Exactitude Tie In

Dawn by Reiner Strasser and Alan Sondheim is a mutli-modal poem/story that employs text, images, audio, and movement to tell a story that is larger than the sum of its parts. Cumulatively these media merge into one work where before a work would at best be able to employ an image and text. Furthermore these media combine to form a meta-media, that is that of a video, as the work resists interaction and plays on a loop as a video would. A simple non-elit text could not work on such a varied spectrum simultaneously.

As new media become part of the canon of literature the use of more than one mode of representation will refine its uses, but this particular work shows an efficacious complimentary rather than supplementary use of what Hayles calls a major characteristic of elit; elit ‘tends to be multimodal.’

Exactitude Elit

Dawn by Reiner Strasser and Alan Sondheim is a mutli-modal poem/story that employs text, images, audio, and movement to tell a story that is larger than the sum of its parts. Each aspect of the story is chosen specifically to elicit a certain response. The imagery is pastoral and tranquil containing no traces of the human world with the exception of one scene where a harrowing figure stands mid turn on the banks of a river. The audio is similar in quality to ‘white noise’ rather than a busy vocal track. It has a sense of natural rhythm that is enforced by the pictures that fade in and out.
The text is sparse and entirely un-flowery, employing repetition much as the audio does. The words alone could cause a sort of kinesthetic ‘coldness’ (the story is rather chilling) but the images combined with the audio serve to take the bitterness out of the story and instead replace it with a feint glimmer of hope and rebirth. Thus a multitude of media exactly formulate a mood for the reader.