Meredith's Week 7

  

Network writing seems to be the most simple of the electronic literature genres so far- it literally just requires writing on the Internet: Rettburg’s definition of network writing is “electronic literature created for and published on the Internet.” Lots of the network writing that this chapter explored uses the Internet’s ability of collaboration. One of the antecedents of network writing were these projects called “Mass-Observation” where a lot of people would observe the same phenomenon, for example, the day of King George VI’s coronation, and they would document what they witnessed. Then, someone put it all together into one piece of media. Rettburg questioned what other versions these mass-observations might have resulted in if it was in the form of a database or hypertext. Besides the medium being the message in electronic literature, I think another takeaway is how your perspective also helps create the message if you’re participating in the creation of the media. Depending on what lens you’re looking through (for example where you’re standing at the King’s Coronation and what your economic and royal standing is), it changes your thoughts and what you convey to the final piece of media. Your perspective also matters when you interact with the media. Some of the previous pieces we’ve looked at have different paths or interactive pieces that you can choose to interact with first, last, or not at all, creating a different experience for you than for the next person that interacts with it.  

I’m exploring the To Be or Not Be Mouchette by Martine Naddam. This was one of the home page fictions that I was interested in and also concerned by, because Rettburg says readers interact with suicide ideations and dark discussions and I thought that there was no way anything so dark was still technically allowed without warnings or flags. The discussion on the suicide page was unlike anything I’ve ever read and honestly made me really uncomfortable. I am very surprised that they allow it to stay up. The page is supposed to represent a 13 year old girl’s (Mouchette’s) home page and she is obsessed with flies, suicide, and death. The home page has pink flowers but wherever you click it takes you to various disturbing links. You can read more about the artist’s reasonings for creating the page in the link below. There are also extremely concerning visuals when you click on the flies flying around on the page. Every time I clicked on something, I found another new page, so I don’t think I’ve even viewed everything there is to view.