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Interactive Storytelling: A New Era

8/1/2017

by John Gross

Throughout time technology has changed how the writer crafts his novel. From pen and paper, to typewriters, to word processing—the tools of the trade are constantly evolving. In today’s world, the writer can craft a sentence and move it around to different places, supplementing paragraphs where he sees fit. This can be a powerful tool, that makes the revision process more fluid and dynamic. An author can be less committed to putting something on a page, where it can be easily reshaped, moved, and removed. While this technology has fundamentally changed how the novelist crafts his work, it hasn’t really changed how the reader consumes it. Sure, we are in a period of time that is showing the rise of e-readers and digital print, but ultimately the novel is being experienced in the same traditional way.

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Play Your Books: Video Games as Electronic Literature

9/1/2016

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By Jessica M. Tuckerman

Here’s a brief description of one of my favorite stories: Desmond Miles just escaped from Abstergo Industries, the modern day face of the Knights Templar, after he was forced to live out the genetic memories of his ancestor who fought in the crusades. He escapes with Lucy Stillman and two others who help him to reach a secluded cave where Desmond relives the memories of Ezio Auditore da Firenze. The story jumps between Ezio’s story in the Italian Renaissance and the cave where Desmond is desperately trying to find an alien device which will destroy the world if it falls into the wrong hands. By reliving Ezio’s memories, Desmond hopes to find where the device is hidden before Abstergo catches up to him.

The story is full of twists and turns. I actually cried when Ezio, the narrator for much of the story, had to watch his family hang in the middle of Firenze. I love the plot, I love the framed narrative, I love seeing Italy during the Renaissance. I was consistently surprised throughout my first reading of the piece and I truly recommend that you pick it up.

The story is from Assassin’s Creed II. A video game.

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"Poems Porn:" Abomination or Revolution?

2/1/2016

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by G. Mitchell Layton

Image via "Poems Porn" Facebook Page

Pornography: a word that tends to make people uncomfortable, a sort of taboo concept that can instantly cause nervous laughter or shock value. Typically we avoid the subject, but recently there has been a trend amongst social networking pages to add the word “porn” to their page names. With accounts like “food porn, “science porn,” or “word porn,” that use the word “porn” as a way to show that they’ll be posting the best and most appealing content of their subject, much like pornography. For example, the “Food Porn” page posts delicious pictures of gourmet dishes from the best chefs, which is enough to arouse the hungry and become porn-like to a borderline addicted foodie. The “Science Porn” page posts exotic images of nature and the universe to show the beauty of science in our world.

The porn aspect of these pages is obviously exaggerated, because no one has the same reaction to a key lime pie as they would to hardcore pornography (at least I would hope not). However, the concept remains the same, and some of these pages on Facebook and Twitter have millions of followers.

This brings me to my personal favorite of the “porn” pages: “Poems Porn.” It’s a bit misleading as, in my opinion, the page has nothing to do with poetry despite the description on their Facebook page that states, “Beautiful poems found online. We Claim no rights to the pics that are posted here.” Beauty is relative and up for interpretation, and apparently so is the concept of poetry. Where the “food porn” page at least posts pictures of tasty treats, the poems porn page has not posted one poem, or rather, none that seem like actual poems to me. They seem more like quotes or inspiring phrases. So if they’re not poems, and they’re definitely not porn, what are they?

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Research in the Age of Instant Gratification

8/1/2015

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by Leslie Martinelli

A few years ago, I read that Encyclopedia Britannica no longer would be printing encyclopedias. Add that to the list of things from my childhood that no longer exist. Don't get me wrong - I'm not anti-progress. Where would we be without air conditioning, microwave ovens, and cell phones? And some of those extinct items deserved to go, like cars without seat belts and manual typewriters. But every now and then technology interferes where it doesn't belong, and I just have to say: Stop! Enough!

Encyclopedias are a case in point. Those printed volumes held many fond memories for me. The first set to enter my family’s house came by way of a door-to-door salesman. That set caused some conflict between my parents. My father had warned my mother time and again not to let salesmen in the front door, let alone buy from any of them. They were, he said, like seagulls - once you fed one of them, you couldn't get rid of the flock. Our house was testament to that caveat; we owned a top-of-the-line vacuum and enough brushes and cleaning products to supply the whole neighborhood. My mother stood by her latest purchase, though. As she saw it, that set of encyclopedias was an investment in my and my brothers’ educational futures.

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Multi-modal: Right Under Our Noses

6/15/2015

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credit: TypeMoon

by Michael Nusspickel

Multi-modal art has been gaining popularity among artists for the past decade, and it would be hard to argue that video games aren’t a means of creating a multi-modal experience for an audience. Within the genre of video games exists a niche sub-genre that logically should be the answer to many writer’s problems with choosing a medium, but it has barely been noticed (if at all) outside of the gaming community: the visual novel.

