These are the notes and exercises for the RMIT University Digital Writing Lab.
For most of the classes there are slides and a recording (the only exceptions are week 3 and week 7 when the presentations are given). If you miss a class go through the slides for that week and watch the recording. Later in the semester as we move to do more workshopping and exercises these slides and recordings will be less important.
Note: Collaborate Ultra does not do a particularly good job of sharing the screen correctly so step-by-step instructions are given for exercises where screen sharing is necessary. The videos also don't play correctly but these are on the slides so you can watch them separately.
To watch the recordings for each week:
- Log into Canvas
- Select "Collaborate Ultra" in the main menu
- Click the menu icon (three lines) to the left of "Sessions"
- Select "Recordings" to show the most recent recordings (for older recordings adjust the filter)
There are links to RMIT resources and you will also see a breakdown of the weeks on what we will cover.
In class we did a couple of exercises answering:
- What tools (or techniques) do you use to write?
- How do these tools shape the way you write (e.g., constrain the way you write or facilitate your writing)?
- As part of the folio for the end of the semester I want you to continue to revisit these questions as you work through class exercises or on your major digital writing work.
And we made a list of what everyone wanted or expected from the Digital Writing class.
Read (I briefly showed these in class) (on top of the weekly readings):
- The kinetic poem "Taroko Gorge"
- The hypertext fiction "First Draft of the Revolution"
- The interactive fiction work "Shade"
"Shade" is much more difficult to interact with so do read the "How to play IF" (link in the top right corner of "Shade") and look at the "Play IF card".
Write down your experience of (re)reading one of those works and we'll talk about it in class.
Look at the Electronic Literature Collection. Try to go through it (any of the 3 volumes) and pick a work you'd like to do your Individual Case Study on in Week 3. The selection should be finalised with me by the end of class Week 2.
Finally, create a GitHub account and do the "Hello World" exercise.
We discussed the 3 works that were read between week 1 and week 2. We talked about the experience of reading each work and how they differed between works.
In class we looked at "Taroko Gorge" and its different variations and remixes. We discussed:
- whether we thought they were successful,
- how they differ from print poetry, and
- how reception of the poems is altered knowing that while a human conceived of the process a computer assembles it.
We also talked about the qualities of electronic literature where it differs from print such as:
- the reader's ability to interact with the work,
- how the work reveals itself materially over time (as opposed to say a narrative which does this in the reader's mind),
- how the text changes, and
- the specific qualities of the type of work (e.g. links in a hypertext narrative, the parser interaction in a work like Shade).
For your presentation you will need to discuss the aspects of the work as literature (such as the qualities that make it poem or how the narrative operates) and how the work produces meaning as a piece of electronic literature (that is, using the qualities and techniques of electronic literature).
I also briefly showed Twine.
If you haven't already you will need to set up a GitHub account and do the "Hello World" exercise (see last week's homework). This should be done by Week 4.
Also look at Twine. Even if you don't intend to produce a hypertext fiction for your main work try using Twine as a way to arrange your ideas or play with narrative. As an exercise try adapting one of your already written print works—it can be fiction, nonfiction, or poetry—to Twine. Or if you have a work in progress try using Twine as a tool to develop that work. We'll do a deeper dive into Twine and hypertext narratives in week 5.
The class was taken up with presentations for the Individual Case Study assignment.
No homework but ensure that you have set up your GitHub account.
No slides or recording this week as the case studies were presented.
In class this week we discussed the intensives. If you missed the class and have feedback about them, please let me know. Some of the feedback was that they clashed with assessments in other classes. I've passed that on and so in future years the intensives will be planned for after those assessment due dates.
We then looked at algorithms and processes used to create poetry and historical examples of poems that were created with processes. We ran through some exercises using Tristan Tzara's process "To Make a Dadaist Poem", the Oulipo technique of N+7 and then we devised our own constraint for writing and used that to write a piece.
The second half of the class I showed a poem I created on Glitch and we ran through remixing that poem "We Walk To You".
Even if you made it to class it might be worth looking at the slides for this week as there were a couple of things I skipped over. There are also links on the last slide to learning resources for coding.
Complete the remix a digital poem, "We Walk To You", exercise.
And once you're happy with your poem post them on Canvas before the next class. I've started a discussion for you to post your digital poems
Also, feel free to make more than one by selecting remix again on "We Walk To You" or remix your own.
In week 5 we cover hypertext fiction, so we look at Twine. In anticipation of that we'll want to use laptops a bit more and to download a few things onto them:
- GitHub desktop
- Visual Studio Code
- And though you can create and edit Twine online, I'd like you to download the latest version of Twine
In this class we looked at literary print precursors to digital hypertext fiction, the technical precursors to hypertext fiction, and hypertext fiction itself.
We discussed the differences between digital hypertext fiction and fiction and between digital hypertext fiction and games. We also talked about how we plan print fiction and how we might plan (or not plan) hypertext fiction.
