Week 8 - Avry

This final chapter of our book discusses Divergent Streams. He writes about the more current practices of E-lit such as: Locative narrative, digital literary installations, virtual and augmented reality narrative, and interactive and combinatory cinema. Locative narratives are one of the major changes in relationships between human and technology. With new technology gps devices allow us to track locations of specific users making it so we are never completely lost, we can always find our way! Interactive/literary installations bring elements of spectacle and meaning into tension with each other. It is a combination of digital media like text, visuals, and sound within a spacial environment like a gallery or museum. He discussed VR and AR and many of us are familiar with this, I certainly remember when VR headsets came out and how cool it was to me! Augmented Reality is essential an overlay of digital text or images/animations onto the real world. And lastly interactive and combinatory cinema - it refers to forms of filmmaking where the structure and flow of the narrative are not fixed but change with user input by algorithms. 

I think the use of smartphones and projects specifically for it allow for a more immersive experience in the sense that you can take the easily accessible work anywhere! 

I'm choosing and deeper analysis of Bubble - the description is "An Interactive story that projects us into a Montreal +2 deg. C. where humans must survive hostile environmental conditions. I thought this was fitting due to the weather we have had the past few days. The story takes us through a sort of "day in the life" living in 2050, where our world is facing extreme temperatures and conditions due to the effects of global warming. To survive, we wear "bubbles" or helmets. Throughout the eerie production, we must swipe our screen to clean the smog off our bubble so we can see, repair cracks in the bubble from harsh conditions, and seal it to prevent the toxic air from leaking in. In the end, our character takes its last breath because "we didn't take care of our bubble" ultimately mirroring Earth and its death that is bound to happen if change isn't made. The piece allows the viewer to reflect on the fact that we are living in a time when our actions have an impact on the future of humanity and each person is responsible for their own fate. WOW. This might have been my favorite project I've looked at so far, it was so meaningful and scary but true!! I'd definitely take a look if you have the extra time.