New Media Literature as demonstrated by Janet Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck
Hamlet on the Holodeck front cover
Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
Murray gives a thought-provoking analysis of the history, present and future of cyberdrama. By her own admission, the present and future are difficult to describe or predict given the rapid pace of change in the computer/cyber world. It is true enough that much of her book, penned in 1996 and updated in 2000, seems already quite out of date. The history she provides, however, will always make this an important reference for new media writers, historians and theorists.
For me, what is missing in Murray’s analysis is a look at the future of nonfiction cyber (new media, multimedia, interactive media, electronic literature) writing. Hamlet on the Holodeck itself, being a stationary, word-only, book-based piece of writing, misses the opportunity to stay current, to evolve, that a cyberbook would have. Murray also avoids analysis of the world of writing and reading that the computer opens to the nonfiction world, remaining focused only on the world of fiction, narrative storytelling.
One point of contention for me in Murray’s theories is her focus on the subject of immersion. For Murray, coming from a gaming background at MIT where she teaches and researches, immersive experiences appear to be the positive and mandatory goal of cyber narrative. She is not alone in this thinking. Most of the books written on the subject of new media narrative that I encounter today focus on writing for gaming. As I personally am an advocate of postmodern forms of writing that engage a reader/participant in the act of reading/viewing by reminding them of their present reality, of the constructions of the author, and through avoidance of totally immersive experiences, it was often difficult for me to “buy into” many of Murray’s theories or projected goals of cyber narrative. Murray’s ideal cyber narrative would be one that allows the reader to be totally immersed in the story, but still able to participate fully; this format actually results in something of a feedback loop in that the more the reader is allowed to participate, the more she becomes immersed in the story. In my ideal literary experience, the reader would not be subjected to a mind numbing immersive experience but to one in which she is fully engaged as a thinking and analytical participant, and learns that an aware-state participation can be more enjoyable (and productive) than a desensitized immersive one. Perhaps we have room, and need, for both. My concern being that the literature and research to date seems to be biased in favor of gaming and immersion.
Writers of nonfiction and fiction will benefit from the phletora of information that Murray draws on and introduces about multi-form stories, audience participation/interaction, the history of the fourth wall as it has pertained to all new advances in storytelling, “intelligent agents,” and the archiving and linking characteristics of computers and how they might be applied to new forms of storytelling. As films were originally called “photoplays,” (a name derived from their original act of simply recording plays on stages), the new media, cyberdrama and multimedia monikers of this new literary form we see emerging from computers are generic, representational titles applied to a genre that has not yet been fully defined and developed. Just as filmgoers fled from the theater when they first saw a train coming at them through the movie screen, and just as early creators of movies felt that the addition of color and sound would detract from the moving visual film element of the early movies, new media literature / electronic literature will evolve with fits and starts itself while it is being conceived and invented, and while readers learn its new language. Like film, one day cyber literature will find its real self – something that none of us are fully imagining right now.
January 29, 2010
Tags: electronic literature, Hamlet on the Holodeck, Janet Murray, MIT Press, Narrative for Gaming, new media as performance, new media as story, new media literature, New Media Narrative Posted in: Book Riffs
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