Reactions to The Silent History, "Reagan Library" and "That Sweet Old Etcetera"

The Silent History - Various

An intriguing blend of storytelling, story-creating, and interactivity. This is possibly one of the best digital objects I've seen, from a production standpoint. The real-world feel of it as a narrative combined with the ability to both access field reports at certain locations written by others and to create reports of one's own for others to access is clever, allowing the underlying story to remain but be supplemented in as many ways as there are extra tidbits to read. Fully crowd-sourced fiction can be sporadic in quality, as in any collaborative project involving dissimilar people and styles thrown together, but the core narrative is amazing as a stand-alone. It's beautifully put together in a technical sense. The blend of traditional text and pseudo-presentation/documentary mixes well, lending it a credence beyond standard fiction. The sheer spectrum of options open to this medium adds something to the art of storytelling that print-only narratives cannot match. Not better, but as good, certainly, and with amazing potential.

"Reagan Library" - Stuart Moulthrop

This would have gone better, I think, if it were meant for a modern platform rather than IE 2 or Netscape. The description makes it sound like there was meant to be audio, forgive the phrase. Also, the point-and-click on objects to move thing didn't work, so hyperlink was the only way to navigate. Still, the ability to drag the screen around to get a 360-degree view was nice. Maybe because it was so silent but interactive, the object was interestingly creepy, and the randomly-generated text at points enhanced that. The feel of an odd systemic human/machine hybrid breakdown actually rather worked given the crippled abilities of the object itself. It feels a bit like this excellent passage from an excellent book. (from 301 to 302) What it didn't feel like was that it became more coherent (or sensible) as things progressed. Just more eloquently creepy/disassociative breakdown-y.

"That Sweet Old Etcetera" - Alison Clifford

This was a little bit beautiful. The medium made for an interesting and innovative illustration of the message. The interactivity, the musical tones, the lovely construction of the poems into a landscape...all brilliant. Hard to read at times, but in line with the spirit of Cummings' style. Can be a bit tricky to navigate without cheating using the tab button, or at least the swaying tree part was, but even that makes it a little playful, in keeping with the tone of the object. This is as much visual art as it is poetry, and it makes me think of the points brought up in Goldsmith's "It's Not Plagiarism. In the Digital Age, it's 'Repurposing.'" The core poetry may not be new, but the presentation of it certainly is, and all the better for being presented in a way commensurate with the message.