Visual novels are novels that use visual and audio cues alongside text to communicate their content. A mix between graphic novels, video games, and pure prose, the visual novel allows a writer to have a product with visual art as an integral part of the storytelling but without sacrificing one’s prose for it. Text is delivered through speech boxes, backgrounds and characters are drawn, and sound and music add to the experience. Visual novels offer everything a graphic novel does, but with the ability to ignore a graphic novel’s layout limitations on word count. They originated in Japan but have been around for well over a decade at this point, so the question becomes: how come they haven’t caught on with Western writers?

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Television is Ruining My Relationship With My Parents: I Don't Blame Them

4/28/2014

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by Brian Maloney

credit: dailyinvention via flikr

Whenever I visit my parents around dinner time, my dad has the television on. This is not uncommon. Around this time however, there are only a handful of syndicated comedies that he will watch. And most of them make me leave the room. When I complain to my parents about how terrible these television shows are, they reply that after working all day they just want to “veg out.” So what does this comment say about my parents? Like many Americans at the end of the day, my parents are tired of thinking.

The shows that they watch, shows like Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory, are ratings juggernauts. They win their respective time slots every time a new episode airs and their syndicated episodes have high ratings as well. To put these shows on at dinner time in the Philadelphia area, where I live, was a stroke of genius for the networks that chose to do so. They knew that they had viewers ready to leave their televisions on during dinner time, and once the show was over in the half-hour dinner block, they would run the same show again to keep those viewers right where they wanted them. It’s possible for these shows to run without continuity or out of order. They can be aired without having season long story arcs. Viewers can watch any episode at any time and not have to worry about what is going on. The concept of each show is simple enough for the casual and longtime viewer to be able to enjoy the show equally.

This does not mean that my parents are stupid or lazy. It just means that I am experiencing entertainment in a different way than they are used to. There are talk shows devoted to specific television shows now. Viewers can use specific hashtags during the program to tweet their feelings and read others feelings on the same subject. It is a new way of conveying feelings over entertainment that is unique to the internet generation. So while I may not like the shows that my parents watch, I can’t blame them for watching. Those shows rely on an old model of television. Something that the executives know has worked in the past and continues to work today.

During the Thursday night comedy blocks, NBC and CBS are frequently competing. CBS has Big Bang at 8 PM, while NBC has countered with a carousel of shows consisting of Community, Parks and Recreation, and 30 Rock. Why has NBC had such a hard time competing with CBS’s Big Bang Theory? Is it due to the revolving door of comedies that they have kept spinning? I believe it is because each one of these shows is a “thinkers” comedy with season long story arcs and sophisticated humor.

Now that viewers have any television show they want to watch in an instant through programs such as Netflix and Hulu, the older generations stick to what they know. Are they afraid of change? This seemed apparent when NBC gave over the late night reigns to popular-with-the-younger-generation’s Conan O’Brien. Most of the viewers who watched The Tonight Show ending up choosing David Letterman over O’Brien, which, according to the ratings, never happened when Jay Leno was at the helm. According to the Associated Press Conan had been, “averaging 2.5 million nightly viewers, compared with 4.2 million for Letterman's "Late Show," according to Nielsen figures.” It seemed as though the audience could not relate to O’Brien’s absurdist form of comedy and for that and poor ratings he was quickly booted. Jay Leno was promptly reinstated as the new/old host of Tonight. The changing of the guard was not embraced.

Traditions are supposed to be passed down from parents to children and I believe this includes entertainment choices as well. There are things that my parents have passed down onto me that I still partake in. There are still shows that I will watch with my parents that we all enjoy such as Boardwalk Empire. But when I try to tell them to watch a show they rarely get into it.

A show like Breaking Bad was another show that I tried to get them to watch and one that struggled in its ratings throughout most of its run. However, its cult following saved it from cancellation. Through word of mouth most viewers caught up due to DVD’s or Netflix in time for the final eight episodes. The viewership jumped through the roof from the season four finale to the series finale. According to Entertainment Weekly, Season four’s finale racked in 1.9 million viewers while the season five finale had 10.3 million viewers tune in. This is a testament to how good the show was, and a direct response from viewers who wanted to watch something of a higher quality on their Sunday evenings. The younger generations are calling for better programming.

This new generation of viewers is experiencing things in a vastly different way than the generations that came before. With the birth of the internet, everything we do can be recorded. We experience things differently. If we want to relive a moment over and over again we have the ability to. Everything can be over analyzed to death, if we want, and most of the time it is. When we watch a television show we can immediately relive it. As soon as a show ends we can use the internet to read how other people feel, what critics think, what certain references mean, and we can even express our own feelings through different media.

Our parents have never encountered television, movies, and other experiences in that way until now. Television that they grew up with was usually a single camera show with a laugh track. And another reason for the popularity of these shows that are winning in the ratings is the inclusion of the laugh track. Most of the comedies that lead the ratings include a laugh track; a designated cue of when to laugh. However, comedies are just beginning to break that mold such as the multi-camera comedy The Office on NBC which does not use the laugh track. This in turn causes the viewer to think about the previous joke and lets them decide when and when not to laugh.

