Ok, I get it, whatever. Shelley Jackson wants to be the master of her own madness, breaking down boundaries and fervently endorsing ambiguity and freedom of interpretation. Cool.
However, I am a bit confused how this can be incorporated into visual aesthetics and especially visual aesthetics in a digital sense. Isn’t the entire point of building an aesthetic knowledge to help us, as designers, more effectively communicate with our audience? AND aren’t we supposed to do this by constructing a narrative between concept and user?
Soooo, Shelley’s idea of the passionate and creative reader doesn’t really apply to what we are trying to accomplish here.
“Writing hypertext, you’ve got to accept the possibility your reader will just stop reading. Why not? The choice to go do something else might be the best outcome of a text.”
Maybe I’m being a bit harsh and finite, but this just seems to be the complete antithesis of what we are trying to accomplish here. In this fast-paced, efficiency-based, lazy society how oh how can we appeal to the masses if we are making them think?! We’re not supposed to ask them to read between the lines. They want information now. Right now. And they want it the quickest, easiest and most painless way possible.
Think about how many Twitter users rely on this social media network for the majority of their news and pop culture updates. A TON! I have been guilty of this more times than I like to admit. Why do you think it’s so popular? You only have to read 140 characters to get to the point, finish the summary, and feel informed.
Don’t get me wrong; I can appreciate what our friend Shelley is saying. Especially from an artistic standpoint, I get it. It’s about the avant-garde. It promotes freedom of thought, creativity, and the ability to construct your own reality. I just don’t see how it can apply to any type of digital media in the here-and-now, 21st century America. It’s all about convenience.
When reading Stitch Bitch, I certainly didn’t experience any sentiments of ease or satisfaction. Maybe I’m one of those connect-the-dots readers or maybe it’s just because it was homework or I’m tired or something…but if I could have stopped, I would have stopped. That doesn’t seem like what we want from our digital audience. It’s all about the clarity in the narrative, not the creative avenues we have left unexplored in the process.