Electronic Literature

Literature in New Media: A Comparative Study of Literary Affordances of Lance Olsen’s “10:01” in Traditional and Digital Medium

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R.Ramya1 and Dr.Rukmini.S2

1PhD Scholar, Department of English, School of Social Sciences and Languages, VIT, Vellore. ORCID id: 0000-0002-7298-5959. Email: ramyarajakannan7@gmail.com

2Senior Assistant Professor, Department of English, School of Social Sciences and Languages, VIT, Vellore. ORCID id: 0000-0001-8414-3145. Email: rukminikrishna123@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.45

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Abstract

The recent advances of the digital era invoke an array of new media for communication. This impressive feat of technology purveys a wide range of new affordances to communication unviable in print. The new media affordances of the electronic and the digital have impacted the creative literary compositions, providing innovations in contemporary literature. Postmodern literature being the initiation of experimental works has strived to reinvent the affordances of literary fiction. It has now advanced into resorting to digital technological affordances to maximize narrative inventiveness. Lance Olsen’s “10:01”, a postmodern novel adapted as hypertext fiction, is an exemplar of such feat. This research examines the literary affordances of the chosen text in print and its hypertext adaptation within the framework of affordance theories.  The study unveils the inlaid new media aesthetics and viabilities of the digital in relation to the traditional medium of print by focusing on affordances. The paper asserts the significance of theorizing the aesthetics involved in digital textuality by holding print and electronic literature at the intersection. This study aims to establish the shift in literary analysis paradigms of text due to the emergence of New media.

Keywords: Electronic literature, New media, Literary Affordances, Print vs Digital, Hypertext fiction, Postmodern Literature, New media Aesthetics.

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Gitanjali Roy

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Faculty of Liberal Arts, ICFAI University, Tripura. Research Scholar, Dept of English, Tripura University. ORCID: 0000-0003-3672-3481. E-mail: itzgitz@gmail.com/gitanjaliroy@iutriipura.edu.in 

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.32

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 Abstract:

A digital performer has to negotiate with different kinds of affordances inside the space of a digital text. The Nightingale’s Playground (2010), a digital fiction authored by Andy Campbell and Judi Alston offers the reader/player with four versions of the text centering on the protagonist Carl Robertson who tries hard to search for his lost school friend Alex Nightingale. The online texts (‘Consensus Trance’, ‘Fieldwork Book’) and the gaming version of the digital fiction (‘Consensus Trance II’) offer the reader different decisional platforms. This makes it a challenging task for the reader to connect the affordances of the digital text. At the same time, the offline pdf version of the digital fiction hints at Carl being affected by a psychological disorder. The paper shall focus on how a digital reader negotiates his/her position inside the digital text by decoding the programmer’s/author’s encoded plot.

Keywords: Digital, Performer, Text, Nightingale’s Playground, Reader, Player.