On the Up Side

I have "Blog Entry" on my To-Do List today, among other things. It seems I have not been very good about posting in the past couple of weeks, in addition to not having been very good at lots of other things.

The issue really is that I was awarded a teaching assistantship at the very last minute before classes started, and I've spent the first month of term getting up to speed, as well as getting all my little freelance gigs out the door (still working on some of those).

So I haven't done much actual research (read: writing) lately.

That ends today, as I have several paragraphs down now on the first story of my PhD, and I've started outlining the next paper I've got planning (on applying cinematic adaptation of visual narrative to digital fiction - it makes sense in my head). The story started forming at 5 a.m. this morning, which made for a rather restless sleep as I plunked a sentence or two every so often into my iPhone. The character is growing.

Other notable moments over the past few weeks:

• Karin Kukkonen (Tampere/Mainz) came to Bangor to give a research talk on the study of comic books. It was a really well-organized talk (using prezi.com rather than PPT, thankfully), and she handed out copies of her bibliography, which I think everyone should do. I was glad to see that most of what I'm looking into WRT visual narrative was there on her list - some confirmation I'm barking up the right trees, anyway.
• I had my first experience with annotated bibliographies, as I was required to submit one for my supervisor meeting this month. I had to look them up (the OWL has a good article). Thanks to my OCD and the fact that I've used Zotero to track my resources from the start, I didn't have to create it from scratch. I think the AB might be pretty useful to me, especially as I've split it into sections according to what area the research falls into (critical, creative, specific papers, etc.). The SCSM PGs have started a collection of ABs on our wiki, which should be a good resource for us in the future.
• I'm gathering a lot of cool info on e-publishing and writer-directed publishing projects (like Robin Sloan's Kickstarter Project and Cory Doctorow's model, among others). Hoping to have a paper out of it next summer.
  

And I think that's about all I have. Hopefully the research gets into full swing this week, and I'll have more to add soon. Until then, consider me writing.

ELD 2.0: A "Card Catalogue" for the Web Generations

The portion of the blogosphere devoted to digital/new media writing and e-publishing is filled with concerns, despairing, and a truckload of theories about how this emerging (emerged?) literary genre is to be organized, recognized, distributed, and brought into the canon of literature.

The importance of creating/accepting a canon for any given genre has been discussed much, as has the difficulty of establishing a central depository for works that often have no physical form. The technology is evolving quickly - works that are considered part of the canon are often just old enough that modern machines can't run the files, like a collection of the world's greatest films on Beta tapes.

Concerns have also flown about who exactly is to do this deciding. In the past, we (humans in general) have left canon-building to the scholars. Not even film or novels, so closely tied as they are to box office numbers and bestseller lists, derive their canons from public opinion. Blade Runner was a box office flop, and The Da Vinci Code has now been read by everyone on the planet. Merit is not tied to profit.

But Web 2.0 has a different culture, a leveling culture for those who participate in it. You don't have to have a string of letters after your name to promote good work anymore, to recognize it, to review it, to consult with peers.

The Electronic Literature Directory is a depository for e-lit that takes the idea of a peer-reviewed canon, and brings it forward into this 2.0 generation. The interface is sleek, with little flash and dazzle to A) take away from the creative works in the collection, or B) distract from the purpose of the site.

The works that are listed in the directory are not limited to those that a committee - or a librarian - decides have merit. Membership to the site is open to any and all interested parties, and those parties can create entries for works directly on the site. No making requests of the keepers of the collection. Also, no whining about what is and isn't included.

Previously, the best we could do to find digital work was to scroll through lists, follow blogs, hope for recommendations from a dozen different sources, or rely on tagging systems based on a set of terminology that has not yet solidified in the digital literature field. I know I for one have spent hours browsing through e-lit pieces, to find very few relevant to the topic or area I'm interested in.

The method for finding works streamlines that hunt-and-peck method. Yes, there is a search engine. But the key item is the tag cloud - now so ubiquitous because of its usefulness on blogs and websites - that is really the dominant visual of the home page. Users can zero in on the key words, generally genre-indicators. For more refinement, users can conduct a search on a combination of tags.

The goal of the site - the scholarly pursuit side of it - is to have each posted work reviewed by an ELD editor (these editors are chosen by the ELO organizing group from scholars and artists in the field), as well as a system of peer-to-peer network reviews. This is not to be an Ebert-type thumbs-up or -down sort of critical review, but more a brief analysis of what the reader/user will find when they enter into the work.

Members are free to offer their own reviews and comments on the same page. This system of reviews, utilizing both scholarly input and that of a general public, is not entirely new - after all, Amazon uses Publishers Weekly reviews as well as customer reviews. It's purpose here, however, is to generate discussion on the work in question, and to establish a groundwork for an e-lit canon.

This review system is something that has been pushed and discussed much in just the past couple of weeks (here, here, here, and yeah, here), and here it is, live and in the beta. ELD's system might not incorporate the hierarchy that has been discussed, but it does have an advantage in the simplicity of the peer-to-peer network. Like much of the Web, it places all members on a level-playing field - something of a fresh breeze when value is often dictated by editors or accountants.

