New work: Underbelly
Underbelly screenshot
Underbelly is my latest playable media fiction, created in Flash. It’s about a woman sculptor, carving on the site of a former colliery in the north of England. As she carves, she is disturbed by a medley of voices, along with her ticking biological clock, and the player/reader is plunged into an underworld of the artist’s repressed fears and desires mashed up with the disregarded histories of the 19th Century women who once worked underground mining coal.
Earlier this week, I performed Underbelly at the Transliteracy Conference at DMU, Leicester, UK, so I thought it was high time I went public with the piece online. It’s a ‘beta version’ at present and I’m hoping to get some user feedback to help me swat any bugs (of which there’s a swarm, I’m sure) and iron out any usability issues. When you’re working alone outside any institution or formal group, it’s hard to get this kind of feedback prior to publishing, so any comments from netpoetic readers would be most welcome!
It’s been a struggle to get Underbelly into shape, partly because I was teaching myself ActionScript 3.0 as I was developing the piece. Currently, it relies heavily on AS frame-scripts because that’s what I was most comfortable with when I started work on it about 18 months ago. I suspect I have a lot of garbage collection issues, which is hardly surprising, the amount of messy code I brushed under the carpet! Initially, I attempted a more object oriented approach but, although I knew it would be cleaner, I found that it was simply beyond me at the time.
Since then, very recently, I’ve been learning how to code games in AS3 which has been a real eye-opener. It’s helped me recognise a much better process and workflow for developing playable media fiction in future. In retrospect, I realise I approached the making of Underbelly in a completely topsy-turvy way. For example, I didn’t arrive at a user interface design until very late in the process. In future I’ll design and thoroughly test the structure, storytelling procedures and UI elements in a wireframe prototype before going any further.
I’d be interested to hear what kinds of development models other artists who do their own programming use. What comes first, the chicken or the egg? Perhaps it’s different for each project?
Tags: e-literature | Flash | programming | transliteracy
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15 Responses to “New work: Underbelly”.
This work reads very well for me, Christine. Visually, it is extremely rich; the imagery is vibrant and shows a nice depth between the surface and underlying elements. The animations and audio work well to propel the storyline, and the transitions are smooth. This must have taken a long time to complete, and the finished project is an impressive one. You have a lot of talent and artistry in play here. Nice work!
my father was from Trail in British Columbia, a smelter and mining town. my family, on his side, is very working class in things like mines, smelters, logging, and forestry. i read d.h. lawrence’s stories and novels set in mining towns with interest.
and went through your piece with interest also. of course it’s more about the artist than the people she is ‘memorializing’. but analogical concerns.
it’s an engaging piece.
In terms of programming, you’re not doing anything more interesting than a mouseover and keeping track of what’s been visited. And a masked circle. The interface is simply a way of presenting the voiced texts and graphics. The programming does not have any spark or personality.
But that’s not what you were trying to do. The narrative does have some spark. The voices, the graphics.
I don’t think many new media writers even know what it might mean for programming to have some spark, some lively behavior. But that’s OK. Each to her own.
I thought the graphics and animations worked particularly well. The earth. The womb. The baby. The crawling and pulling. The oppressive unbornness of it. And the analogical connection with the artist.
Thanks, Alan! Yes, it has taken a long time to complete (or nearly complete, not quite finished yet) and if I’d known how long, I don’t think I’d have used my own voice – I got so sick of hearing it.
Jim, thanks too. You’re right, the interface is a primarily a way of presenting the voiced texts. I don’t see it so much as a way of presenting the graphics (it performs that as secondary function in my view) because, for a large part, the graphics are the interface elements that help the user find and play and mix the voices. I’m very much a beginner when it comes to programming (I learned AS3 because I didn’t know much AS2 in any case) and in Underbelly it is very basic (or it seems to me, a complicated collection of basic elements). So I understand how that would make it uninteresting to a more experienced programmer. I wouldn’t claim that it had any ‘spark’ or ‘personality’ in that respect – I can’t achieve that yet – but I do aspire to become much more expressive via programming also. It’s one thing to “know what it might mean for programming to have some spark, some lively behavior” and it’s another thing to be able to apply that in the service of a poem or narrative. Give me time…
I imagine there are different philosophies on what part programming might play in an elit piece. Some (like myself, at least for now) prefer the programming to play a supporting role, someplace in the background, in support of the narrative, audio, and imagery. Others might like it in the starring role.
