Digital literature review 3: The Collapse
Category: Interactive Digital Novel
Title: The Collapse
Author: David M Henley
Publisher: Thought Empire
Cost: Free to use
Platform: Internet browser but better viewed on a touch screen device
Resource: https://davidmhenley.com/
Where can it be viewed: Desktop but best viewed on portable devices such as mobiles or tablet computers
The art of digital storytelling is being looked upon as an art form rather than a form of digital literature or text and an experimental way to use multimedia to tell a story (Groth, 2018). Many awards have the intention to showcase “innovation and creativity” in storytelling for new and contemporary media for example the digital literature awards QUT, these contemporary examples, can tread a fine line between something that is easily absorbed and understood, to something that is distracting or hard to interpret for the user due to their non-linear content. (Lamb, 2011). In the 2021 winner of the Woolhara Digital Literary award for digital innovation, “ The Collapse, we see an example of contemporary digital literature that intends to use digital enhancements to extend the experience of the narrative (Woollahara Council, 2021). Good storytelling connects the humanity in all of us and the digital context can allow others to connect emotionally through experiences they have not yet felt – but only through the right digital enhancements (Tse et al., 2021).
Content and Ease of Use:
The Collapse (2021) is a digital novel based on a first-hand witness account of “Tom” as he experiences the collapse of society. The story follows Tom through the initial broadcasts of new articles and advertisements (presented as breakout moving images and animations) through to the ultimate sense of the human race a the hand of “Killbots”. The story is helped with the use of a countdown timer, with each page counting down closer and closer to the end – adding to the chaotic and fast-paced nature of the text. Scattered throughout the narrative are images and animated enhancements that also add to the chaotic nature of the text. Alternatively, there are also options for the user to toggle the audio elements, although it is recommended by the author to add to the reading experience.
Although an award-winning piece, I felt that the multimedia elements in The Collapse created elements of distraction for the viewer rather than aide the telling of the story. There is so much going on in this text and although I understand the chaotic and fast-paced context of the story, the chaos of the embedded sound, graphics and animations made it difficult to concentrate on what I was reading. This can make it difficult for the reader to engage effectively with the content (Yokota & Teale, 2014). There is a sense of urgency created by the countdown timer, but this element disappears as the user scrolls through teh story so it becomes seems redundant. Kucirkova explains that cannot simply add digital elements simply because they are available, they must add to the narrative or enhance the story in some form (Kucirkova, 2018,) and although the enhancements in David Henley’s The collapse do support the telling of the story, they do detract from the user experience making the story hard to read and confusing (Bozkurt & Bozkurt, 2015)
Interactivity and Adapatability
David Henley describes the collapse as an “experiment combing video, animations and sound to push the reading experience (Henley, 2021). The Collapse takes the viewer through a web-based narrative using a familiar scrolling element that helps the user to focus on teh content rather than learn how to make the content work (Kucirkova, 2018,) the interface itself is designed in a way that is easily navigated by the user, with the ability to jump to times on the countdown clock via a sidebar menu. This aspect is both a positive and a negative feature as one becomes tempted to move quickly through the work due to the overall chaotic nature of the text itself – missing integral components of the story in the process. (McGeehan et al., 2018) this is of particular importance to those of a digital native mindset as they are easily distractable and have a tendency to skim read (Coombes, 2016) design in digital literature should help and not hinder the visual literacy elements of a text and the ability for students to decode written text via visual elements is an important part of developing digital literacy (Lurgi, 2019) – anecdotally, as a literate adult, I found the story hard to navigate with and struggled with all the added media enhancements.
Classroom application
Overall, this text would be best suited to an English-based curriculum as an example of digital and multimodal text. I would recommend that it be used in stage 5 to 6 curriculum as some aspects of this text can have some adult themes. Although the user has the opportunity to replay chapters and pages, the nature of this text would need advanced literacy skills to engage effectively with it due to its chaotic nature and use of multimodal elements. (Walsh, 2010)
References
Bozkurt, A., & Bozkurt, M. (2015). Evaluation Criteria for Interactive E-Books For Open and Distance Learning. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 16(5), 58-73. IRRODL. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v16i5.2218
Coombes, B. (2016). Digital Literacy: A New Flavour of Literacy or Something Different? Synergy, 14(1), 1-10. 10.13140/RG.2.1.2609.8804
Groth, S. (2018, May 20). Still Defining Digital Literature. The Writing Platform. Retrieved August 17, 2022, from https://thewritingplatform.com/2018/05/still-defining-digital-literature/
Henley, D. M. (2021). The Collapse. David Henley | Thought Empire. Retrieved August 21, 2022, from https://davidmhenley.com/
Lamb, A. (2011, Nov). Reading Redefined for a Transmedia Universe. International Society for Technology in Education, 39(3), 12-17. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ954320
Lurgi. (2019, May 25). Why Comics? ALIA Graphic Novels and Comics. Retrieved August 20, 2022, from https://aliagraphic.blogspot.com/p/comics-and-literacy.html
McGeehan, C., Chambers, S., & Nowakowski, J. (2018). Just because It’s Digital, Doesnt Mean It’s Good: Evaluating Digital Picture books. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 34(2), 58-70. Routledge. 10.1080/21532974.2017.1399488
Tse, J. K., Chen, S. W.Y., & Chu, S. K.W. (2021). Quality Assessment for Digital Stories by Young Authors. Sciendo: Data and Information Management, 5(1), 174-183. Sciendo.
Woollahara Council. (2021). Woollahra Digital Literary Award | Woollahra. Woollahra Municipal Council. Retrieved August 20, 2022, from https://www.woollahra.nsw.gov.au/library/whats_on/digital_literary_award
Walsh, M. (2010). Multimodal Literacy: What does it mean for classroom practice. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 33(3), 211-239.
Yokota, J., & Teale, W. H. (2014). Picture Books and the Digital World. The Reading Teacher, 67(8), 577-585. 10.1002/trtr.1262
