Literature Review

 

The literature review will be divided into the following areas: the nature of Digital Fiction, the origins of digital fiction its in Cybertext, and the current world of multi literacies.  I have specifically chosen the term digital fiction for the work I will be creating although I acknowledge that there are a number of different terms that are used to define similar work. Although the work I am describing only exists on digital equipment, as with all creative forms there are roots of the work within non-digital work. I have however sought only to look at the digital world where I would like fine art to participate in the world of new literacies.

What is Digital Fiction?

The term ‘Digital Fiction’ is the term I am using to describe an interactive narrative that can only exist on a computer, however that computer is presented. I have found that it is a difficult term for many to understand and that also there are many other terms or phrases that are also used to express a similar idea.

The writer Kate Pullinger (Pullinger 2010) talks of, Born digital fiction, which in its title, tries to express literature that exists within a digital world and has been created solely for that world. As she says:

….writers and artists have been experimenting with form, creating media-rich, screen-dependent, born-digital, works of fiction.​

Digital fiction is not an e-book. An e-book is a book transferred to an electronic medium but the process of reading has not changed. As Kate Pullinger, who has quite specific views about the status of e-books, says:

Stop talking about e-books. E-books are boring. Convenient, practical, destined to become one of the ways we read, but boring, as counter-intuitive as placing the text of the latest blockbuster novel on a television screen.(Pullinger 2010)

The Alice in Wonderland app. is sometimes cited as digital fiction (2010). This is an e-book, with added illustrations, that can be played with. It is an electronic pop-up book, but it is still driven by the text from the original Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. So why is this not Digital fiction? Both the e-book and the Alice App are on electronic devices, they are both digital, they contain fictional narrative, but they are still recognisable as books. They begin at the beginning and follow a fairly straightforward narrative to the end, even if there are some games and participation as the story progresses. So if this is not Digital Fiction what am I defining as digital fiction? The DFIN Wiki (2009) describes Digital fiction as:

Fiction that is written for and read on a computer screen, that pursues its verbal, discursive and/or conceptual complexity through the digital medium, and would lose something of its aesthetic and semiotic function if it were removed from that medium(Bell 2009).

If I am looking for a narrative process that requires the interaction of the reader perhaps I should look at work that is described as Interactive Fiction. This is text-based storytelling that needs the interaction, or direction, of the reader to complete the narrative. Presenting the work of digital fiction in another format, as text, would loose some part of the process but the narrative remains. Is it a choice of style rather than a narrative format that changes? As the website for Electronic Literature describes in a passage written by Nick Montfort:

By definition, IF is neither a “story” or a “game,” but, as all IF developers know, a “world” combined with a parser and instructions for generating text based on events in the world. The riddle is central to understanding how the IF world functions as both literature and puzzle. Interestingly, the riddle is a part of the literary tradition of poetry, not that tradition of the novel more often associated with IF. This means that despite the common nomenclature of IF works as “games,” the IF program as a “story” file, and the work of IF as an electronic “novel,” none of these three figures are of central importance to IF(Montfort 2005).

A further refining of this definition seeks to link IF to video games as the early development of interactive fiction was also the first steps along the pathway to video games:

The term refers to programs (usually called "games" or, less often, "works") that let you type commands to a character. This character wanders around in a simulated world of some sort, typically one that is described in text. "Text adventure" and "text game" have been used to mean pretty much the same thing. (ifwiki.org n.d.)

 

Interactive fiction evolved from text based games sometimes called ‘Hypertext’. In his book; Twisty Little Passages: An approach to Interactive Fiction, Nick Montfort explores, teases and exposes in a historical timeline, what he defines as IF. Interactive Fiction as described here is a puzzle, a riddle that the participant must engage in to understand the ‘story’. He is looking at early games that were text based:

This book seeks to describe some of the intellectual history of this form and its relationship to other literary and gaming forms, and to computing and other computer programs, while critically examining a representative selection of important works and describing their interrelationships. (N. Montfort 2004)

For me the problem with IF is that it is text based and it is part of the movement that went on to evolve Video Games. The fiction is very much ‘game’ based with the reader or participant solving puzzles in order for the story to continue. This is interactive but it evolved from books that use this same system of choice or decision by the reader to continue the story. However, I do feel the introduction of the ability of the ‘reader or player’ to change the outcome is important.

This brings me to another format or term for the definition of digital fiction, called ‘Trans-literacy’ as defined on the Trans Literacy Research site:

Trans literacy is the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. (TransLiteracy Reasearch Group 2012)

The important words for me in this are the terms; read, write and interact. It is also interesting that the need for a range of platforms, tools and media are used. The Trans media Literacy Group use a definition of ‘text-plus’ to categorise this style of online reading. The plus is the addition made to the earlier concept of the write read interface. There is technology, social practice, negotiation between media, links to oral, print, images etc., and the negotiation between the new reading concepts, such as scroll. However this definition or inclusion of topics could also include the term Electronic Literature. Electronic Literature, as defined by the electronic literature organisation, is described as:

The term refers to works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer. Within the broad category of electronic literature are several forms and threads of practice, some of which are:

·       Hypertext fiction and poetry, on and off the Web

·       Kinetic poetry presented in Flash and using other platforms

·       Computer art installations which ask viewers to read them or otherwise have literary aspects

·       Conversational characters, also known as chatterbots

·       Interactive fiction

·       Novels that take the form of emails, SMS messages, or blogs

·       Poems and stories that are generated by computers, either interactively or based on parameters given at the beginning

·       Collaborative writing projects that allow readers to contribute to the text of a work

·       Literary performances online that develop new ways of writing (Electronic Literature Organisation 2012)

Having looked at the list from the Electronic Literature Organisation, which seems to include every possible variant of computer based interactive literature; I feel that I need to define my own terms. Digital Fiction seems a simple answer but for the term fiction. Although initially I found that much of the work I looked at was fiction, I have since seen some very creative used of the ideas to explore non-fiction. Therefore perhaps the term I need to use is Digital Narrative however the chase for a name suggests that it is what the work does that is important rather than what it is called. As Bolter and Gromola (2005)say:

Think of the computer screen as a window opening into a visual world that seems to be behind or beyond it (p26).

In Writing Space (2001) Bolter goes further into this relationship that is constructed with the technology and the reader / writer when he says:

Digital technology seems to reduce the distance between author and reader by turning the reader into an author herself (p4).