English: "E-Lit Review"
Inanimate Alice: Episode 1
Through my exploration of "Inanimate Alice, Episode 1:
China” by Kate Pullinger and Babel I have seen how technology has been evolving
more in our everyday lives. Technology is a place where many people can
adapt and learn new things. Have we ever thought that technology could be
a creative or fun way to learn? Well, I am here to tell you that
technology has many web pages where one can find it be amusing and entertaining
by the electronic literature that’s being incorporated online. There are
many genres in electronic literature such as poetry, young adult fiction,
games, hypertext creative non-fiction/fiction, music, and many more.
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Therefore, from all these genres of electronic literature, one that struck my attention was a piece of children/young adult literature with art work called, “Inanimate Alice Episode 1: China.” This piece of electronic literature is an interactive hypertext fiction that set in the 21st century. Inanimate Alice tells a story about a young girl (Alice) whose life is surrounded by technology. She goes on a journey with her mother in the middle of nowhere where she is concerned and worried about finding her father. Alice lives on a base and is home schooled because her father being in the army. She doesn’t associate with any friends, whereas, her only friend is “Brad” a boy who she drew and moves around with a skateboard on her baxi, a technological device.
In my exploration to Inanimate Alice I’ve realized that the story takes place in China, (where her dad was drafted). The digital storytelling starts off with giving you directions on how to navigate through the website (which is clicking the arrow in order to proceed to the next page). Each page contains a sentence more, but one can see that in each page there’s significance symbols on the right hand side. The symbol is shaped as a square and represents what the page was about (indicating as if the symbols are chapters of the story). Throughout the whole story there are many sound effects but one that I noticed a lot was a sound that’s like an old dial-up Internet connection, in which it plays throughout the whole story. Even though, the sound effect fits right into the story where it takes place as Alice is living in the middle of a desert where wires surround her at all times. There also comes a point in time where the website contains a special sound effect as if the reader can imagine they are in China while reading the story. The sound is like a shaolin monk where people in China go to meditate.
Through the story there are moments where the navigator has a chance to interact with the story. For example, when Alice is on the journey to look for her father she decides to take a picture of flowers as she’s in the car with her mother. By taking the pictures the navigator can click on the flowers that pop out and each click makes a flash sound effect. After the flowers have been photographed there is movement where images are displayed and motion occurs where you see Alice’s technological device going through the process of sending a picture message to her father. While Alice is staying at the base camp the only thing that seems to make her happy is her “baxi” (technological device). Her baxi is a device that keeps her entertained and prevents her from being scared because she is searching to find her father late at night.
On the other hand, Inanimate Alice is a piece of electronic literature that took me on a journey where I felt that I was a child all over again encountering a new invention that was incorporated in technology. Alice was a digital piece that seemed user friendly. There were moments where I found myself being amazed on how a piece of electronic children’s literature can be highly interactive for the child. Even though, this story is linear and not complex like many other pieces of electronic literature are, by means this hypertext fiction is a great story to gear children and young adults’ attention to technology.
Reviews/Critics:
In a review by Kotlon Smith, she discuses that
Inanimate Alice was a piece of literature where she felt it was something that
didn’t connect her into a childhood’s experience. She also indicated that
it was a piece that didn’t fall into the category of children’s
literature. One of the things that grabbed her attention was that in
order for the navigator to read the digital story the website needed Flash to
operate the interactive story correctly. Kotlon also states that the
story was displayed in a linear fashion, but at the same time this makes the
navigator more engaged and attentive throughout the entire story.
On the other hand, Kotlin states that one of the negative things about the story is that the reader is not able to click forward (chapter menu that’s displayed on the side of the page) to keep on reading towards the end, whereas, the only thing the reader is able to do is to proceed backwards from the story. Although, Kotlon mentions that she found the story to be entertaining, it also made her to pay attention in order to maintain interest within the story. Overall, Kotlon states that one problem she has for the story is that she feels its, “highly compressed” making it “easy to miss information that the author thinks is important,” but in the future she hopes to encounter more types that in some way are related to the one like “Inanimate Alice.”
Here’s a link to my
E-lit review:
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