The CAC Continuum
Created | Updated Apr 28, 2004
~jwf~ sees the future is bright
Fiction Weird Science First/Personals Kitchen SyncronicitiesSatire
This week
CAC-C features the work of one very creative writer
who is experimenting with ways to break through
the words versus pictures barrier
Graham Theexwinger
recently dropped us a note to offer 'this bit of stuff'
and we were made glad to see that there is yet hope
that web based writing may yet mature into a new art form
A2475236
Editorial comments
A long history of intellectual snobbery about comix and children's books and other illustrated stories is still impeding web based writing. Most writers fail to understand that a computer screen is not a printed page and fail to come to terms with this new medium. Quite frankly, reading text online can be very tiring.
It isn't just the lack of visual imagination shown by writers. Another reason is the lack of literacy displayed by computer graphic artists. They think in shapes and colours and can't string two words together. That's why Flash and other computer animations can be as unsatisfying as pages of solid text.
One would think that a marriage between writing and the visual arts would be a natural one. Both are creative arts. But it only works in comic books and kid's books. Even so called artbooks and other kinds of illustrated manuals reflect a negative creative tension between words and pictures. As a result, most computer communications continue to suffer from a conflict between text and images.
But things are showing signs of improving.
Our featured entry is a glimmer of hope. The content may seem deliberately juvenile, as if the writer is having fun impersonating a younger writer - getting excited about madcap acts of juvenile delinquency involving cats and dogs and green slime. But behind that fun is a very clever ploy to maintain the interest of younger readers with short attentio... - oh look a birdie!
Note the many computer generated effects U248371 incorporates into his text. The use of the sidebar boxes for additional info is a very visual element which involves the reader in a very satisfying puzzle-solving exercise, the way good web pages do. Asking the reader to participate and to think stimulates the imagination and makes us see how a parallel reality of youthful bad behaviour might sometimes follow the familiar plotlines of the movie "ALIEN".
Check it out!
~jwf~
This week's featured entry is brought to you by
U187783
because we believe that ALIEN content is the best content.
So if you'd like to have us criticise and belittle
your creative efforts, please click on the submissions button on our homepage
and post a link (the A-number) to your entry.
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