recontextualization

This paper explores the concept of narrativity throughout space by analyzing the distributed novel Implementation (Rettberg and Montfort 2012). Distributed narratives are literary texts that are distributed across different spaces and times to create divergence rather than unity (Walker 1). Implementation consists of 240 stickers with text fragments and people are invited to put up stickers in a place of their choice on public surfaces. The stickers could then be photographed and added to the project website.The practice of putting up the stickers highly influences the way in which the actor views the space, connecting elements in the text fragment to elements in their surroundings. The actor who places the sticker might not have noticed certain elements if it hadn't been for the text on the sticker. Once the sticker is placed in its context, the opposite occurs: the surroundings influences the reading of the narrative.This diffraction between narrative and space is highlighted by the act of photography and online collection, as the digital interface shows the immediate context of the sticker but makes the city as a whole invisible. For the 'analog' reader, however, the context of the whole city is highly visible as the sticker has to be found inside the city.  The combination of analog and digital practices of Implementation thus highlights the representation of the city as a visual practice. In this way, the city becomes part of the work and vice versa in both physical and digital settings.

This paper analyses the work by means of a new materialist "diffractive reading" (Barad and Haraway) between the narrative and its urban context. I propose to regard the urban space as a ‘text’ and read how this (con)text interacts with the narrative stickers. My paper will also outline future plans for empirical experiments Implementation. 

Walid Raad's The Atlas Group Archive (1989-2004) is a transmedial, fictional 'archive' which supposedly encompasses donated testimonies on the war in Lebanon (1974-1991), including diary logs, photographs (some of which contain notes), and videos, archived on theatlasgroup.org. In this case, the fictionality of the archive creates an archive where no real archive exists. The entire archive is transmedially constructed, in which the layering of content in each image becomes the key feature. There is, for example, a document named "Let's be honest the weather helped" (1998) contains a series of black-and-white images of buildings with colored dots on them, which supposedly signify various types of bullet hits (see fig. 1). The dots cover the whole area of bullet impact, so this media filter makes it impossible to verify if there were indeed bullet hits, and let alone which color the bullet tips were. The transmediality of the project is thus a means in conveying the impossibility of an archive and the unrepresentability of trauma. Medial borders are crossed through layering of content, reinforcing and destabilizing the truth value of testimony. Apart from being published on the website, Raad's project has been exhibited in different galleries around the world.

The Atlas Group Archive can be seen as an instance of 'traveling memory' (Erll), a term to describe the dynamics of commemoration in the current age of globalization. Analyzing The Atlas Group Archive as an instance of traveling memory, I argue that the internal and external institutional context of the archive largely influences its ability to become a traveling memory which "has brought forth global media cultures" (Erll). I compare the effects of the different interfaces in which this work has appeared. Apart from being published on a website, Raad's project has been exhibited in art galleries around the world. Academics have often pointed to the ways in which The Atlas Group Archive plays with the blurring of fact and fiction. I take this observation to the next level by reframing it as the engagement with decontextualisation and recontextualisation. In my analysis, each context becomes an integral part of the images, a layer of content providing meaning. In the online archive, the images function as an icon of the material notebook, and the black background of the images functions as an index, signifying that the images are uncropped and therefore authentic . In the context presentation of the exhibition, however, these images function as icons and index primarily to show that absence of their referentiality. The notebook does not exist and the black background is part of the artwork. I analyze the project's narrative function's using Manovich's criteria for narrativity in databases: the distinction between 'text', 'story', and 'fabula'. Though highly transmedial and fragmented, The Atlas Group Archive accommodates to this model, as it uses multimedia (a 'text' across media borders) to narrate the Lebanese war ('story'), colored by narration of events experienced by actors ('fabula'), and together these three elements form an archival format. According to Benjamin, the opposition between information and storytelling resides in the fact that "while the [storyteller] was inclined to borrow from the miraculous, it is indispensable for information to sound plausible" (101). In the case of The Atlas Group Archive, we might say that these two categories are combined. The fabula is miraculous, but the contextualisation of text and story into information makes the unity plausible. The Atlas Group Archive's narrative functions by the virtue of fragmentation, which becomes an integral part of the content: it fills gaps while at the same time creating them.

(source: author's abstract)

Most new media work establishes interactivity within a curated installation space: a gallery, a festival, or an area whose purpose is to exhibit art. However, recent experiments in new media narratives have made use of the capabilities of smartphones and tablets to present experiences that are aware of the user’s position in space and
even their current behavior or object of attention.

Specifically,augmented reality works set themselves apart by re-contextualizing environments and objects encountered in everyday life, removing the fourth wall and blurring or eliminating an interactive experience's boundaries. This differs markedly from the purism of the imagination tapped by literature, and often even favors more realistic integration, in contrast to stylistic depictions and abstractions used in monitor-based works. Augmented reality’s strength and interest lies in how it embeds a story in an environment, or how it can be used to awaken new awareness of a viewer to their surroundings. This bridges the world of the reader with the diegesis of the narrative, resulting in works that react to the immediacy of the experienced space.

The major draw to augmented reality in industry has been to use this immediacy to push a product or service, and embed it within the viewer's world. As with any new platform for generating content, its commercial appropriations and implementations threaten to control the discourse of its use. It is important therefore to establish an artistic framework that conveys and critiques the narrative affordances AR makes possible.

Augmented reality is a relatively nascent medium, especially when set alongside other works of electronic literature. Our talk will start with a brief illustration that will allow audience members with smartphones to collaboratively experience an augmented reality work.

(Source: Author's abstract, 2012 ELO Conference site)