I’ve just finished Obsession, a novel by A.S. Byatt, where the main narrative technique to reveal plot is based upon a series of letters between two (deceased) poets. So it got me thinking about how so much of our communication these days is based around Facebook, text messages and e-mails. Other than the odd novel which uses e-mail excerpts (in as much of the same way that letters have been used as a narrative method in revealing the story), I don’t think I’ve read any recent fiction that makes use of text messages and social networking sites to tell a story.
One example of a contemporary novel to shake up the traditional novel form with new technology is Hannu Luntiala’s novel Viimeiset Viestit (The Last Messages). Written entirely based on a man’s text messages to his family while he is away travelling, I’m guessing that a lot of the novel’s meaning is based upon either what is missing, or what is suggested in the text on the page.
It might not be up exactly high-brow, but the potential for a couple of sentences to paint a picture is oh-so-evident on TLN: Texts Last Night. I’m positive most of them are fake and created purely for the site though! There’s also MyLifeIsAverage, which is home to nuggets of wisdom such as “Today, I realized the word bed actually looks like a bed” and “the other day I learned that if you say ‘beer can’ with an English accent, you’re saying ‘bacon’ with a Jamaican accent. Mind blown”.
I also found this really creative idea called Position Art, or GPS Drawing, where people use their GPS-enabled devices to track their movements as they walk and use that information to create an image.
Part sport, part art, GPS drawing lets runners, walkers, cyclists and hikers imagine themselves anew — not just as a collection of burning muscles, sweaty armpits, forward motion; not just as people endeavouring to crest a hill or lose five pounds. