Rebooting Electronic Literature, Volume 4

Traversal of Deena Larsen's "Marble Springs 1.0"

Deena Larsen performed Marble Springs 1.0 remotely from Denver, CO via Zoom and YouTube while Dene Grigar navigated it from the lab at Washington State University Vancouver using a Macintosh Classic II running System Software 7.1. The performance was hosted by the Electronic Literature Lab (ELL) on Thursday, December 3, 2020. It was led by Polish scholar Mariusz Pisarski. Grigar moderated the Q&A that followed the Traversal.
 

Deena Larsen’s Traversal of  Marble Springs 1.0, Part 1


The Traversal begins with Mariusz Pisarski introducing Deena Larsen, ELL, and Marble Springs. The version of Marble Springs read in the Traversal is Marble Springs 1.0 (the earliest version), but in the years since Larsen has produced versions 2.0 and 3.0 of the piece. Pisarski describes several modes of moving through Marble Springs, such as the nested map interface, character connection diagrams, in-text links, and reader-generated marginalia and, then, turns the screen over to Deena Larsen. Larsen begins her Traversal by describing the "bulletin board era" during which she wrote the work: since "computers were very new," she "had to explain to [her] thesis advisors how to use a mouse" and she "saved two years" for her expensive early Macintosh computer. Consequently, Larsen links the "Victoriana" visual style of Marble Springs in order to make the new less unfamiliar, the same reason why several pages of instructions accompany Marble Springs. Larsen reads the introductory poem and, then, navigates to the "About the Author" page, which establishes a mystery as to who the author is within the world of the text and celebrates how "the tales spin secretly inside you/ forming you as much, perhaps more so, than you form them." Next Larsen reads from a poem describing the character of Sadie and introduces the form of the character pages––a "Title" tab that describes the character's family relations, a "Text" tab that carries Larsen's poem about the character, a "Margins" tab that gives a reader space to write in, and a "Bibliography" tab. Sadie, a writer, dies young from childbirth, and the illustration accompanying her story is a chimera "for that fantasy life she never had." Like most other poems seen in the Traversal, this one is made of unrhymed lines each usually between five and 10 syllables long in roughly two or three stanzas of five to ten lines.
 

Deena Larsen’s Traversal of  Marble Springs 1.0, Part 2

Grigar, navigating according to Larsen's directions, selects the skeleton key, one of four icons on the left side of the screen that opens up a window showing Sadie's circle of friends (each with their own clickable card) and all the places and institutions in the town of Marble Springs that Sadie is connected to. Larsen visits the card describing Sadie's friend, Laura Keeperly, and the quilts she works on. Clicking on the map icon beside the skeleton key icon, Larsen navigates back through the map of Marble Springs and the local area, which she explains is actually a series of nested maps, a functionality which the structure of HyperCard "made easy." She finds Sadie's stone in the graveyard, with an inscription written by Sadie's widower, Tom––one of the few inscriptions in Marble Springs written by the men who are only "glimpsed" through what they "physically left behind." If a man's name is clicked on, Larsen explains, the card is blank. Clicking on the eye next to the map and skeleton key icons, Larsen navigates to the "directory" of the town which lists all the characters and, there, finds Rachel Cole, one of the more prominent women in town who ran a temperance society but "drank in secret." Larsen also describes how she incorporated pop-ups in the text and facts from different historical sources, such as an 1860s cookbook. 

Deena Larsen’s Traversal of  Marble Springs 1.0, Part 3


The Traversal continues on to the poem describing Hezekiah, the Black servant of Rachel Cole who "came West after Emancipation." Moving back to the map, Larsen describes how the work's "meaning is embedded in the navigation," and "90% of Marble Springs is in the traveling!" She goes to the quarry, reminiscing about a time she took people attending an electronic literature conference up to a real Colorado quarry. Stuart Moulthrop, participating in the Traversal's YouTube Chat remembers this event and makes a comment about it, getting a laugh out of Larsen. Reading a poem about Red Birch, a "half-breed" woman who is part Native and part settler, Larsen's voice is resonant and slow. She discusses the recurrent theme of "confinement," which is represented in Red Birch's corset, as well as the freedom and erasure that comes to her characters through death. Navigating through the eye icon, which opens the Directory of the town, Larsen navigates to the "Ladies Aid Society" card, which displays the characters associated with that institution. Larsen describes how Marble Springs represents "many moments at once" and navigates to Emmy Mateson's card, describing her relationship with a controlling father, and from there to her controlling sister Ruby's card, where it becomes evident (though never explicitly stated) that "Emmy had five weeks of freedom in her whole life" between her father's death and Ruby's arrival in town.   