As Jim says, each to his or her own….
I didn’t say the piece was uninteresting, Christine. I went through the whole thing. I’ve enjoyed many of your pieces. This one too. I was just being honest about the programming aspect. One never is sure whether it’s worth being honest with someone. Nice very nice is a more common response.
One thing I would say about learning AS3 or any tech stuff, for that matter. When you learn something about AS3, try to think of it in terms of the creative possibilities it offers. This makes it take a bit longer, but it’s more interesting that way. I pretty much have to learn this way or learning tech stuff is too dull for me to do it.
Yes, Alan, and whether the programming is in a starring or supporting role (a very useful way to view it) may depend on the conceptual needs of each individual work of elit – e.g. how important narrative is in relation to playability/interactivity in terms of where the weight of the meaning lies.
Jim, I really appreciate your honesty. I mean that. Please continue to be honest with me! I understood that it wasn’t the whole thing you found uninteresting, just the programming aspect. I should have been clearer in my response (hell, isn’t text tricky to get right? nothing plain about it).
It was remiss of me not to respond to other comments you made. For example, “The oppressive unbornness of it” – yes, such an apt description!
Thanks for your advice about learning AS3/tech stuff – thinking in terms of the creative possibilities – yes! That’s what I intend to do from now on. I approached working on Underbelly completely arse-backwards. I started out with such grand ideas about what I wanted it to do, or rather, what I wanted the user to be able to do with it, but found I didn’t have the programming skill/experience to achieve them. So I had to abandon my ‘big ideas’, vague as they were (probably why I’m a little over-sensitive about these issues now
I like this. What I particularly like is the suggestion that the modern-day sculptress is tapping away at the surface of things and avoiding engagement with the fundamentals of life/death/childbirth, while the previous generations of women working in the mines, even though they worked under such terrible conditions, were sexually uninhibited, tough and experienced, and engaged fully with life.
I think one problem is that the historical specifics tend to conflict with this symbolic schema a little bit. For one thing they tend to make us feel that the working conditions down in the mines were so bad in earlier centuries that the comparison between modern well-to-do-but-maybe-not-fully-engaged-with-life femininity and oldfashioned dying-early, working-hard, knocked-about-by-your-men femininity is simply no contest – you’d go for the modern option every time, shallow or not. Secondly, and slightly paradoxically, they make the modern sculptress character seem flat and uninteresting by comparison with the characters from the past. I get the feeling that we only fully engage with her towards the end, and especially when we get to the three life-choices with which the piece closes.
Those three life-choices also represent a sudden change in the “feel” of the piece. Quite satisfying as a conclusion, I thought, but different layout, a different type of interaction, a more “doomy” feel with that rumbling background-sound (perhaps a touch of Andy Campbell’s influence here?)… It means that there’s a big and noticeable “hinge” between the main sections of the piece (exploring that kind of circular womblike underground map) and the concluding three-options section.
I also think there’s a slight problem in the ealier sections in that the voices aren’t differentiated from each other all that thoroughly. I take it all the voices are yours. You’ve done a good job at picking out different shades of midland accent – from the almost faux-midlands of the sculptress to the much deeper provincial way of talking of the mining females. But the eighteen-year-old girl doesn’t really sound very much younger than the woman in her forties.
Having said all of this, which sounds rather critical, I ought to repeat that I do like the piece. I think the central theme, the contrast between the comfortable shallowness of modern life and the extremely-uncomfortable rawness and fullness of life in previous centuries, is a fruitful one.
Thanks Edward. I’m glad you like the piece and I tend to agree with your critique. One thing though – they are shades of a Yorkshire accent, not a Midlands one. Being a Yorkshire lass (and yes, I did the voices) I couldn’t let that slip by
Not that it’s particularly important, of course, because the Midlands was a big mining area too.
