Chapter 7- Divergent Streams
The final chapter of Scott Rettbergs Electronic Literature focuses on several newer genres of e-lit ; locative narratives, interactive installations, expanded cinema, virtual reality, and augmented reasoning. Expansion on the core genres of e-lit (hypertext fiction, combinatory poetics, etc.) are referred to as divergent streams. Divergent streams “in some way builds upon those other genres while expanding them into other disciplines.” (Rettberg 184).
Due to the constant growth of the field, ways to preserve/archive e-lit are continuously important. While e-lit is not kept in library catalogs, there are databases created to store e-lit. Despite the continuous growth of the field, previous works of e-lit don’t disappear. They are” absorbed into new genres and forms…they serve as building blocks for the other forms that follow them,” (Rettberg 201).
For my bring it to the table, I researched the locative narrative The La Flood Project (2011) by Mark Marino and the LAinundacion collective. To create the project, USC students gathered stories of local disasters, allowing for a collective narrative to be developed of a fictional Los Angeles disaster. The project included character monologues and location descriptions for each stage of the flood. Along with this, there was a live tweeting event in which participants shared their fictional experiences of the flood. The La Flood Project resulted in more than 70,000 tweets.
I was also intrigued by the LA Flood Project. I think it's impressive how they managed to have people export 70,000 tweets about a fictional scenario!
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