Deena Larsen’s Traversal of  Marble Springs 1.0, Part 4

Larsen decides to end on the lexia describing The White Owl, the bar that Emmy's father Jake owns. In order to navigate there, Larsen clicks strategically through the cards of characters associated with the site. Larsen describes her project as "quilting," a process in which each character is a different stitch. She brings the Traversal to the "happy story" about Billie Rose, an Irish immigrant who works at The White Owl. Pisarski asks Larsen to show the group the Jail and the various lives that have crossed through it. The group then gets a little lost, which Larsen takes in stride, saying "that happens in a small town." Arriving at The White Owl, Larsen opens pop-ups describing scenes of "Then" and "Now" at the bar, and elaborating on the "conceit" of  Marble Springs: "you're looking at a ghost town, and you're seeing the compressed levels of history hidden in those trunks, and you're sorting through them, linking them." Larsen concludes by thanking the organizers of the Traversal.

Deena Larsen’s Traversal of Marble Springs 1.0, Q&A, Part 1


Pisarski asks about the scale of Marble Springs, which Deena Larsen admits is so large that "I, actually, famously enough, failed a pop quiz on Marble Springs because I had forgotten what was in there. . . .  It is huge." Larsen; Mark Bernstein, the work's publisher; and hypertext theorist Nancy Kaplan did, however, create a smaller free demo of the work on a website in order to sell it. Pisarski then asks whether Larsen sees the work more as a "collection of poems" or as a "universe." Larsen answers that it is a "universe" because 90% of the work is in "what is never said . . . what you get when you put all of the connections together." Larsen stresses that an important aspect of Marble Springs were the "create-your-own buttons" that readers could use to write their own content in, and which she spent $4,000 developing with hypertext specialist Terry Harpold.

Deena Larsen’s Traversal of  Marble Springs 1.0, Q&A, Part 2

Pisarski questions Larsen about the origins of Marble Springs, which she "started writing at the age of eight." As a child, Larsen hung out at the Colorado Historical Museum Library where she would get "tea and lunch" and "touch the diaries of these women in the 1800s." At one point, she used a "desperation tea" recipe from those sources to cure her bronchitis. She then describes a difficult time in her life when she lived in a small town in Japan where she was the only foreigner, "was attacked," and found that "Marble Springs was my solace." After returning to the United States, she made Marble Springs into a set of laminated cards with embroidery thread, and a former professor of hers suggested she try HyperCard. Larsen worked with Mark Bernstein for many years to get Marble Springs published, which was difficult for her because "she's my baby" and she wanted to own the work. She describes her other works as "intellectual exercises" compared to Marble Springs, which is deeply and personally significant. Larsen then elaborates on the use of HyperCard for Marble Springs, which taught her that "structure is also meaning," and the "randomness" of navigation is a major part of the meaning of Marble Springs. Pisarski asks what software Larsen would use if she were writing Marble Springs today, and answers "locative hypertext," so she could express the "importance of place," adding that Marble Springs is designed "more as a private world than a public space." Grigar and Larsen then discuss Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, which they both love but which Larsen says "lacks the juxtaposition and connections" that hypertext affords.

Deena Larsen’s Traversal of  Marble Springs 1.0, Q&A, Part 3


Reading a comment from a Stuart Moulthrop in the chat that "Reclaiming Sobriety, Marble Springs, and Uncle Buddy's are the soul of HyperCard," Grigar asks Larsen if she agrees. Larsen compliments the programming of Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse and how HyperCard is used to express it. Pisarski then shares his view that Marble Springs takes time to read and is rewarding after one "accumulates glimpses" and gets to know the town. Holding her cat, which has crawled into the frame of her Zoom window, Larsen comments that Marble Springs "is the Victorian crazy quilt" in her body of work and her others are "patterned" pieces. Pisarski asks about the visuals in the work, and Larsen describes her desire for a "Victorian sense and sensibility" and "clutter" in Marble Springs, which Kathleen Turner Suarez, credited as illustrator, helped her accomplish. 
 

This page has paths:

This page references: