Description: Slot.Machine.Lottery—isn’t it enough to make one envision the gut-driven thrill of plump red cherries and punchy Candy Land tunes pouring out the bubbly speakers of a Casino cash-guzzler? In Jason Nelson’s This is How You Will Die, this cheerful paradigm finds itself gore-riddled at the side of a digital guillotine.
When you enter Jason’s Nelson’s website, you realize you have stumbled upon raw trouble. Buzzing psychedelic grass forms the background of his “whistled to life” series that encloses the morbid fiction you pursue. Upon entering the game’s purgatory, you stare at thin crimson scribbles and the solemn tombstone of an unknown Mr. “Teddy.” Devilishly simple instructions and credits appear in white, and arrows direct you towards two deceivingly simple words: death SPIN.
Using re-appropriated hypertext from a simple online slot game, Nelson combines hijacked auditory, cinematic and poetic elements into a murderous credit-based joyride for one’s survival. This game combines randomized fortune telling, dangerous gambling, and Russian roulette as animated vehicles to convey the mysterious notion of one’s eventual passing from existence to the grave. Nelson’s piece challenges the paradigms of literature hygiene by using asymmetry and hacktivist patchwork for the majority of its scattered interface. Besides this, the game-engine is composed of fifteen, five-line stories which substitute for the cartoon symbols one would experience on a typical slot machine.
Given a spin, these stories are shuffled and displayed in a unique combination of five text fragments. The first two texts depict the moments before death, the middle portion illustrates the cause of death, and the latter two sections depict the questionable aftermath.
Unless random combinations earn you additional points, you have a total of three ten-credit rolls to spend on the game. Certain functions of the game espouse media clips, while during the entire experience, a torture-dungeon soundtrack loops an eerie clip. An award winning piece, Nelson’s digital signature is sure to enchant you just as it has for the viral thousands who have flocked to his finite-calculator.

Analysis: Jason Nelson’s piece This is How You Will Die works to form a “bridge” between the philosophical implications of literature and the contemporary form that technology offers (Hayles 24). Nelson’s work contains both the comic existentialism that resembles the works of Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) and the “organic scramble” of artists like Pollock. His project takes on the mundane interface of life and translates it within the “virtual world” that our consciousnesses are inhabiting at an exponential rate (Hayles 47). By doing so, Nelson makes poetry “encounterable” as a digital entity. Cyberspace is the new bookstore, and programmers are the new Poes, Chaucers, and Shakespeares who flood the shelves. It is groundbreaking new media.
Additionally, Nelson’s work bypasses the conventional “genetic algorithms” and standard storyline format by adopting, instead, a catalytic tone (82). This tone is primarily achieved by two means: self-reflection and sound. As Paul Miller writes, “noise can disorient us and destabilize our systems. But it is not just this explosive, destabilizing effect that is significant. The noise can be instructive” (Burdette). Miller’s quote effectively pinpoints how sound compliments the process of self-reflection. Sound provokes us to engage emotion, emotion provokes a particular state of being.
It is primarily the self’s willingness to engage the thought of their own death that animates the simple program. Simple graphics and chilling sounds only help provoke this space. In this way, Nelson perfects “taunt programming.” This refers to programs which primarily gain momentum by the phenomenology that potentially ensues (i.e., existential angst, nausea, and convulsions). In other words, his literature highlights an uniquely human endeavour, which is, symbolic immortality. Goldsmith’s reaction to another work helps summarize this reaction. He felt that another e-lit work evoked a feeling of “how unprofound my life and my mind is” (Perloff). These inner crises are precisely what Nelson provokes with his absurdest environments.
In summary, it is the ambiguity of his “constellatory” plot lines which trivialize a culturally-regarded enormity, that is, death (Gomringer). The limited plasticity of Nelson’s work places emphasis upon the work’s pilot. It assigns value to the emotional response rather than the combination or result. In short, the reader is the final cause of Nelson’s construction—its prevailing purpose and fuel simultaneously (Heidegger 12).

Author Description: Jason Nelson: eccentric hypertext engineer, cyberstudies professor, poet, and digital connoisseur. Born in Oklahoma, Jason is a thoroughbred American. Nelson is an avid appropriator of hypertext. He uses patchwork code as a vehicle with the hope of witnessing poetry’s revival and raised reception in the rushing digital age. He has been the recipient of multiple, prestigious electronic-media awards and currently teaches on the Golden Coast of Australia at Queensland University.

His unique organic scrawl pervades all his many works in a disconcerting Kafkaesque manner. In this way, all of Nelson’s pieces form both an invitation, and challenge to his digital-foodies. Passivity is not easily entertained by those who regard his work, nor is any kind of rigid reception advised. It is the fluid nature of his interface that comes at both a deceptive surprise and potential prejudice for the unsuspecting visitor. In short, this Outbacker may be caustic to one’s sense of wellness… but since when was a tensionless state ever good for us?

Works Cited:

Burdette, William. Noise From the Street. Web. 2011.

Gomringer, Eugene. From Line to Constellation. Web. 1954.

Hayles, Katherine. Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary. UNDP Press. Print. 2010.

Nelson, Jason. Digital Poem Discussion. Web. 2010

Nelson, Jason. Digital Poetry Introduction. Web. 2007.

Perloff, Marjourie. Screening the Page/Paging the Screen. Web. 2006.

Simon, Nina. The Wilderness in the Corner: A Discussion with Jason Nelson. Web. 2007.