Design is relevant to how digital works of literature are encountered, interpreted and responded to. The visual arrangement of a work on the computer screen (use of color and light, points of view etc), its structural elements (programming codes, server speeds etc.) and its functional qualities (spatial arrangements, linking systems, and sonic features etc.) combine to become the overall design of the digital text. It is argued in this chapter that patterns of implied response are present in the design elements of a digital work of literature. A recent popular work on the design of digital media describes the authorship of interactive texts where “the ratio of accessible states to conceivable states is a good measure of the quality of the interaction. Verbs are what make states accessible to your user. If you put lots of effort into the verbs, you’ll be giving more and more state accessibility to your user”. (Crawford: 95) Such a mechanistic approach to interactive design speaks of a lack in the understanding of how representations from multiple cultures often intersect in the authoring of digital textuality. However, there is present in the statement a suggestion of the relevance of response in the design of digital media works. It is such dialogic exchanges between design, the material artifact and implied response embodied in the digital literary text which forms the subject of this chapter.
Should be interesting.....
In the meantime there is much to do. I was sent a link today to The Eighth Day, "an online graphic novel created as a 3rd year Final Major Production for (BA) in Interactive Media Production by Arni Lochner".
There's a blog for The Eighth Day as well. It represents for me a further development in Flash as a narrative production tool. The Eighth Day is an interactive web comic with audio. Really nice use of animation in both visual composition and kinetic structures. Shading and colors are great as well. I question the need to maintain the folio form but it works fine.
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