Best Sentence #79
But how, in the medium of email, might one investigate white space?
P.S. I know the point of this blog is "out of context", but with so many first-time visitors and new readers, I thought a little context might be fun. So click on the comments for the full passage from which this sentence was snipped.
P.S. I know the point of this blog is "out of context", but with so many first-time visitors and new readers, I thought a little context might be fun. So click on the comments for the full passage from which this sentence was snipped.
posted by Jane | 10:49 AM
18 Comments:
Oh, in case you're wondering, here's the context...
From chapter 5 of the dissetation:
The email appeared exactly as the text does below, with the same amount and placement of white space:
Once upon a time there was a young man who dreamed of the sea. The waves, he thought . . . the waves beat like the world’s heart, crashing and hissing against the shore.
Crash and hiss.
Crash and hiss.
He loved the sound of the swell as it slapped and gasped against the hull of his boat.
Slap and gasp.
Slap and gasp.
And he was thinking about the rocking ocean, gentle as a mother’s arms, at the very moment he was murdered.
A mother’s arms.
A mother’s arms.
Just a few puzzles into the game, players have already started to learn that the everyday media they encounter may be hiding interactive affordances. But what technique does this e-mailed poem suggest? In confronting a mysterious poem, a player might think first of modes of literary analysis. The visual “white space” or “blank space” of a poem, for instance, is often said to convey as much as the carefully arranged words. In this particular poem, there is indeed a significant amount of white space. But how, in the medium of email, might one investigate white space? What interaction does an email text afford? The text of opened emails is not editable unless it is cut and pasted into a text-editing program or window; however, text in an email can be highlighted. Here, the player may think to highlight the text of the email. The black bar created through this action reveals that some of the email has been written in HTML and coded to appear in a white font. Invisible unless highlighted, this white text occupies the white space of the poem. Highlighting the text reveals the following:
JEANINE
Once upon a time there was a young man who dreamed of the sea. The waves, he thought . . . the waves beat like the world’s heart, crashing and hissing against the shore.
WAS THE KEY.
Crash and hiss.
Crash and hiss.
YOU'VE SEEN HER NAME BEFORE
He loved the sound of the swell as it slapped and gasped against the hull of his boat.
Slap and gasp.
Slap and gasp.
BUT YOU'VE PROBABLY FORGOTTEN
And he was thinking about the rocking ocean, gentle as a mother’s arms, at the very moment he was murdered.
A mother’s arms.
A mother’s arms.
SHE WILL LEAD YOU TO EVAN, JUST AS SHE LED THEM...
Here, the form and the medium of the poem together have suggested a particular affordance beyond reading. The player is required to act upon the text in a specific manner in order to reveal its hidden assets. Like Gold’s ubicomp objects that assume an ordinary appearance as a kind of ruse, this email obscured its interactive properties for everyone but those who playfully investigate beyond the surface.
Isn't that a bit like asking...in the ludicrous world of 'game theory', is it being rather pedanticly 'ludic', or academically banal... to engage one's audience of colleagues in a search for the implicit, the "phatic"--'white space'--rather than the explicit, the "emphatic".
When the focus is expression, it is hard to focus on what is 'left out'.
To focus on what is 'left out' requires a major shift of paradigm...indeed, the beginning of a New Game.
Just my opinion - white space or blank space relating to poetry = no matter the medium - convey points to ponder, for one to stop & reflect on the message / subject being relayed/
THIS IS A GREAT SITE.
Since you are a resident of CA (great state, highlie librail), I hope you can answer a question four me.
Good advice is what I think you should provide.
With regard to that person who should bee elect vice president, do you thing hillary clinton should make Nancy Pelosi or Barbara Boxer her frist choice?
Hillary-for-President.blogspot.com
Hmmm, interesting. I like it!
The keys danced, the monitor shook and suddenly shut off ...
http://digitalartphotographyfordummies.blogspot.com/
Best blog I ever met ;-)
I agree with machsirius that embedding a message in an already cryptic message is a great idea - but I find the white spaces containing concrete clues to the game a bit of a disapointment - if only because it becomes yet another example of a common malady suffered by many games - Its called: "guess what I was thinking" -i.e. you have to guess what the author was thinking.
I often use this term to describe a bad IQ Test item (question). An item of this type does not measure your ability to reason, but rather your ability to guess what the test author was thinking.
nice blog
While Mystery certainly crops up in a great deal of well-known Renaissance poetry, the interactive gamesplaying inherent in the literary white space you allude to so succinctly rather brings to Edna's mind the wonderfully black pages of Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Moreover, I can attest to the fact that subversion through "space exploration" of this sort often crops up as I write my own oft-censo/ured poetry - though inevitably the "blogspace" is often multicoloured and, perhaps equally importantly, two-dimensional - for the time being, at least.
Growing up, my sister and I used to often play the game of taking turns speaking sentences that we were confident had never been uttered before, not even by circuitously regal articulators of characteristically bovine vernacular.
Very cool!
Mmm...I actually like this blog a lot!
-Anonymous
When in textual communication, it is just sooo great finding people that can read in-between the lines of what one writes. It is like love. What I am referring to is the metaphorical white spaces.
Edna-- Tristram Shandy is my favorite all-time book! :)
I find your blog most fascinating.
writing a paper one paragraph at
a time is a new concept for me. I'll have to give it a try. Thank
you for sharing.
Writer
Correction: I ment to say one
sentence at a time. Daaaa.
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