Experiment 6**

Please click on the link above to see my reimagined version of Experiment 4: Self Representation.

I am telling a story of my day, where I go through regular Princeton struggles, and then find comfort in something I love. I decided to use the form of snapchat (which is a telephone app where one takes pictures, adds comments, draws pictures, and sends it to friends. The picture disappears after up to 10 seconds both from the friend’s telephone and the sender’s telephone). I picked this medium, since people my age often use this method of communication, and add a visual image of themselves to their messages to each other.

I think snapchatting is both a more intimate mode of communication, due to the inclusion of one’s own image, and a more distrustful method of communication, since the receiver does not get to keep the message. I could not capture that effect in this project unfortunately, since the images need to stay on the paper for grading. However, in an ideal context, I would like to create a comic strip that only exists for up to 10-ish seconds.

I put in explanatory, and emotional emoticon-type things in my first draft of Experiment 6, and then edited them all out. I think I finally learned to edit down, and to have faith in the images to carry the intended meaning on their own. I hope this reflects my growth through the experiments in this class.

I had a great time creating this [and so did my snapchat friends]. I hope you will too..

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B5Ldd2WTC5q8LU9lUWRtR0dEWW8&usp=sharing

in order to view: download folder and open index.html
AK Williams

In my visual proposal, I attempted to depict hyper attention with a simple two dimensional drawing.  Specifically, I hoped that I could introduce (using symbols) new media into Chris Ware’s Building Stories (specifically the storyline of Phil) in order to force readers to engage in a hyper attention form of thinking.  However, I believe that experiment to have failed because it only symbolically and very tangentially applied the idea of hyper attention.  Furthermore, I came to an understanding that in many ways Ware’s texts are already a sort of hyper attentive model — many different types of books that you can pick up and put down, and so forth.  However, they still retain some notion of deep attention in that you can focus on only one book at at time.  Despite this, Chris Ware’s overlapping narratives scattered among different books in Building Stories provide a perfect opportunity to capitalize on the needs of hyper attention.  Now, I revise both the subject and the medium through which I do this, in hopes of transforming it into a true model of hyper attention.

Hyper attention, according to N. Katherine Hayles, a professor at UCLA, is characterized by the following:

— Rapidly switching among different tasks, and excellent ability to handle this change in environment.

— A preference for multiple streams of information

— Involves a high level of stimulation

— Ability to handle environments where multiple things compete for attention.

— Impatience with non interactive objects

Source: Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes by N. Katherine Hayles.

Here, a single narrative (which is recognizable as the demise of Branford Bee) is envisioned as an iPad app which caters to the hyper attentive model of thinking.  The narrative is actually told from three different perspectives in two different books.

The iPad app allows the user to toggle between perspectives of different characters (see the three icons on the right of each iPad ‘screen’) without differentiating between the different books.  Instead, it organizes the narrative by time and collapses all parts of the same story contained within various books into a single sequence.  Interdependent parts of the narrative (i.e. that the girl must open the window before Branford can escape) must be played out by the reader/user before the narrative continues along.  The reader/user moves the characters along the page until they reach their final destination as indicated in Ware’s original text/drawing.  i.e. in panel 1, the actual image is of the girl pouring detergent in to the washing machine.  As the finger swipes her along this path, she will move towards the laundry machine and pick up the detergent.

By rendering Building Stories in this fashion on the iPad, I capitalize on several key components of hyper attention.  First is the ability to focus on multiple information streams, which comes from being able to shift perspective between different characters.  Secondly, the objects become interactive, in that the user must guide the narrative forwards by making characters move towards their destination (i.e. Ware’s actual drawing).  Furthermore, there are multiple points of attention, since the user must simultaneously propel all the different narratives forward by toggling between characters and checking if their story can continue at a given time.  Hopefully, the below storyboard brings these ideas to life.

1.  The current perspective is the girl’s.  In Ware’s original panel that this image depicts, the girl is pouring the detergent into the washer.  The user (the hand) swipes her across the screen until this image is shown, at which point this panel’s interactivity and narrative have been completed.

2.  The user toggles to Branford Bee’s perspective, whose current narrative is of the approach of the girl in the laundry room.  However, because the user has not reached the panel in the girl’s perspective where she opens the window, the user cannot “move forward” in Branford Bee’s perspective.

3.  The user toggles back to the girl’s perspective and moves through the panels until she opens the window.

4.  The user toggles back to Branford Bee, who can now escape.  In this 3 by 3 grid, the user taps one by one on each of the mini panels in order to move the narrative forward.

5.  By the end of the above 3 x 3 grid, Branford Bee is flying free and towards the drop of soda on the stair.  Thus, when the user toggles to the building’s perspective, we see the image of exactly this happening as Chris Ware depicts it.

Panel 1 comes from the game board; panel 2 comes from the back of the Branford Bee booklet (red cover); panel 3 comes from the game board; panel 4 comes from the Branford Bee booklet; panel 5 comes from the game board.

Note that the prequel to this narrative is contained in The Daily Bee (where Branford gets stuck in the house to begin with!) providing more fodder for the iPad app!

If something is occluded, our imagination fills in it the endless possibilities of the hidden interior.

The figure from experiment 5 reminded me of paper dolls, but the most boring paper dolls imaginable. How to add content? Occlude.

Extension of Building Stories — the Phil story.

A.K. Williams
Annotated Bibliography

Berman, Margaret Fink “Imagining an Idiosyncratic Belonging: Representing Disability in Chris Ware’s ‘Building Stories’ ” The comics of Chris Ware : drawing is a way of thinking / edited by David M. Ball and Martha B. Kuhlman. Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 2010. 191-205 . Print.

I’m looking to include this essay’s perspective on the ways that Chris Ware engages common conceptions of the ways that we understand social and physical spaces. The essay engages Ware’s grouping of the characters according to their physical proximity to each other and the ways that this tension opens up a tension between the ways that these characters engage and understand each other and themselves. I will use it primarily to speak to the ways that the physical and social forms color our understanding of emotion, selfhood and memory.

Ben Roberts(2006) Cinema as Mnemotechnics, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 11: 1 55-63.

This article speaks about the ways that philosophers have understood the relationship between memory, mnemotechnics and temporality. This essay deals mainly with the ways that human memory is understood as a cinema of mnemotechnics, and I will use it to inform my reading the way that Ware uses form to influence readers’ perception of temporality and memory in “Building Stories”

Sattler, Peter R. Past “Imperfect: ‘Building Stories’ and the Art of Memory. “The comics of Chris Ware : drawing is a way of thinking / edited by David M. Ball and Martha B. Kuhlman. Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 2010. 206-222. Print.
I’m interested in this essay’s discussion of mnemotechnics, observer and field memories and it’s analysis of William James philosophy of memory and selfhood. Mnemotechnic is a mnemonic that claims to help people retain information by constructing a physical space in their head and associating different concepts with different spaces.

*hint, zoom in!

My visual proposal turned out more like an outline of my thoughts. I still don’t have an argument, but I am trying to get there, by trying to draw associations and asking myself many questions.

Also, sorry it’s a link instead of an image. I think we have established by now that I am as technophobic as Ware.

WHY A FEMALE CHARACTER

Harry Potter References aside (I only use them here to help get the point across, they likely won’t be part of the final project), my original text game idea has evolved quite a bit.  The basic idea is to write an App that will talk to you as if he inhabits your phone and that he will try to get you to do silly things with your phone, a la Auster and Calle in double game.  looking at the project now this feels pretty ambitious, so I may have to tone it down in some way but I hope to capture the same personality and character that I felt here