Every generation wants to pass down traditions to their children, but their children change. Trends change, as does the thinking from generation to generation. My grandparents liked forms of entertainment that my parents did not understand, and I know that my children will not understand some of my entertainment choices as well. And that’s why I don’t blame my parents for liking what they do. The shows that they enjoy get good ratings because they are smart; they play to their audience and know what they like. As do my parents. They know what they like. And so do I. Even though I don’t always agree with their choices, I can see why they make them. They want to be entertained when they come home from work, and if that doesn’t involve a show that I like, then so be it. But I still reserve the right to roll my eyes, and leave the room.

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Cross-genre before it was cool

1/20/2014

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Cross-genre (before it was cool)

Amelia Thatcher

Genre seems like a rote device, four solidly identifiable modes of writing: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama. But long before writ- ers added hyper- links and embedded video to their work and called it mul- tigenre, tangible changes were un- derway to subvert rigid methods of expressing oneself. From gothic fiction to the invention of political science, writers were more inventive than any traditional view might hold.

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Texting Harry Potter: The Absence of Digital Media in Popular Fiction

3/3/2013

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Texting Harry Potter:
The Absence of Digital Media in Popular Fiction

Cherita Harrell

It’s no secret that we’re in the midst of a digital era. Our lives are consumed with technology, and we’re surrounded by digital natives—or what writer Marc Prensky defines in his article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, as a person born during or after the general introduction of digital technologies, and through interaction, has a greater understanding of its concepts. These digital natives spend most of their time fiddling with their iToys as they immerse themselves in forms of instantaneous communication. They are addicted to their gadgets, and are slaves to the conveniences of their smart phones, tablets, and social networking websites. Their devotion to technology is evident in the songs they listen to, and the movies they watch. It’s difficult to imagine, especially with so many sources encouraging our consumption of digital media, that there is a way for us to escape the pings, beeps and vibrations of our electronic lifelines. However, although digital technology is prevalent in our lives, there are some forms of entertainment that provide us with the opportunity to escape our digital leashes—forms of entertainment such as fantasy fiction.

As technology continues to evolve, it’s peculiar that our addictions have yet to trickle into the popular stories that dominate the shelves of our neighborhood Barnes & Noble. The fact that we turn off our HD televisions, silence our iPhones, and curl up on sofas with our Nooks and Kindles, so that we can read stories about magical realms, post-apocalyptic battle fields, and boys with lightning bolt scars, is intriguing. It seems it should be the digital immigrants—those born before the existence of digital technologies and have adopted it to some extent later in their life—that would willingly abandon their ties to technology in order to read a decent book. However, it’s peculiar that the digital natives that flock to the Apple store to stand in a four hour line so they can be the “first” to purchase a brand new device are some of the same individuals who gravitate to stories that exclude the types of technology heavily relied upon today. But why is this? Why are we unwilling to sever our ties with technology in our daily lives, but willing to dive head first into a fictional universe where these items don’t exist? Are we craving a world where we use carrier owls to relay messages? A world where we battle for our lives in an arena similar to the Thunderdome? A world where the only sources of communication are flashes in the sky, and messages attached to balloons? It’s unlikely that we want our world to mimic those of the popular protagonists that capture our attention through the pages of a well-written novel. So what’s the allure? Are we simply aware that digital media may be exciting in our personal lives, but in a book that is supposed to command our attention and entertain us—it would be downright boring?

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Writing: Then and Now: The Journey of Communication Back to Pictographics

2/12/2013

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Writing: Then and Now
The Journey of Communication: Back to Pictographics

Jane Blaus

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Interactive Storytelling: A New Era

Play Your Books: Video Games as Electronic Literature

"Poems Porn:" Abomination or Revolution?

Research in the Age of Instant Gratification

Multi-modal: Right Under Our Noses

Television is Ruining My Relationship With My Parents: I Don't Blame Them

Cross-genre before it was cool

Texting Harry Potter: The Absence of Digital Media in Popular Fiction

Texting Harry Potter:
The Absence of Digital Media in Popular Fiction

Cherita Harrell

Writing: Then and Now: The Journey of Communication Back to Pictographics

Writing: Then and Now
The Journey of Communication: Back to Pictographics

Jane Blaus

thoughts on writing, art, & new media by glassworks editorial staFF

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Texting Harry Potter: The Absence of Digital Media in Popular FictionCherita Harrell

Writing: Then and NowThe Journey of Communication: Back to PictographicsJane Blaus

﻿thoughts on writing, art, & new media by glassworks editorial staFF﻿

Archives

Categories

Texting Harry Potter:
The Absence of Digital Media in Popular Fiction

Cherita Harrell

Writing: Then and Now
The Journey of Communication: Back to Pictographics

Jane Blaus

thoughts on writing, art, & new media by glassworks editorial staFF