Responses: Week of 1/29

The Last Performance is a visually appealing piece of electronic literature. When you first come to the page you hear a horse neighing very loudly unfortunately you never quite get told the purpose or significance of the horse. After the page loads you are asked to “construct a last” upon clicking that you are taken to a screen with words in a form of a circle. As you watch the words change from big circles, little circles, swirls, etc. Not only do the shapes change but the words in the shapes change as well. It is very challenging to follow along and read the words before it changes, but begins and end are repetitive throughout the whole story.

In the upper left hand corner are the words “The Dance” “The Performance Space” and “The Dome” each of these are actually links to different places.  “The Dance” is the story that you are taken to when you first click “construct a last”. I believe this is called the dance because how the words are set up almost as if they are doing parts of a dance routine. “ The Performance Space” takes you to a picture of a building, I assume, is the dance studio. You can then click on the picture leading you to a quote about the space. When you click “The Dome” you are taken to a page full of random words at first glance this seems pointless, but you can click on these words and be taken to different ‘lenses’ or perspectives of what this place means to people and their ideas on what should be done with it.
You are given somewhat of an explanation of this piece if you click in the lower right hand corner on the first page called “project blueprints” which tells you the reason of the e-literature. It is about a place called Goat Island where unfortunately decided to do a last performance after twenty years of performing. This piece is based on that last performance but with a twist. The website invites artists and writers to send in different pieces of work to help build a last performance, but at the same time with people endlessly sending in work the performance cannot really end. So in  a way this piece is to keep Goat Island alive even after they stop performing.

The electronic literature My Body a Wunderkammer is a piece by Shelley Jackson, that uses the different part of a woman's body to tell stories about her life.  The piece starts out by displaying a sketch of a woman’s body where you can pick any highlighted part to begin.  After the user initial picks where to begin a story will be displayed and throughout the story there will be hypertext that will take you to different stories that are linked to different parts of her body.

This piece of electronic literature was very interesting.  It told stories that went through the life of the authors with some actual stories and some fictional stories.  The author did a great job telling stories from throughout her life and connecting them. She uses the many stories to show and tell how she evolved as a person and also as a human.  My Body a Wunderkammer is a great piece of electronic literature.