Overall, from my standpoint as a new media writer (you see how fluid our terminology still is? Geez), from my standpoint as a new media scholar, and from my standpoint as a member and potential reviewer of the site, I think this is a great foundation for success. It will build, and it will by necessity become more complex, and will evolve as the genre evolves. In five years, something may prove even more useful than the tag cloud, much as search engines replaced card catalogues. At the moment, this interface gives the best potential for the various paths e-lit may take.

My one concern about the ELD - about any collection of e-lit, really - is that they are not libraries. To keep with the library analogy, the ELD is a card catalogue. It contains information about the works, and points to their locations, but it does not collect and preserve them in any real sense.

Rather, they link to the works on outside networks, on the internet. What happens when the artist/writer moves to another institution and loses their server space? What happens when the creators of these pieces pass on, and their domains revert back to the public? How will these works of art, works of literature, be preserved?

Until we work out a solution to this, e-lit will remain an evanescent art. The poetry of Virgil and Homer could not be passed on to future generations (and okay, arguably, what was passed down wasn't actually the poetry of Virgil and Homer...but academic arguments aside) until it could be fixed to paper and preserved. For every passage in Homer and every quotation from Aristotle, there are thousands - millions - of works that are lost to us.

The problem with e-lit at the moment is that it is ALL impermanent, not just some of it. ALL of it.

And I've gotten off-track. Anyway. Visit the ELD. Sign up. Become a member, post your favorite works, review them. Build e-lit to the point we can get some funding for an E-Library of Congress or something.

Art and Story

My plan for yesterday was to spend the entire day immersed in the beta for the Electronic Literature Directory's new site, and post about it here. Unfortunately, I woke up feeling as though gnomes had scoured my throat with steel wool, and had then smacked me between the eyes with a sledgehammer. It was all I could do to hold my head up.

So I didn't. I whined a bit until the husband left to do some work, and then I plugged in the 3-hour "Dangerous Days: Making of Blade Runner" DVD extra. I'm in the midst of thinking about how visual storytelling can add depth to the narrative, and as Blade Runner is such a key narrative in terms of visual storytelling in the film medium, I thought I'd write a paper on it with another PhD in my department.

In between bouts of passing out, then waking up and having to rewind and rewatch segments, I gained a lot of information about how the film was made, how the story was put together, who contributed what, what the thought processes were behind certain choices (most came down to either "Ridley said so" or "we couldn't afford X, so we did Y"), etc. There's been a ton written about BR, of course, and I'm looking forward to it.

What really got me thinking, however, was a comment my husband picked up on toward the end of the doc. One of the filmmakers was talking about adding in the voiceover to the original theatrical release - the voiceover that had been in the original script, that Harrison Ford said was shite, and Ridley Scott agreed, so they never put it in.

But when the edit came through, and the test audiences came out of the screenings with the "I don't get it" look on their faces, the suits said "Do the voiceover, or the film will flop - no one will get it otherwise." Scott said, yeah, okay, sure. (BTW, it's really funny to listen to the tapings of the voiceover sessions - Ford thought it was utterly asinine, and was not silent about it.)

The filmmaker, talking about it on the DVD, said what they'd wound up with was an art film, not a money-making theatrical hit. It made sense to me, but my husband asked, "What exactly is an art film?"

And of course, as when anyone asks you to define something you believe you know perfectly well how to define, I was flabbergasted.

After a moment, I said, "It's essentially something that has great meaning for the maker, and in film generally has so much depth that the story is actually secondary. The depth in the visuals, or the combination of audio and visual, is the point - not the plot. Story is essentially sacrificed for the sake of the art, the effect."

He took that on, no problem. But it made me think: what is it we've been doing with digital fiction? We've been creating art. We appreciate it, and other scholars and artists appreciate it. But the general public? Nah. The conceit is too much when they're looking for entertainment.

The film industry hit mainstream fairly early - they had to; filmmaking is fracking expensive. If they didn't have a way to make money back, the whole art would have gone under. But yeah, they still make art films. Not as many, without the big budgets, but they still make them because there's still a place for them.

Digital fiction, on the other hand, is generally not terribly expensive. Most of us can create our work with the tools we already have at hand - a computer, maybe a software package or two. We don't need investors, and we don't necessarily have a bottom line, so we create digital fiction that has meaning and depth to us. Cool.

But so much of the blogging I see about digital fiction is concerned with how we start to make a living off it. If you can't make a living as an artist, it remains a niche art. The best digital writers, so far, still offer their work for free. Even painters and other fine artists have a hope of gallery shows and print sales.

For those of us interested in bringing it to the forefront of storytelling genres - to stand on equal footing with film, book, and play - we need to keep the story at the forefront. We need to find ways to create depth without it obscuring the story (as they did with Blade Runner). The neon signs in the film had meaning - they're not just collections of Japanese or Chinese characters. That provides depth - that provides art. But it didn't stand in the way of story. It enhanced and bolstered it, so that by that final scene, when Roy Batty is dying in the rain, the dove flying from his hand, the audience lives in that completely constructed world, and feels empathy for a mere machine.

Story is still king, yo.