Taylor's Research Report
From English 194 Wiki
Contents |
Abstract
This critical essay aims to examine the website “Knowing Poe”. Due to the fact that the site provides educational background about the authors’ life as well as interactive games regarding his short stories, “Knowing Poe” provides an ideal resource for brainstorming ideas related to the English 194 Gold-Bug team’s project and future research.
Description
The website, “Knowing Poe”, is interactive in all ways, shapes and forms. There are three primary sections: Poe the Person, Poe the Writer, and the Poe Library. Each section gives the reader a glimpse into Poe’s life, writing, and interests. As the reader moves from section to section, an audio voice recording tat reads the text on each page. After a page is done, the viewer can go to the next page and continue in the same way. Each section includes interactive time lines, stories, and games that keep the reader engaged.
Much information is provided about Poe’s life in each section of the site. For example, “Poe the Person” gives insight into his writing career. The contet of poe’s childhood is filled in through Information about growing up in details about growing up in Baltimore. There is even an interactive timeline that is included to give users another alternative way to look at his life. Additionally, the “Poe the Writer” section provides facts, such as he is commonly known as 'father of the American short story', his interest in cryptograms, or how his writing career began. The link Secret Writing also provides particularly interesting insight to Poe’s fascination with cryptograms and ciphers. The section gives the readers a background about how cryptograms work and what they do in Poe’s stories. This section should be remembered due to the fact that The Gold-Bug story revolves around figuring out a cryptogram.
Evaluation of Opportunities and Limitations for Team Project
Interactivity is as one aspect that must be kept in mind, specifically when dealing with contemporary literature. Hypertexts provide readers a new way to interact with texts that originally were mere words on paper. Although hypertext has emerged in the past few decades as an exciting new way to view, produce and create literature, several problems have simultaneously materialized with these new forms. While new technology has enabled artists to better express artistic forms, humans have been conditioned to have certain expectations, particularly when using technologies such as the computer. As such, one limitation in this new age of technology is the act of reading text from a screen. One author who has written extensively on hypertexts is Espen Aarseth. In his book “Hypertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature” states that the simple shift from reading a text on the screen to holding a book in one’s hands drastically changes the reader’s experience. If it is the case that the act of reading literature changes based upon the medium, then artists must work with that medium in order to maintain their audience’s attention. This is particularly important to keep in mind for all three teams in the English 194 class when creating their final project.
So how does “Knowing Poe” treat and respond to some of the current limitations in new media literature? Something that I found to be particularly interesting about the website is how much effort was invested in engaging the audience through visuals, including Adobe Flash presentations and audio ranging from simple readings of the text on the site to mood creating sounds. For example, the opening Flash presentation displays the effort to create the appropriate mood – the color scheme is black and white, the shadow of the raven moves across the screen, and simultaneously, the audience hears the screeches of the raven. The viewer is immediately drawn into the site, whereby means of the eerie, mysterious mood. However, the website “Knowing Poe” goes to an even farther extent to include additional elements such as interactivity, graphics, and other aspects to keep their audience entertained.
Today’s media presents many interesting options for older works that want to take the form of new ones, or simply new works that have never even been created in paper form; some options include gaming and modeling, as discussed in class. On the site, "Knowing Poe", an example of a story turned into a type of hypertext is "The Black Cat". In the project Picture This, readers can interact with text and images to create their own personal version of the story. Each screen allows the reader to choose one of four pictures to drag into a box where the full image is revealed. In doing so, the reader ultimately crafts a visual story, almost like a comic book. After the voice reads the excerpt from the story and the reader has chosen an image, the reader can continue on to the following screen. Upon reaching the conclusion, the entire text with the specifically selected images can be printed – an individual version of the story that is uniquely personal to the reader. This type of exercise incorporates audio, visual, and a game-like function. The combination of these three elements provides an enriching experience for the reader, as they are naturally more engaged with this text, as opposed to a typical story on paper.
The example of The Black Cat provides several features that the Gold Bug Team should keep in mind when creating a final project from Poe’s The Gold-Bug. First of all, the game is simple and clear. The act of choosing, although easy, provides a game-like characteristic, which allows individuals to create their own uniquely personal version of the story; thus, making the story even more interesting, due to the interactivity. Although it is intriguing because the game is different than reading the short story in a book, it might seem quite simple to an online reader. I think that a more complex project could be created by the Gold Bug Team.
Another important aspect of the “Knowing Poe” website resides in their description of cryptograms. While this does not necessarily allow you to create your own cryptogram, the description does give the reader an adequate amount of information to understand how they work, Poe's fascination with them, and a chance to decode one. This should be a place for the Gold Bug Team to start; however, I do not think that it is interactive enough to provide us with ideas for making cryptograms interactive. When creating the final project, the team should try to remember a creative way to incorporate cryptograms within the text, because Poe was so intrigued by them.
Finally, It'll Be the Death of Me, the interactive game that the site provided regarding Poe's life and death, can be another area of study for the Gold-Bug team’s brainstorming process. In the game, there are numerous topics that could be discussed to match up with notions discussed previously in the course, such as gaming, and narratives. The incredible graphics and the combination with additional sound effects invite readers to creatively image Poe’s life, in the same eerie and mysterious mood that Poe created in his stories. To play, the reader simply listens and presses the "Next" button. Moreover, there are several spaces where the reader can choose to do further reading about Poe's death or to continue on. This could be a great idea for the Gold-Bug's team project, as it would be fairly simple to create a type of hypertext where the audience can choose several options, and some of those options could open up to larger texts. If readers were interested in learning more, it would allow them to do further research, and if they chose not to read, they could continue on with the hypertext. However, the graphics are very well done, and I think that trying to recreate a project exactly like this could be difficult for the team. The concept is right on par with where we would like to go; so again, this should be a great place to start brainstorming and figuring out what is possible within the time we have left.
Resources for Further Study
“Knowing Poe” embodies many of the aspects that are currently being studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara campus; however, further research can be done. What should be looked at is other books, short stories, or poems that have been changed from an original piece of work into a work that is integrated with new media. Specifically for the Gold-Bug team's purposes, the group should examine other works that have been creatively re-imagined for an online environment. While various aspects of the website were critically observed above, the team should research the best possibilities in recreating the text of The Gold-Bug. Although the website "Knowing Poe" has provided many spots of inspiration (Flash productions, game-like interactivity, mood creating audio, etc.), evaluations should be made when producing The Gold-Bug prototype. Integrating audio and visuals appears to be particularly effective in the examples above. Hopefully, these elements can be included in the final product of The Gold-Bug.
