Definitions
Digital literature spans such a wide variety of formats that it is hard to define. Even looking at what is heralded as excellence in digital literature does not always help. For example, look at two Australian awards given within nine months of each other. The Woolahra Digital Literary Awards 2018 required that submissions have been initially published online on an editorially curated site or in electronic format (Woolahra Municipal Council, n.d.). The QUT Digital Literature Award, however, requires that the work “relies on the unique capabilities of digital media” (Queensland Literary Awards, n.d., Section 4, para. 6). This difference led to works as different as Diary of a Post-Teenage Girl with Eloise Grills, a hand-drawn comic with the only digital affordance being the ability to select a particular frame to view and zoom in on it, and Nine Billion Branches, a user-navigated digital landscape where poetry is revealed by different cursor controls implemented across a variety of on-screen artworks, receiving accolades that sound identical. With such a broad-spectrum definition of what digital literature is currently, it is difficult to consider what serves as a development or what might be a new direction in which it is headed, but I will try.
Developments and new directions
Another digital literature prize-winner, David Devanny, gave some insight into possible directions of development for digital literature in a 2014 interview (Pears, 2014). He expressed an interest in developing skills with 3D cameras, touch screen technology and GPS apps with the view of incorporating virtual and augmented realities and location specificity in future digital literature works. Given the rising popularity of these digital capabilities, I can see these being features that digital literature will exploit. In fact, the Australian app Story City (Craven, 2015) has brought location specific narratives to several Australian cities, an experience I hope to enjoy sometime soon.
Issues
Underneath the portfolio section on the Dreaming Methods website, development company for one of the 2017 QUT Digital Literary Award shortlisted works, there is a list of government and game development sponsors (Dreaming Methods One to One Development Trust, 1999-2018). Jason Nelson’s curriculum vitae shows that he is a tenured lecturer in Digital Art and Writing and he has procured several lucrative grants in that field (Nelson, n.d.a). Therefore, creating digital literature is part of his livelihood. The works shortlisted for the Woolhara Digital Literary Awards were also published for some method of payment. Quality digital literature costs money to create and, in my opinion, will develop along the lines for which its creators can find compensation. For digital literature that uses digital affordances effectively to create a rich environment that extends the literary experience to become the standard, a publishing payment structure that compensates creators at least on a level equivalent to their traditional print counterparts must emerge. I fervently hope that will happen as I think the possibilities are exciting.
References
Craven, E. (2015). StoryCity [Mobile application]. Available from Apple App Store and Google Play.
Dreaming Methods One to One Development Trust. (1999-2018). Portfolio [Web page section]. Retrieved July 28, 2018 from https://dreamingmethods.com/#portfolio.
GIPHY. (n.d.). Jerry Maguire money gif [GIF]. Retrieved from https://giphy.com/gifs/show-money-maguire-9HQRIttS5C4Za.
Grills, E. (2016, February 17). Diary of a post-teenage girl with Eloise Grills. Scum. Retrieved from http://www.scum-mag.com/diary-of-a-post-teenage-girl-with-eloise-grills/.
Nelson, J. (n.d.a). Curriculum vitae. Retrieved July 28, 2018 from http://secrettechnology.com/JN-CV.pdf.
Nelson, J. (n.d.b). Nine Million Branches. Retrieved from http://media.hyperrhiz.io/hyperrhiz17/gallery/nelson/index.html.
Pears, A. (2014, May 3). What can eLearning learn from digital literature? [Blog post]. Retrieved July 28, 2018 from https://www.unicorntraining.com/blog/blog-what-can-elearning-learn-from-digital-literature.
Queensland Literary Awards. (n.d.). Guidelines. Retrieved from http://www.qldliteraryawards.org.au/about/guidelines#qldiglit.
Woolahra Municipal Council. (n.d.). Digital literary awards. Retrieved July 28, 2018 from https://www.woollahra.nsw.gov.au/library/whats_on/digital_literary_award.
Crossposted to INF533 Discussion Forum on July 28, 2018.