Is This Loss?

The Dead Tower

The images presented in the upcoming pages are all taken from the pice of electronic literature known as The Dead Tower, a collaborative text written by both Andy Campbell and Mez Breeze. The Dead Tower is a narrative that is created through the use of HTML and Flash Player 12 a choice that allows the authors to create a text which can be considered both a piece of poetry and a game simultaneously. The text places the reader in the center of an uneven, rocky, dark and desolate terrain surrounded by detritus that seems to have come from a crashed bus. Throughout this landscape, the only other things visible to the player are a dark tower illuminated in blues and purples and some rotating and glowing words scattered throughout the virtual world. The scenery and words presented to the reader paint a blurred picture that recounts the narrative of the bus crash evidence of which can be seen strewn all around the player.
 
The effectiveness of this text can be attributed to not only the author's writing but the interactivity of the text. Providing the reader the freedom to explore the text using the mouse and arrow keys to look around and the space bar to jump allows them to experience the text with more than just their eyes. This use of technology helps to immerse the reader into the text pushing them to a greater understanding of the underlining theme of loss. The interactivity of the text The Dead Tower helps highlight the concept of loss specifically the loss of self, the loss of tradition, and the loss of life; the upcoming images help to show how the authors do so.

The text itself can be found here: http://collection.eliterature.org/3/work.html?work=dead-tower.

Similar texts that also relate to the concept of loss are:
- http://collection.eliterature.org/3/work.html?work=everyone-at-this-party-is-dead
- http://collection.eliterature.org/3/work.html?work=loss-undersea
 

This page has paths:

Contents of this path: