helterskelliter

Kean University 2019, The Network

There Is No “NO” Button…

helterskelliter on February 24, 2019February 24, 2019

This post may be late because it’s a certain snarky blog poster’s birthday on Sunday, the 24th…. Hello~ Welcome back to the hellscape ^.^ This week, we’re exploring the circumstances that led to a post-truth Internet and the creation of a platform that is responsible now, more than ever, for spreading more “fake” content than real. Strap in! There Are Only “Okay” Buttons In this day and age, I think it’s a given for most of us to believe that […]

Kean University 2019, The Network

Privacy Is A Privilege?

helterskelliter on February 17, 2019February 17, 2019

“We are paying for everything right now. The currency we’re trading is data.” ~ Anne-Marie Scott So, this week the polar vortex finally descended upon us and swallowed us whole in a show of might that only emphasized how insignificant we are– Actually, class just got snowed out cause global warming is a thing and it’s screwing with the weather. What are you gonna do??? Pass Ocasi0-Cortez’s Green Deal??? Anyway, despite this week’s unfortunate weather, some of us were still able […]

Kean University 2019, The Network

Developing Digital Literacy (One Video at a Time)~

helterskelliter on February 16, 2019

Hey~ Welcome to this week’s bonus post ^.^ I’m going to try to keep it short & sweet! A big topic in class related to privacy, data tracking, and navigating online spaces as a whole is that of digital literacy. Data tracking, learning algorithms, and surveillance capitalism have largely been allowed to propagate and perpetuate and make a butt-ton of money off of all of us due in large part to a lack of regulation. Unfortunately, much of this has gone […]

Kean University 2019, The Network

In the Algorithm We Trust (But Should We????)

helterskelliter on February 10, 2019February 10, 2019

Welcome back to hell~ This week, we dove deeper into the darkness of the web and the practices of those who use the web as a tool for mass surveillance. Topics in this week’s discussion include 1) data tracking, 2) digital redlining, and 3) surveillance capitalism. Light stuff, I know. Anyway, I suggest you grab a drink of your choice and strap in for my *hot take* on some of these issues~ Data Tracking, Digital Redlining, & Surveillance Capitalism Oh My! […]

Kean University 2019, The Network

I’m Unique…Like Everyone Else

helterskelliter on February 9, 2019February 9, 2019

If anything, delving into online data tracking has made it readily apparent just how much of our information is, well, readily apparent. Just about every application you could conceive of using is tracking you to some extent. Don’t believe me? Sounds far-fetched? Well, there are plenty of sites you can explore that will break down for you how different forms of online data tracking work. This week, were provided a list of different sites in the class blog post that let […]

Kean University 2019, The Network

Descending into Darkness…

helterskelliter on February 3, 2019February 4, 2019

So…. this past week was a bit of a mess. I experienced some major and hella expensive car issues that made me wish for a self-driving car for the first time ever despite their numerous, reported issues. Anyway, enough about my ever-growing list of issues. Let’s dive into the Internet’s f*ckery~ The Dark Substance of the Internet This week, discussion started off light enough with an introductory reading on alchemy and the creation and nature of this ancient magic’s digital form. This reading was also […]

Kean University 2019, The Network

This Post Goes Out to My FBI Agent (Thanks for Always Being There)~

helterskelliter on January 27, 2019February 4, 2019

How my FBI agent probably looks most of the time~ I’ve missed you over the shutdown T_T Anyway…. I’m back and better than ever. Hope you haven’t missed me too much I’ll try to make up for lost time and get right into the snarky commentary~ Big Brother is Watching You “How do we know who, what to trust online anymore?…What keeps you up at night or worried about your own internet activity?” I see we’re starting off light this semester. Anyway, […]

Kean University 2018, The Network

Following the Stars…

helterskelliter on December 2, 2018December 2, 2018

Feature image: Oddly serendipitous journal entry from this morning~ Sharif Ezzat’s Like Stars in a Clear Night Sky is a Flash hypertext poem, whose simple interface asks readers to navigate the space one star at a time. The work is designed to look like a starry night sky, several of the stars acting as nodes that link to free-verse, narrative poems. The title of each poem is a reference to a line in a poem that is read in Arabic (with English […]

