Category Archives: Writers Conference

Deena Larsen, Writer

Deena Larsen has written over 30 elit pieces. You can find out more about elit—and get writing exercises to try this out on your own—from her textbook introduction, Fundamentals. She will speak about elit Tuesday March 23 at 4 pm in the Memorial Union. This is the third in a series of posts designed to suggest ways to incorporate The 41st Annual Writers Conference into classes on campus. Check out Crystal Albert’s introduction to this series of posts, Deena’s first post, and check back on next Tuesday for the next installment.

This installment to Deena Larsen’s introduction to electronic literature, Link Spot Link, is provided in conjunction with the 41rst annual Writers Conference on March 23. In these introductions, Larsen will introduce you and your students to the immense possibilities of meaning inherent in electronic literature. Electronic literature provides new rhetorical devices that were not available until the mid-1990s. Using the web and HTML, we can now link to documents. Using Flash, we can animate sequences of text and imagery and incorporate sound. Electronic literature uses these devices to add meaning to texts. This introduction will examine just how electronic elements (links, sound, navigation, imagery, sound, animation, and structure) can highlight textual meanings, add subtle references, subvert the overt meanings, and play lots of wonderful tricks with what once was a simple text.

Be sure to check out the first four parts to this series:

The English Department and Beyond: the UND Writers Conference (Crystal Alberts)
Teaching the Writers Conference: Link Spot Link – Electronic Literature Made Easy (Deena Larsen)
Teaching the Writers Conference: Link Spot Link! How to use electronic literature in your courses now (Deena Larsen)

Part 2. Explore Electronic Literature on Your Own

Imagery and Sound

This exercise shows how electronic literature uses imagery, motion, and sound to enhance meaning. First, read the image below (from Rob Kendall’s Faith) and write out how you feel about this—what is the text saying?

Next, go here and read the actual poem (from beginning to end) WITHOUT music. What is the text saying now? How has the meaning changed? Talk about one motion, color, disappearance/fading, or other visual cue of the text that really spoke to you. Why did that appeal to you? What do you think it meant?

Click on replay and read the poem WITH music. How are the instruments related to ideas and themes in the text? What new insights did you gain into the poem?

Links and Secrets

This next exercise shows an example of how links can add meaning and how finding the secret places of texts can change meaning.

First, read the main text of Deena Larsen’s I’m Simply Saying (screen on the left) and write out what you think the author is trying to convey.

Next, examine the text with the link words highlighted (in bold blue). These show the links (doors into other portions of the text). How does this emphasis—choosing these words as the link/doors—change the story? What would have happened if other words (for example, “change,” “everything,” “end”) were emphasized as links instead?

Now, read the words with one of the secret levels caught and revealed to show a different story behind the lines.

What further insights do you have about this piece from these words?

Go to the actual piece and look at how movement and imagery also affect the meaning: http://www.canberra.edu.au/centres/inflect/02/larsen/simply7.html

Part 3. Questions to Ponder for Link Spot Link: Deena Larsen

Electronic literature isn’t just bling—it is literature that uses electronic elements as an integral part of the work to convey meanings in ways never before possible. This introduction will examine just how electronic elements (links, sound, navigation, imagery, sound, animation, and structure) can highlight textual meanings, add subtle references, subvert the overt meanings, and play lots of wonderful tricks with what once was a simple text. This lecture is with the 41rst Annual University of North Dakota Writer’s Conference. For a longer explanation of these devices, see Fundamentals.

Links

What are links?
How can links provide connections for meanings? (Discuss one example—how would the text be different if there were no links?)
Your class: Find a connection between concepts you are studying and write a short explanation of these connections.

Imagery

How can imagery affect the reading and meaning of a text? How did the images in Rob Kendall’s Study in Shades affect the meaning of the piece?

What does placement do for meaning? How would Peter Howard’s The Rainbow Factory differ if the texts were found on a rainbow instead of an upper and lower factory window?
Your class: Find an illustration of a concept you are studying and explain how the illustration relates to that concept. How else could this concept be illustrated?

