Our first joint paper — that is between Jeremy Douglass, Mark Marino and I (of Writer Response Theory)– was presented by Jeremy at DAC in Denmark last week. The feedback is good. In particular, Jeremy has been getting a few queries from people following up from my sections on cross-media and adaptations. I’ll be posting about these researchers soon too. Yes, there is another cross-media researcher in the world! In fact, I have 4 more coming your way. In the meantime, here is the abstract of our paper:
How do we compare eliterature forms? What does it mean for a work to be implemented as hypertext, interactive fiction, or chatbot? “Benchmark fiction” is a methodology for creating ‘benchmarks’ – sets of adaptations of the “same” eliterature content across different media for the purpose of comparative study. While total equivalence between the resulting ‘benchfic’ is impossible, praxis remains important: by creating ‘equivalent’ media and then critiquing them, we revealing our own definitions of media through process. Work on the first story to be benchmarked, “The Lady or the Tiger” (1882) by Frank R. Stockton, inspired a framework for displaying sources through interchangeable display modules. The project is considered in terms of historical precedents (Lorem Ipsum, Hello World, Cloak of Darkness, Gabriella Infinita), contemporarytheories (adaptation, remediation, media-specific analysis, transmedial and cross-media storytelling), and current experiments (chatbots, wikis, search art, cellular automata), with some discussion of design and pedagogy.
And the bot, part of the benchmark project, is here.
Douglass, J., Marino, M. and Christy Dena (2005) ‘Benchmark Fiction: A Framework for Comparative New Media Studies’ presented at Digital Arts and Culture Conference, Department of Digital Aesthetics & Communication at the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark.