![\"Pandemic](\"http:\/\/gantercourses.net\/ecyclopedia\/files\/2013\/03\/Pandemic-Rooms-300x193.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/b><\/em><\/b><\/b><\/em><\/b><\/p>\nThe Work<\/b><\/p>\n
Pandemic Rooms<\/i> is an interactive piece of net\/web artwork created by Jason Nelson that plays off of societal fears and paranoia around contracting a pandemic disease in the form of a flu virus and the ways in which society navigates those fears; both real and imagined.\u00a0 As the viewer\u00a0interacts with\u00a0Nelson\u2019s piece, they have the option of viewing the pandemic outbreak from four different vantage points \u2013 The Affected, The Emotions, The Pathogen, and The Cleansing.\u00a0 Each of the four viewing platforms contains an additional four\u00a0options in which the viewer can navigate through the pandemic.\u00a0 Each of the sub-platforms are highly interactive and generative and\u00a0allow the viewer to click and drag icons to add and subtract to and from\u00a0the scene, which helps to create music and movement; while other sub-platforms are more passive in the sense that the viewer is simply meant to watch the scene unfold.\u00a0 Even in the passive scenes, where the viewer does not have an interactive role in creating the scene, the viewers\u00a0are still able to interact with the scene by listening to and watching the pandemic unfold; through story, image and music.<\/p>\n
The Critical Analysis<\/b><\/p>\n
While not a traditionally critical, political or philosophical work of parody or satire, Nelson\u2019s piece does help to bridge the gap between paranoia and reality.\u00a0 Nelson brings awareness to the potential of a pandemic without actually taking the viewer into the heart of the pandemic \u2013 all while making the viewer consciously aware of the fact that they are navigating their own fate.<\/p>\n
Jason Nelson\u2019s Pandemic Rooms <\/i>is electronic literature (<\/i>e-lit) – why, because\u00a0Nelson\u2019s work meets many of N. Katherine Hayles\u2019 genres of e-lit, including “code, hypertext fiction, interactive fiction and top down approach to narrative in which the narrator spins a story and the bottom-up model of interactivity in which the user chooses how the story will be told\u201d (17). \u00a0According to Hayles works of e-lit \u201care deeply penetrated by code\u201d (5) and Nelson\u2019s work while aesthetically quirky and unconventional does use tradition forms of code such as Java Script and Flash, to create the end result of what he likes\u00a0to call digitial or hypermedia poetry, but what Hayles prefers to simply call\u00a0e-lit.<\/p>\n
When Hayles and her coworkers got together to create the criteria\u00a0for the first volume of Electronic Literature Volume One\u00a0(ELC1) they established some very strict criteria as to what would and would not classify as e-lit.\u00a0 If work was\u00a0 to be included into ELC1 the\u00a0work had to\u00a0include at least one of the following criterion: “work performed in digital media and work created on a computer but published in print (Hayles 3) and or the committee’s formulation for works to be\u00a0included in ELC1,\u00a0was that the piece was\u00a0\u201cwork with an important literacy aspect that [took] advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by stand-alone or networked computers (Hayles 3).\u00a0 By this definition, Nelson\u2019s Pandemic Rooms<\/i> and all of his works would classify as e-lit according to Hayles’ definition.<\/p>\n
More importantly than Hayles’ genres and definitions of e-lit is her statement that \u201celectronic literature, tests the boundaries of the literally\u00a0 and challenges us (readers) to rethink our assumptions of what literature can do and be\u201d (5).\u00a0 All of Nelson\u2019s works challenge Hayles’\u00a0aforementioned statement, and engage his\u00a0readers into a highly interactive world, where the viewer is allowed to navigate fully the world in which they are interacting; thus becoming a part of the digital\u00a0poetic that was created.<\/p>\n
Any of Jason\u00a0Nelson\u2019s current and future\u00a0works of digital poetics\u00a0should be considered for inclusion\u00a0into any\u00a0electronic literature anthology, as Nelson’s\u00a0creations are fresh, interactive, multi-modal, kinetic and just plan quirky \u2013 and it is exactly Nelsons\u2019 quirkiness that allows his audience to interact with and be drawn into\u00a0the world of e-lit as a whole.<\/p>\n
Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\nHayles, N., Katerine. Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary<\/i>. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2008. Print.<\/p>\n
Wikipedia. Jason Nelson<\/i>. 24 February 2013. Web. 23 March 2013.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Artist Jason Nelson grew up in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.\u00a0 He\u00a0earned a BA from the University of Oklahoma and an MFA in New Media Writing from Bowling Green State University.\u00a0 Currently, Nelson is a digital and hypermedia poet and artist. \u00a0He is a lecturer on Cyberstudies, digital writing and creative practice at Griffith University in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_links_to":"","_links_to_type":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,33,8,19,20,34,13,10,35,37,36,23],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-animation","tag-appropriated","tag-audio","tag-combinatorial","tag-critical","tag-fiction","tag-generative","tag-kinetic","tag-music","tag-philosophical","tag-political","tag-satire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gantercourses.net\/ecyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gantercourses.net\/ecyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gantercourses.net\/ecyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gantercourses.net\/ecyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gantercourses.net\/ecyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/gantercourses.net\/ecyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":489,"href":"https:\/\/gantercourses.net\/ecyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gantercourses.net\/ecyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gantercourses.net\/ecyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gantercourses.net\/ecyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}