LONDON.- As media change, so do the ways in which we read.

"We shouldn't confuse 'reading' with codex books," said N. Katherine Hayles, literature professor at the University of California and editor of "Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary" (University of Notre Dame, March 2008), in a recent interview. "We need a broader definition of the function of reading and the sort of literacy necessary for reading."

Enter Inanimate Alice, a sophisticated but user-friendly digital story that incorporates text, dynamic sound and visuals, music, and interactivity. Not quite a game, not quite a novel, Alice is poised to shift the boundaries between these forms.

"For me Alice is an attempt to carve out a space in our rather noisy media world for a kind of online reading," said co-creator Kate Pullinger from her home in London. "It incorporates text, sound and image, but in some ways it bears quite a close relation to reading a book. I'm really interested in creating a story where people will want to do the equivalent of turning the page."

Pullinger is a novelist, screen writer, radio script writer and faculty member of the Creative Writing and New Media Department at De Montfort University in Leicester, England. Her collaborator Chris Joseph is a digital artist, writer and composer who co-created the digital novel "The Breathing Wall" with Pullinger and Stefan Schemat.

The story, now in its third of ten episodes, opens with the precocious 8-year-old Alice living with her parents in a remote part of China, where her father is "looking for oil." The viewer never sees the girl but rather watches the story through her eyes as the mystery slowly develops. Electronic music by Joseph accompanies the piece and helps to shape the mood, which alternates between frenetic and tranquil.

In order to move the story forward the user must solve puzzles and interact with the objects in Alice's world, such as the digital game device she plays with. The piece is simple enough to be manipulated by a child but is intended for all ages. Audio and visual clues unfold over the course of all ten episodes to tell the larger story of a woman who grows up to become a successful computer game designer. From its beginning in China the story moves to a snow-covered villa in the Italian Alps and a tense scene in an apartment in Russia.

But it is more than the story's content that has a multicultural dimension. Alice was featured at the conference for the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue in Brussels, Belgium in December of 2007, and has been screened at digital art and film festivals around the world. This summer the piece will be showcased at the 2008 Biennale in Sydney, Australia.

Currently underway is an increased push of Alice's educational potential. Dr. Jess Laccetti has created an education pack to accompany the piece. Geared toward undergraduate study, the guide has nonetheless prompted primary and secondary school teachers to adapt the material and bring it into their classrooms. Teachers in 24 countries have downloaded the education pack from the Alice website(www.inanimatealice.com).

A primary school teacher in Sydney introduced the piece to her class and got an enthusiastic response from her grade six students: "...of their own volition, many kids experienced some kind of artistic response to the story. Many of the girls in the glass were making their own photos based on the flowers taken by Alice on her journey. Lovely pastel drawings!"

The story's interactivity will indeed prove to be an important component of changing educational needs, said Peter Brantley, director of the Digital Library Federation, which is based in Washington D.C. "It's my sense that a paradigm that supports these facets of interactivity and sharing will become an increasingly important component of pedagogy in the future. Inanimate Alice is on the leading edge of these developments."

Alice's fourth episode, released in June 2008 allows for even more interactivity by employing software that allows readers to create their own digital pieces. Users are able to upload images, text, music and other sound to create an interactive story similar to Alice.

"As our societies develop and adopt new technologically aided forms of expression, it is inevitable and natural that our expectations for how we consume information and entertainment change," Brantley said. "But rather than a replacement, I hope this is an enlargement. There is value in existing
immersive narrative forms, just as there is merit in 'rapid reading' of fragmented texts. Schools have a responsibility to help students learn how to enjoy and benefit from both forms."


Article written by: Katie Haegele

About the Authors:

Kate Pullinger works both in print and new media. Her most recent novels include A Little Stranger (2006), Weird Sister (1999) and The Last Time I Saw Jane (1996), and the short story collections My Life as a Girl in a Men's Prison (1997) and Tiny Lies (1989). Her current digital fiction projects include her multiple award-winning collaboration with Chris Joseph on 'Inanimate Alice', a multimedia episodic digital fiction, and 'Flight Paths', a networked novel, created on an through the internet. She's also involved in developing a fiction for mobile phones. Kate Pullinger is Reader in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University where she teaches on the online MA in Creative Writing and New Media.

Chris Joseph is a digital writer and artist who has created work as babel. Past projects include The Breathing Wall with Kate Pullinger and Stefan Schemat, a groundbreaking digital novel that responds to the reader's breathing rate, and Animalamina, a collection of interactive poetry for children. He is currently Digital Writer in Residence at the Institute of Creative Technologies in De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.