readers

The end-point of any form of literary communication is the reader, as acknowledged by the shift towards studying reception in fields such as book history and cultural studies. Electronic literary studies has, to date, remained principally concerned with issues of textuality and medium. Certainly it has, from its inception, extensively explored theoretical issues around the nature of authorship and the extent reader agency. However, this “reader” has tended to remain broadly a theoretical construct rather than a documented empirical reality. Indeed, the first wave of electronic literature has been criticised for imbuing this idealised “reader” with an appetite for digital literary experimentation, common amongst electronic literature scholars and practitioners but scarcely evident amongst the broader reading public.

This paper examines reader behaviour in digital environments through focussing on one of the major configurations of contemporary reading – the writers’ festival. These are also known as “festivals of ideas” or take the form of cultural festivals with a significant bookish slant. Intriguingly, digital-only writers’ festivals are beginning to emerge, such as the US-based #TwitterFiction Festival (http://twitterfictionfestival.com/, 2012- ) and the Melbourne-co-ordinated Digital Writers’ Festival (http://digitalwritersfestival.com/2014/, February 2014- ). These innovative events are characterised by web-streamed panel presentations by geographically dispersed writers, live webchats between writers and organisers, Twitter interaction with and between “readers”, online book clubs and collaborative, real-time literary composition. They hence showcase reader modes of interaction with digital literature and document actual readers’ responses to digital literary texts.

More broadly, even major site-specific writers’ festivals (Edinburgh, Hay-on-Wye, Sydney, Toronto) now commonly incorporate significant digital elements, such as live tweeting during sessions, guest bloggers, online fora, live inter-festival link-ups and extensive online archiving. There is a question of whether, by the second decade of the 21st century, any writers’ festival can be considered purely site-specific.

The mainstreaming of the digital writers festival offers a rich new field of research for scholars of electronic literature, permitting as it does examination of actual reader encounters and responses to electronic (and print) literary forms in digital environments. However it simultaneously provokes some unsettling questions. While digital literary festival components greatly expand audiences for writers’ festival events, overcoming limitations of geography, time and disposable income, do they dilute the performative specificity of the event: the special aura of being physically present at a one-off reading by a particular author? If writers’ festivals move increasingly online, can they continue to expect significant cultural policy support from state and local governments on the basis of their contribution to local tourism and civic branding? Does social media’s increasingly audio-visual orientation undermine the literary festival’s traditional (even aggressive) assertion of the primacy of print?

Scholars of electronic literature have been at the forefront of exploring such inter-medial issues since the genre’s emergence in the late 1980s. But the rise of the digital literary festival casts disciplinary consensus into a new light and prompts urgent questions about who the readers of electronic literature – the end-point of this cultural form -- actually are.

(Source: ELO 2015 Conference Catalog)

E-books, e-book readers, touchscreens and other types of displays do not belong to the realm of fantasy any more, but are an indelible part of our reality. Interactivity is becoming a key ingredient of electronic publications. There are several projects dedicated to children that allow the practicing of important literacy skills, such as language development, story comprehension, sense of the structure, and collaboration in storytelling by playing and experimenting. These activities are crucial to a child’s development.

During middle childhood the most important seems to be a process of development involving increasingly creative use of playing to develop plots and episodes, the transition from individual to group play, the growing importance of language in plot development and the strengthening of links between play and social life. It is important that a child interacts with a book, not just by passively following a story but by participating in its creation upon every encounter. Graphic design should aim at facilitating the linguistic and social development of a child, at the same time stimulating his or her creativity and abstract thinking, as well as supporting the development of fine motor skills, which are all necessary to self-sufficiency.

Therefore this project’s key requirements involve the following aspects – educational, emotional, ergonomic as well as more detailed objectives:

Using gestures to facilitate a child’s development (the development of brain hemispheres, eye-hand coordination, developing abstract thinking).
The opportunity of constructing a variety of stories – a child builds a story by himself or herself, deciding on the plot development.
The use of randomization and surprise elements, where the book becomes a new story, explored by a child at every encounter, but within the preprogrammed framework (beginning-development-ending).

Body mechanisms, which are necessary for the development of handwriting, are autonomy in dressing etc., a proper grip by hand and three fingers (tripod fingers grip), as well as the use of the non-dominant hand to hold paper. Proper positioning of the thumb and two other fingers is crucial for the correct holding of a pencil. This type of grip plays a key role in the mechanisms using fine manipulation.

Autonomy is based on the development of movements made in specific directions: up and down, inside and out, as well as circular. These are the same directions a child must master in order to write letters and digits. In dyspraxia therapy it is advised that “finger games” are used, such as the manipulation of puppets put on fingers, paper clips and clothes pegs (by manipulating these objects a child practices the opposition of a thumb and strengthens the three fingers participating in the pencil grip).

This paper presents the results of a qualitative user study conducted on a group of early readers (aged 6-9) in a primary school in Krakow, Poland, on a sample of 20 children. The presented solution is a new type of plot construction in a publication – an open structure that is not chronological but has some key points (like the beginning and end) predefined. It is also an attempt at using gestures, which are native to software in a way that is beneficial from the point of view of developmental psychology.

The prototypes of a paper and a digital tablet-based book made it possible to check children’s reaction to non-chronological storytelling application and aimed to verify the design principles along with fine motor skills needed to manipulate the objects on touch screens.

