Blog # 6

Please write a reflection - your thoughts/questions resulting from reading Amanda Gould's article on Electronic Literature.

Amanda Gould’s made me think about how creators of E-lit are not only writers, but artists.  After I created my own piece of E-lit, I noticed how the lexia was only a fraction of the work.  I needed to also be a graphic designer and make sure the piece I put together told a complete story.  From the colors I used, to the positioning of items on the page, I needed to make sure the feeling of the piece was coming from the story I was trying to tell. 

“E-lit provides students new objects to think with and new ways to think the objects (the text) we think we know” writes Gould.  The potential of the literature has reached new heights, giving the reader more of an opportunity to critique it and interpret it in different ways.  As we do when we go to a museum, we take apart artwork and relate it to ourselves or things we have learned in our lives.  The same applies to an E-lit piece.  You learn from the work as you extract the meaning of it. 

“In “Five Elements of Digital Literature,” Noah Wardrip-Fruin agrees that in order to properly read digital literature, we must avoid shallow categorizations” says Gould.  I agree with what Noah says because of when I did my E-lit review assignment.  I couldn’t be general in critiquing it; the experience wouldn’t have been the same.  It is one thing to simply look at a piece of E-lit and comment on it, but it is a whole other experience when you spend hours looking at it and dissecting it.  Applying different theories/understandings is what really gets you to experience the piece.  The more specific attention you give the E-lit work from beginning to end, the more you get out of it.  Gould goes into more detail speaking on Wardrip-Fruin’s work on “the five key elements to consider when reading E-lit paradigms which are data, processes, interaction, surface, and context”.  I agree, with all of these, the reader will gain a deep understanding of the piece. Specifically with “interaction”, because in my opinion this is where the reader would find how they connected with the piece on a personal level.  

A question I would like to ask the author is if she thinks E-lit will develop further in the future, and if this new progression will change E-lit from how we understand/connect with it today.