This is the repository for my HSC Extension 2 English Major Work: Fragments of Gist
It is an electron app that acts as a story book.
Fragments of Gist
“The text is a tissue of citations” - Roland Barthes
As you read these words who is creating meaning? Is it me, the Author? You, the Audience? Society perhaps? Or, is it something else or someone else entirely?
My major work, entitled Fragments of Gist, is a digital media piece that explores the relationship between the Author, the Text and the Audience in generating meaning. It examines under what circumstances meaning is created, how that meaning is interpreted and why shared understanding between Author and Reader may not be achieved. My piece builds heavily on research into Reader Response Criticism, particularly the work of Barthes’ “The Death of the Author” , Foucault’s “What is an Author?” and other related works. It materialises notions such as: the originality of a piece of text; the Author as God and keeper of ‘true’ divine meaning; the inherent performative act of writing; and the situational and contextual position that the Audience is interpreting meaning from. My piece packages these notions into one digital experience for the audience to explore. The purpose of Fragments of Gist is to question this Author, Audience and Text relationship that we often take for granted during the reading experience. It aims to provide an entertaining yet (ironically) meaningful interactive experience where the audience is not necessarily directed, but can explore these concepts on their own terms, through their own reading experience.
My piece would be intended for readers of Seizure’s “Alt-Text” digital magazine. Being digital in nature suit my form well, and therefore the readers would be well versed in using digital technologies to experience the piece. Alt-Text aims to take digital experiences “past the inclusion of technology in writing as a contemporary gesture” and specifically explore the “relationship to the platforms and devices that filter and distribute the ways we make meaning. [...] We want pages/screens of writing that are all-too-aware of their pagey-ness/screeny-ness”. Given my piece uses the digital medium as an essential component of the reading experience coupled with the concept being exactly about how meaning is generated, I believe the readers of Alt-Text fit the bill perfectly as an intended audience.
Originally, the project was set to be a social satire that stemmed from my family’s experience with our cafe. When receiving criticism (particularly on review and travel sites such as TripAdvisor) my parents would act in a very particular way to make changes. I was interested in the critic’s (an audience) power over action and my parent’s (an audience) interpretive power over the review itself. While the concept itself may have drastically changed over time, a core interest underpinning the concept has remained unaltered: audience power and interpretation.
Investigation into concept however was required to become increasingly disparate from the original. Previously my concept was not clear as to how it achieved my purpose. Following the advice of mentors, further independent investigation has replaced research primarily concerned with self-censorship, ‘feelpinions’, emotional manipulation through social media and the changing role of humans in an interconnected world with research that was more focussed towards my purpose. This included investigation into Chomsky’s Context Free Grammar , Leavitt's and Christenfeld’s research: Story spoilers don’t spoil stories , Barthes’s work (including Introduction and The Death of The Author ) and research into narratology and forms of storytelling (particularly Herman’s Towards a Transmedial Narratology, Cassell and McNeill’s Gesture and the Poetics of Prose and the suite of essays in Ryan’s Narrative Across Media)
As a result of this investigation, not only has the entire direction of the piece changed, but it has affected how the narrative progresses. Alfie’s awareness of his position in a digital media piece now allows him to make explicit quotation from some of these sources. This assisted my purpose by clarifying to the audience exactly what I was trying to say. The use of a self-aware narrator in my piece allows me to make effective explicit reference to ‘the world of the Reader’ and it works as my purpose revolves around the exploration of this boundary between the Reader’s world and the Author’s fiction. This kind of narrator also plays to my audience who respond well to pieces “all-too-aware of their pagey-ness/screeny-ness”
The structure of my piece is essential to illustrating my purpose. The structure directly affects how the piece is read and it took some time to consider how best to approach it. The choose-your-own-adventure style structure was implemented early in the process after research into interactive pieces such as Lifeline and Senongo Akpem’s well regarded articles on Building Nonlinear Narratives for the Web. However I was soon to realise that this kind of structure didn’t really do much to promote my purpose. The solution was found in an article about Semantic Bleaching. By using emojis as the form of interaction from one section to the next, the Audience is interpreting the meaning of an ambiguous image based on their prior experience of the image. Furthermore, an emoji’s appearance changes based on the device they are viewed upon, thus relating to the idea of the context that the audience approach the text from changes meaning. This readily depicting my purpose in an appropriate way.
There was also the consideration of time restrictions on the major work. I do not know how fast or slow the Audience will progress through the piece, nor do I know the reading sequence they will take, nor the platform they are viewing on. Investigation into Tree Structures vs Directed Network Structures significantly altered how I set out my piece and continuous editing of logic maps throughout the process helped clarify this. Research into various technologies code libraries allowed me to create an experience that would be constant across Mac and Windows devices. The form allows me to record the time, and when the time reaches eighteen minutes, progress the reader to the final sequence. This may mean the reader misses some of the content however this apparent obstacle actually contributes to my purpose. I, the Author, can never be sure of the situation that the Reader has found themselves in. They’re interpretation of my meaning will differ because they may have been cut off or never reached from some section of the storyline. This absolutely assists my purpose.
I needed to ensure the technology did not distract from the reading experience, but instead complimented it. This is essential to ensure the piece is effective for my intended audience which calls for technology not simply “as a contemporary gesture” but a significant part of the piece. A phone interview with Ella Rubeli, an award winning journalist who specialises in digital articles, clarified the need for engaging pieces: “We ask the question: how can we hook people at an early stage and tell a story that’s going to be really engaging, not distracting or unintuitive” To remedy the inherent confusion with a digital media piece, the story was kept very simple. The plot, although chosen by the reader, remains linear and engagement is maintained both by the humour of Alfie and occasional interactive media points throughout the story. These points, such as the conversion of text to syllables or oral narration of a ‘chapter’ work in conjunction with research into reader response criticism. The research is often explicitly stated or alluded to by Alfie. Alfie’s voice is an emulation of the monologues in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, used for his manipulation of meaning in his work. Currently, the tone of Alfie is a mixture of both the tone and style in Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the narrator in The Stanley Parable. By combining the two styles I hope to achieve a voice that is both very aware of its role and comically dark. By including the Alfred Hitchcock Theme and other soundtracks, I attempt further this allusion to his work.
Our study of Postmodernism in the Preliminary English Extension 1 course was a solid foundation for research conducted for my major work. Discussion of Ferdinand de Saussure in and his work in semiotics , has enabled me to further my understanding of audience ability and made a nice connection to my later research on reader response criticism. The HSC English Advanced course was particularly helpful in developing my creative writing skills and the Module B focus on T.S. Elliot’s work furthered my understanding of multiple readings of a text.
Although there certainly have been many challenges in the Extension Two course, overall my piece has changed for the better as a result of continuous thought, research and reiteration. The piece, to date, is the culmination of research into how I can best convey my purpose and I think it is becoming increasingly more effective as the work develops. I have gained an immense appreciation of the role investigation plays as a solid foundation for what is an incredibly dynamic and malleable course.