My DIY film/writing school

My finished chapters : New Media Travels

I have been a slack student. It's not that I haven't been reading and taking in the information, ruminating on it, etc. ... it's just that I haven't been writing about it here.

My last entry of that kind was in December .... and I have now finished both books (The Writing Experiment and Story)

So, without further ado, my notes on The Writing Experiment, Chapter 11: New Media Travels.

New media is non-linear, as exemplified by the way you're reading this blog. Sure, each post has a beginning, middle and end, but you don't start at my first ever post and then read up to here.

Non-linear writing allows the principles we've explored in this book (postmodernism) to be used to their full potential.

New media tends to be screen-based, whether it's in the form of video, animation or interactive display. It involves the simultaneous absorption of multiple, fragmented texts. It's writing for the ADHD generation.

Synonyms: New media writing, cyberwriting, digital writing, cyberpoetry, hypertext, hypermedia.

The link, the screener, the hypertextual
"In a hypertext each individual text (usually known as a lexia) is likely to contain more than one link."

I never knew it was 'usually' known as a lexia... and I've been working with web text for five years! Must be an academic thing again...

Hypertext fiction allows for many possible readings of "the story".

"These paramaters (plot, climax or narrator) are not so much erased as displaced and multiplied, so that there are numerous plots, climaxes and narrators."

Animation
You can use movement to illustrate the meaning of a word, or use it to suggest ambiguity, fluidity. You can confirm, or contradict the meaning of the word by the way you animate it.

Splitting, framing, layering
Scroll vs. click, the eternal debate.

Cyborg language
Using machine language - computer code - in your writing.

Hypermedia
Combining writing, image and sound.

There was much more, but not that interested me at the moment.

posted by Simon @ 2:01 pm