Sound

How can music or sound affect the reading and meaning of a text? How did the sound in Rob Kendall’s Faith or Deena Larsen’s I’m Simply Saying work with the text to provide meaning?
Your class: Find sounds that are an appropriate backdrop for a concept you are studying and explain how the sounds relate to that concept. What sounds (voices, music, etc) would not work with this concept? Why?

Secrecy

What additional nuances can secrets give to the text? What happens if readers don’t find the secrets—are they left with a false impression of the piece? Are secrets a “fair” thing to do to a reader? Play with the corners in I’m Simply Saying. If you had not found these secret texts, how would your reading be different?

Your class: What if the concept you are studying were a secret revealed only after you had climbed a 20,000 foot mountain? How would that effort of finding out the secret affect your reaction to the concept?

Deena Larsen, Writer

Deena Larsen has written over 30 elit pieces. You can find out more about elit—and get writing exercises to try this out on your own—from her textbook introduction, Fundamentals. She will speak about elit Tuesday March 23 at 4 pm in the Memorial Union. This is the second in a series of posts designed to suggest ways to incorporate The 41st Annual Writers Conference into classes on campus. Check out Crystal Albert’s introduction to this series of posts, Deena’s first post, and check back on next Tuesday for the next installment.

An introduction to electronic literature, Link Spot Link, will be provided in conjunction with the 41rst annual Writers Conference on March 23. Deena Larsen, electronic literature writer, will introduce you and your students to the immense possibilities of meaning inherent in electronic literature. Electronic literature provides new rhetorical devices that were not available until the mid-1990s. Using the web and HTML, we can now link to documents. Using Flash, we can animate sequences of text and imagery and incorporate sound. Electronic literature uses these devices to add meaning to texts. This introduction will examine just how electronic elements (links, sound, navigation, imagery, sound, animation, and structure) can highlight textual meanings, add subtle references, subvert the overt meanings, and play lots of wonderful tricks with what once was a simple text.

You can get your classes involved—and add new layers of meanings to the materials you are teaching now. This packet explains four electronic literature elements (links, imagery, sound, and secrets) and connects them with pedagogical suggestions for courses in Literature, History/Political Science, Math/Physics/Sciences, Art/Music/Drama/Dance, Languages/English, Philosophy/Religion, and Education.

You can use these handouts as they are or customize them to your classes. These assignments can provide a way to integrate students’ common experiences of surfing the web, watching movies, texting, etc. to the works you are teaching and the concepts you are conveying now. These can be used for extra credit assignments—without taking up any class time— or can be incorporated into a class discussion.

• Enhance your current lectures and assignments with electronic literature rhetorical devices. The first part explains the element and provides a short explanation of how you can use that element to enhance your teaching or to assign some “extra credit” to students to help them explore the concepts you are conveying now. The exercises are divided into different academic disciplines based on the thought techniques and assumptions used in each.
• Explore some electronic literature works. The second part shows how these elements work in two simple electronic literature works. You can pass these around for interested students or assign this part as extra credit as well.
• Attend the lecture and answer questions. The third part has questions that students will be able to answer after attending Deena Larsen’s lecture. You can assign the general questions or use the “Your Class” questions as extra credit assignments for your specific materials.

Starting places for electronic literature

• To see most of what is out there, go to Electronic Literature Organization and click on Directory for a list of electronic works and journals that feature elit.
• To get a longer explanation of these devices and examples of how these are used in electronic literature, see Fundamentals.

• To find a quick read, go to Deena Larsen’s webshelf that lists electronic literature organized by the time it takes to read that work (from simple to complex).

Part 1A. Links

A link in hypertext (and electronic literature) is like a door into a new portion of the text (usually called a “node”). The link has three parts:

1. The origin node (or room where the door is)
2. The link itself, which is usually a phrase or a word in the origin node (the door itself)
3. The destination node (or room where you end up after you go through the door)

Each of these parts has a meaning that is influenced now by the other parts of the link. So when you have a node with a link, you no longer just have that node to consider—you have the added meanings of the linked word or phrase and the connection with the destination node.
Discussing links is a great way to understand connections in general: cause and effect, time sequence, similarities, opposites, necessary conditions, etc.

