E-lit, the Final Frontier.

Brendan Brooks

It’s hard, it’s confusing, it’s annoying at times, so why read electronic literature at all? We can all remember back to when we were first read to. Books like Where the Wild Things Are taught us not to fear monsters, Mr Pines Purple House taught us to accept differences and the adventures of Whinny the Poo gave us an imaginary literary friend. Then we started to read to ourselves. Picking our way through the leveled readers until we became comfortable with books that had no pictures. Slowly as we worked our way through reading books became lees and less scary. We were taught the rules and how it worked. Learned that stories usually have a hero and a villain, and we were comfortable.

Shall I tell you a story of my adventures in E-Lit?

By Brendan

Shall I tell you of a story? A large tapestry of stars highlighted in the night sky? The sound of wind chimes softly echoed in the background? The voice in “like Stars In A Clear night sky” to tell us their story much like this. People just don’t tell stories in this form anymore. The greatest story ever told was not written down but spoken to me. Picture a large first nations big house filled to the rafters with smoke. Picture a dimly lit fire about to go out and signify bedtime. Picture

“Faith” in Electronic Literature

By Brendan Brooks

The kinetic poem “Faith” is meant to mirror the development of mankind’s faith. The piece starts with an illuminated Faith at the top of the screen. Like within our lives, the word faith remains ever present throughout the piece. The poem then is showered by logic. Normally logic is the one thing that can challenge faith. Faith is a belief in something that exists outside of logic and truth. It is a belief based off of experience and emotion. So naturally as logic literally begins to rain down upon our faith, faith remains unaltered.

Questions to J. R Carpenter

By the English 214 Question Collective

A series of questions inspired by J.R. Carpenter’s THE CAPE: THE BACK STORY post:

1) As you stated in your “Back Story” guest blog, physical photographs possess a certain authority. As the transformative process of selecting a medium for publication moves “The Cape” from print-text to hypertext, does the message/meaning of your story change?

2) You mentioned that the Geological Guide photographs interest you more than your own family history. Do you find using fact with fiction allowed you to create a more authentic story?

3) As the work is entitled “The Cape”, the importance of place and memory – as you imply – are highlighted by the imagery in the erosion of the Maritime shorelines and how memories dissipate. This seems to create a strong sense of sublimity within your work.  Is this something you have reflected on?

Brendan’s Weightless Community Presents: Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries Presents, Dakota

Brendan Brooks

Welcome to the world of Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries Presents, where even something as simple as the credits to their website can be presented in rhythm and song. Based out of Seoul Korea they are the duo of Mark Vogue of the U.S and Young-Hae Chang from Korea. They mix a combination of Macromedia Flash writings with catchy musical beats which they “Tighten up”. Part story, part music video they have used the computer to its fullest in presenting Dakota.