These Waves of Girls is a hypermedia novella by Caitlin Fisher that won the
Electronic Literature Organization
The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is a nonprofit organization "established in 1999 to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of electronic literature". It hosts annual conferences, awards annual prizes for works of ...
's Award for Fiction in 2001.
The work is frequently taught in undergraduate literature courses and is referenced in the field of
electronic literature
Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature encompassing works created exclusively on and for digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. A work of electronic literature can be defined as "a constr ...
as a significant example of early multimodal web-based hypertext fiction,
placing Fisher "at the forefront of digital writing".
Plot
The plot of ''These Waves of Girls'' is described by Andreas Kitzmann as concerning "a young girl struggling with her sexual identity",
while Raine Koskimaa describes the work as "a confessional autobiography about a girl coming to terms with her lesbian identity".
The "waves" of girls are "supposed to be about different moments in girlhood, different kinds of girls, different ways of discursively producing the girl. There are so many layers of stories of girls as victims, as victimisers, as cruel, as strong, as just so many different things at once", Fisher explained in a television interview in 2001.
Narrative structure and interaction
Web-based hypertext
![These Waves of Girls section excerpt - Caitlin Fisher](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/These_Waves_of_Girls_section_excerpt_-_Caitlin_Fisher.png)
In an interview with TechTV immediately after receiving the ELO Award for ''These Waves of Girls'', Fisher said the experience of writing with links and multiple modalities was exciting: "Writing in a hypertext environment, and working on the links as you're working on the writing, that becomes another way of writing - I think there is a new grammar to hypermedia." However, she also noted that "what I love best about traditional writing, I could keep."
In 2001, publishing a story on the web was still fairly unusual. Koskimaa notes that this affects the experience of reading the work itself: "it situates itself in the huge docuverse of the Internet –even though there are no links from the work reaching outside of its self-contained whole, through the web browser functionality it is always just one click away from other documents in the Web".
The hypertextual structure is what Koskimaa calls a textbook example of "associative hypertext".
Larry McCaffery described the linking as working in "often surprising ways that establish hidden connections that often seem to be operating on the basis of emotional, associational logic".
Multimodal hypertext
''These Waves of Girls'' "effectively integrates visual and audio material into a nonlinear hypertext where the reader actively determines the process of the reading experience".
The integration of sound and visuals through a combination of
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
and
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia Computing platform, software platform used for production of Flash animation, animations, rich web applications, application software, desktop applications, mobile apps, mo ...
was new in 2001. Colours, images and sounds (like the laughter of girls at the beginning of the piece) are integral to the narrative. Koskimaa also notes that "
me of the images are mildly interactive in a way that moving the cursor over them distorts the picture like it was 'squeezed'."
Vertical and horizontal scrolling beyond the immediately visible part of the page in the browser are also utilised.
Autobiographical
Kitzmann writes that ''These Waves of Girls'' is "structured as a confessional autobiography that parallels, to some extent, the experience of someone reminiscing about childhood experiences while flipping through old photographs."
This is a common way of structuring hypertext fictions, Kitzmann writes, because it is a familiar mode of storytelling that is often characterised by the storyteller's memories being triggered by "a variety of cues, such as old photographs, comments by listeners, and random daily events".
Koskimaa also notes that the work uses an
unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator whose credibility is compromised. They can be found in fiction and film, and range from children to mature characters. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in ''The Rhetoric of Fiction''. While unrel ...
, a familiar literary technique in fictional autobiographies.
Unpolished web design
The autobiographical framing is also visible in the slightly unpolished feel of the web design. Anja Rau has criticised this in her "beta-test" of the work, where she argues that the use of frames, Flash and the embedding of sound is done in a way that "does not meet the technological standards of current internet or CD-ROM productions."
In an analysis of how people read electronic literature based on teaching the works in undergraduate and Masters level classes, James Pope noted that all students reading ''These Waves of Girls'' commented "that the interface design was messy and confusing, with cluttered layout, awkward navigation and nested frames creating very distracting pages".
