Benchmark Fiction: A Framework for Comparative New Media Studies Christy Dena Jeremy Douglass Mark Marino University of Melbourne UC Santa Barbara UC Riverside School of Creative Arts 2607 South Hall, UCSB 8325 Fordham Rd. Parkville, Australia Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3170 USA LA, CA 90045 USA [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract The underlying tenet of producing benchfic – the separation of How do we compare eliterature forms? What does it mean for a ‘form’ from ‘content’ – is highly problematic. It is difficult or work to be implemented as hypertext, interactive fiction, or impossible to pinpoint where form ends and content begins in a chatbot? "Benchmark fiction" is a methodology for creating given work, particularly artistic work designed to be experienced 'benchmarks' - sets of adaptations of the “same” eliterature content as a unified whole. Yet, with benchfic as with other processes of across different media for the purpose of comparative study. adaptation, translation and remediation, the problem of While total equivalence between the resulting 'benchfic' is determining which elements to hold constant and which to vary is impossible, praxis remains important: by creating 'equivalent' in large part the value of the undertaking. media and then critiquing them, we reveal our own definitions of In the process of producing benchfic, one’s concept of ‘form’ is media through process. Work on the first story to be formalized as one’s vision of the content takes new shape. These benchmarked, “The Lady or the Tiger” (1882) by Frank R. very formalizations may break under the weight of the creative Stockton, inspired a framework for displaying sources through experiments, testing their limitations, another goal of the Project. interchangeable display modules. The project is considered in There is no one correct approach. Rather, the Benchmark Fiction terms of historical precedents (Lorem Ipsum, Hello World, Cloak Project proposes the ongoing aggregation of a multitude of of Darkness, Gabriella Infinita), contemporary theories parallel elit adaptations; each with their own claim to what in (adaptation, remediation, media-specific analysis, transmedial and translation studies is termed ‘equivalence.’ Rather than creating cross-media storytelling), and current experiments (chatbots, simple assumptions about how elit forms operate, benchmark wikis, search art, cellular automata), with some discussion of fiction creates an opportunity to critically examine the design and pedagogy. assumptions and arguments we already make. This investigation is both process and product oriented. First, 1. INTRODUCTION through the process of attempting adaptation into target forms, we A benchmark fiction, or ‘benchfic,’ is an elit adaptation for the hope to identify and share different writing practices that emerge purposes of comparing media. The term ‘benchmark’ here is while trying to render similar effects in different new media. playfully repurposed from the fields of computer science and Second, we hope to generate example products which allow strategic management in order to emphasize the focus on utility critical communities more opportunities to make apples-to-apples and standards. While ‘benchmark’ originated as a surveying term comparisons of new media fiction implementations – similar for a point of reference, in contemporary computer science, matter can be pulled up in two different applications and read ‘benchmarking’ has come to mean the execution of a software test closely side by side. in order to ascertain the relative performance of underlying hardware. Ultimately, these experiments may prove more interpretive than empirical, in that we will not constrain ourselves to attempting As creative theoretical practitioners, we approach the benchmark pedantic remediations of the text into each form, but rather adapt test with painters’ smocks instead of lab coats. Nonetheless, the the text in order to accentuate the strengths and limitations of each comparison to computer science benchmarking is serious. The form. The results will reflect particular readings of the source text production and comparison of benchfic is analogous to this as well as interpretations of the nature of the forms themselves. process of testing hardware via software. With benchfic, the soft ‘content’ of a story might be ‘run’ on the hard ‘form’ of two 2. BENCHFIC IN THEORY different systems of elit implementation in order to examine differences in those two specific forms. Thus, Frank R. Stockton’s 2.1 Adaptation short story “The Lady, or the Tiger” might be adapted as a Adaptation studies are concerned with relations between texts, in Storyspace hypertext fiction as well as an Inform interactive particular, what passes from one text to another. As Kamilla fiction. Alternately, the content of a work of elit (e.g. “Afternoon: Elliott so aptly observes, adaptation is a “heresy” for it “suggests a story’ by Michael Joyce”) might be separated from that form that form is separable from content” [6]. In an attempt to call for a (Storyspace) and then re-implemented on some other form “renewed scrutiny” of the study of the relations between literature (HTML). and film adaptations, Elliott provides a concept explication of adaptation studies. She outlines six approaches to understanding form and content within a book and film adaptation paradigm: these are Psychic; Ventriloquist; Genetic; De(re)composing; by media theorist Henry Jenkins. In 2001, Jenkins observed the Incarnational and Trumping. occurrence of increasing media channels and the introduction of stories that are delivered over multiple channels [13]. Through an The Psychic Concept of adaptation has two levels: the idea that an analysis of “The Matrix” franchise, Jenkins posited the notion of adaptation must preserve the “spirit of the text” (which doesn’t “transmedia storytelling”: mean a high degree of sameness, but a text that persists certain perceived authorial intentions) and the idea that the spirit of a text In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each passes from the text to adapter, to the adaptation and then to the medium does what it does best—so that a story might reader or viewer. Unlike the Psychic Concept, a Ventriloquist be introduced in a film, expanded through television, approach sees “what passes from novel to film in adaptation [as] a novels, and comics, and its world might be explored dead corpse rather than a living spirit”. The film breathes life into and experienced through game play. Each franchise the “dead” novel. The Genetic view sees the transitory substance entry needs to be self-contained enough to enable as being an ‘underlying “deep” narrative structure akin to genetic autonomous consumption. That is, you don’t need to structure”. A story, for instance, is the same, but with a different have seen the film to enjoy the game and vice-versa. plot. A De(re)composing approach values a de- and re- composition of the text: elements in the film for example “serve to While talk of “franchise” and “autonomous consumption” reflects fulfill the disappointed hopes and desires of its characters”. An the capitalist model of mass entertainment, Neo’s ability to take Incarnation view of adaptation sees the film as a necessary shape in the outside world and in the Matrix world speak directly materialization that is prefigured, indeed demanded, by the novel. to our notion of translation. More recently, Jill Walker has And finally, the Trumping relation between a novel and film is explored the notion of “distributed narrative”, where a narrative that of competition. In this approach, novel and film are compared is distributed over time, space and producers [29]; while Lizbeth according to which “represents better”. Within the conceptual Klastrup and Susana Tosca have investigated the qualities of a work that can persist over multiple channels and time through the paradigm of such concerns, the Benchmark Fiction Project intends to explore elit-adaptations for the sake of “renewed scrutiny” of notion of “transmedial worlds” [17]. Semiotician Jay Lempke has this important area. also recognized the critical approaches needed to capture the peculiar instances of multi-text environments: 2.2 Transmedial Narrative and Game Not only do we not have adequate models of semiotic For a given text there are both media-specific and transmedial effects and inter-discursivity for each of these media qualities, and benchmarking seeks to explore their difference. In individually, but many of the discursive and this regard, our research hypothesis is akin to narratologist David ideological effects of interest in inter-media franchises Herman’s: depend on inter-relations among presentations in coordinated, multiple semiotic media. [18] Although narratives in different media exploit a common stock of narrative design principles, they All of these approaches require the ‘text’ to be viewed in a multi- exploit them in different, media-specific ways, or, text, and multi-channel environment, what Christy Dena rather, in a certain range of ways determined by the conceives as “polymorphic works: narrative in many forms” [5]. properties of each medium [12]. Polymorphic works are an extension of literary theorist Itamar Even-Zohar’s “polysystem studies”, a theory addressing the However, we extend this hypothesis to include ludic design complex socio-semiotic phenomena surrounding translations [7]. concerns such as system, players, artificial conflict, rules, They place works within