Pay Attention! Or, what is our brain on the Internet?

The literature piece in which has caught my attention would be Strings by Dan Waber. Dan Waber feels that handwriting is rarely seen in works of electronic literature or on screen at all. I, myself also see more visuals then actual words in electronic literatures. As I was reading the literature pieces, you can see that most of the page was covered by visuals and very little words were being used.

I personally chose this piece because the Strings represents a life in its own and how it is able to shape into different human emotions and actions. As I was playing the piece, I would see the piece of string, displaying a whole lot of human emotions like sad, happy, arguing, and laughter. I like how the strings were able to corporate into something in which I experience everyday. The Strings had a life on it’s own.

The cool thing is, in this visual, the hand in which is writing the words are not shown which gave a uniqueness how the words are transformed.  I also like how opposite emotions were the words in the strings that swing back and forth. This shows how relationships with people and how people interact with one another are. They may get along on one side and not get along in the other.  The string kind of portrayed a game of tug-o-war in a way where the stronger side wins the game.  Waber is trying to let us see that side and how many people would experience different emotions in different situations.

Literature Piece: http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/waber__strings.html

Still standing by Bruno Nadeau and Jason Lewis.

Still standing caught my eye, big time. As sound as I heard the title I assumed right away it was going to be about struggling through life. No matter what the struggle you will still stand as a strong person that you are.  As I clicked begin, I saw that it was a bunch of letters lying at the bottom of the screen sort of like a sensor.  As the guy walked in front of it, it was as if the reflection of the guys making the poem. I was a little confused as to what the poem meant. I just think is it beautiful how when he walked away all the letters fell down. Comparing it to our daily lives , when we lose someone who means the world to us , everything just seems to fall down and out of place.

http://collection.eliterature.org/2/works/nadeau_still_standing/ss_960x540.mov

I is always in the center. As I try to move, new verbs appears between you and I. It is what ones see from their perspective. I never changes. What you do does. As I move without the cube, there is different you with verb. It is kind of like browsing the internet, it is the first person browsing from one site to the next and looking at what others are doing. This cube represents facebook. Statutes of you, whom are the others are changing, through the perspective of I. We are in a distant, but from we, the you and are are the we.

I picked the inanimate Alice, Episode 1: China. It is about a Chinese girl is driving with her mom to look for her dad since he is lost. It presented in a flash form. It also requires viewers’ action throughout the story. Viewers can be drawn in with text, images, sound effects, background music and the interaction.

That Chinese girl has an electronic device, which she called it as ba-xi, with her in the car while they are on the way to find her dad. The player can register all new locations which might help them to find her dad. It can also be used to take photos, mailing, drawing. She drew a guy and she named him Brad, who is her imaginary friends. At the end of the story, she found her father because she heard Brad’s voice in her head and told her “Go that way.”

I found this story interesting because it captures my attention by its music, images and mainly the interaction that it asks for. Since it is presented in a flash form, I could read as many times as I want for each flash and go back to any part I want. The background music is in Chinese style and the sound effect matches the story. Also, I think that most people have their own ba-xi in their life.

http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/pullinger_babel__inanimate_alice_episode_1_china/index.html

I chose this piece because the barrage of numbers and letters animated in various styles and effects intrigued me. It reminded me of math which I dislike but also computers and programming languages and the internet which contains probably an ever growing amount of such sequences due to the popular demand for technological reliance on the internet. The sound makes everything smooth and interesting and since the text is constantly moving in different transitions, it doesn’t get boring. Poetry doesn’t have to be only words but it can be pictures, sounds, and anything random as long as it means something to you.

I picked the Birds Singing other Birds’ Songs as my topic. This is a piece of work which reveals how the birdsongs would be reinterpreted by the human voice. The arrangement of this work is fantastic. One can press any number bottom (1-13) as he or she wishes. The song will be sung individually if you press one single number. If you want to have a combination of voice, you can pick more than one number to make the song more vivid. When I was playing it, I tried to have all the number 1-13 pressed. It came out boisterous and dissolving.  This piece formalizes the human speech into computerized bird-voice which I think services as an integration to show us that any literacy can be demonstrated by image and digital form. 

Link:http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/mencia__birds_singing_other_birds_songs/index.html

Star Wars, One Letter at a Time by Brian Kim Stefans was interestingly unlike the other poems/flash on the site. Unlike the other titles, this one caught my eye well because I liked the Star Wars trilogy.

In the beginning when I was looking at the letters, I was focusly engaged in what the letters would make the word of and keeping track of the letters as they poped out. But I realized as the flash goes on and on, with the letters and all the sounds of the type writer, it becomes so frustrating to make sense whats going on and I lost my focus. After a good six minutes in, I suddenly became lost and confused on what the point of this work was. I even tried to catch back to where the word was in the real script.

Therefore I began to write this blog to say how I don’t understand this work. But as I started to write this blog, I realized that I was in a similar position as George Lucas making his masterpiece.

I believe this work, by Brian Kim Stefans, shows us a common exerience of writing: how George Lucas sat infront of a typing tool and wrote letter by letter, and staring at what letters comes next or what word to put next, similarily to what we all do when we write an essay. I mean, lets face it, we always have that moment where you want the words to just fill up the page on the blank screen. Also that we all start on a blank page and that we fill it up with our ideas, concepts and experiences! This also would agree on the saying “that everyone has a stroy to tell”. 

Even if I’m totally getting a different idea of this work, I believe it all the works in the site just like the poem, can be interpreted differently by everyone.

If you are up to the challenge of hearing the typewriter as George Lucas writes his work click here -> http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/stefans__star_wars_one_letter_at_a_time.html

Stud Poker created by Marko Niemi.

Poker Game made with a poetry twist to it. Everything is the same as a real game of poker but instead of numbers there is words. The idea is to make the best poetry hand with your words or get a normal poker hand such as a pair or three of kind.

The game is interesting and makes you really think because your always seeing how mixing and matching words makes a better poetry line.

http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/niemi__stud_poetry.html

Paper number two is really interesting. This assignment has made me think about many things surrounding our educational system. As I wrote my first and second draft, I thought about many ideas that could help our education system improve. Even though we are limited in this paper and I cannot write everything that came to my mind, it felt good to think about so many ways I could help improve education a classroom. As I have developed many interesting ideas, I’m stilling having trouble putting them in paper. I feel like my brain is just throwing so many different ideas onto the paper that it’s hard to get my ideas together.

I feel like a good strategy would be thinking about one type of technology and writing about how it would change a subject taught in school, but yet again if I choice to do that I feel like I would be very limited. Limited in the sense that I would not be able to fully express how feel and my ideas to how I think a 21st classroom should look like. This is a very interesting paper to write and it will be very interesting to see the outcome of this paper. I just need to get my ideas organized and develop a well-written thesis sentence.

As I was looking over my paper, I realized that I still have a far way to go. The main problem I’m having is clarifying my main central idea and organizing it to make it flow throughout the paper. I feel as if I’m just being too basic and vague. In this first draft, I remember how difficult it was for me. I had to think about my topic for about three hours, before I really started to write something. I couldn’t support enough details from my topic.

I’m starting to revise my paper by creating an outline of it so that I know what to write. I’m struggling with how I’m start out with an interesting and relatable topic. I wonder how everybody else is really doing. I feel like I can’t leave writing this paper in the last minute because there are many different of ideas. In my next paper I hope that I can be more specific and direct. I’m excited about being able