Game link: https://mxue.itch.io/inthelandofthefree
Please find details of my design in the file I attached. Hope you enjoy it.

My project was to create an interactive decision-making game based on the short story collection Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912) written by Sui Sin Far (Edith Maude Eaton, 1865–1914). I used Twine (Story format: Harlowe 3.3.3) to write the game. The project is an attempt to explore how to PLAY with literary works and historical records.

Bogost, Ian. “Winning Isn’t Everything.” Published December 19, 2014, https://medium.com/matter/winning-isnt-everything-255b3a26d1cf.

_______. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2010.

_______. “Videogames are a Mess.” Published September 03, 2009, http://bogost.com/writing/videogames_are_a_mess/.

Chan, Sucheng. “The Exclusion of Chinese Women, 1870–1943.” Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America 1882-1943, edited by Sucheng Chan, 94–146. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991.

Denning, Andrew. “Deep Play? Video Games and the Historical Imaginary.” The American Historical Review 126, Issue 1 (March 2021): 180–198.

Yang, Robert. “Not a manifesto; on game development as cultural work.” Published October 04, 2015, https://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2015/10/not-manifesto.html.

https://mxue.itch.io/inthelandofthefree

My project was to create an interactive decision-making game based on the short story collection Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912) written by Sui Sin Far (Edith Maude Eaton, 1865–1914). I used Twine to write the game. The project is an attempt to explore how to PLAY with literary works and historical records. I have mixed three stories from this collection into one major storyline in the game and adapted some other plots/characters to enrich the scenes. I will make another post to talk about my rationale and questions I examine through designing this game because I don’t want to spoil the enjoyment here.

I hope you enjoy the game and experience lives of immigrants in the late 19^th century. And after you finish the game (no matter which ending you reach), you can take a look at the second post to see if you could feel my goals through the designs. I would like to listen to your feedback!

My research focuses on woman writers/poets in Japan and I examine the multifaceted life stories presented by them in their works. In the meantime, my work in DH 720: Doing things with Novels inspired me to think further about the smoothness of our reading experience and the materiality of digital remediations.

For the final project, I choose to work on a short story collection, Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912), written by a Chinese-British-Canadian-American writer Sui Sin Far (Edith Maude Eaton, 1865–1914). The text is in the public domain, giving me flexibility in reproducing it in new forms. My research questions are: 1) how to present parallels between North American and Chinese culture, voices of immigrant women, and family memories in the diaspora on a digital platform; 2) how my choice of materials (the materiality of digital culture) speaks to the textuality of the story. I have asked a question once in my response to Graham’s and Drucker’s articles: can we say that a hypertext work remediated via digitalization transforms the implicity of intertextuality? I aim to provide some answers to the question through this project by creating annotations (Mrs. Spring Fragrance, Asian Americans in the early 20th century, and Chinese Culture in the diaspora) and making a new hypertext-beyond-narrative path that leads readers to explore themes of exclusion/inclusion, mixed-race heritage, and immigrant identities.

The whole project will be built on a WordPress site where I can provide the complete text, enable plugins, and embed images/maps/recordings. I am still building up my specific aims for the final project but currently I have designed the following sections.

1. I plan to choose passages from these short stories and generate AI-art images (I have tried Midjourney and believe it is the best, but I will give more AI tools a try) based on my chosen plot keywords. The results of the above step will inform an extended scope of the project at which I write an analysis of my AI adaptations based on the materiality/textuality presented by the AI tools, followed by a tutorial I write for readers who are interested in using AI-generated art to make visual/video adaptations of literary works. How is this kind of adaptation different from film/TV/theater adaptations? What are the roles of human creator and AI creator? Are these tools working well in different language settings or drawing a foreign cultural object?
2. If we ask our readers to become one character in these short stories, what kind of choices will this reader make for the fictional figure? I intend to design a simple interactive story (or even a scene) using Twine to provide options. This idea was inspired by Dot’s Game, a single-player game where a young black woman travels through time to key moments in her family member’s lives and understand how individual choices were made by social inequalities. My question behind this mini decision-making game is if there were alternative ways of living for an immigrant woman in the early 20th century. In the Game page, I also plan to write an introduction discussing the possibilities/challenges in utilizing games in reading literary works following nonlinear paths.

Works that I found relevant to my final project are:

Aarseth, Espen J. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Ellestrom, Lars. “Adaptation within the Field of Media Transformations.” In Adaptation Studies: New Challenges, New Directions, edited by Jørgen Bruhn, Anne Gjelsvik, Eirik Frisvold Hanssen, 113–132. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.

