Week 7: Collaboration & Network Writing (Elayna)
Chapter 6, of Electronic Literature by Scott Rettberg, is all about Collaboration and networking. Network writing is described in the text as a genre that "may require readers to visit multiple sites to experience the narrative, it may interrogate the nature and materiality of the network itself, it may use the internets potential for collaboration, or use the network as a site for performance" (Rettberg, pg.152). From what I learned, Network Writing is digital literature that branches into many different variations and potentials the internet has to offer, as "The Internet is a fully multimodal medium" (Rettberg, 152). Since Network writing is like a genre with many branches, it allows for better/ more possible modes of collaborating which you can not easily maintain in printed literature.
The piece of digital literature I decided to look into was "The Unknown" by the author of electronic Literature, Scott Rettberg. This is a collaborative hypertext which almost operates like a choose your own adventure or twine. There was so many words to press which led you to other texts and hyperlinks which honestly got confusing. It starts off on the first page by saying "Everybody gets told to write about what they know." which goes on to describe how we may think we know everything but we don't. Within these pages, there's an aray of remarks, and questions that don't particularly align or relate. However I see a point to this confusion, and believe its to just dive into what may be the unknown to the reader. I kept clicking and clicking just to see how far I could go, and don't think I ever came to and end; there is never an end to the unknown there is always more to learn.
I like that your post covers the idea that "the Internet is a fully multimodal medium," because it relates strongly to network writing's contemporary nature. The multimodal and collaborative aspects of network writing pretty much sum up the ever-changing nature of literature after technology, where writing is now changing in ways that nobody can foresee. I think this ties into the discussion about "The Unknown" pretty well because, frankly, this piece is quite confusing. It requires a lot of knowledge about the author group as well as culture (particularly around e-lit) that was present at the time when they were writing. I also read "The Unknown" earlier this semester and I couldn't quite grasp it, I think because it has a lot of unique contextual and form elements. I agree that "The Unknown" is a super expansive piece that is very cool but is also seemingly endless and difficult to comprehend for the average reader.
ReplyDeleteI also looked at this piece and I really like your analysis! The Unknown was really cool to go through but I do agree that it could be really confusing as well. I found the bottom part of the pages more interesting as it opened up so many more possibilities, which also served to make things even more confusing.
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