Biography of the Author:

Donna Leishman is a media artist, critical writer and author of several well-known electronic literature pieces. This female author from outside of North America currently resides in Scotland where she works at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee. Leishman has demonstrated her research to numerous universities and her works have been featured in many renowned newspapers, conferences, museums and galleries across the world (University of Dundee). “Themes in her research include developing and exploring the role of the participant, issues around identity and closure and interrogating the aesthetic consequences of difficult interactions and dissonance” (University of Dundee). Her website 6amhoover.com allows her avid e-lit readers to experience and navigate her creations and also gives them access to some of her critical writing (University of Dundee).

Description of the Work:

Donna Leishman’s The Bloody Chamber V2 is a kinetic and interactive piece of fiction based on the historical French folk tale Bluebeard.  The piece depicts a sinister love story but unlike most literature, the work uses flash. This distinct creation gives Leishman’s unique portrayal of the historical events regarding a diabolical husband who gives his latest wife a key to his bloody chamber. He stresses that she must not enter the room however, out of curiosity she goes against his will and enters the forbidden chamber where she discovers the bodies of his past wives (Leishman). Apart from a small piece of text, the completely black, white and red work is almost entirely a visual narrative accompanied by audio components. The interface allows the reader to maneuver through the narrative with a simple click of a mouse enabling them, with unease, to find their own way through each room within this house of terror.  This screen-based environment gives readers a new, creative and interactive way of experiencing an old wives tale.

Framing Commentary:

Like many other of her electronic literature pieces, Donna Leishman’s The Bloody Chamber V2 focuses on combining historical legends and myths with contemporary technologies. Her genre of literature is fairly recent to modern readers and in Katherine Hayles book Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary, she claims “…the most obvious way to think about screens [is] to imagine them as pages of a book one turn[s] by clicking” (59-60). This assertion perfectly embodies Leishman’s work as The Bloody Chamber V2’s narrative entails the reader to continuously click the screen in order to delve further into the story. Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw, another piece by Leishman, also shares similar qualities. Both pieces use an interactive, visual narrative as well as sound to portray an historical folklore and the reader solely controls the story. Unlike John Cayley’s ambient piece Windsound, both The Bloody Chamber and Deviant cannot play alone. The viewer exclusively controls the destiny of the characters. This enables the reader to follow the narrative at their own pace and allows them to truly take in the surroundings of the piece. Furthermore, Hayles book specifically discusses Deviant and what the reader can expect from this work. She claims that “[r]ather than striving to progress by solving various puzzles and mysteries, the interactor discovers that the goal is not reaching the end…but rather the journey itself” (9-10). The readers of The Bloody Chamber can also anticipate this. The purpose of this piece is to explore the virtual world slowly and to enjoy the interactive fiction as a whole, rather than focusing strictly on the end.

Works Cited:

Hayles, N. Katherine. Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008. 9-10, 59-60. Print.

Leishman, Donna. “The Bloody Chamber.” 6amhoover. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar 2013. <http://www.6amhoover.com/chamber/index_flash.htm>.

“Staff.” University of Dundee. N.p., n.d. Web. 2o Mar 2013. <http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/staff/donnaleishman/>.