The aim of the study was to evaluate whether the paper book might help children learn the use of a more complex, tablet-based book, built using the same principles, but considering the usage of touchscreen and touch gestures. The test also aimed to verify the speed of mastering a user interface when little or no visual hints were provided.

The paper also explains how open structure designs, based on randomized elements, allow the expansion of the genre with educational books, aiming to help develop the young reader’s eye-to-hand coordination and make more engaging stories based on new content.

(Source: ELO 2015 conference catalog)

The recent evolution of western societies has been characterized by an increasing emphasis on information and communication. As the amount of available information increases, however, the user -- worker, student, citizen -- faces a new problem: selecting and accessing relevant information. More than ever it is crucial to find efficient ways for users to interact with information systems in a way that prevents them from being overwhelmed or simply missing their targets. As a result, hypertext systems have been developed as a means of facilitating the interactions between readers and text. In hypertext, information is organized as a network in which nodes are text chunks (e.g., lists of items, paragraphs, pages) and links are relationships between the nodes (e.g., semantic associations, expansions, definitions, examples -- virtually any kind of relation that can be imagined between two text passages). Unfortunately, the many ways in which these hypertext interfaces can be designed has caused a complexity that extends far beyond the processing abilities of regular users. Therefore, it has become widely recognized that a more rational approach based on a thorough analysis of information users' needs, capacities, capabilities, and skills is needed. This volume seeks to meet that need.

From a user-centered perspective -- between systems and users -- this volume presents theoretical and empirical research on the cognitive processes involved in using hypertext. In so doing, it illustrates three main approaches to the design of hypertext systems:
*cognitive, which examines how users process multilayered hypertext structures;
*ergonomical, which explores how users interact with the design characteristics of hardware and software; and
*educational, which studies the learning objectives, frequency and duration of hypertext sessions, type of reading activity, and the user's learning characteristics.

This volume also tries to provide answers for the questions that have plagued hypertext research:
*What is hypertext good for?
*Who is hypertext good for?
*If it is useful for learning and instruction, then what type?
*What particular cognitive skills are needed to interact successfully with a hypertext system? Anyone interested in the fields of computer science, linguistics, psychology, education, and graphic design will find this volume intriguing, informative, and a definitive starting point for future research in the field of hypertext.

This panel will examine the textual (verbal and non-verbal) construction of characters as the key to representation and identity in cyberspace. The concept of “character” is not established a priori, but comes into being as participants in the digital world or text render words, images and movements into a perceived identity.

The panellists will address questions of representation, fiction and reality as well as discussing techniques, patterns and codes used in creating and interpreting digital characters. Is it possible to represent oneself realistically in cyberspace? What is the relationship between realistically intended projections of ourselves and make-believe or fantastic characters? What are the relationships between the construction of characters in narrative and dramatic fiction and in computer games and online communities?

In four complementary and interlinked perspectives on characters in digital environments, we will discuss how real and fictional people are represented and/or represent themselves in the varied contexts of online communities, computer games, hypertext fiction and artificial intelligence.

Lisbeth Klastrup´s paper examines how in some digital fictions and/or worlds, the programme is brought to the centre of the stage of action as a “character.” Represented as a perceptible subjective consciousness or “implicit narrator,” this character is made explicit through the way it manipulates the interface, comments on the ongoing action, etc. In these instances, the programme is “perceiving” us at the same time as we as characters/readers perceive “it.” Can these examples point toward an alternative way of thinking about character representations and their mediation in digital environments?

Susana Tosca´s paper discusses different sorts of computer games to see what kind of characters they propose the user to identify herself with. It considers the range of actions that users are asked/allowed to perform as well as the prior narrative construction of the "user-character." These two factors will give an idea of the nature and degree of the users activity, raising questions of narrative and psychological identification, representation, involvement, catharsis and ultimately the cultural importance of games. Who are we when we play digital games?

Jill Walker´s paper explores the concept of “character” in a MOO, examining the relationship between traditional notions of character, as we are familiar with them from literature, drama and cinema, and players' presentation of themselves as make-believe or realistic characters in a MOO. In analysing specific examples of characters and “bots” in MOOs, this paper examines how we can use existing and emerging theory to understand digital characters.

Elin Sjursen´s paper investigates how the creation of identity/character is flavored by the user’s implementation of textual and visual codes in "interactive" environments like MOOs and cybertexts. Without help from facial expressions, body language and tone of voice, how does the reader interpret the writer while they chat together, how does the writer reveal herself to the reader? Can any of these codes help create better and more believable bots?

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS:

SUSANA PAJARES TOSCA is writing a PhD thesis on Literature and Hypertext in the Complutense University of Madrid. She has published articles and given talks on humanities computing and cyberculture in general both in Spain and abroad.

LISBETH KLASTRUP is writing a PhD thesis on MOOs and other on-line Communities as Fictional Worlds. As the first PhD at the recently established IT-University in Copenhagen (Denmark), she is much engaged in the founding of the interdisciplinary ITU Research School. She has written articles on on-line fictions, film and cyberspace.

JILL WALKER is currently researching a PhD at the University of Bergen (Norway), where she will compare hypertext fiction and MUDs. She has published several articles on hypertext fiction, both in print and as hypertexts, and has extensive experience with building and living in MOOs.

ELIN JOHANNE SJURSEN is writing her graduate thesis on the merging of text/image/sound in cybertext poetry at the University of Bergen (Norway). As a multimedia artist she has presented her work at several conferences.