Module 5 - Siyao Chen

Link to my Pinterest board

The topic I chose for my curation is digital literature. According to Heckman and Sullivan (2018), digital literature refers to a construction that computation entitles their literary aesthetics, which is a word-centered, multimodal power system. From my perspective, digital literature is "born-digital" and hardly can be adapted to print. In my curation, I am going to share three pieces of digital literature, explaining how their "born-digital" feature contributes to interacting with readers.

Pin 1: The Gate

The first pin is a game essay called The Gate, which focuses on the Anthropocene, and explores the coexistence between humans and non-humans in the Anthropocene. According to Tisselli (2020), the conceptual foundation of "The Gate" is rooted in Danna Haraway’s idea: we must know how to coexist and forge diverse alliances with non-human entities so that we can 'stay with the trouble ' in the Anthropocene. During this video essay, readers need to meet different creatures and collect at least three languages to pass the gate, and in the end, it discloses the concept of the gate: human language. In my opinion, this anti-anthropocentrism digital literature shows that humans must welcome non-human voices into our bodies and embrace inclusive relationships with diverse forms of life if we want to coexist with other species. Just like Haraway (2016, p.31) said: " Nobody lives everywhere; everybody lives somewhere. Nothing is connected to everything; everything is connected to something".

In The Gate, readers can think about coexistence in the Anthropocene. For the audience who is completely unfamiliar with this concept, this interactive video essay is definitely more attractive than a single-threaded academic essay. Compared with the traditional linear essay, digital literature is "born-digital", so it gives the audience the ability to explore the possible endings depending on their own power. It can be interactive and allow readers to actually experience the aspects appealing to them and reach multiple endings, rather than telling them the "right path" through spoon-feeding education.

Pin 2-1: The Museum of Human Activity

The second pin I chose is a curation called The Museum of Human Activity: A Virtual Curation of Art and the Anthropocene. Joyce Seitzinger mentioned that social curation refers to the process of discovering, choosing, collecting, and sharing digital artifacts by an individual with the intention of a specific social purpose, such as collaboration, studying, expressing identity or engaging in community (Thompson & Reilly, 2019). In this museum of human activity, the author collects real-world Anthropogenic artworks to explore how human activities impact the environment through interactive storytelling (Confenete, 2021). Interactive storytelling is an essential part of digital literature, which means we can regard this virtual curation as a type of digital literature. The audiences can enter this virtual pixel museum for a tour as if they are in the real world. The works in the virtual museum also correspond to the works in real work.

Pin 2-2: Spiral Jetty

Pin 2-3: In the Bush

For instance, in pin 2-1, the artwork on the left side is Robert Smithson (1970) 's Spiral Jetty (Pin 2-2). From the explanation in the virtual museum, visitors can learn Smithson uses landscape and the earth's surface as a medium for his artwork to show humans' ability to behave as geological and biological agents. The artwork on the right side is Cilbert and George's In the Bush (1972) (Pin 2-3), which frames the possibility of human imagination and resists human influence by capturing "the wildest tree in Kew" (Tate, 2022).

Different from real-world visiting, the tour in a virtual pixel museum does not have the limitation of time and place. The inherently digital nature of this digital curation also allows audiences to experience the interactivity of enjoying the real-world exhibit. According to Confente (2021), the interactive nature of digital literature gives audiences larger freedom: the audience can even only admire the artwork without reading the narration--this neglect is also a metaphor --as if we are always moving through the Anthropocene, benefiting from technology without exploring its dangers.

Pin 3: Depression Quest

The third digital literature is a twine game called Depression Quest (Pin 3). According to Moulthrop (2017), Twine games focus on the intimacy of mechanics, which means instead of market-driven entertainment, they invest more in individual expression. This interactive game expresses the struggles and efforts of people with depression, encourages people with depression that they are not alone, and provides an opportunity for the general public to learn about depression.

"Twine games are themselves fundamentally cross-bred, combining elements of hypertext, procedural fiction, and text adventure (Moulthrop, 2017, p.7)". It can be seen that the Twine game is a significant place for digital literature for it can integrate various elements and contribute to the interactivity of digital literature. Digital literature moves away from the traditional, linear approach so that readers can explore the possibilities of text and understand the author better.

In general, the three different pins in my curation show how the "born-digital" feature in digital literature increases interactivity. Digital literature can use an attractive way to guide the audience to think about the part they used to ignore, provide a real-world experience in a virtual environment, and use a non-linear way to immerse the reader in other emotions. 


References

Confente, O. (2021, September 12). The Museum of Human Activity: A Virtual Curation of Art and the Anthropocene. the museum of human activity: a virtual curation of art and the anthropocene. https://thedigitalreview.com/issue01/confente-see-the-anthropocene/index.html

Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11cw25q

Heckman, D. & O'Sullivan, J. (2018) 'Electronic Literature: Contexts and Poetics' In: Literary Studies in a Digital Age, New York: Modern Language Association. doi: 10.1632/lsda.2018.14

Moulthrop, S. (2017). Intimate mechanics: One model of electronic literature. Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, (17). https://doi.org/10.20415/hyp/017.e03 

Pereira, P. (2020). Greening the Digital Muse: An Ecocritical Examination of Contemporary Digital Art and Literature, Electronic Book Review, https://doi.org/10.7273/v30n-1a73

Tate. (2022). 'in the Bush,' Gilbert & George, 1972. Retrieved October 31, 2022, from https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/gilbert-george-in-the-bush-t01702

The Digital Review (2022). Retrieved October 31, 2022, from https://thedigitalreview.com/

Thompson, S., & Reilly, M. (2019). “Everyone’s a Curator”: Identifying the Everyday Curator. International Journal of the Image, 10(2), 25–38. https://doi-org.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/10.18848/2154-8560/CGP/v10i02/25-38 

Tisselli, E. (2020). A game-essay on Coexistence and Spectrality in the anthropocene: By Eugenio Tisselli. the gate. https://thedigitalreview.com/issue00/the-gate/index.html