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Powerlessness In Electronic Literature: By Blake Aschenbrener, Sriram Satyavolu, and Savannah Walters

Untrace by Serge Bouchardon

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Traces Left
Types of Traces

Bourchardon plays with the word “trace” in its noun and verb form; the first leaves a small piece of physical evidence, a clue for instance, and the second means both to unearth and to outline an image. In this work, the word “trace” refers to the five meanings, each correlating to a numbered section of the text:

1. a message left by a stranger
2. memories of the speaker and reader
3. a mark on another person
4. self-expression
5. one’s child

Traces of the Past
Memories, the second form of tracing, make themselves especially pertinent. The past interactions, although an intangible record of existence, remain in their mind as an image/idea of you, as a trace of you. This suggests that your relationships are also traces, so long as the memories are alive. In short, you leave a trace every time you leave a memory in someone else’s mind. In Untrace, the reader only comprehends the artifacts left of the narrator’s past. The reader becomes an investigator of the speaker’s story, putting the pieces together to retrace a cohesive narrative. The bits and pieces from the character’s memory stand as the only basis of information about the speaker. In Memory and Motion, an academic article on digital writing by Maria Angel and Anna Gibbs, states, “…the developments of the human mind and of material culture have co-evolved in a relationship where human knowledge is reliant on forms of externalised memory” (3). This claims our informational knowledge depends on verbally (or artistically) expressed memories. In the case, the narrator expresses their past in visual, verbal, and perhaps audio. making Untrace a fascinating path of narrative breadcrumbs.
Definition of Trace
With his manipulation of “trace”, Bouchardon prompts the reader to question its specificities. Can you leave a trace without identifying its owner? In other words, can you leave an untraceable trace? A traces lead you to the thing it embodies. Bourchardon negates the word into the title Untrace. Does this addition of the prefix “un-” refer to untracing as in following the path back to its roots? Or undoing or avoiding any clue received? It could refer to any number of definitions. If I, however, trace my hand on a sheet of paper, it silhouettes the shape of a hand, and the brain fills in the outline with the skin and bone it’s missing. If I trace a drawing, by following its lines I inherently make a copy of the original image. A trace can mean a trackable piece of evidence that leads back to a source or a sprinkle of something, i.e. “Just a little bit”. In fact, all of these definitions of “trace” lead the tracker to whoever left something behind.
Loss of Power
Vulnerability
The most jarring aspect of Untrace, stands in its vulnerability, in the lack of control and of choice. Within the first two minutes of playing, a list of names and dates appear on the screen. It is not explicit what prompt pops up for the reader to insert their name on an unfamiliar screen when they don’t know anything about the narrator. At the start, you
are asked if you would like to leave a trace, but you have no control over the answer. If you try clicking “Refuse,” it automatically moves your mouse over to the accept button and clicks it for you (see right).

Not Alone
The reader is suspicious of entering their name because that means they will and are being traced, and it only gets more intrusive from there. The next prompts the reader to enter a memory at school, and the next offers to take a picture from your webcam, the most visual and highly personal trace: a selfie. Behind this screen with the camera though, the player can see other peoples pictures from laptop cameras, slightly burred in the background of your own picture-taking indulgence. With these pictures and the list of the last 34 previous players, the reader realizes they are not alone in this helpless feeling. I thought, everyone else experienced the same powerlessness and lack of choice that I did, so although I played it alone, I feel connected to the past player that also didn’t have a choice in whether or not to leave a trace or not. In reality, you have the choice whether or not to leave something behind or to “disappear and leave nothing behind. In the game, however, you truly don’t have a choice because if you refuse to enter your name or message, you cannot move onto the rest of the work. You are left powerless.

Helpless together
Interestingly, the narrator is also helpless in part of the story. Speaking through the screen, they struggle between their desire to leave a trace and the wish to disappear without a single one. The tables turn to the narrator relying on the reader to aid them in tracing their past, their traces. At one point the narrator says, “I would like to find traces of my past. ... Through traces left by others’ past lives.” This reveals that the player/reader doesn’t simply exist experience the electronic literature; they are also there to aid the narrator in recollecting their memories, and underneath, to do the same for the reader. The player learns that the narrator is just as powerless as they are, but both have the power to learn from the other. The player trusts that their information won't be sold to some third party, and the speaker desperately reaches out to find their traces.
Image, Audio, and Touch
Audio Heartbeat
In this work, the visual, audio, and haptic elements immerse the reader into the work and bait them into following the narrative. The audio, the most immediately noticeable of these three media, permeates throughout each section of the work. Albeit it varies slightly in each new page, it stays uniformly ominous and intense. In the beginning, the music stays on a single note and varies only in the octave in which that note plays (higher or lower). The sound pulses. When the swinging lightbulb appears, the pulsing quickens, and the player feels the pressure of time with the increase of tempo. In fact, according to a study done at the University of Wisconson, because the music pulses at a faster tempo, the listeners' heart rate and systolic blood pressure increase from their baseline levels ("Effects of music tempos on blood pressure..." 6-7). Then electric guitar enters the music, playing major and minor thirds, making the reader feel a little more overwhelmed with the quickened pace, with more people listening than you’ve ever imagined. My immediate thought upon hearing this music jumped to dramatic cutscenes from interrogation rooms. The music in Untrace pressures the reader to pay attention and make the right decisions because the stakes stand high. The pulsing audio evokes the feeling of a crime scene where pieces of evidence must not go unnoticed.
In addition to the audio, the visual format affects the interpretation of the narrative. With the majority of the work taking place on a solid black screen, the reader has no choice but to pay attention to the small white words in a simple typewriter font. This format draws focus to the content of the phrases rather than any visual distraction. The first image, in fact, doesn’t appear until a minute into the game (a stark difference from many aesthetically pleasing e-literature works). At this point, a lightbulb swings back and forth until the reader clicks it. When they do this, the light turns on (logically), and reveals a chunk of hidden text. The single lightbulb in a dark room, alongside the music, reminds the reader of an interrogation scene, leaving the reader feeling intimidated and powerless. The lightbulb incorporates the traces left behind with the trace of a body on the scene of a crime.
Tactile Trace
Although music and imaging add depth to the piece, the most fascinating media layer of Untrace is the tactile one. In one part of the work, the player has to mouse over the phrases “You are my trace” pop up in different areas across the screen. Because I use a mousepad to navigate the screen, I followed each phrase as it appeared, and ended up physically tracing the path with my finger. Then as soon as I touched each phrase, so to speak, the audio played of different young boys saying "I'm tracing you!" Although a player would not experience this tactile interaction if they using a mouse, I did, and it made me feel connected to the trace the piece left on me.