Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Doing (Audio-Visual) Things with Words – From Epistolary Intent to Epistolary Entanglements: An Introduction
- 1 Performance and Power : The Letter as an Expression of Masculinity in Game of Thrones
- 2 ‘My dearest little girl, I just got your letter and I hope that you will continue to write to me often’: Epistolary Listening in News from Home (Chantal Akerman, 1976)
- 3 Dead Letters: Epistolary Hauntology and the Speed of Light in Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas, 2016)
- 4 Attention to Detail: Epistolary Forms in New Melodrama
- 5 The Spiritual Intimacies of The Red Hand Files: How Long Will I Be Alone?
- 6 Video Authenticity and Epistolary Self-Expression in Letter to America (Kira Muratova, 1999)
- 7 Epistolary Affect and Romance Scams: Letter from an Unknown Woman
- 8 Delivering Posthumous Messages : Katherine Mansfield and Letters in the Literary Biopic Leave All Fair (John Reid, 1985)
- 9 The Interactive Letter : Co-Authorship and Interactive Media in Emily Short’s First Draft of the Revolution
- 10 Epistolary Distance and Reciprocity in José Luis Guerín and Jonas Mekas’s Filmed Correspondences
- 11 Instagram and the Diary : The Case of Amalia Ulman’s Excellences & Perfections (2014)
- 12 Civil War Epistolary and the Hollywood War Film
- 13 Epistolarity and Decolonial Aesthetics in Carola Grahn’s Look Who’s Talking (2016)
- 14 Epistolary Relays in Fatih Akin’s Auf der anderen Seite (On the Other Side/On the Edge of Heaven) (2007)
- Index
9 - The Interactive Letter : Co-Authorship and Interactive Media in Emily Short’s First Draft of the Revolution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 June 2023
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Doing (Audio-Visual) Things with Words – From Epistolary Intent to Epistolary Entanglements: An Introduction
- 1 Performance and Power : The Letter as an Expression of Masculinity in Game of Thrones
- 2 ‘My dearest little girl, I just got your letter and I hope that you will continue to write to me often’: Epistolary Listening in News from Home (Chantal Akerman, 1976)
- 3 Dead Letters: Epistolary Hauntology and the Speed of Light in Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas, 2016)
- 4 Attention to Detail: Epistolary Forms in New Melodrama
- 5 The Spiritual Intimacies of The Red Hand Files: How Long Will I Be Alone?
- 6 Video Authenticity and Epistolary Self-Expression in Letter to America (Kira Muratova, 1999)
- 7 Epistolary Affect and Romance Scams: Letter from an Unknown Woman
- 8 Delivering Posthumous Messages : Katherine Mansfield and Letters in the Literary Biopic Leave All Fair (John Reid, 1985)
- 9 The Interactive Letter : Co-Authorship and Interactive Media in Emily Short’s First Draft of the Revolution
- 10 Epistolary Distance and Reciprocity in José Luis Guerín and Jonas Mekas’s Filmed Correspondences
- 11 Instagram and the Diary : The Case of Amalia Ulman’s Excellences & Perfections (2014)
- 12 Civil War Epistolary and the Hollywood War Film
- 13 Epistolarity and Decolonial Aesthetics in Carola Grahn’s Look Who’s Talking (2016)
- 14 Epistolary Relays in Fatih Akin’s Auf der anderen Seite (On the Other Side/On the Edge of Heaven) (2007)
- Index
Summary
Abstract
This chapter discusses the writing and transmitting of letters in Emily Short's 2012 interactive epistolary work, First Draft of the Revolution. It argues how interactivity commentates on the letter's processes of becoming, specifically through the reader as co-author in a triangulation of reading, writing, and interactivity. This triangulation upends epistolary confidentiality and the tension between private and public in terms of the writing process. The chapter also examines the letter's crossing of space and time in how its transmission contributes to its meaning as a communication medium. Through this two-pronged exploration of ‘epistolary interactivity’, the chapter interrogates the nature of media itself, and how interactivity shapes letters as media in terms of being, becoming, change, and potential for change.
Keywords: interactive; First Draft of the Revolution; letter-writing; transmission; confidentiality; change
Introduction
Juliette has been banished for the summer to a village above Grenoble: a few Alpine houses, a deep lake, blue sky, and no society. Now she writes daily to her husband. First Draft of the Revolution
This chapter discusses the writing and transmitting of letters in Emily Short's award-winning 2012 interactive work, First Draft of the Revolution, self-described as ‘an interactive epistolary story’. Hosted and played on a dedicated website, (https://www.inklestudios.com/firstdraft/), First Draft is a story told almost entirely through letters written by and sent amongst a crew of characters set in eighteenth-century revolutionary France. It begins with a correspondence by the protagonist, Juliette, to her husband, Henri, who has banished her from Paris to ‘a village above Grenoble’ in the Dauphiné countryside. The work also features letters by Henri; Henri's sister, Alise, who does not like Juliette and approves of her being sent away; and Mother Catherine-Agnes, Juliette's Mother Superior at an unnamed convent where Juliette grew up before getting married. Together, their correspondences reveal Juliette's discovery of a plot by the friar in the country village to manipulate Henri's recently found illegitimate son (also at the same village!) in an effort to overthrow the Lavori, an order of magic-using noblemen to which Henri belongs.
First Draft is by no means unique as an interactive epistolary story. There are many examples of interactive letters used to advance gameplay and narrative particularly in recent years.
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- Epistolary Entanglements in Film, Media and the Visual Arts , pp. 173 - 190Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2023