Raine Koskimaa counters this argument, saying that the unpolished style "has to be taken as a conscious choice by the author".
While nested frames would be unacceptable if following web design guidelines, they might "be a successful device in a hyperfictional context (..) We can interpret the instance of nested frames as a meaningful element in the work".
Larry McCaffery
Lawrence F. McCaffery Jr. (born May 13, 1946) is an American literary critic, editor, and retired professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University. His work and teaching focuses on postmodern literature, contemporary ...
's description of the work in his role as judge of the fiction contest supports Koskimaa's interpretation that the unpolished web design is a meaningful narrative element. McCaffrey writes, "There is a raw energy and garish intensity to these visual features that perfectly captures the feel of childhood and adolescence."
In ''Digital Fiction and the Unnatural'',
Astrid Ensslin
Astrid Christina Ensslin is a German digital humanities scholar and games researcher, and Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen. She was previously Professor of Media and Digital Communications at the University of Alberta. Enss ...
and Alice Bell note that another aspect making ''These Waves of Girls'' difficult to read is the way links are used: "words used as hyperlinks are not always immediately indicative of the destination lexias to which they lead, so that they can inhibit rather than empower readers in their role as link chooser."
Narrativity
Writing for the ''Bloomsbury Handbook of Electronic Literature'', Daniel Punday argues that ''These Waves of Girls'' "locates narrativity within individual stages and sections, but eschew(s) narrative progression through these stages."
Like Koskimaa, Sunday sees the structure of ''These Waves of Girls'' as strongly connected to the aesthetic and culture of the web at the turn of the century. He writes, "Fisher's narrative exemplifies the way that early Web-based hypertext could tell a series of interrelated stories using a menu system that allows the reader to enter (and reenter) sections in any order. (..)
rrativity exists entirely within the stories narrated and alluded to within individual alexia; the overall menu structure of the text is unconnected to narrative progression."
Reception
The
Electronic Literature Organization
The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is a nonprofit organization "established in 1999 to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of electronic literature". It hosts annual conferences, awards annual prizes for works of ...
awarded ''These Waves of Girls'' its fiction award in 2001. The judge,
Larry McCaffery
Lawrence F. McCaffery Jr. (born May 13, 1946) is an American literary critic, editor, and retired professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University. His work and teaching focuses on postmodern literature, contemporary ...
, wrote: "I found myself hooked on ''Waves'' from the moment I first logged on and watched Caitlin's gorgeous graphic interface assemble itself out of images of moving clouds drifting across the screen, mingling with the sounds of girls laughing."
Despite this excitement, writing in 2006, James Pope notes the apparent paradox that a work so highly thought of in the field of electronic literature, and about as popular a topic as teen sexuality, "remains 'stuck' in a sort of twilight zone, apparently known only to a few insiders".
The work is frequently taught in undergraduate literature courses and is referenced in the scholarship as a highly influential example of early multimodal web-based hypertext fiction.
Fisher is described as having "established herself at the forefront of digital writing" with ''These Waves of Girls'' and the augmented reality poem ''Andromeda'' (2008).
External links
2001 television interview with Caitlin Fisher on TechTV about ''These Waves of Girls'' winning the ELO Award* ''These Waves of Girls'' no longer works on the web because it uses
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia Computing platform, software platform used for production of Flash animation, animations, rich web applications, application software, desktop applications, mobile apps, mo ...
, which has been deprecated. However
the Electronic Literature Organization hosts an archival emulation of the work
Short video walkthrough documenting ''These Waves of Girls''ELMCIP Knowledge Base for Electronic Literature entry for ''These Waves of Girls''
References
{{authority control
2001 books
2000s electronic literature works
2001 in Internet culture
2001 Canadian novels
Women in fiction
Lesbian fiction
Canadian novellas
Hypermedia
Canadian LGBT novels
2000s LGBT novels
Novels with lesbian themes
2001 LGBT-related literary works