Published on the Web (online journal)

"The Fall" is the story of John Smith, three-time winner of the MBPW (Most Boring Person in the World award), who is about to take a radical step into the next phase of his life. John Smith is not only himself in this narrative—through the use of archetypal images, symbols and plot, he becomes an everyman for our age. This story synthesizes text, images, audio, and animation into a single sustained vision of the action. It engages readers with opportunities for fuller interactions (e.g. triggering visual events during the piece and, at the end, an interactive quiz). These interactions push against typical reader expectations and force a more pro-active engagement with the material.

"The Fall" is linear in plot and uses elements of fiction (character, symbol, etc.) typically found in conventional print-based works. This is a deliberate attempt to bridge the "audience gap," where we still see a mainstream audience for print-based literature, but a limited audience for electronic literature. This bridging is an important concern in our field: with works using linear plots and other standard elements of fiction, we can expand our audience among readers who are more comfortable with the conventions of traditional literature; at the same time, we can also show younger writers a path that connects the print-based past and the electronic future of storytelling. This mixed brand of electronic literature empowers our field with an inclusiveness that embraces beginning writers and offers a wider potential for popular engagement.

(source: ELO 2018 website)

The Forever Club is an ensemble web comedy using a mash-up of videos, texts, interactive elements, animations, audio, memes, and visual remnants of social media.

(Source: http://thenewriver.us/the-forever-club/)

"StoryFace" is a digital fiction based on the capture and recognition of facial emotions.

The user logs onto a dating website. He/she is asked to display, in front of the webcam, the emotion that seems to characterize him/her the best. After this the website proposes profiles of partners. The user can choose one and exchange with a fictional partner. The user is now expected to focus on the content of messages. However, the user's facial expressions continue to be tracked and analyzed… 

What is highlighted here is the tendency of emotion recognition devices to normalize emotions. Which emotion does the device expect? We go from the measurement of emotions to the standardization of emotions. 

StoryFace was re-published in The New River in 2018.

It Must Have Been Dark by Then is a book and audio experience that uses a mixture of evocative music, narration and field recording to bring you stories of changing environments, from the swamplands of Louisiana, to empty Latvian villages and the edge of the Tunisian Sahara. Unlike many audio guides, there is no preset route, the software builds a unique map for each person’s experience. It is up to you to choose your own path through the city, connecting the remote to the immediate, the precious to the disappearing.

In January and February 2017 Duncan Speakman travelled with collaborators across three countries on three continents, visiting environments that are experiencing rapid change from human and environmental factors. What he created on his return is somewhere between a travel journal and a poetic reflection on connection, progress and memory. The experience asks the listener to seek out types of locations in their own environment, and once there it offers sounds and stories from remote but related situations. At each location the listener/reader is invited to tie those memories to the place they are in, creating a map of both where they are right now and of places that may not exist in the future.

(source: https://ambientlit.com/index.php/it-must-have-been-dark-by-then/)

"Show's Over" is a creditable fiction by Stuart Moulthrop. The work consist of a credit roll for fake films, generated as they go, composed on the fly by a series of programs. The shows are all over, so you can just hang out and watch the words. Watch while you want. Get up and go when you're ready. There is bonus content in the shape of a story in eighteen parts. The story can be accessed by clicking anywhere in the active window while the credits are rolling. While doing this a subtle message will appear in the background, saying something like request story/narrative/disrupt. The messages will differ from time to time but their meaning is always the same. You'll have your story segment as soon as the current credit sequence completes.

When story bit rolls up, the words will pause at the top of the screen. You have two  minutes to read in peace. If you don't need that much time, click in the active window and things will move along. You cannot go directly to the next bit to the story as this is disruptive technology. You have to sit through at least one imaginary credit roll before the story resumes. There are several ways the show can end, depending on what you choose to see. And the end is not the end, of course: swallow-taled, the story will happily recycle after you reach full count. Some shows go on forever.

A series of dix multimedia texts produced with Photoshop, 3D Studio MAX 1.2, 3D Studio R4, and other tools exhibited and later collected for frAme, issue 1. As the author states, the works reflect "media metaphors for contemporary trends in philosophical and sociological thought" that show that "multimedia culture can no longer be confined to text, but now is in the form of graphics, sound, and video, often in simultaneous configurations."