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Beneath the Surface: System Representation and Reader Reception in Electronic Literature
One challenge authors face when creating electronic literature is to balance immersion in the story with awareness of the underlying computational system (Wardrip-Fruin, 2010, 2013). This paper presents a preliminary investigation of the ways in which the representation of the underlying computational system in the user interface influences the readeräs focus on either the story or the underlying system. To begin exploring this question, we conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with seven participants. Each participant interacted with variations of a procedural hypertext story that represented the underlying system state either numerically or in natural language, and displayed the underlying system state either non-diegetically or diegetically. Observations suggest that although numerical representations make it easier for the reader to grasp the procedural nature of the system, they can also lead to a focus on playing the system, rather than on reading the story. Interestingly, participants reported that the natural language representation was harder to interpret, but that this difficulty actually enhanced their engagement with the storyworld.
Hannah Ackermans - 14.11.2015 - 15:06
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Toward Understanding Real-World Social Impacts of Avatars
Many digital narratives feature avatars onto which we project our agency, aspirations, and biases – consciously and unconsciously. This paper presents two projects towards understanding why we construct the avatars that we do and how these avatars impact us. The upshot is that electronic literature authors should take constructing avatars in digital systems seriously since they can potentially reinforce real-world stereotypes.
The first project consists of a system called AIRvatar (named for the Advanced Identity Representation), which is an avatar constructor for collecting analytical data such as mouse-click events and the amount of time spent in the different parts of the menu.
Hannah Ackermans - 27.11.2015 - 15:05