Literature

Links add layers of meanings and relate themes. Literature works within a series of themes and connected ideas. To see this in action:

1. Take two pages from the book you are reading now as your “nodes.”
2. Choose one page as an origin node and the other page as a destination node
3. Highlight a word or phrase in the origin node as the link
4. Read the origin node, then the linked words, then the destination node out loud

Write a short paper about how the meaning changed. What words in the origin text now relate to the destination text—in ways that they would not have had you simply turned the page? What new insights do you now have into the characters or the situation?
Note that this may add meaning to the original text that the author may or may not have intended—which can be a discussion in and of itself. This exercise is really a lesson in interpretation and in extending the text—in effect, you become a cowriter as you extend the meaning inherent in the text by using these new rhetorical devices.

History/Political Science

Links and connections provide insights into actions and reactions. Choose two events in the period or theories you are studying. List as many connections as you can—and explain how these connections work. (Are the same people involved—how did one aspect of what they did tie into another aspect? How are people related or connected—how did these relations affect what happened? Did people read or believe the same materials—how did these common beliefs influence their actions?)

Math/Physics/Sciences/Engineering

In the topics you are discussing, look for connections. How does this topic relate to the previous topic of discussion? Do the exercise shown for literature with one of the texts you are using. How do the concepts relate to each other? Describe these relationships. Could x work with or happen without y? Why or why not?

Art/Music/Drama/Dance

Themes provide the basic connections between various portions of a work and function as links. In the work you are creating, studying, or performing, what are the themes? How does repetition work as a link to connect various portions? Can you perform or create something and over-emphasize these links? What happens when these connections (which are usually in the background) come out into the foreground?

Languages /English

Connections between words have their own field of study: Etymology. Choose several words you are working with and look up their origins. What other words are connected to these words? How are the concepts connected? Write a short paragraph about the ideas behind these connections. (For example, in English “disaster” is connected to “stars” as people blamed their fates on the movements of the stars and planets. What other words are connected to “stars”? Why?)

Philosophy/Religion

What are the connections between two ideas you have been studying? Explain their relationships. Do the exercise shown for literature with one of the texts you are using. How do the author’s ideas relate to each other? (For example: Are there underlying assumptions common to both? Are they opposites or contradictions? Does one idea require the other?) Explain these relationships in a short paper.

Education

Take the lesson materials you are designing now—describe how you could link from one part of the material to another part of the material to show a connection between concepts. Show how this can help explain concepts—why is the first concept {an opposite of/the same as/an effect from/a cause of} the second concept?

Part 1B. Imagery

Imagery can also add tone and emotional meaning. Images in electronic literature can be colored text, a montage of pictures, a navigational image (where you click on parts of the image to reach other parts of the work), a movie, etc.

Literature

First, place one image by a page of the text you are reading. Then read the same page with a different image. Write a short paper about how the reading experience changed. What elements in the images you chose relate to the page (text, character, situation, etc.)? What words on that page take on a different meaning when contrasted with a different image?

History/Political Science

Images deeply influence zeitgeist, thoughts, and subsequent actions (for example, how did the tricolor image of Obama influence the election?). But images also inform our current thinking about that age. What image or icon “defines” the moment of history or exemplifies the theory in Political Science that you are studying? For example, the Life photo of the sailor kissing the girl may define World War II. Create a “quiz:” Choose 4 popular images of various time periods and ask your classmates to identify the era based on the image you chose. Or choose 4 popular images of movements or activities in a particular time period and ask classmates to identify those movements or activities (for example, suffragettes or Gibson girls).

Math/Physics/Sciences/Engineering

How can visually showing a concept make it easier to understand the concept? Think about the diagrams we use (molecular models, geometric figures). How do these diagrams convey concepts? What are the conventions for displaying concepts you are working with? How did these conventions arise? What would happen to your—and the conventional—view of these concepts if you used other ways to display these concepts?

