UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Digital Storytelling in Spanish: Narrative Techniques and Approaches A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literature by Julio Alejandro Pérez Committee in charge: Professor Ellen McCracken, Chair Professor Rita Raley Professor Sara Poot-Herrera March 2015 The dissertation of Julio A. Pérez is approved. _____________________________________________________ Rita Raley _____________________________________________________ Sara Poot-Herrera _____________________________________________________ Ellen McCracken, Committee Chair December 2014 VITA OF JULIO A. PEREZ EDUCATION Bachelor of Science in Pure Mathematics, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, 2001 (magna cum laude) Masters of Arts in Comparative Literature, University of Iowa, 2007 Doctor in Philosophy in Hispanic Literatures, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2015 (expected) PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT 2008–14: Teaching Assistant, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of California, Santa Barbara. 2006–08: Americorps Member, Iowa City 2002–06: Teaching Assistant, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Iowa iii ABSTRACT Digital Storytelling in Spanish: Narrative Techniques and Approaches by Julio Alejandro Pérez This thesis looks at a sample of twelve stories of electronic literature written in Spanish and focuses on the different narrative techniques that these works implement. The techniques range from simple hyperlinks to highly complex functions as in videogames. These works draw from the traditions of print literature as well as from the digital culture that has shaped this era: hypertext, algorithms, text reordering, text fragmentation, multimedia creations, and almost anything else the computer is capable of. As each work discussed here is unique, a different theoretical approach is used for each. iv Table of Contents Introduction: Playing the Text . 1 Chapter I: Linear Narratives . 36 I. Más respeto que soy tu madre: Familiar Slapstick and Humor Repackaged . 41 II. El diario del niño burbuja: Art Imitating Medium . 51 III. La Autopista de Shambala: Reading with Your Pointer . 57 IV. Don Juan, en la frontera del espíritu: Historical Intertextuality as Hyperlinks . 65 Chapter II: Hypertexts. 79 I. Como el cielo los ojos: Fragmented Texts, Memories, Illusions, and Self . 83 II. Sinferidad: Branching toward Others’ Perceptions . 93 III. Heartbeat: Structure and Theme on Opposing Corners . 100 IV. Condiciones Extremas: the Self-Altering Narration . 109 Chapter III: Multimedia and the Interactive . 124 I. Tierra de extracción: Drilling for Plot and Subconscious Narrating . 127 II. 21 días: Defying the Narrating . 138 III. Modus Vivendi: Interacting with the World through Words . 148 IV. Golpe de Gracia: a Proto-literary Videogame . 157 Conclusion: Approaches and Impact of Electronic Storytelling . 167 Works Consulted . 178 v Introduction: Playing the Text The Dawn of Electronic Literature In Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narratives in Cyberspace, Janet Murray describes an experience she had early in her career at IBM. In those days computers were not the fast machines they are today but large and loud card-punching contraptions that had to be kept in their own temperature-controlled rooms: But one day the icy, clamorous cardprinter room was turned into whimsical cabaret: a clever young hacker had created a set of punch cards that worked like a player piano roll and caused the card reader to chug a recognizable version of the Marine Corps Hymn […]. All day long, programmers sneaked away from their work to hear this thunderously awful but mesmerizing concert. The data it was processing was of course meaningless, but the song was a work of true virtuosity. (3) With this anecdote she transforms a machine meant to crunch thousands of numbers per second and store immense amounts of information into a creative instrument capable of eliciting the same kind of emotional response we derive from literature, music, theater, and visual arts. As computers became more advanced and accessible, other creative uses became possible, including the creation of literature. In “Card Shark and Thespis: Exotic Tools for Hypertext Narrative,” Bernstein and Greco mention that the first convincing attempts at literary computing appeared in the late 1980s; the early 90s saw the first big works that would jumpstart the genre that became electronic literature. The critical step was “to 1 recognize that hypertext links need not be merely annotations or plot points” (167). Hyperlinks had the potential to be used in creative ways that could provide entirely new methods of organizing the text, creating new reading experiences. One of the first works to illustrate how computers could be used as literary devices was afternoon, a story by Michael Joyce, published in 1990. This story is seen as a foundational work that influenced everything that came after. In Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, Espen J. Aarseth, whom I will discuss later in more detail, describes Joyce’s story as “[engaging] a modernist poetics to subvert traditional storytelling and present a literary labyrinth for the reader to explore” (13). In afternoon, Joyce presents a text that reveals further plot developments as the reader clicks different words on the screen. The reading experience is not passive; rather, the reader is required to pay attention to where he or she is clicking in order to reach the parts of the text not yet explored and uncover as much of the story as possible. Another foundational story was Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden, published in 1992. It also relies on hyperlinks but does so in a more explicit manner. Each page of text contains a few hyperlinks that send the reader to new pieces of information. Victory Garden might seem less daunting mechanically because each link is clearly presented, but navigating through the entire story is just as complex and disorienting for the uninitiated reader. Each page’s relationship with the others seems to form a complex web and it is only once the reader has experienced many scenes that the story begins to takes shape. Without devoting time to creating a map, it is impossible to know if everything has been read. Though both works use hyperlinks, they do so in different ways. As Bernstein and Greco write, “[Moulthrop] uses links in an ironic, less purely evocative mode; Joyce speaks 2 of links as ‘words that yield,’ but Moulthrop’s witty (and, often, bitterly sarcastic) links yield nothing to anyone” (167). In Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary, N. Katherine Hayles defines electronic literature in the way agreed upon by the Electronic Literature Organization: “work[s] with an important literary aspect that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer” (3). With the proliferation of more advanced smartphones, tablets, and other digital devices, the term “computer” used in her definition should be expanded. For the sake of consistency, I will use “computer” as an umbrella term for all of these devices. Electronic literature can take many forms, adopting conventions from other media— not only from literature, but from software user interfaces, videos, music, and videogames. It is not even necessary for it to use words. Hayles notes that of the over sixty works in the Electronic Literature Collection, one third have no recognizable words. Rather, all have visual components, and some have sonic features. Hayles redefines “the literary” to encompass “creative artworks that interrogate the histories, contexts, and productions of literature, including as well the verbal art of literature proper” (4). It is because of this wide range of possibilities that the definition mentioned above is vague enough to contain them, but also provides a central, common defining element. Even if a work of electronic literature behaves like a videogame, what makes it literature is the “literary aspect” the author strove for. Although hyperlinks are the first techniques that come to mind when discussing works of electronic literature, the variety of the genre extends well beyond this. Navigating works can be achieved through buttons, entered commands, and even controllable characters. 3 Hayles’s study focuses on works beyond those that rely on the hypertext scheme used by Joyce and Moulthrop. She goes as far as to call that era the “classical” era of electronic literature, making the current one “contemporary” or “postmodern” (7). After this initial period, which she sees as culminating around 1995, hypertext has become a hybrid of other computational techniques. There has also been a rise of interactive fictions, network fiction, locative narratives, generative art, works with more complex navigational schemes, and even works that resemble videogames. An example of how electronic literature has expanded from hyperlinks into other genres while still preserving its literary qualities is Neil Hennessy’s Basho’s Frogger, published in 2002 and included in the second volume of the Electronic Literature Collection published by the Electronic Literature Organization. Basho’s Frogger 4 Two references are needed to understand this work. The game screen is almost a replica of the videogame Frogger that came out in 1981. In Frogger, the user controls a frog that has to first cross a road, while avoiding incoming traffic, and then cross a river using logs and turtles