Meredith's Week 5

 Rettburg’s Chapter 5 about kinetic and interactive poetry was another good addition to the types of digital literature we’ve been collecting in our blogs, like interactive games and hypertext fiction. I didn’t know that there was a difference between kinetic and interactive; kinetic poetry incorporates motion and animation whereas interactive poetry still has dynamic components but it relies on the reader’s participation to click, drag, or move pieces of the poetry. My favorite part of the chapter was concrete poetry because we used to make them in elementary and middle school. We used this rudimentary software to input the text and a piece of clipart and it would spit out a concrete poem out of the two inputs. I also remember drawing concrete poems; I think I have one of a sun somewhere in my old notebooks.  

For this week, I examined “Cruising” by Inger Ankerson. I didn’t know what to do with it until I read the directions on the ELO page. At first, I thought that it was just a cool visual with the girl’s voice reading the poem over it, but then I realized it was interactive and you have to use the mouse to pan over the images and words and “control” or “drive” them like you would a car. I was able to read the text and it matches what the girl’s voice is saying, but I didn’t really understand the pictures. If you want the words to be larger to read, you’ll be too zoomed in on the pictures. But the pictures just seemed car/night out themed; I think there were only like 5 or 6 of them and they repeated in a carousel. I like that the piece is named “Cruising” and you have to drive the text.