Dreaming Methods features a new work of hypermedia storytelling. Called “The Flat“, it is described as “an atmospheric journey into an abandoned council flat where traces of a narrative formed by its previous inhabitants still lingers”. Done entirely in Flash, it requires a Flash 8 or higher Flash Player. It begins with a dark screen and a vignette of a staricase with a lit doorway at the top. Some words flash on the screen briefly and then fade out. One sentence says, “you were right about me hiding the truth”. The screen goes entirely dark, and there is a rhythmic and pulsing sound for a while. This sound is suddenly punctured by loud knocking. Then the pulsing sounds return. This all begins to seem lame to me, until after being interrupted and coming back to this piece and starting over, I figure out I can click on the lit doorway at the top of the stairs. I click.

I realize that unfolding the story will require clicking. There are more words, and I have to read them quickly to catch them before they fade. “you were always going to do well.” I realize that I am in the role of a snoopy person who knew the person who used to live in the flat, and I have the feeling that the person’s resentful consciousness still lingers in some way, ghost-like, in the flat. The inside of the flat is very dark. It has an unmade bed and a purse in it. There is also a coat. I click on anything clickable, bringing on more mysterious words and winding up going in circles inside the flat. I wonder whether the story will be good enough to justify further effort on my part.

I end up being too slow or something, because the knocking sound comes back. The first time it had happened, my husband had said there was somebody at the door. The second time around, he is annoyed. “Would you stop that? God,” he says from his adjacent computer lair. I feel punished by this interactive tale for my lack of quickness and cleverness in navigating the story. I wonder if it’s me or the story. I want it to be good. I want to enjoy it. It’s the future, right? I can’t give up on it yet. I turn the sound off. The sound does not seem key in any way to experiencing the story, anyway. It seems mostly atmospheric, and it has become repititious by now.

I continue clicking. Pieces of the story come in fragments. Whoever is addressing “me” as “you” continues to almost taunt me, and I derive from some of the fragments that I am twelve years old. The red bedspread turns out to have some light red text on it. It’s hard to read. I think I used to eat baked beans in this place after I came home from school. Somehow, I don’t click fast enough or in the right place. The screen goes dark again. I’ll have to start all over again if I want to get more out of it. I like the idea a lot in concept, and I like the atmospheric feel a lot. I wonder if I’m just lazy, since I’m beginning to feel like giving up on the story. So far, my curiosity has not been piqued enough by any of the fragments, and I haven’t felt like my efforts to find out more has yielded enough of a reward to make me feel like continuing. I wish that there were somebody else with whom I could compare notes, so I would know if I’m missing something and, if so, what I’m missing.

I try one more time, and this time, I notice that there is something about noticing the density of the pigments. This has to mean the redness of the bedspread. I click on it again and try again to read the faint red text on it. I pan around and try to read more of it. I begin to realize that my expectations of story were holding the piece up to standards to which it had not been aspiring. It needs to be experienced more as a poem, both a visual and a verbal poem, than as a story. The very experience I have with it, trying to find out more, seems like it might be part of the theme of the piece. I am nosy but find little other than traces that somebody once lived here and is now gone but yet taunts my snoopiness. There are words on the bedspread about vanishing and thinness and husks. The words keep fading and spinning. It all seems transient.

This interpretation, that the whole thing is about transience and about the foolishness of snoopiness - as if we could nail down any solid meaning about anybody in this world where everything is temporary - begins to seem like it might be satisfyingly arty. But still I wonder if I’m missing something, because of the initial words, “you were right about me hiding the truth”. I don’t have enough patience by now to go back and click around one more time. I begin to wish that somebody else would try it out and I could compare notes with them. I do like the idea and its technical execution, but I dislike the feeling I have, wondering whether I got something out of this piece that was worth my time, wondering if my interpretation is silly because I’m missing a story that is really there. I am well aware of my tendency to overinterpret almost anything, especially if I have the expectation that it is something arty, so I don’t know how far I can trust my interpretation, when it comes to something like this. This is almost funny in a way.

Other Posts Categorized as Hypermedia Storytelling:

• Bunk Magazine, a Hypermedia Humor E-Zine, Launches - September 11th, 2006
• Literatronic Software for Online Writing - May 27th, 2006
• Who Reads Hypermediated Tales? Children. - March 7th, 2006