic combinatory poetics escape formally from the confines of the screen to never return except in a reincarnated fashion. The Nick Montfort’s implementation of Strachey’s “Love Letters” flashes the letters across the screen without proper time to read them, and if you can’t read it in time, it vanishes. This movement provides a reason for the why “Stochastic Texts” and “Love Letters” remain fundamentally poetic. Their representational meanings in addition to evocative meanings, as we discussed in class, remain under the control of the works’ forms. With regards to these two combinatory poetic pieces, their representational meanings are hardly the only meanings present, for the evocative meanings are heavily privileged when the content is difficult to decipher, disappears, and is recycled.

I remain intrigued by Rettberg’s claim that “if these letters are not great literature, they are literary writing produced by the procedural operations of the computer” and if this is the way we choose to think about combinatory poetics, then to what extent have modern computer science advancements also advanced (or diminished?) the ability for writers and scientists alike to be better storytellers (32). Particularly, what is the purpose of poetry if not to somehow come to understand it? Am I unable to understand the gravity of these works because I could not relate to the contextual culture?

After playing Plotkin’s Shade and reading Jeremy Douglass’ “Enlightening Interactive Fiction: Andrew Plotkin’s Shade, I was plainly frustrated, but also reminded of this quiz the Washington Post published online by the extent to which it utilizes extended notions of light to craft a narrative. While this is fundamentally different from Shade, there are some interesting takeaways.

First, my initial engagement with Shade was so frustrating I had to quit. Immediately, I began a new document for this post to write down all of the aspects of the structure I found unhelpful or particularly crucial to the experience of playing. These notes included the exploration of a language barrier questioning the existence of a learning curve in regard to knowing the correct “command” language necessary to move the game forward. Douglass describes the sensation perfectly when he states that “no matter how many times you turn off the lamp, the requested interaction is politely refused” (3). Essentially, Douglass calls the frustrating inability to articulate the correct command the “hiding method” that necessitates a ransacking hunt which “produces a moderate amount frustration” – an understatement (6). Therefore, in realizing the scholarly legitimacy of this play induced rage, I am left questioning then whether or not the learning curve is from learning a new process of reading (that is, electronically) or rather learning how to play a new game in order to facilitate reading?

The concept that “darkness kills,” or at least generates fear, Douglass raises interested me for literal and metaphorical reasons (4). Literally speaking, I thought initially of more current interactive games that use darkness as a scare tactic that enlivens the second person nature of the game, most notably among them Slender Man which was discontinued due to a violent act that occurred when two girls took the simulation too far wanting to allegedly be proxies for the video game murderer. Second-person immersion can have serious real-world consequences, but that is another digression.

On a lighter and more metaphorical note, I found the idea of light important in Shade, as Douglass notes, such that “as a narrative, it tells a story of enlightenment” (4). The Washington Post quiz, “Which of these 2020 Democrats agrees with you most?” informs the idea of enlightenment as a narrative strategy. The quiz implies an understood “you” when answering policy questions granting the reader, or player, the agency to choose which narrative they want to craft to better embody their ideal political candidate. Conversely, readers may fashion their answers to craft their own political narrative. The quiz has interactive elements including the readers identification with a character and their construction of a story via online web-based media outlets – an affordance only provided through the Washington Post’s online presence. Thus, the idea of being enlightened through the construction of a story rings true even within the fabrication of our political identities. Moreover, most of what politicians say anyways is a fabricated story, so the media adopting IF as a means of news makes complete sense. Did I just make a case for news as interactive fiction?

Following my reading of Chapter 3 in Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, I am left with lingering thoughts and certain questions about particular aspects regarding the critical intersection between academic humanities and technology.

I wish to further explore Murray’s idea of “multimedia” as a medium through which storytellers potentially discover how to tell their stories more effectively. Under this idea, Murray examines what it means for a medium to be “digitally sophisticated” which she explains through the capabilities of digital narratives such as an internet soap opera which she contends can be “sophisticated” if it provides features like “audio as an integral part of the plotline” such that readers are more interested in the story itself rather than the technology used to convey said story (67, 68). Here, I wish to expand upon Murray’s exploration of the influence of multimedia in movies, Web soaps, and books and add to her list podcasts and audiobooks that likewise employ aspects of “dramatic richness” through inclusion of technological resources such as “the wiretap of a murder threat or a political negotiation” (68). To this end, I believe that podcasts and audiobooks as sources of digital humanities and alternatives to traditional oral – person to person – storytelling provide an interesting conceptualization of what Murray terms “electronic narrative art” (68). One of my favorite podcasts which I believe assumes Murray’s standards of dramatic richness and electronic narrative art is Dr. Death – give it a listen.

Using our continuous discourse about affordances as they relate to books versus electronic literature as a launching point, I turn to Murray’s final affordance of four relating to digital environments: “Digital Environments Are Encyclopedic” (83). I found this particular affordance the most intriguing in that it further revealed to me the disconnect between academic structures of access to resources versus technological, or digital, approaches to encyclopedic accessibility. During the summer of 2019, I collaborated with a Davidson College English Professor in the process of publishing a book at Duke University Press. He wished to create for his book a digital archive as an electronic receptacle in which to provide sources cited within his book thus producing an accessible electronic platform to view and retrieve relevant materials. This experience strongly correlates to Murray’s belief in the “encyclopedic capacity of the computer” to grant readers access “from any point on the globe” (84). However, ideas about the accessibility of materials in relation to the competitive nature of humanities academia and the way that competitive – and almost capitalistic – attitude interacts with digital environments lingers with me because while many more resources are available to users through the internet a strong disconnect remains between the prestige seeking egos of academic scholars who wish to make exclusive their work and the highly collaborative and open-access spaces of digital humanities and computer science communities at large. Nevertheless, as I learned through my research last summer, Davidson College professors are working to make smoother the intersection between technology and academic humanities.

Lastly, I leave readers with a moment in Murray’s work I continue to muse over. She writes, “the encyclopedic capacity of the computer can distract us from asking why things work the way they do and why we are being asked to play one role rather than another” (89). It is important to remember that games such as SimCity that simulate life, are in fact not modeled based on real life but rather certain perspectives on it. Thus, the conflation of the game simulation and real experience I believe Murray claims can be dangerous.