HERE

For Whom the Telling Changed

"Whom the Telling Changed" is an exciting and intriguing work of Interactive Fiction. Aaron Reed, the author of this work, sets up a curious premise and allows the reader to go on a journey into the nature of storytelling.

In "Whom the Telling Changed" you are quite clueless as to your own identity. That is to say that you, as a reader/player, are not familiar with your gender or role in society. Your character is very aware, but it is up to you as the reader to make these connections and decisions based upon the information provided for you.

The story begins with the option of reading through instructions or just diving right in. If you take the instructional road, so to speak, you are told that you are able to type in any command you think is relevant to the story being told to you. If you are at a loss, or if there are certain words that will help you in your reading of the story, they will be highlighted for you if you so wish. 

After beginning the story you find that you are in a tent, surrounded by mystical objects with esoteric properties. You hear voices outside the tent, and your first decision is to go out and see what is happening. You know, through the narration, that this is the night of "The Telling" which is an ancient ritual practiced among your people wherein every member of your tribe gathers to hear a story told by "The Teller." It is a celebration, a learning experience, and a community bonding event. 

The first characters you meet are your lover, a warrior, and your arch enemy, who is also a warrior. They tell you of a nearby tribe that has set up camp on the other side of the hills. Your enemy believes that striking the other tribe, without knowing their intentions, is the only solution to their presence. Your lover is not quite sure, but offers little input.

When you arrive at the fire, where "The Telling" will be told, you greet your aunt, who is the tribe's current "Teller." When she begins "The Telling" she loses all identity and becomes something larger than life. She proceeds to tell a story from The Epic of Gilgamesh. 

This is the most interesting part of "For Whom the Telling Changed" as it is the most interactive part. As "The Teller" tells the story the crowd responds, in a "call and response" fashion, and you are invited to do so as well. As the story becomes more of an allegory for what should be done about the unknown tribe that your tribe is worried about, you are left to help sway the crowd in one direction or another. You have control over how the crowd will react, and you can choose a peaceful end or one that will bring about conflict.

As stated in class, I was not able to finish this game. I played for roughly 2 hours (possibly a little less) and was never able to get to a conclusion. From what I have read about the story, it takes about that amount of time to finish, but I was not able to get to it. It seems that the ending would follow suit with whatever decisions you have made in swaying the crowd, and that your tribe would come to a group decision on how the unknown tribe in the distance will be handled.

In playing and researching this IF text I came across Mr. Reed's website and his own data analysis of those who played his game in 2006 at the "Slamdance Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition" in Utah. 

The statistics can be found HERE and some might remember that I used these statistics during my presentation in class.

All in all, "For Whom the Telling Changed" is an amazing example of Interactive Fiction and Digital Literature. It allows the reader to tell the story themselves, making decisions that influence every aspect of how the story pans out. It delves into the very nature of storytelling, the importance that our stories play in our lives, and the broader picture of humanity in relation to how we perceive our pasts and our futures. Mr. Reed is definitely a pioneer of the Digital Literature front and I feel incredibly inspired by his work. The program that he used to create his piece has been discontinued and removed from the internet, but I intend to research it more in order to see how he was able to build such a complex story. If I could make something half as complex for this class I would be very satisfied, by I know that this might not be an easily attainable goal. 

I strongly encourage anyone with a love of reading to invest time in "For Whom the Telling Changed." There is no "telling" what you might get out of it!

I am infinitely infuriated by the internet at the present moment.

After spending two weeks working on a Keynote interactive story for Project 2 I have learned that there is no conceivable way to upload this file and have people download it and "play" it the way it was created.

I saved the Keynote file as a PowerPoint in the hopes of making it more accessible. Unfortunately, when I uploaded the file to GoogleDocs it became an awful mess. Everything was wrong. The formatting looked like vomit, all my links were inert, images were the wrong color, extra text was added, etc. The entire presentation became an orgy of jumbled letters and misconstrued images.

After realizing my failure here I scoured the internet for other options. I found out about Slideshare, which supposedly allows for importing of Keynote files. Not sure why everyone on the internet claims this to be true because after spending an hour trying to figure out how to upload a Keynote file to their website I realized it was not possible. It just won't allow for uploading the Keynote file type.

My next step was to try and convert the file to HTML. This worked, but it eliminated all the transitions/interactive links/sound/video and essentially just turned the entire thing into a 2 dimensional presentation. I hated the way it came out in this format so it was back to the drawing board.

