Authors Bios: Andy Campbell was born, and still resides, in the United Kingdom in 1975. He has been at the forefront of digital fiction since 1993, and is the head author of the website Dreaming Methods. On top of this Andy is also a judge for Bournemouth University’s New Media Writing Prize, and he is also the Creative Developer for Intimate Alice.

Lynda Williams was born in Norwich, and has lived in many locales all over the world. In 2010 her short film, Grace, was screened internationally at the Cannes Films Festival. Since 2009, she has also provided web-content for the London 2012 website. She is currently developing new film, TV and digital fiction projects.

Description:   Using stunning visuals and striking audio, Changed is a fictional tale about a young girl who has survived a vicious attack. The collaboration uses interactive fiction to throw the reader into the world of gender inequality and the inner feelings of those who are wronged. This open source, kinetic narrative strikes a chord with the user and invites them to travel through this dark place that is visited by many victims. While the story is pre-determined there are some “easter eggs” hidden throughout that adds some layers to the story to make the journey even more though provoking.

Framing Commentary:   Changed is a great hypertext story that specifically uses a technique known as multi-linear lyricism (Marinetti 7). In using this technique the collaborators use words that grabs the attention of the user, and show the user where to click next to further the story. After being click on the words of the story slowly dissolve. An important difference between print and electronic hypertext is the accessibility of print pages compared, for example, to the words revealed by the cursor’s click (Hayles 75). Hayles also states that “fragmentation and recombination are intrinsic to the medium (Hayles 75). In this sense, the words that the user originally clicks on are gone, or become hard to read, if they go to the next screen and back. This adds more to story because the fragmentation is something that the reader of a traditional book cannot experience. Hypertexts also allow the user to navigate throughout the story in at least two senses (Hayles 83). This accomplished not only by allowing the user to click on words to reveal the story, but also by scrolling through to different story boards. Another way in which the authors allow the user to navigate is by putting in objects which the user can drag around to reveal even more text, such as the lamp allowing the user to make previously hidden text visible.  By mixing together both visual, auditory, and textual media the story is a prime example of multimodality (Hayles) that adds a lot of feeling and depth to this dark story. The story expertly combines all the aspect of new media, albeit in a linear story, in a way that make all of them equally important and take away from the story if they are not brought together.

Works Cited:

Hayles, N. Katherine. “Print is Flat, Code is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis.” Poetics Today 25. 1 (2004): 69-90. Web. 22 Mar. 2013.

Marinetti, F.T. “Destruction of Syntax – Imagination without Strings – Words-in-Freedom.” Futurism (1913): 1-8. Unknown.nu. Web. Mar 22. 2013.