In the second half of the class we worked on writing a short hypertext narrative with Twine and we used GitHub and Netlify to publish the poem so that it was publicly available.
Complete the create and publish a Twine story exercise.
Once you've completed your simple Twine story, post it on Canvas.
In week 6 we look at interactive fiction/text adventures so for this you will need to download Inform 7.
In the class we continued with Twine. We added images to the Twine story we started in week 5, and changed the font, background colour and link colours. I went through resources that you can use in your work that are out of copyright or have Creative Commons licences that allow reuse under specified conditions.
I briefly covered parser-based interactive fiction though we ran out of time to do the Inform 7 exercise (we will revist this later in the year). The rest of the class was discussing what is needed for the proposals in week 7. So, make sure you read the class handbook for the requirements and listen to the class recording for further discussion of what is needed. In general terms:
- ensure you address the requirements in the class handbook
- make sure you discuss the computationally necessary aspects of the work (e.g. interaction style, algorithm)
- make sure you discuss the significance of the computationally necessary aspects of the work (e.g. why is linking or generative content meaningful in the work)
Proposals are due week 7 so concentrate on working on those.
Proposal presentations were this week and Jini Maxwell came in as a guest.
These are the works Jini mentioned in class:
- Porpentine's body of work (Jini particularly recommends Ultrabusiness Tycoon III)
- Depression Quest
- Under a Star Called Sun
- Touch Melbourne
And from Jini:
I didn't mention this one in class, but State: Burial is a great example of a narrative Bitsy – could be a good one for students who are interested in the engine, but want to make something more literary!
Make sure you upload your slides and support material to the assignment on Canvas.
Also, collect together and bring any technical questions / problems and we will create a list in class.
No slides or recording this week as the project proposals were presented.
This week we covered the differences between games and digital literature (and how they overlap). We discussed how a game is read—and for what qualities—versus how a piece of literature is read.
We also looked at and discussed web and game accessibility. There are links to accessibility resources in the slides.
Finally, we made a list of technical issues to address (these can be found under the How To Guides) and started small exercises to answer some of these problems.
No homework other than the continuing project and folio work. Keep bringing in any technical problems that arise as you develop your projects.
In class I went through questions that have come out of your projects. I showed how to add simple audio in Twine and audio in HTML/JavaScript with the use of a JavaScript audio library. I also briefly showed the Harlowe Audio Library for Twine which we will go into more detail in a later week.
The last exercise involved creating an input box which would filter the typed in characters and, based on what was typed, show a list of words.
No homework other than the continuing project and folio work. Keep bringing in any technical problems that arise as you develop your projects.
This week was dedicated to addressing some of the technical questions raised by the various projects and we went through 4 exercises:
- Create an image map in Twine
- Create a simple animation with CSS
- Remix typewriter text in HTML and JavaScript
- Remix text rain in HTML and JavaScript
No homework other than the continuing project and folio work.
In class I covered the submission requirements for the developed creative work. I also went through 3 simple exercises:
- Typewriter text in Twine
- Change the page background colour on click append in Twine
- Text rain in Twine
The developed creative work is due before class next week. A page needs to be uploaded to Canvas with:
- Title of the work and your name
- Description of the work
- Intended audience
- Developed work Netlify link(s)
- Developed work GitHub links(s)
- For Twine works a "proof" added to the GitHub repository
The intended audience can be broad, such as horror readers, poetry readers, or online journal readers; or narrower, such as readers of a specific literary journal. This is so you can start thinking about where to send your work for publication.
To add a proof, select "View Proofing Copy" in the Twine menu. This will open the proofing copy in a browser. Save the page as proof.html into your directory/folder with your Twine index.html file. Don't forgot to commit the new file and push the changes to GitHub.
This week we addressed the additional professional resources requirements for the folio (an artist CV or simple website). We also discussed the different places your works could be published such as online and digital literary journals or self-publishing. We looked at website building services and I went through how to make a very simple HTML/CSS website and publish that as a GitHub site.
The folio is due Friday 4 June. Look at the requirements in the course handbook but this will have been developed over the semester as you worked through the class exercises. As this is 15-30 pages each digital experiment will count as a page. For each digital experiment:
- provide a screenshot of the work
- a link to the work on Glitch (or Netlify depending on the piece)
- a link to the work on GitHub
- a reflection on the piece
The minimum reflection is 500 words in total but you can certainly go over that amount.
The other written experiments and reflections don't require any special treatment and can be added as is. Also take this as an opportunity to consolidate your thoughts about your digital writing and the direction you want (or don't want) it to go in.
Finally, remember as you reflect on your writing to make sure you have addressed the two questions I raised at the beginning of the semester:
- What tools (or techniques) do you use to write?
- How do these tools shape the way you write (e.g., constrain the way you write or facilitate your writing)?