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On Our Location

New e-book affirms the crucial relationship of story and setting

ECHO HISTORY

”The Silent History” is certainly also not the first time that writers and researchers have tried to make the intimate bond between story and setting a technological reality. In 2005, MIT professor Nick A. Montfort, who is also president of the Electronic Literature Organization,  pioneered the “Bubble Project,” a sticker-art movement in which people fill in blank thought-bubble stickers posted on advertisements, pretending to write the model’s thoughts—literally writing on the environment, as opposed to the invisible graffiti made by “The Silent History.” Artists like Rueb and Stefan Schemat, who designs soundscapes, are likewise pioneers in the interactive-fiction field. “There’s the impulse to say, ‘This is new, it’s the first thing, there’s nothing like it,’” Montfort says. “People in fact do new things and, in fact, what they do is connected to history.”

He’s right. MIT was the site of much literary experimentation in the late ’70s and ’80s  as the first personal computers arrived on the scene. Researchers developed some of the first interactive fictional e-worlds (what now we call video games). Later came hypertext fiction—a story in which the plot is determined based on the links one clicks.

It’s the hybridization of collaborative and locative experiments that, along with the technology, that distinguishes “The Silent History”—not the age-old impulse to immerse oneself in a story. In designing her locative soundscapes, Rueb draws on the Native American belief that a landscape carries the history of the people who have lived there. “They believe that when you go to a place, you’re activating that history or that narrative, and that the narrative cannot exist outside of this location,” she says. “It’s actually a very ancient idea.”

Perhaps, then, one is able to trace this human desire to connect narrative to place all the way back to ancient folklore. “Neither of these elements is a digital-age invention,” Harvard English professor Leah Price wrote in an email. “I would see it more as a case of reinventing the wheel.” No story, real or fictional, lacks a setting, and though one could try to tie this recognition to the advent of the technology that allowed that connection to blossom, doing so is fruitless.

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Therefore, the introduction of every new mode of experimental literature is not necessarily a threat to the way we read stories. Projects like this one are merely a logical next step in a long line of attempts to immerse readers more fully in a narrative. “It’s kind of a motivation that is a basic human curiosity,” Derby says. “The iPhone doesn’t create that. It just provides us with a new way to explore that.”

A NEW LINK

For now, iPad and iPhone technology seems to represent the realization of such an ability—it allows us seemingly infinite freedom to experiment. “The technology itself was so far behind the imagination of the people that were attempting to write [interactive literature] that it ended up being a really frustrating experience,” Derby says. “But now, all of that [technology] is so seamless and so deeply integrated into our lives. The moment has arrived where we’re losing this distinction between print and digital.”

It remains unclear whether the next step for electronic literature will be defined by e-books that are indistinguishable from their paper forms or more experimental efforts. “E-books are a publisher initiative, and they’re about how to effectively distribute and market books to people digitally, but if you see what’s available on the Kindle, there’s very little innovation in form,” Montfort says. According to him, electronic literature is largely initiated by authors, usually made available to all readers, and demonstrates great innovation. “I see [‘The Silent History’] as a possible point of convergence between more innovative efforts that authors are making and the e-book,” he says. Because the project was initiated by Horowitz—a publisher whose job it is to market the novel but who is also responsible for the experimental form of the novel—“The Silent History” represents a possible fusion of mainstream e-book culture and more niche-oriented e-literature.

Even though “The Silent History” distances itself from mainstream e-books—a form of literature that makes some devotees of the print book uncomfortable—its creators do not envision this form becoming the modern means of reading. “None of us took part in this project because we want to dance on the grave of the printed book,” Derby says. “I think we all believe that the printed book is going to continue and thrive, and this is not in any way a replacement for that.” Rather, the creators want to send the message that there is still potential for experimentation in literature.

Given the fast pace of technological advances, there is always the risk for innovators of going the way of the dinosaur—their inventions losing their relevancy with time. Derby wrote a work of hypertext fiction for his senior thesis at Brown University in HTML form. Saved only on a floppy disc, the work is likely lost, not to mention nonfunctional in a modern sense. Despite new efforts at curating experimental and digital fiction, Horowitz, Derby, and Moffett recognize that this project will someday likely become as functionally irrelevant as Derby’s floppy disc narrative.

Producing a successful literary innovation, however, is merely a matter of negotiating convention; audiences will sift through these experiments, embracing some and rejecting others. “You have to sort of accept that if you’re going to write in this medium, at least for now,” Derby says. “It’s going to be like the wild wild West for many years. It’s kind of fun that way.”

—Staff writer Gina K. Hackett can be reached at ghackett@college.harvard.edu.

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