Animalanima<\/i><\/a> is an interactive and digital form of poetry designed to introduce children to the world of electronic literature. Though Chris Joseph is the primary creator for the poems, design, programming, and music, his illustrations are done by various people (many of which are women). This style of children\u2019s literature uses animation and kinetics as well as music and audio, providing the audience with a self-navigating collaboration of poems. Every poem corresponds with the animal in that particular scene, and the animal represents a letter in the alphabet. In addition to the poem, each scene is accompanied by music and sounds for that specific animal to help provide the young audience with interesting facts about that animal. Readers chose their own paths by clicking different parts of the scene, and have the ability to return to that particular poem if they wish. This interactive set of twenty-six short poems, uncovered in your own order, provide us with a learning experience that is also fun and imaginative.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
Commentary: <\/b>Electronic literature can be experienced through many different ways, some more intriguing than others. Many of the pieces we have worked with, including Animalanima<\/i>, are multimodal. This means that they incorporate various computerized techniques, like music, images, and animation, in order to create electronic literature that is both creative and intriguing. We can see multimodal techniques in other pieces like Dakota<\/i>, by the Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, where the flashing text is accompanied by music and loud beats. Unlike The Dreamlife of Letters,<\/i> by Kim Stefans, Animalanima <\/i>is a non-ambient piece, meaning that it does not play through on it\u2019s own. The reader is essentially the driver of the text, clicking onwards allowing the piece to play out. Another non-ambient piece we looked at was Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw, <\/i>by Donna Leishman. This non-ambient piece of work is similar to Animalanima <\/i>because they are both forms of ergodic literature, meaning that they both require non-trivial efforts on the reader\u2019s part in order to complete the work. In addition, both pieces are interactive and educational. While Deviant <\/i>provides us with historical context and an explanation as to what happened to Christian Shaw, Joseph\u2019s work presents us with twenty-six short poems that teach us about animals. As seen in his poem, titled Seattle Drift, <\/i>Jim Andrews has developed the concept of \u201cdoing the text\u201d. His idea also applies to Animalanima, <\/i>because rather than watching an ambient piece of literature, the audience must click through the text in order to reach the end. Last but not least, Chris Joseph\u2019s piece of children\u2019s literature could be considered collaborative in the sense that it was created by various people. Though he is responsible for the most part, Joseph had illustrators who created the animated images. Animalanima<\/i> was interactive and educational while still maintaining the reader\u2019s interest through unique multimodal techniques.<\/p>\n
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Works Cited: <\/b><\/p>\n
Joseph, Chris. “About Me.” CHRIS JOSEPH: digital art, digital fiction, electronic poetry, music<\/i>. N.p., n. d. Web. Web. 24 Mar. 2013. <http:\/\/www.chrisjoseph.org\/blog\/about-me>.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Biography: Chris Joseph is a British\/Canadian author and artist in the world of electronic literature. He has written in various genres of e-lit ranging from interactive poetry for kids, to multimedia games and stories. A few of Chris\u2019 pieces are incredibly unique in the sense that they are more engaging than many other kinds of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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":[9,8,65,64,62,6,14,35,63],"class_list":["post-544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-animation","tag-audio","tag-childrens-literature","tag-collaborative","tag-ergodic","tag-interactive","tag-multimodal","tag-music","tag-non-ambient"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gantercourses.net\/ecyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544","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=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gantercourses.net\/ecyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":633,"href":"https:\/\/gantercourses.net\/ecyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions\/633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gantercourses.net\/ecyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gantercourses.net\/ecyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gantercourses.net\/ecyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}