Chapter 7

Chapter 7 "Divergent Streams" focuses on genres of electronic literary that could not be explained in detail within the book. A few genres Rettberg discusses includes "Locative narratives", "Interactive Installations",  and "Expanded Cinema, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality". Locative narratives is about the relationship between our interactions between the Internet and real life. Rettberg uses Google Earth and Street View as examples of programs that are able combine elements of real life and technology. Rettberg believes locative technology is able to create experiences through layers about the world. Technologies such as GPS, QR codes, and RFID are used to identify specific locations and used to deepen a electronic literature story. One example Rettberg uses is a "murder mystery by retracing the steps of the killer at the scene of the crime" (184). The main aspects of a locative narrative is the relationship of real life with a geographical location and include characteristics of how the "experience can be mapped" (185). Rettberg explains how many locative narrative are a collection of narratives and uses The Yellow Arrow Project as an example. The Yellow Arrow Project uses SMS and placed markers on the website which allowed the reader to send messages to the projects phone number. Interactive Installations is a genre that "extends techniques from electronic literature into arts and performance environments" (189). Text Rain is an example of a interactive kinetic text installation. Letters would drop at the top of screen and each letter would interactive with the image on the screen. Expanded Cinema, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality focuses on 3-D objects and sometimes 4-D environments. CD-ROM became a popular tool at the beginning of augmented reality with films using it to experiment with different techniques. 

The work I chose to focus on was Terminal Time. Terminal Time was created in 1998 by Steffi Domike, Michael Mateas, and Paul Vanouse. It is a 30 minute documentary about the history of the world. Terminal Time first "moved from the far past to the recent present...and the audience was presented with multiple choice questions and asked to clap for the options they preferred" (195). The questions were based on the audience's ideology biases and would change based on the audience.

Tim W