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The Exploration of Electronic Literature

symbols at end

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Collaborative Introduction By: Sarah Krueger, Sammy Dunbar, Katherine Schade, Abbey Lawrence

The Exploration of Electronic Literature is a compilation of case studies that analyze the theme of exploration within electronic literature. These four pieces find ways of exploring new media, self-discovery, and modern society. The works highlighted in this compilation include:
--> With Those We Love Alive by Porpentine
--> Public Secrets by Sharon Daniel
--> Faith by Robert Kendall
--> Brainstrips by Alan Bigelow

Abstract:
Within electronic literature, the users are introduced to varying levels of interactivity and exploration. This exploration is not bound by examining the work and the genre on a surface level but extends far beyond into ones personal life and society as a whole. The extension into personal life and society is created by different technological forms and programs of electronic literature.

With Those we Love Alive
With Those We Love Alive by Porpentine is a e-literature work that focuses on the exploration of self through a fictitious story about a girl who creates artifacts to impress a skull empress. The story incorporates lighting, sound, and symbols in order to connect the reader the best they can to the literature. The story highlights certain aspects of society, such as violence and friendship, in order to create a story that more readers can relate to. The story also exemplifies the core of e-literature. Everything that is told is personalized for the reader, the reader is able to choose what they want to read first and which path they want to take in order to explore their self that they are creating in the game.

Public Secrets
Digital Media Artist, Sharon Daniel, creates pieces that serve as commentary for public institutions that foster and perpetuate social injustice. In the work, Public Secrets, Daniel investigates the injustices of the prison industrial complex through a compilation of audio recordings of incarcerated women speaking on their experiences within the system. As a piece of hypertext media, Public Secrets is a multi-vocal narrative of hundreds of statements taken from the female prisoners in California. The work was originally created on the popular technological platform, Scalar, and provides users with "an interactive interface to an audio archive" ("New Media Art | Interactive Documentary"). Daniel's intention for the piece was to be an abolitionist project in pursuit of a more human world (Vectors Journal Editorial Staff). With this information, users look to the work as a proposal towards absolving the barbarous prison system through those most affected by it, the incarcerated.

Faith
Faith by Robert Kendall is an unusual piece of electronic literature as well as an unusual poem. With limited interactivity, the work uses sound, color, and movement of words to emphasize certain words and create different layers to the poem. The role of the reader being to move to the next slide, each slide reveals a different idea about faith versus logic and how these two concepts affect each other. The different layers and ideas presented by Kendall clearly invite the reader to explore their own values when it comes to faith as well as messages sent by society as a whole about the influence that logic has on cultural and religious beliefs.

Brainstrips
Brainstrips is a hybrid of web comics and interactive modules that cover a vast array of topics concerning philosophy, science, and mathematics. Written by Alan Bigelow, an author and college professor, he attempts to teach these concepts and answer life's most thought-provoking questions in a satirical manner. This is done mainly through reading comic strips, completing quizzes, and self-reflection on a rating scale. Although the order in which the story is told cannot be manipulated, the reader has the opportunity to explore and relate its content to themselves and society as a whole.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introducing the Authors
"With Those We Love Alive" Analysis
"Public Secrets" Analysis
"Faith" Analysis
"Brain Strips" Analysis
Works Cited

To navigate this book, you can click in the top left corner to get to reach the table of contents. Each analysis has separate pages for different types of the author's exploration arguments. Within each page there may be links to other outside sources, other author's scalar pages, and annotated images to provide the reader with more information on the e-literature work. To interact with each annotated image, click on the image and hover the mouse over until you see more information on that image.
Exploring of Self In "With Those We Love Alive"
Sarah Krueger
Throughout the narrative, Porpentine asks personal questions about the reader that allows for the reader to reflect on how they want to portray themselves in the story. In the beginning of the story, the author asks the reader the month they were born in and what “element” the reader connects with the most- (see picture)- this question will allow the reader to think more deeply about why they choose the image that most closely resembles them.
Through personalizing the story and allowing the reader to explore the narrative through their own eyes, there is a sense of interactivity that you can only get through e-literature. Porpentine also tells the reader to keep a pen next to them throughout the journey and do draw symbols on themselves that reflect each spot they have been to. This idea of drawing on themselves is showing the reader that every place that one visits makes an impact on their personality, whether they realize it or not. Porpentine is allowing the reader to further reflect on how this story is personally affecting them, which can later teach them to realize how every experience they have in real life affects them in some way as well. By the end of the story, the reader is given a list of all the symbols that they have collected throughout the story on their "skin" that reflect their choices throughout their journey in the story.
An example of someone who played the game and wrote on their arm throughout the game, taking in each symbol as a part of their identity is Alice O'Connor who blogged about the story after she read it. As you can see through clicking on the link to her article, the symbols that she drew symbolize each of the decisions she made throughout the game and are supposedly apart of her now. (O'Connor)

The author is asking these personal questions so the reader feels more connected to the story, rather than being a passive reader and having no activity with the text. The author also makes them feel more connected by speaking to the reader directly; for example when a page pops up that says “nothing you can do is wrong” (Porpentine) at the beginning of the story.
The struggle that the main character goes through in order to impress the empress is personalized to the reader, making it feel like the reader is living that life as well.
Through the mechanism of e-literature this sense of interactivity and exploration is able to be experienced by the reader. The exploration in the text delves into deeper meanings that just self as well. Porpentine also incorporates social exploration into the text by placing underlying social controversies into the text.

This idea that the reader is being oppressed and Porpentine is showing the reader how that would feel is similar to the author of "Public Secrets" describing how the prisoners are also being oppressed and kept hidden from the rest of the world. Whether it is behind bars or locked inside a castle, the underlying message is the same: no one wants to be held against their will. Humans crave freedom.

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click here to read about the exploration of society within the story

click here to read about the exploration of e-literature within the story