Today we discussed Roland Barthes and his concepts of readerly and writerly and how the concept of a writerly text have important connections with our study and discussion of new media.
Then we covered our definition of narrative which will play an important role for the rest of the semester.
We then used the online (hypertext) novel 253 – An Interactive Novel as source to illustrate these concepts and ideas. Working our way through this text everyone was asked to plot the narrative. Plotting the narrative is a way to sequence our path and to note the different causes and effects of this path. For an example of how one of these might look, visit my own plot of 253 from February 2009. This will serve as a model for any analysis of a work of new media (hypertext, game, web site, etc.)
The are two more readings assigned (check the course calendar) and an assignment (located at http://tunxis.digication.com) due for next class.