Our third module, Studio DH, will examine areas of creative practice in and around storytelling, play, and craft. While digital humanities is typically aligned with analytical or instrumental pursuits, as Burdick, Drucker, et al. collectively argue, actual DH practice is closely tied to areas such as interaction design, aesthetic or affective computation, and manifold forms of digital expression. We will look at new digital storytelling conventions, variously termed interactive fiction, hypertext fiction, and electronic literature. We will also look at games and virtual spaces, arguably the most influential (and certainly the most lucrative) genre of digital expression in existence. Finally, we will look at hybrid digital/analog fabrication practices and the ethos of hacking, making, and crafting that surrounds them. What does the humanities have to say to new forms of digital creativity emerging all around us? What if, instead of the library or even the lab, ground zero for digital humanities was the studio?

READINGS

Presentation: Katie K.

• Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths“
• Matienzo, “Emotions, Archives, Interactive Fiction, and Linked Data“
• Porptentine, “Creation Under Capitalism and the Twine Revolution“
• Short and Daly, First Draft of the Revolution
• Plotkin, Shade
• Walker, “Feral Hypertext: When Hypertext Literature Escapes Control” (PDF)
• Burdick, et al. “Provocations” (D_H)

Source: http://www.nbb.cornell.edu/neurobio/land/OldStudentProjects/cs490-95to96/tonyg/Language.Viz1.html

EXERCISE

This is a two-part exercise that we will complete over the next three weeks. You will use an interactive story editor called Twine to create a story (which can in fact be either fiction or non-fiction, either a narratives or a game). Start by downloading and installing Twine on your computer from the previous link. Then, take a look at some other people’s Twine creations: howling dogs, weird tape in the mail, Hunt for the Gay Planet, Kim’s Story, Brkyln Trash King, and December 11, 2012 are all good ones to start with, though you may also use another Twine piece you find on your own. Choose one and write a short blog entry (posted in the “Exercises” category) that is a critique in the workshop mode, i.e. a frank discussion of a what you like and don’t like about the work’s execution. Finally, read through the Twine/Twee Reference Manual.

The first part is grade pass/fail. The second part, for which you will create your own Twine piece, will receive a regular letter grade.

 FIELDWORK

April 3rd, 4th, 5th: Electronic Literature Showcase, Library of Congress; see also Grigar and Berens, Electronic Literature and Its Emerging Forms.

Friday 5th and 6th (several DH-related papers): GEO Conference: (Dis)realities and the Literary and Cultural Imagination