In the prefaces, a depth model of
the digital texts attempts to maintain surfaces as the site of reading. This
depth model is expressed in images such as a “floating depth framework” (DreamaphageELO). The movement and change suggested by floatation, the distance that comes
with depth, and the guidance that is part of any framework summarizes the
function of the authorial prefaces in relation to the work. The reader is placed in a dynamic and exploratory relationship to the work, one that is architectural, while at the same time presenting an image from the author’s perspective. In architectural terms, depth is an intrinsic part
of the representation of space in the prefaces, particularly because of how it
implies movement. The prefatorial portrayal of depth is an attempt to monitor how
the “Digital work has the capacity to explore space as a potentially semantic
element and to engage with depth and surface in a more explicit and complex
way” (Schaffer and Roberts 40). Due to the combined semiotic and spatial nature
of the works, which are expressed in both depth and surface composition, a
potential gap is filled in analysis. Depth is mainly dealt with in the prefaces
in a way that maintains surfaces by referencing architecture.
In
the prefaces, reader agency is most often qualified as feedback via the linking
and navigational structures in the works. Agency as it is described in the
prefaces can be thought of as the reader experiencing “the satisfying power to
take meaningful action and seeing the results of our choices” (Murray 2000 126).
Implicit in Murray’s conception of agency is a linear system of time, which
results in reader feedback over a fairly short intervening period, coupled with
a reliance on a clear relationship between cause and effect. Ryan states the
use of feedback loops in digital narrative “enables the text to modify itself,
so that the reader will encounter different sequences of signs during different
reading sessions” (Ryan 2001 206). In contemporary digital works simulations have joined signs,
where readers negotiate spaces resembling real places, as they venture deeper
into narrative structures. In my close reading of the authorial prefaces for
how reader agency is portrayed the concept of reader agency is actually
depicted as compliance with the design and address of the texts. This
compliance is articulated via tropes grounded in the spatial and narrative
elements of the works.
According to the “Behind the Façade” authorial
preface, Façade offers the reader a “global agency that is a real
influence on the overall story arc, over which topics get brought up, how the
characters feel about the player over time and how the story ends” (Mateas and
Sterne “Behind the Façade” 2). How the characters may “feel about the player
over time” introduces the narrative component of interactive character emotions
into the metanarrative of the preface. It is by understanding how the emotions
of the characters function in narrative that the reader can have “a real
influence” over narrative development. This understanding is based on a
feedback-controlled system of response-inviting structures in the work, which
are outlined in the preface. How “topics get brought up” refers to the control
of procedurality in the narrative of the works, something that is also
described in the preface with the use of narrative elements. The use of
narrative elements to explain the works reinforces the idea that agency is
reader compliance with the design and narrative structures of the digital
works. In this way the authorial preface “Behind The
Façade” is based on the premise that
agency is a matter of depth, determined by “what’s going on inside the
artificial intelligence (AI) of the characters” of Façade (“Behind the Façade” 1).
Agency, as I shall demonstrate through
this study in my close readings, is acquired with depth in relation to reading.
The authorial prefaces remediate print, in the form of the
prefaces themselves and the language they use, whereby reading practices from
the age of print are established in relation to the digital works. This
backwards glance sets up the readings of the works as I describe in this
chapter, as surface based, with an interior and exterior through which the
reader moves as part of interpretation. The complexity of reading in
this arrangement, with surfaces as the primary site but with multiple
directions towards an imagined interior, develops Ryan’s argument
that “the reader produced by the electronic reading machine will therefore be
more inclined to graze [sic] at the
surface of the texts than to immerse herself in a textual world or to probe the
mind of an author,” (Ryan 1999 99). In
the prefaces of this present study the reader is directed, even compelled to move both temporally and
spatially towards an interior in the works, as narrative progression depends
upon it. However, my analysis shows that the surfaces control immersion in a
textual world, based on the power of navigation to hold attention. The
establishment of a progression towards an interior in narrative is assisted by remediation
in the prefaces, whereby a clear temporal and spatial path can be established;
based on goals, quests and architecture, as they are didactically described
in print.
In the
prefaces remediation exists primarily in references to print. The preface is
itself a grafting from print media, and was used for centuries to introduce the
printed text to the reader (See de Zepetnek 5-10). The printed preface
traditionally “informs the reader of such facts the author thinks pertinent” in
regard to its subject text (Holman quoted in de Zepetnek 12). Writing is the
sole medium of expression in the authorial prefaces and can be considered
remediation in the digital context.[1]
The remediation of writing in the digital, as a feature of print, is “the
representation of one medium in another” (Bolter and Grusin 44). Along with
the adapted form, print is remediated in the prefaces according to what Bolter
and Grusin describe as “the mediation of mediation” (56). The “mediation of
mediation” is based on the fact that the prefaces mediate the texts objectively,
which combines with the subjectivity of the reader to formulate an
understanding of the works where “there is nothing prior to or outside the act
of mediation” (58). The authorial prefaces are a ‘mediation of mediation,’ both
in how they use descriptive rhetoric adapted from print media to explain
reading and in the material forms they take. The attribution to a single author,
the references to original and copies, to pages and titles are further examples
of the remediation of print by the authorial prefaces. Using the referent of
print media, the prefaces define the digital work a priori to the reader finding it, and the reader must assimilate
these definitions if she is to gain significant agency in reading.
Works Cited
Bolter, J. and Richard Grusin. Remediation:
Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.
Nelson, Jason. “Dreamaphage” Electronic
Literature Collection Vol. 1. N. Katherine Hayles, Nick Montfort, Scott
Rettberg, Stephanie Strickland (Eds.) October 2006 http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/nelson__dreamaphage.html
Accessed 16 July 2011.
Mateas, Michael. & Andrew Sterne. Behind the Façade. Atlanta: Procedural Arts, 2005.
Murray, H. Janet. Hamlet on the
Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. 1997. Cambridge: MIT
Press, 2000.
Ryan, Marie-Laure.
Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and
Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Schaffner, Anna Katharina, Andrew Michael
Roberts. “Rhetorics of Surface and Depth in Digital Poetry”. Revue des Littératures de l’Union Européenne
(RiLUnE), n. 5, 2006, p. 37-48.
de Zepetnek, Stevem Tötösy. The
Social Dimensions of Fiction: On the Rhetoric and Function of Prefacing Novels
in the Nineteenth-Century Canadas. Braunschweig: Vieweg Publishing, 1993.
[1] As I have mentioned in the previous chapter, the reliance on writing
contrasts the multimodality of the preface’s subject texts, which includes the
remediation of video, designed spaces and audio.
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