BIOGRAPHY

Aaron A. Reed is an acclaimed writer in the field of electronic literature whose extensive body of work has been featured in the Electronic Literature Collection. He identifies as a writer, programmer, student and teacher who has collaborated with several other authors on works of electronic literature. After receiving a BA in Film Studies at the University of Utah, Reed went on to achieve his MFA in Digital Arts & new Media in 2011 and is currently pursuing his PhD in Computer Science at the University of California Santa Cruz.

DESCRIPTION

First published in 2010, Blue Lacuna is a full length reconfigurative digital novel that relies on user interaction to steer the narrative. The novel is generative, highly descriptive and contains masses of imbedded text only revealed by reader prompts and choices. The reader is inserted into the plot as the main character, “you”: a wayfarer and explorer and drawn to far off lands, including the island of Lacuna, by “the call”; a mysterious force that drives the journey through the novel. As the novel progresses, the reader encounters different characters that take on significance based on the reader’s response to them. Textual prompts give the option to experience ‘dynamic room descriptions’, revealing in-depth descriptions of objects of interest.  While Blue Lacuna is not multi-modal it alters the traditional linear model of a novel by utilizing the dynamic capacities of a digital medium. As a highly interactive and user-dependent piece of electronic literature, Blue Lacuna’s ultimate meaning and resolution is defined by “you”, the reader.

COMMENTARY

Reed has created an extensive fantasy world in Blue Lacuna that is enthralling and exploratory. While the novel requires input and active choice from the reader to progress and define the narrative, it is the poetic language and imagery that gives the piece strength. As Marjorie Perloff states, “no medium or technique of production can in itself give the poet… the inspiration or language to produce works of art” (143) and the interactive medium through which Blue Lacuna is experienced only lends itself to the dreamlike qualities of the narrative. Perloff’s analogy of interactive electronic literature to the Simms game (Perloff 144) is helpful in understanding the reader’s relationship to the novel; the content is fixed but the presentation and manipulation is dynamic. The embodied experience of Blue Lacuna gives the reader the best of both the worlds of print and electronic literature by combining the heroes journey with modern digital capacities. This allows the exploration of “the dynamic interactions between the artifactual characteristics and the interpretation that materiality embodies” (Hayles 70) in the world of electronic literature and gives the reader opportunity to shape their own pursuit of meaning and happiness through an intertwined world of hypertextuality.

WORKS CITED

Hayles, Katherine N. “Print is Flat; Code is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis” Poetics
Today 25.1. (2004) Web.

Perloff, Marjorie. “Screening the Page/ Paging the Screen:Digital Poetics and the Differential Text.” Trans. Array New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories. Adelaide Morris and Thomas Swiss I. Cambridge and London: MIYT Press, 2006. 143-64. Web.

Reed, Aaron A. Blue Lacuna. bluelacunastory.com Web.