But something drastic changed for me when I listened to Steph Ceraso's piece of city life. What I love about literature is the ability to visualize a reality entirely distinct to your circumstances. And the image of star-soaked grass I might have imagined from a novel's text was transformed into a chorus of crickets joined by the conversations of cars on the freeway. Tennessee Williams once wrote that "in memory, everything seems to happen to music," and though this had never been a major focus of mine, it definitely shone true in Boost Lit.

I've always joked my technological capabilities were more limited, but in this class, I realized when communication is concerned, there's a way to make it work and to become more technologically literate (a bit ironic given our class' focus, I know).

As a final piece of reflection for this course, I've constructed a video which revisits each of my projects and provides commentary on the process using technologies like Audacity and Camtasia 2. 

The first mile marker was the Sound List, which at first, I was a bit torn about. I love music, and the ability to analyze it is always a welcome opportunity. But I realized throughout the collection that what was most significant was not, in fact, the footage or songs. Rather, it was the accessibility of a work to its audience. 

Next up, was the audio essay, which I found an immensely interesting project. Still lacking any visuals, I've selected poems to associate emotionally with a larger storyline. And rather than choosing to detail a personal narrative or experience, I decided it would be neat to take on a larger topic. As inspiration, I looked to the then current rape case at St. Paul's school, stealing headlines at the time. Ultimately, the accused student, Owen Labrie, was only convicted of sleeping with a minor. Implied in this ruling is perhaps that the judge and jury questioned the prosecution's case, wondering if it was "circumstantial evidence." So what I aimed to show in my rendition of Sylvia Plath's Mad Girl's Love Song was that experiences can be both circumstantial and entirely valid- the two are not mutually exclusive. As the poem progresses to musical responses to Plath's poem, more present is the voice of a victim, who begins to question the accuracy of her testimony and case. Clearly, distinct circumstances plagued Plath's mental health, but I hoped the audio essay would be an ideal format to combine the two frustrations with memory and truth. Maddened by the system, the narrator ultimately questions whether she made it all up "inside [her] head." 

Following the audio essay, we explored the interactions between texts, visuals, and audio content. For my live e-poem- an extremely difficult project to get exactly right (try it at home, and you'll see it yourself)- the goal was explicit: make it live. But after around 5 or 6 takes of the project, I realized how much intricate work it takes to truly accomplish the "live from New York," or in my case, "live from Camtasia 2 software." 

Maintaining the theme of poetry being expressed throughout digital literature techniques, I chose a favorite for my live poem, Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe. I tried to convey the poem's ambiguity in shaping the character of Annabel, keeping the visual elements simple but on the beat of a background song to emphasize the issues. 

In contrast, my treatment of the recorded e-poem embraced complexity and dynamism of layered video footage. For that piece, I analyzed and modernized the poem "The Flapper" by Dorothy Parker, adding opaque qualities to certain videos to accentuate the layered significance of the time period. 

Finally, our last project was a video response to Cormac McCarthy's The Road, a rather post-apocalyptic tale that follows the desperation of a father and his son. Overall, McCarthy's writing style is detailed and yet shares a type of simplicity. So to portray this stylistic choice, as well as the recurring theme of memory and "the perfect day," I crafted a video project. I hope you enjoy! 

Sincerely,

Corey Risinger