Art/Music/Drama/Dance

What happens to a piece of art when viewed with different background music (jazz, Rachmaninov, 14th century madrigals, etc.)? What happens when art is viewed in contrast with other images or venues (for example a sculpture placed in a backdrop of a kindergarten vs a convent)? How does a dance or a musical performance differ when performed against various stage backdrops (for example, a blank curtain, an indoor scene, an outdoor scene)?

Languages/English

Find a painting from your culture and an explanation of that image both in English and in your language. List words used to describe that image in both English and in your language (for example: warm, colorful, bright, simple, light). How do the words differ in English and in your language? Now find another painting and an explanation and list the words used to describe this painting (for example: cold, bitter, frenetic). Take both paintings and the lists of words in your language (without English translations) and ask your classmates to match up the word lists with your paintings. How did these match up?

Philosophy/Religion

Throughout the ages, people have illustrated philosophies and religions to explain concepts (think of the sculptures around the doors of gothic cathedrals). What images have been used to explain the concepts you are studying now? What other images could you use to explain these concepts?

Education

How can you incorporate drawing into your lesson plans to draw out visual learners? How can merging art and text make meanings clearer?

Part 1C. Sounds

Sounds provide tone, rhythm, meter, and tension and are an integral part of meaning in electronic literature. Even before IPods, sounds permeated our lives. Electronic literature uses sound to convey emotional tone, provide a sense of place, and to overlay meaning onto the text. Sound may be spoken words (which may or may not mirror the text), music (which may emphasize the mood or suggest other possible underlying moods), sound effects (which may emphasize the action or hint at other actions), etc.

Literature

Read a page or paragraph in your current work while playing first a happy, fast piece of music and then read the same material again but with a sadder, slower piece of music. Write a short paper about how the reading experience changed for you. How did you feel when reading the piece? How did your mood change? How did your internal changes change the way you felt or thought about the piece?

History/Political Science

Sounds define an age and influence the ideas and actions of the people. How does sound influence what people do and believe (for example, why did McCain chose “Running on Empty” for a campaign ad)? In the period you are studying, find one popular or iconic song or piece of music. How does that help explain the age and how people thought? What if the music in this age had been different (rap instead of Bach, blues instead of bugles)? Write a short paper on what might have happened.

Math/Physics/Sciences/Engineering

Music has mathematical symmetry; sound has physical properties. Take a concept that you are working on and find appropriate music. What did you consider when you chose this music? How does the concept you are studying relate to the sound?

Art/Music/Drama/Dance

What are the relationships between imagery, sound, and motion? Take an aspect of the piece that you are creating or performing, and experiment with different visual, auditory, and kinesthetic layers. What happens to a slow piece of music when played with a fast video or with a fast dance? What happens to music with different scenic backdrops (played when viewing scenes of mountain landscapes vs battlefields)?

Languages/English

Not only does music define a culture, but each language has its own music. Listen to something in your language—a news broadcast, an explanation of a museum piece. Draw a line on a page as you listen to that piece that represents to you how the language sounds. You could draw short thick lines for fast paces, long loopy lines for dipthong vowels, etc. Listen to the piece again and draw on the same page—only with a different color. How does the music of the language change for you as you hear it again?

Philosophy/Religion

Sounds influence our thoughts and ideas. Think about the historical period of the person who wrote the concepts you are studying now. What music was popular? What sounds would the author have heard? What would have happened to the ideas had the music been different?

Education

How can you incorporate sounds into your lesson plans to draw out auditory learners? How could the use of sound improve a lesson? What would happen if you taught a concept with soft slow music in the background? What if you taught that same concept with a staccato, beat music in the background? Could students create their own music and “rap” the concepts? Write a short paper or give a short demonstration.

Part 1D. Secrets

Some nodes in electronic literature works are hidden–they are not accessible by any visible link in the work and you can find them only if you know where they are or stumble across some invisible link. Secret nodes tantalize the reader, providing more interest in the piece. Readers “in the know” are like players in an online game who have reached a certain level and attained enlightenment. Think about how this works in movies, for example, The Crying Game or the Sixth Sense.

Literature

Take a paragraph or short section from the work you are reading. What would happen if this paragraph were hidden on the inside of the book jacket (so you had to take the cover off the book to read it)? How would that secrecy provide an importance to the text it does not possess “on the open page”? What would the work be like if this text were not visible and only accessible as a secret?

History/Political Science

Were there secret societies or codes in the period/culture you are studying? How were they discovered? What role did secret societies play in the period you are discussing? How do people react when they are “in the know” and are not “in the know”? What happens when these secrets are revealed? What role do secret societies (e.g., the Skull and Bones club) play today?

Math/Physics/Sciences/Engineering

How can hiding something make it more clear? How do detection methods for easter eggs in videos relate to detection/problem solving methods in physics, math, and sciences? How were the topics you are discussing found/discovered/explained (for example, benzene rings)? What was secret about them? How do people make discoveries? What are “clues” to look for? How does looking for secrets inform scientific methods?

Art/Music/Drama/Dance

What meanings are hidden underneath surface of the work that you are creating or performing? Experiment with embodying secrets in your work or performance. What happens when part—but not all—of the audience knows what is going on?

Languages/English

Languages have subtle meanings and nuances. First, think about the “unwritten” meanings of some words in English. Often, even native speakers are not aware of these meanings—which can cause trouble (for example, the latest flap about tea bags). Find a word in your language that has other meanings (google some of the words you are studying and read the contexts or find a book of idioms in your language and examine some of those idioms).

Philosophy/Religion

Many basic concepts are shrouded in mystery. What enticement does this mystery hold? Imagine if the concept you are studying were only revealed to “worthy acolytes.” Would the concept be more appealing? Would it change how you view the concept? Explain.

Education

People like mysteries. How could you make a game of a concept you are teaching? Could you hide something in the room and have a treasure hunt? How can hinting at something and not explaining it overtly help to convey a concept?

Deena Larsen, Writer

Deena Larsen has written over 30 elit pieces. You can find out more about elit—and get writing exercises to try this out on your own—from her textbook introduction, Fundamentals. She will speak about elit Tuesday March 23 at 4 pm in the Memorial Union. This is the second in a series of posts designed to suggest ways to incorporate The 41st Annual Writers Conference into classes on campus. Check out Crystal Albert’s introduction to this series of posts and check back on Thursday for the next installment.

Electronic literature (elit) depends on features in digital media to add meaning to the words themselves.

Links

Unlike a paper book, where you turn pages, in elit you have to create a way to get from one piece of text to another. (Pieces of text are called “nodes.”) So we make links, which function as doors to these nodes. A link has three parts:

1. The origin node (or room where the door is)
2. The link itself, which is usually a phrase or a word in the origin node (the door itself)
3. The destination node (or room where you end up after you go through the door)

If you have a room without a door, then you can not go anywhere. If you have too many doors in a room, you could be confused. If you have doors that don’t lead where you think they will or are not indicated well, you could end up in a closet when you wanted the kitchen. So a mark of a good elit piece is links that help you walk through the piece.

Just as doors add décor to a room, links add meaning to an elit piece. Each of the parts of the link has a meaning that is influenced now by the other parts of the link. So when you have a node with a link, you no longer just have that node to consider—you have the added meanings of the linked word or phrase and the connection with the destination node.

Deena Larsen’s Ferris Wheels shows how links can change the meaning of the piece. On the node, Against Tides, the last line reads: “Why do I think I can swim against the tides of fate yet once more?” “Fate” links to the node “Turn” which shows a happy old couple—showing that the narrator thinks that the tides of fate could be happy. How would the story be different if that word “fate” had actually gone to the node “Black,” which talks about the narrator’s fantasies of suicide?