More seriously, the reason I chose to have one voice perform all the different voices was to situate the narrative within the sculptor’s psyche, so the stories from the past are filtered through her. The mining women’s stories are drawn from the Testimonies gathered by Lord Ashley’s Mines Commission of 1842. These ‘first hand’ accounts were transcribed by the Sub-Commissioners, the women themselves being largely illiterate, so their ‘voices’ had already been through one filtering process. It felt more appropriate to filter or funnel their voices again through one voice, rather than attempting to create the illusion that we have direct access to voices from the past.
Eee, fancy me thinking it were Midlands when it were broad Yorkshire all’t'time. I’m that clemmed I could thraip a whippet.
“I started out with such grand ideas about what I wanted it to do, or rather, what I wanted the user to be able to do with it, but found I didn’t have the programming skill/experience to achieve them. So I had to abandon my ‘big ideas’, vague as they were”
Learning how to learn is important. One of the crucial aspects of learning programming languages is membership in at least one good online email list where you can ask questions and get good quick answers. I am on such a Director list, and I can hardly emphasize enough how much they have helped me learn Lingo.
There are different levels of lists. There are beginner lists where you don’t get very good answers if you get any answers at all. And intermediate lists where you get good answers and the volume is very high. And expert lists where the membership is private and the answers are prompt and absolutely expert. You don’t get into those unless invited.
Another important part of learning how to learn programming languages is a set of good bookmarks concerning tutorials, sample code, official documentation, and so on.
Another important part of learning how to learn is knowing how to use a debugger.
Finally, the differences between different programming languages are not as significant as the differences between natural languages. Different programming languages are always quite similar. They all can branch, ie, they can all make decisions with something like an if-then-else statement. They all have some sort of loop statement. They all let you assign variables values. And they all have some principle of modularisation whereby you can write functions or handlers or methods–or whatever they’re called in that language–that take parameters.
At some point, you might want to take a course or two in programming. To learn the basics systematically and comprehensively. I don’t know if such courses are available in Actionscript. More likely in Java or C or C++. And this sort of course is not much concerning UI. It’s all about the command line level. In any case, you learn the basics. Loops, branching, variable types, scope, functions, parameters by value and reference, recursion, pointers, and simple data structures like lists, queues, and stacks. And this sort of course would probably be most useful after you’ve done what you’re doing at the moment, for a while, so you can appreciate it and anticipate it.
In any case, I applaud you in your effort to learn some programming, Christine. Way to go.
Thanks Jim, for your very useful advice. I’ve found online tutorials, as well as books, very useful but it hadn’t occurred to me to join an email list. I’m finding that learning game programming in ActionScript is currently helping me plug a lot of gaps in my understanding. I’m beginning to build a better mental picture of how the core principles (some of them anyway) fit together. I may well go on to learn the basics of another programming language too, later, as you suggest. For one thing, I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket. I think it’s important to be adaptable in this evolving online/digital ecology.
You’ll find email lists more relevant after you learn the basics of a language. The basics tend to be quite well-documented. The most basic documentation is video documentation. It’s good stuff at the basic level. And more complete documentation is available in text. Manuals. Online tutorials. Articles online. Google queries.
But you eventually get to the level where some of your questions aren’t answered via these usually very good resources. The email lists are usually excellent, at that point.
I haven’t had to join any JavaScript email lists. I’ve found, so far, that my questions can be answered via Google queries and sorting through the returns. I’m at an intermediate JavaScript level, I’d say.
Director is a bit more arcane, however. An amazing amount of expertise out there on some of the email lists. And fewer people using Director.
Thanks again, Jim. I’ve found Lynda.com very useful for video tutorials. There are lots of free resources out there for Flash, but sometimes it’s worth paying just to get the depth and breadth you need all in one place – saves time.
i bought a book on javascript. it says oop is not supported in javascript. which is not true, as it turns out.
my shelves have many programming references on them. most of them need to be tossed. books on computer stuff, typically, have a very short life. but there are a few i still consult.
i’m still looking for the manual that isn’t really a manual but is, instead, about art. yet could have been a manual in that the author could have done it if it weren’t too dull to write such a thing.
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