Archive for 2018

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[ecrea] "Small Screen Fictions" - special issue of Paradoxa

Mon Jul 16 08:35:14 GMT 2018





I'm delighted to announce the publication of our /Paradoxa /special issue, /*Small Screen Fictions*/, which features contributions from current and future leaders in digital narrative and e-literature scholarship: Stuart Moulthrop, Steve Tomasula, Dene Grigar, Mark Marino, James O'Sullivan, David Meurer, Sara Tanderup, Aline Frederico, Sarah Mygind, Ryan House, Joshua Hussey, Kristine Kelly, Meredith Dabek, and Caleb Milligan.

The collection is edited by Astrid Ensslin (University of Alberta, Canada), Lisa Swanstrom (University of Utah, U.S.A.), and Paweł Frelik (Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland).

The companion website <http://smallscreenfictions.net/> offers free access to the Introduction, supplementary online material for individual essays, and information about how to purchase a copy.

*Blurb:*

Today, with growing frequency, narratives are experienced on the smaller screens of laptops, tablets, and even mobile phones, which in turn become “all-purpose reading machines” (Tosca and Pedersen 358) that shape the ways in which our bodies and minds interact with narrative meanings. Narratives that we peruse via small screens typically involve direct reader/viewer/player interaction, enabling highly idiosyncratic, individualized and unique narrative experiences. Some of these fictions are merely digitized or wikified versions of texts previously available in the codex form; their digital conversion affects some of the ways in which readers engage with them, but the basic structures of these narratives remain unchanged. Some others, however, have been written and designed (these two concepts often blur) specifically for interactive small screens.

The functionalities and affordances of these digital-born fictions are not replicable in any other medial form; nor can they be made manifest in any printed form; nor do they demonstrate an allegiance to any single pre-existing art form. It is within the idiosyncratic nature of small screen fictions that they embrace the experimental affordances of the tools in and for which they are written, and that they give rise to ever new ways of gestural manipulations (Bouchardon). They allow us to explore new ways of using parts or functions of our bodies – be it our hands and fingers, voice, breath, or even brain waves and full-body motion – in combination with exploratory-noematic strategies of reading and play. By the same token, small screen fictions accentuate and foreground the playful nature of reading and situate it in contexts and settings conventionally reserved for immersive video gaming, for example.

The contributions to this special issue seek to capture and exemplify some of these trends. They range from in-depth analyses of individual texts to theoretical and philosophical discussions and empirical reader-response studies. They span a diversity of different platforms and genres, from narrative videogames and ludic, gamelike fictions using 3D immersive environments, touchscreen technologies, or more traditional mouse-and-keyboard combinations; to participatory social media narratives; networked and locative narratives; interactive graphic novels; interactive hypermedia, as well as haptic and augmented reality fictions. Furthermore, the articles compiled in this collection show that small screen fictions appeal to a variety of target audiences, from indie gamers to bloggers, and from pre-school children with a propensity for canonical cartoon characters to mature adults with an interest in exploring the depths of human trauma through palimpsestically layered, symbolic landscapes.


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