Assignment 2

History of Digital Assignment 2 In the first two pieces we looked at, Shelly Jackson’s “My Body” and Adrienne Eisen's “Six Sex Scenes”, the conceptual framework is very much about how these women feel in their own skin. So much so and so personal that it made me somewhat uncomfortable to read. They are very much about coming of age but made me feel like I was snooping in some little girl's diary. I get that it is tough for girls growing up in a predominately misogynistic society, but I’m not really interested in hearing about someone sniffing their panties or being confused about where exactly pee comes from. I had my own curiosities about biology but to this day, I still wouldn’t write about it for millions to read. Guys just don't talk about stuff like that I guess, nor do I know any that write in a diary about it. You can call me old fashioned or square all you want. Sorry but I really couldn’t get through but just a few pages of these very intimate details; give me a great sci-fi story instead. Tina Laporta’s piece had much more to offer I feel when questioning this phenomenon of “presence” in today’s ever increasing online environment. It had a somewhat linear narrative that is reminiscent of a screenshot of a chat session from a Facebook conversation told in the third person. Donna Leischman's “redridinghood” had some technical issues and I couldn’t get past the part where her mother was handing her a basket. I did like the interactive story format with the moving cartoon characters and looked at some of her other work as well but it seems a lot of it has Flash problems. All the stories could be fiction but the last two seem the most likely. The link strategy on My Body and Sixty Sex Scenes was very similar. Random pages of a diary or the authors’ stories that the user selects sends the reader in random directions depending on which hypertext link that you select. The user has only a faint idea of what the next page will be about so you didn't really know where you were going within the story and each new link felt like another page of a diary with no structure or no sense of a structured autobiography. For me I just felt kind of lost and confused and didn't really care to move on past three or four links which could be a lack of this kind of sensibility caused by a lifetime of reading books in a linear fashion. The structure caused me to lose interest but the content could have also been a factor. Tina LaPorta's piece explored a much more interesting storyline for me; the actual disconnect that we all have in an age of constant communication. Again the linear structure is something I am used to. As Tina explained, this was a dialogue that she did in fact have where she photographed the interaction as it happened. Overall I didn't feel like any of these artworks was very literary but more like a journal or diary (and not even a social media page) as in the first two, or more scientific as in Tina Laporta’s investigation of the “disembodied and dislocated nature of on-line communication.” I also didn’t see them as visual or performing art pieces either. Since the electronic environment is not subject to restriction to a degree it has allowed these women to express themselves without rebuttal or immediate criticism, making it a very arbitrary decision contingent solely upon their discretion. Once again, arbitrary or not, you wouldn’t catch me writing something like this. “What happens in Vegas”…, you might say.