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1. The Doll Games

   The Doll Games is a hypertext project that documents a complex narrative game that Shelley and Pamela Jackson used to play when they were prepubescent girls, and frames that documentation in faux-academic discourse. In “sitting uneasily between” different styles of discourse, the work enlists the reader to differentiate between authoritative knowledge and play. Although the dolls in question are “things of childhood,” the project reveals that in the games the authors used to play with these dolls, one can find the roots of both Pamela and Shelley’s “grownup” lives: Shelley’s vocation as a fiction writer, and Pamela’s as a Berkeley-trained Ph.D. in Rhetoric. Throughout, the project plays with constructions of gender and of identity. This is a “true” story that places truth of all kinds in between those ironic question marks. The Doll Games is a network novel in the sense that it uses the network to construct narratives in a particularly novel way. The Doll Games is also consciously structured as a network document, and plays in an ironic fashion with its network context.

   Scott Rettberg - 26.02.2011 - 16:24

2. Nio

   The main part of the Nio project is an interactive audio piece done in Shockwave. It consists of two "verses." In verse 1, the wreader layers audio and lettristic animations. In verse 2, the wreader both layers and sequences them. Verse 2 is a little sequencer. The Nio project has other parts such as the source code (requires Macromedia Director 8+); the (Shockwave) Song Shapes, which are audioless and use the same animations as in Nio; an essay on the poetics of interactive audio for the web; an essay on audio programming in Director, which is now part of the Macromedia documentation; still visual poetry drawn from onion skins of Nio animations; and an interview by Randy Adams with me about Nio.

   (Source: Author's abstract: Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1)

   Scott Rettberg - 26.02.2011 - 23:06

3. Iterature

   Iterature

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 01.03.2011 - 11:48

4. Reach, a Fiction

   Reach, a Fiction

   Jill Walker Rettberg - 24.03.2011 - 10:46

5. Labyrinth: the Rulebook without Game

   An ergodic Flash text exploring video game culture through the lens of playable manuals.

   How does one read this clever piece, which touches on so many genres, such as poetry, fiction, game, theory, game manual, and codework? It claims to be a manual for an absent game, a bottomless pit, and a labyrinth for readers to get lost, wondering if indeed the game has already begun. The reader inhabits a character from the outset, a 35 year old married man, who can take on different roles in games belonging to popular RPG and videogame genres: science fiction, spy thriller, fantasy, and labyrinth exploration. Most of the writing is in the tradition of game manual for these types of games (here’s an old favorite) which at their best help immerse the readers into the world of the game and can be more fun than the game itself. In the case of tabletop RPGs, like Dungeons & Dragons, the game is the rulebooks, and all it requires is players and some dice for the necessary randomizations— making them good recipients of the label “cardboard computers,” as Matthew Kirschenbaum has used for tabletop wargames.

   Mark Marino - 28.03.2011 - 16:12

6. Chroma

   Chroma is an interactive serial that examines issues of racial identity in virtual environments through a tightly choreographed combination of graphics, voice and music. Three digital explorers are tasked by their mentor with the creation of avatars that will enable exploration of a newly rediscovered "natural cyberspace" humans long ago lost the ability to access. Conflict arises when one character pauses to question the wisdom of blindly forging ahead with human representation in the digital world. Interactive real-time animations are used to represent the thoughts and feelings of the main characters, and respond to the user in intimate ways that help to illuminate the unfolding story while building emotional connections with its central players.

   (Source: Author's description from Electronic Literature Collection, Volume Two)

   Scott Rettberg - 15.04.2011 - 13:45

7. New Digital Emblems

   I probably encountered emblems first through the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay. Like much that I admire, emblems are really on the margins of art and literary history. Before the dot.com bust, so much that was written about the web struck me as wrong-headed. People imputed what I can only call 'magic' to web's feature set. Low-cost-per-million multimedia interactivity was going to change the world. I knew that people had said similar things about the emblem, and had offered, in outline, many of the same reasons for it. So the emblem, often literally magical, became a caricature of the web.

   (Source: Author's description from Electronic Literature Collection, Volume Two)

   Scott Rettberg - 15.04.2011 - 15:18

8. All Roads

   Venice. The tight winding alleys and long dirty canals. Easy to become lost here, where every street emerges somewhere unexpected. In the central square a scaffold has been erected for your neck, and if only you can escape for long enough you might survive, but in this city all roads lead back to Piazza San Marco and the Hanging Clock.

   (Source: Author's description from Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1)

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 18.04.2011 - 12:53

9. Carving in Possibilities

   Carving in Possibilities is a short Flash piece. By moving the mouse, the user carves the face of Michelangelo's David out of speculations about David, the crowd watching David and Goliath, the sculptor, and the crowds viewing the sculpture.
   (Source: author's description in ELC 1.)

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 18.04.2011 - 13:28

10. Cruising

    On one level, Cruising is an excited oral recitation of a teenager's favorite pastime in small town Wisconsin, racing up and down the main drag of Main Street looking to make connections, wanting love. But by merging the linear aspect of the sound recording with an interactive component that demands a degree of control, Cruising reinforces the spatial and temporal themes of the poem by requiring the user to learn how to “drive” the text. A new user must first struggle with gaining control of the speed, the direction, and the scale in order to follow the textual path of the narrative. When the text on the screen and the spoken words are made to coincide, the rush of the image sequence is reduced to a slow ongoing loop of still frames. The viewer moves between reading text and experiencing a filmic flow of images — but cannot exactly have both at the same time. In this way, the work seeks to highlight the materiality of text, film, and interface.

    (Souce: Authors' description from Electronic Literature Collection, Volume One)

    Scott Rettberg - 22.04.2011 - 13:43

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