Susan Gibb uses links to emphasize the confusion of the narrator in Blueberries. In the node “Time,” she writes: “It’s because I’ve lost my hold on reality. Time has been sliding around between present and past, past and future. Things happen that I recall having happened before.” The link on “future” goes to voices from the narrator’s distant past and the link on “past” goes to a present moment (called “Present”). These disconnect” further underscore the blurring between present and past, past and future. If the links had been what we normally expect—that is had linked to an event in the past on “past” or an event in the future on “future,” then the narrator’s confusion would not be so clearcut.

Images

Imagery can also add tone and emotional meaning. Images in elit can be colored text, a montage of pictures, a navigational image (where you click on parts of the image to reach other parts of the work), video, etc. These images work in a similar way to Art Spiegelman’s comics. Robert S. Leventhal, in Responses to the Holocaust: A Hypermedia Sourcebook for the Humanities said of Art Spiegelman’s Maus : “the image is never left to stand alone, but is always caught up in the differential between narrative, image, dialogue and reflection.”

Rob Kendall’s Study in Shades shows the silhouettes of a father and daughter, who are telling their sides of the story. Watch how the images change—the father gets darker as the daughter realizes she is losing him to Alzheimer’s, and the daughter gets lighter as the father realizes he can no longer remember who she is. The images here create the progress of the story.

In Stuart Moulthrop’s Pax, readers have to click on moving images to get text to appear in the right column—creating a video game effect.

Deena Larsen’s I’m Simply Saying has moving texts that play with the main part of the piece to make new meanings. This screenshot captures words in the third line changing between “connections,” “projections,” and “conjectures.”

Sound

Sounds provide tone, rhythm, meter, and tension and are an integral part of meaning in elit. Even before IPods, sounds permeated our lives. Elit uses sound to convey emotional tone, provide a sense of place, and to overlay meaning onto the text. Sound may be spoken words (which may or may not mirror the text), music (which may emphasize the mood or suggest other possible underlying moods), sound effects (which may emphasize the action or hint at other actions), etc.

Stuart Moulthrop’s Under Language uses sound to provide other “voices” than just the written text, as he explains in his instructions on reading the text: “When you call up a line, you should encounter an accompanying audible text, read to you by an unreal person, supplying the voice of the poem. . . These audible readings do not echo the visible lines. Rather, they express a second sense or esoteric meaning: an under-language.” Comics artist Alan Moore coined the term “under-language” in comics as “neither the ‘visuals’ nor the ‘verbals,’ but a unique effect caused by a combination of the two.” Comic Book Rebels: Conversations with the Creators of the New Comics. Stanley Wiater and Stephen R. Bissette eds. (New York: Donald I. Fine, Inc., 1993), Interview with Alan Moore, pp. 162-63

Deena Larsen’s I’m Simply Saying uses sound to accompany each text’s movements, adding a different pace and emotion.

Jim Andrew’s Nio lets the reader play with sounds and letters, creating new meanings.

Secrets

Elit writers are a tricky bunch. Some use invisible links so that the reader has to hunt for the next doorway into the text. Some hide text in the html coding of a web page. Some hide nodes so that readers can only find them if the readers are “in the know” or work very hard. These secret nodes tantalize the reader, providing more interest in the piece. Elit writers are just working within a general trend. DVDs often provide “easter eggs”—those hidden little extra bits. Video games only reveal secrets to players who have reached a certain level and attained enlightenment. Movies make a big deal of not giving away the central secret (for example, The Crying Game or the Sixth Sense).

Stuart Moulthrop relates that a reader informed him of an easter egg in “Pax,” and confesses that he had no clear memory of including it “proving Ambrose Bierce was wrong about secrets ‘two can keep a secret, if one of them is dead.’”

You can find secret parts of Deena Larsen’s I’m Simply Saying by poking around the corners of the main text.

One of the secret parts adds “secrets lie in lily cool faces, in rose warm blood, in orchid dry bruises, punctured by the realities of fast cars and faster modems.”

For more information: Deena Larsen’s webshelf lists electronic literature organized by the time it takes to read that work (from simple to complex).

Electronic Literature Organization and click on Directory for a comprehensive list of electronic works.