Kean University 2018, The Network

Assembling the Story from the Pieces…

helterskelliter on November 27, 2018November 27, 2018

There are many stories in the Valley Judy Malloy’s Uncle Roger is a work of hypertext fiction that explores the nature of love, relationships, family, business, class, and, ultimately, storytelling in a disjointed but compellingly, collage-like way. Uncle Roger consists of three different story files, A Party in Woodside, The Blue Notebook, and Terminals. This small collection of storie revolves around the early days of the Silicon Valley tech industry and people involved in the burgeoning industry. For this review, I explored A Party in Woodside. This story file is […]

Kean University 2018, The Network

Cruising Right Along….

helterskelliter on November 20, 2018November 20, 2018

Meditating on Moving Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapnar’s Cruising is a compelling work of kinetic poetry that explores themes of love and youth and whose actual design reinforces its exploration of “temporal and spatial themes”. This work is made using Flash and it combines still images with linear, moving text. The speed of the text, and thus the speed of navigating this piece, is determined by the user’s cursor placement and movement. Users are tasked with finding a “balance” that allows […]

Kean University 2018, The Network

Spoiler Icarus Doesn’t Die in this One…

helterskelliter on November 12, 2018November 12, 2018

Shocking In Daniel Merlin Goodbrey’s Icarus Needs, users get to go on a “hypercomic adventure” as they try to wake up “everyone’s favorite mentally unhinged cartoonist, Icarus Creeps”. The premise of this work is that Icarus fell asleep while playing video games and has somehow ended up in a surreal, cartoon-esque dreamscape ruled by a squirrel king??? Icarus needs to find a way out of this nightmare while rescuing his girlfriend, Kit, and defeating a very squirrely squirrel king. Users play as […]

Kean University 2018, The Network

Putting the Pieces Together…???

helterskelliter on November 6, 2018November 6, 2018

“Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE.” ~ Tristan Tzara Uncovering the Story The story I want to tell is one I’ve been assembling the pieces of for a while now. Ever since my first interactions with ELit, specifically with works by Jason Nelson, Juliet Davis, and Porpentine, I feel like there has been this story developing. Between then and now, that tale has existed in a kind of in […]

Kean University 2018, The Network

Because I Am (Still) Alive

helterskelliter on October 21, 2018October 21, 2018

“One way or another, the dream will come. Fight.” (*I recommend checking out my first post on this work before delving into this one~) Porpentine’s With Those We Love Alive is a dark, twisted, and fantastical Twine game that invites readers to become participants in the act of experiential inscription by asking readers to draw sigils on themselves as they work through the piece. These sigils are meant to represent experiences typically invisible or intangible or hidden like “new beginnings” or “pain […]

Kean University 2018, The Network

Piecing Myself Together

helterskelliter on October 14, 2018October 14, 2018

Am I in pieces? “This was the hardest thing to internalize; that something permanent but invisible had happened.” The Raven Boys – Maggie Stiefvater In Juliet Davis’ Pieces of Herself, the embodiment and construction of feminine identity as well as the relationship of the female self to public and private space is explored. This work of Elit operates through a drag-and-drop interface which allows readers to comb through different environments of the work for icons that can be “dragged” and “dropped” on the […]

Kean University 2018, The Network

Re-imagining Assemblage in the Taroko Gorge Remix Collection~

helterskelliter on October 7, 2018October 7, 2018

Some Reassembly Required… Taroko Gorge (2009) is a work of generative poetry created by Nick Monfort and inspired by a body of poetry written about the Taiwanese national park of the same name. Lines of poetry are generated via a JavaScript program, designed to format each line of the work in a specific way. Monfort states, “…this generator forms strophes that begin and end with a “path” line and may have one or more more static “site” lines in between. Between each […]