Dene Griger has a piece out that is quite lovely and dramatic and I don’t know how I missed it. Combination of flash and hypertext–the text actually sets off changes in the audio visual end. Well worth reading: Fallow Fields.
Alan Bigelow has a new addition to Webyarns, a piece called “Higher Math” that offers: “God created the integers, all else is the work of man.”
I particularly related to the Multiplication section; my roomate back in the early days was Carol Wojciechowski.
For some reason my MacBook doesn’t like the site and within seconds turns on the fan and protests loudly. I shoulda got the MacBook Pro I guess. But I can switch to the pc with all the hoity-toity memory and space easily enough.
It’s no good; I can’t just transfer the damn thing into html and make it any better with color and fancy design. It’d be like putting the cardboard back behind a work of art in a frame. Just don’t have it in me to cut the wrong corners when it counts.
So that’s what’s holding me up right now–as well as keeping me busy while I wait for more hypertext story–editing the somewhat sloppy language in Paths that I thought was so great at the time. That, and trying to figure out how to get the image of Jesus Christ from showing up as the representative frame of Recycling on You-Tube. No offense or sacrilegious intent meant, but He’s scaring readers away.
Even as I settle myself in for a nice hypertext write, I wonder where it all is going. Even I still have some dislikes of the medium in the reading of it, but then, there’ve been quite a few changes incorporated into hypertext work now. Even as I write in it I need these ‘changes’ to keep the groove, namely, to see the visual presentation and that for me usually means some color if not graphics.
This is also likely why I’ve still not bothered to master interactive fiction, as in the old text-interplay of Photopia, et al. It’s not visually exciting. Particularly when seeing “There’s no such thing” a few zillion times (I happen to be certified directionally dysfunctional). When I first got into IF and then hypertext via Storyspace, my mind zoomed ahead to a combination of the two–never the concept of IF alone–and with images and sound as well.
Now I’m not quite a senior citizen but I’ve been raised in the era of television at least, so I’m used to the visual saturation of the senses–though books were still a big, big part of my list to Santa. It makes one wonder how the younger generations, brought up on laptops rather than mere laps in a rocking chair, feel about these forms of story when they can get film clips on their phones for goodness’ sake.
A couple of years ago I played around a bit with Chris Crawford’s Storytron, in beta form, more on the authoring side of things than on the reading and playing of the prepared story. At that time, unless my mind is deceiving me, there was a very promising graphical interface that was highly sophisticated to go along with the program. When I checked out Storytron in the last couple of days after its launch of a fully useable program, I was surprised to see the same old Sponge Bob Square Pants figures (faces?) in the play areas. While Storytron is sort of halfway between IF in its decisions and hypertext in its manual use of clicking menus, it doesn’t do much in the way of eye-appeal. Same thing with the promise of Facade, which hasn’t progressed any from its intial output and primitive visuals. Why are some of these great concepts not really accepted by a much wider audience? Somehow I believe it has something to do with needing to look as exciting and interesting as the content should certainly be.
Like I said, I may often opt for the classics in their physical text and creamy-paged form and a quiet corner with a soft-cushioned curl-up-type chair, but I still have come to expect some visual stimulation when it’s just my Mac and me. In this hungry-eyed era I would think that aside from story and good solid writing another major consideration needs to be presentation.
Well I guess the answer to which medium of text is more enduring has been answered. Via J-Walk, this photo of a book is priceless. I’d love to see this done in animation too.
Excited for Chris and the crew from Storytron on their official launch the other day of the Storytron World. (You find out the greatest news via twitter!).
I’m putting this one on the agenda to play with as soon as I can. I did some work in it a while ago but I wasn’t really quite new media savvy or geared to the style so I’m sure it’ll be a lot more interesting and fun next time around.
Congratulations folks on a dream turned reality!
It’s nice to see that since many literary journals have gone online they are now opening themselves up to the new media methods of telling story.
At Narratives, Eliza Frye’s Horse & Rider, Part One, is a winner in the story contest. Though the cover art looks rather kinky, it’s fairly straightforward in story. Frye also has more stories available for reading, and at the Narratives site, the work of other artist/writers as well.
As the news media is learning too, when life hands you lemons you make lemonade. It’s just another turn of the wheel of civilization and we all either adjust, or walk.
Very good advice from A List Apart this morning on “The Elegance of Imperfection.”
“It symbolizes a crucial lesson about craft: utility is not contingent on perfection of form.”
Even as I fight back the urge to twiddle and tweak till I’m left with a toothpick of story from a oak tree of words, I do realize that editing and going that one step further does most often improve upon form. Utility is fine, but I still can’t help but seek perfection–perhaps as a balance to more natural impulsive instincts.
In working on the 100 Stories Project (which I really shouldn’t be doing, I suppose, until the official start date), I’m playing with colors to stay on track with the project as a whole. It is important, of course, to have something set up prior to the opening bell since there won’t be time later to play when deadlines to produce are more important, but after practicing the hypertext, I had to play with the display. And, after two major rehauls in display just to find something inspiring to write in, there’s still that urge to look further to come up with the perfect playground. In checking out the suggested site, Kular, for color theme, I found this that I do like a lot:
In changing the css color values on a test, I neglected to change the headline colors from a lovely navy and while the values above came out subtle and soft, the navy text fairly popped with class.
Then, of course, there’s thousands of color combinations and I’ll have to explore further before I go changing things again. But the above–with navy text–may show up somewhere someday soon. Like maybe at the Spinning site that’s gotten boring for me.
What are the odds that something like this will happen again (all at exactly 12:19 pm):
1. smgctJust put in another job app: http://tinyurl.com/cwv7x82 minutes ago from web
2. ersinghausIn this context AS3 is just too much food on the table. Can’t eat it all, even though it looks tasty.2 minutes ago from twhirl
3. willienelsonInformation on the cancelled tour http://willienelson.com/ppp…2 minutes ago from twhirl
Tale of Tales is launching The Path in San Francisco today. I’ve looked at the trailer and screenshots of this short game and it looks exciting. The graphics are fantastic as evidenced just by this site image below:
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology