Sooth is a piece that conveniently ties well together with Separation! Sooth is Epoetry that involves clicking interaction with the reader in order for the poems to be continued. I like the sounds visuals that are provided with each poem. The one that scared me the most with sound and visual was the poem, "weeds". The camera work around the hospital patient was distracting from the words on the screen. As the camera went around the body starting from the legs working its way up to the face, I was getting more and more anxious that the face was going to have some type of bandages or bruises because the person did have a hospital gown on. When I saw the person did not appear to be injured I felt more at ease but then I got anxious again when the patient's eye opened and looked right into the camera. I felt her staring at me while I was trying to read the poem and again I was distracted. I immediately changed the poem since I did feel like I was being watched. The other poems worked well with sound and imagery. The poem, "root" contained my favorite sounds. It went nicely with the images because I saw water and heard droplets of rain into a pond of some sort. It was quite soothing. Oh would you look at that.... soothing.... and the title of the piece is called.... sooth. I didn't even plan that. This was an interesting piece and very interactive which I love. I would just change that one part of the woman in the hospital bed. Other than that, I did enjoy it overall. 

Alexandra Sabogal

Doctor Zamora

Writing Electronic Literature

28 November 2016

Before choosing my piece, I saw myself picking one with lots of visuals and cool sounds. It was what I always noticed in every other piece and was what stood out to me the most. The fact that the piece I chose has no sound or out of the ordinary visuals is very interesting.

Annie Abraham’s Separation was a piece of Elit that caught my attention from the very beginning. It starts off with a blank screen leaving the reader to wonder what to do next. Naturally, we click to see if we can trigger anything on the screen. Once the reader clicks the screen, a word pops up. It starts off with, “lonely”...leaving the reader to realize he/she has the power to make all of the words appear with just a click of a mouse.

I love when pieces involve the reader. This piece is extremely interactive. The whole piece is a poem about separation. The poem appears to be about a person writing about how this one person they are addicted to isn’t good for them. I assumed it was a person writing to their significant other.

After every couple of lines, a screen pops up with a breathing technique. Each one helps the reader disconnect, stretch and focus. For example, the first exercise is called “show the pain”. In this exercise, the reader is asked to open their mouth and lips as wide as possible, simultaneously raising their eyebrows as high as possible. They have to hold for counts of 5 and repeat until the red bar goes away. The second exercise that pops up is called, “caress your back”. The reader is asked to put their arm behind their head with the palm touching their back. Hold onto their elbow with the other hand and gently pull, across and down. Go to the point where they feel a stretch in your shoulder and upper arm and hold this position. Repeat both sides several times. These exercises definitely come off as random when reading the poem especially if you didn’t read the intro to the piece.

The intro talks about how the text was originally written by a patient in a hospital in 2001. The patient was being asked to use a tool to prevent RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury). This tool was the collection of exercises of the brain and body.

Here is a bit of the intro to help explain the piece:

“All computer workers tend to forget their body, and so risk to be a victim of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) one day. The visitors of 'separation' are constraint to click slowly (, as someone recovering from rsi) to see appearing one word at a time of the text. Every now and then a exercise is proposed and all interaction with the computer is postponed. (A recovering rsi patient needs to do this kind of exercises.)

The text seems to be about a separation between human beings, only the last two phrases reveal that it's about a separation between a human being and a computer.”

After reading the intro, I knew the poem was dedicated to the person’s computer. It made total sense! The lines that stuck out to me the most were “You never need a break and when you are down it’s me who has to repair you. You won’t repair me”. I found these lines powerful because there is so much truth to these words. When my computer is down, I have to take it to get looked at or read the manual that came with it to help it work again. I do my best to help the computer because I need it for work and pleasure. I have grown so attached to it that when it is down, I freak out and do my best to make it work again. When I am down and broken, the computer doesn’t fix me. When I am sad and going through a rough patch, the computer isn’t asking for help to make me work again. I do more for the computer than it does for me. So why am I so attached to it? Later on in the poem it says, “From now on I will use you and I won’t let you take me over again”. This is something that stayed with me after reading this piece. I will not let my computer take over me and neither should anyone else. We are in control. We are the users of technology. Technology does not control us.

A Hobo Lobo Adventure is very different from the other pieces we have looked through throughout the semester. I actually regret not finding it first because I enjoyed it that much. There is just one thing I did not like from this piece and it is the lack of music in the beginning. Something I point out first from all previous pieces is the sound. It was something I definitely missed because the sounds usually help me focus on the piece and follow through until the end.  I followed through and finished it even without a lot of sound.

After noticing sound I focus on interaction with the viewer/reader. I as the reader got to interact with this quite often. I loved the pop ups and the movement and how my participation was required to help keep the piece moving.

When beginning this piece I saw the title and had no idea what it meant. I looked it up real quick to find that lobo meant timber wolf and hamlet meant a small village. I assumed hobo meant what everyone knows it stands for which is a homeless person and I was correct. The hobo lobo is the main character in the piece. He is seen as a possible hero when there is news about rats being all around the village. Hobo lobo is expected to take care of the situation by the mayor.

Speaking of the mayor, my favorite part was when his face popped up on the screen so unexpectedly. I love when I cant predict something coming in a piece and that for sure I did not see coming.

There were many pop ups that moved all around the screen jumping around and sliding and bouncing. This could be distracting to some but I did enjoy the craziness of it all. The illustrations were great and really played a big part in making the characters come to life.

Again I have found a piece that helps me realize how important sound is within a piece of Elit. "This is how you die" is a game online in form of a slot machine one could find in a casino. Except this game won't bring you a dollar and some change if you're lucky. This game is actually frightening and it's main focus is death and how the player will get there. I took a couple ideas as inspiration from this piece. For example the voices of the man and woman, I enjoyed that. The eerie music was also a great addition to the whole piece. This definitely wasn't one of my favorites but for sure one of the oddest pieces. I found myself not being able to listen to it by myself in my room because it made me that uncomfortable. It wasn't as interactive as other pieces but I did enjoy the fact that I was playing a slot machine and had credits. That made the game realistic in a way even though this is a literature piece. I am interested to see what Kelly has to say about this piece because out of all of them, this is the one I find myself having the least amount of words to explain how I feel about it. I will definitely say I enjoyed the sounds and imagery.