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Video nof Dawn, taken by William Siege
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2019-11-19T18:27:00-08:00
Although Dawn isn’t highly interactive, it still has the appeal of a well pieced together piece of digital literature. By use of fading texts and gradual change, the piece entrances the reader and forces them to think quickly and concisely to understand what is happening before the entire image has transformed. There are only brief moments where both words and images are completely solidified, which is why the reader is given a singular pause button. If the cursor is hovered over the pause button, the images will freeze allowing the reader a better ability to read and take in the images. All of the separate pieces of dawn together are supposed to be overwhelming. It mimics the feelings of loss, when there are too many emotions and too many stimuli at a given moment to understand everything. When paused, the images freeze but the sound stays constant. The purpose of the sound is to provide a relaxing background that remains steady and independent of the pictures and of the words. Each piece of Dawn is independent from each other, addressing different aspects of a person's needs when they are in crisis. The sound fills the need for stability in a time when everything seems so uncertain.
New media is able to utilize sound and images in a way that no previous literature ever could, creating an entirely new experience. In traditional literature, it would be difficult to convey such emotions in so few words, but the addition of changing images has allowed for the advancement of literature into a new, more compact and powerful form. Leonardo Flores, in his "Electronic Literature in 2016" https://entropymag.org/electronic-literature-in-2016-definitions-trends-preservation-and-projections/ discusses how many modern literary critics will proclaim that poetry is dead. He argues contrarily, that poetry has simply transformed into a form more applicable to modern society. Electronic poetry is the new most effective means of conveying emotions through literature.
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