Kirschenbaum, Matthew G., Richard Ovenden, Gabriela Redwine, and Rachel Donahue. Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections. Washington D.C: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2010.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Taylor & Francis Group, 2001. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Ryan, Marie-Laure. “Transmedia Storytelling as Narrative Practice.” In The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies, edited by Thomas Leitch, 527–542. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Schober, Regina. “Adaptation as Connection – Transmediality Reconsidered.” In Adaptation Studies: New Challenges, New Directions, edited by Jørgen Bruhn, Anne Gjelsvik, Eirik Frisvold Hanssen, 89–112. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.

I once worked with Dr. Mary Chapman and will also refer to her public humanities projects on Edith and Winnifred Eaton.

Our group (Raquel, JP, Patricia, and I) did a digital annotation of Manhattan Transfer and chose to use platforms and tools like WordPress/Kumu/Midjourney/Headliner to present multimedia paratextual elements. I am responsible for drafting the About page, the character map, and AI-generated images for some scenes in the novel.

John Dos Passo writes this novel like a reporter who combines incidents, lives, conflicts, and monologues into a flashing continuity. The novel is like a remix of several films with the theme of metropolitan New York. Our group discussed why this novel has never been adapted into a movie/TV series and how we invite readers to do things with it if their first reading experience might be quite fragmented.

I am inspired by the method of character mapping used in novel writing. For example, writers use character mapping to decide which character must stay and what the conflict/nexus is. My mapping of characters in Manhattan Transfer aims to give readers a possible starting point to understand interactions in the novel and explore some abstract ideas that lie behind some potentially less popular scenes. If readers look at my character map, they might ask who the protagonists are, how certain characters are connected, and where/why a peripheral character appears. One peripheral example I chose to include is Anna Cohen, who only shows up a few times but is an interesting woman who shows resistance in her personality. Raquel helped me develop my map into a more interactive one using Kumu and we added AI-generated images for scenes to the Kumu map as well. By introducing some peripheral characters, I am not suggesting a completely alternative reading of the novel but would like to encourage readers to pay attention to some invisible roles/scenes.

The next question is if we can restore the documentary effect in the novel through visual presentations and invite readers to contribute to our site by reproducing their favorite scenes. Patricia and I discussed book covers and how images of steamboats are used as icons of the 1920s New York. JP sent us many photographs of the NYC streets in the 1920s. After reading Patricia’s introduction to artists like George Grosz, I decided to choose some scenes in the novel and test Midjourney to see if this AI art tool can help me produce visual adaptations of scenes in Manhattan Transfer.

We have an AI Images page on our site where I wrote the rationale behind our decision, links to tools, and keywords/passages I chose. In addition, my AI art attempts are connected to the character map so that readers can also try it out by selecting the characters/scenes and following/challenging my keywords. For example, I wanted to keep the metropolitan style, urban modernism, and expressionism in his writing, so I included keywords like metropolis, aquarium effect, George Grosz, and 1920s. I adjusted my works several times with Midjourney to find a balance between abstract and photorealistic. Raquel also designed a comment-posting feature for our site for readers to interact with the text, images, and us. Please see the examples below.

Keywords: brick houses, lamplight, policeman, metropolis, leaned out window 

Keywords: Broadway, New York, 1920s, a young couple, store windows, electric signs, aquarium effect

Keywords: skyscrapers, a scudding sky, follies girls, a lonely man, George Grosz

Keywords: department store, Brooks Brothers, fitting room, two men in the same suits, New York, 1920s

Finally, to give readers basic directions to our site, we designed a navigation bar and used internal links on the About page. The info on About page is pretty concise, which serves as an amusement park map. Visitors certainly will find many surprises while going to different sections. A lot of surprises are hidden via the Hypothesis annotations. Imagine a message board at the exit/entrance of a museum! We want readers/visitors to bring back some memories of Manhattan Transfer and leave their footprints at our site. We were once debating whether we used too many additional tools and might overload our visitors but by looking at the final result, I think we carefully and beautifully crafted them!

Graham uses the example of Joyce’s Ulysses to present an early example of hypertext that serves as “a graveyard for early work in the digital humanities.” (Graham) I appreciate her analysis of the intertextuality and the potential of cyberspace in creating infinite hypertext and variants. But after reading her introduction on diverse Ulysses DH projects, I started to consider the question of bridging intertextuality and intermediality through the digital transformation of literature. By referring to Marshall McLuhan’s theories, especially his discussion on media as extensions of man, I am wondering how to explain the mechanisms between textuality and materiality in our reading/writing experiences, particularly during the current media convergence. I have questions: can we say that a hypertext work remediated via digitalization transforms the implicity of intertextuality? If we are now in a meta-medium world, is it possible that we are overly immersed in nodes in intermedial practices and lose our connections with a work, a text, or an object? How should we deal with fragmented reading/writing/playing experiences enhanced by media convergence?

Drucker’s “The Virtual Codex” argues for an architectural approach to thinking about E-book designs. What elements make a book? What features constitute a book? She lists overlapping features in traditional book and e-book designs, like the table of contents, index, bookmarks, etc. My question, again, goes with the materiality mentioned in this approach: in terms of material culture, if we talk about things that talk via books/reading, how shall we analyze books that are not read (but to be collected, to be shown, to be exhibited, etc.)? What kinds of E-book designs satisfy this aim? Or, do we need to pay attention to nonreaders associated with books and E-books collections?

In this week’s reading, Blair touches on my above questions in “Note Taking as an Art of Transmission.” I learned about the broader applicability of note-taking in our engagements with books and also in our daily interactions. The notes could also be subversive or even totally irrelevant, as examples introduced in Lerer’s article “Devotion and Defacement: Reading Children’s Marginalia.” We see images of children’s playing, education, and domestic relationships in notes and the feminization in note-taking among young women. Note-taking is serving as the lens of human activities, including but not limited to reading. I am especially interested in how scholars talk about a person’s life experiences by reading their notes and comparing them with other historical resources. Is there a fictionality in note-taking?

The two weeks’ readings encourage me to reconsider the textuality and materiality of books, archival resources, notes, and general reading/writing experiences. Is there a space between texts and textiles? Do digital tools fragment these spaces?

McLuhan Marshall and W. Terrence Gordon. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: Gingko Press, 2013.

The Tale of Genji (Genji) was written by Murasaki Shikibu (c. 970–c. 1019), a female attendant born into the middle ranks at the imperial court in the Heian Japan (794–1185). Japanese scholars believe that this work is a masterpiece that represents Japanese national character and therefore is a must-read for both Japanese and those interested in Japanese culture. The original text is written in Classical Japanese and is hard to understand for readers without years of language training. In addition, no single manuscript could be verified as the only source of this work. There have been fragments and different versions being passed down over the years. Since about the 1910s, modern Japanese translations that are complete and accessible have appeared, followed by translations in other languages.

The story is about the life of Genji, the son of Emperor Kiritsubo. Although the central figure Genji is fictional, many of the characters in Genji are loosely connected to historical figures during the Heian period. There are a massive amount of love and sexual affairs surrounding Genji in the book, but you could also read this book as an epic of Japanese aristocratic lives, profoundly depicting traditions, ceremonies, arts, politics, religions, etc. The whole book is so sophisticated in its plots, delineation of characters, and literary and aesthetic forms. I have read this work multiple times but am very curious about how we might “read” the text through audiobooks and appreciate/understand the stories in a radically different context from our own.

I found the audiobook version of Genji through audible: The Tale of Genji Volume 1 Audiobook This link only leads you to the first volume of Genji.

If you are a subscriber of audible, you could get access to this volume using one credit. You can also buy the audiobook version from amazon for $7.35. However, I had difficulties locating it at libraries and also am not sure how it works if I wanted to assign this volume to my students if I am going to teach about Genji. I could not imagine how to organize my class if I gave up the physical copy of a Genji translation and instead only assigned students to listen to this audiobook version. But this volume might be a good possibility to explore. It is an unabridged version based on Dennis Washburn’s recent translation. Washburn’s translation departs from the original but has excellent readability for modern and western readers, which, I think, is why this translation has been made into an English audiobook. The audiobook version sticks to the Washburn’s translation but the chapter numbers in the audiobook version do not match the actual chapter numbers in Genji, which will be annoying if we are going to refer to a certain episode.

The audiobook Genji is narrated by Brian Nishii, a professional voice actor born in Tokyo with a background in multilingual cultural activities. He delivers a flawless narration and pays special attention to Japanese people and place names. I appreciate his pronunciation and the varied tones he chooses for different characters. Heartfelt emotions are very well acted out, especially when he chants love poems. His voice is professionally recorded and edited, but I can still feel awkward when he plays female roles. You would still inevitably find in his voice an exotic Asian woman image. I am unsure if it is okay to assume a seemingly natural connection between high-pitched voices and feminization. But one scene in this volume impressed me a lot when he plays a role named Lady Rokujō whose spirit rushes out of her body, possesses Genji’s wife, Lady Aoi, and confesses her hatred and anger for Aoi. Nishii’s voice as Lady Rokujō is not adorable but emotionally rich and attractive, which breaks stereotypes of Japanese women. However, to what extent does the richness of this character come from the actor? To what extent is it derived from the work itself? If the producer decides to use more actors, would it help the readers capture more of the nuanced emotions?

I would say the process of listening to this volume is a smooth one. With textual close reading alone, we have a lot of room for imagination, although it can be challenging and uncomfortably inconvenient. This audiobook offers its readers convenience and smooth experience, but what would our imagined world be like with his voice? Is it possible to “read” a foreign text or foreign characters with an open mind while listening to a familiar/domestic and single cast audiobook?