Originally I was just going to upload the file as a PowerPoint and allow people to download it, but after seeing the conversion I think I would rather no one see the file at all then for them to see it in that state.

I have a final project, but I can't get it on the internet without sacrificing 75% of the work I put into it. I will be bringing my laptop to class to show my project and I hope that will suffice, because I have no idea how to get this to work otherwise.

Animania

This second project has definitely tackled me more than I have tackled it. At this point in the semester things seem to run together, and all of the madness of life seems to pile  up as more and more assignments are due. When I first set out to begin this project I had many ambitious ideas running around my head. Luckily, due to the scaling back of the first project, I was quickly able to reign in my ideas based upon my time and my capabilities.

Dr. Zamora posted a ton of helpful resources for this project on her blog, and I wanted to do my own research as well. I found lots of amazing applications for creating Interactive Fiction, Text-Based Adventure Games, etc. but, sadly, I noticed that all of the free and easy to use software was not Mac compatible (which is what I have at home) while all of the complicated coding-based programs were fine on my Mac.. but I didn't have the time to learn the programming language.

After much deliberating I decided to just stick with Keynote, Mac's answer to Power Point. I've been playing around with it for a few days now and I think I've figured most of it out. I think with this project I will have less of an interactive piece than an opening animation to a larger story.

My narration idea, essentially, sprung from apocalyptic discussions that I have with my boyfriend. We both find it fascinating that our culture seems incredibly obsessed with the end of the world, and we always make hypothetical doomsday plans in case we wake one day to find a zombie outbreak or whathaveyou.

So this story takes place 4 generations after the world has "ended." The story is told in 2nd person, with the narration centering around the room that your character is currently standing in. The room is full of books, movies, CDs, etc. and you, having been born 4 generations after the world ended, are incredibly unfamiliar with the vast majority of these relics before you. My goal with this story is to explore our collective history, and how future generations would have to piece together our history on their own with what was left behind if civilization as we know it were to collapse. Essentially I want to play with what someone might think if all they had to draw upon from human history were some pulp novels, DVDs of British television, some music from a teenager in the suburbs, or some kind of random assortment of media. What would this say about history? What would this person deduce about the way our society was run if this was all they had to go on?

There's more to this idea but I will elaborate in my next post.

In regards to our in-class Tweet session with Dr. Flores this evening, I would like to pose questions that center around structure in the digital sense.

1.) Do you believe it is essential for one who wants to be involved in Digital Literature to learn all the possible coding languages they wish to use or is it equally as important to collaborate with individuals who already have this skill set in order to make a more cohesive product? An example I can think of along this line would be an individual who had a great idea for a movie but no idea how to use a camera. He could learn to use the camera, but in order to get the full effect of his vision he could easily find someone with all the know how to film his movie with him.

2.) Do you have any tips or tricks on creating interactive fiction/digital poetry/etc? One or two "insider secrets" that our class might not be in tune with just yet?

3.) I have gotten into many debates lately about the relevancy of poetry in the digital age. In a time when the internet makes every angsty teenager with a blog a "poet" do you believe that poetry is becoming a watered down art form or one that is seeing a breath of new life due to new ways that it can be explored? I guess I'm asking if you are cynical or optimistic about the future of poetry?

Spinal Tap

The First Word:

The Abstract 

         Desolation Angels. 

Into the Wild

Nine Stories.

The Songlines,

Still Life With Woodpecker.

Jitterbug Perfume. 

I have to say, doing this "Spine Poetry" was a lot of fun, but much more difficult than I thought it would be. So many of the books that I own have titles that are poetic on their own, but that don't stand too well when joined together. 

The above is the best I could do, and I'm satisfied with it, but I kind of wish I could have made a more riveting poem (like the examples I'd seen online of such poetry). C'est la vie. 

Tonight in class I will be presenting on Aaron Reed's "Whom the Telling Changed." This is a work of (mostly) hypertext fiction with some flash elements that, essentially, plays around with the nature of storytelling.

In playing and researching this IF text I came across Mr. Reed's website and his own data analysis of those who played his game in 2006 at the "Slamdance Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition" in Utah. 

The statistics can be found HERE and I will be referencing them throughout my presentation. 

I will save the rest of the information on "Whom the Telling Changed" for the presentation in class, as to not reveal any exciting or pertinent information just yet.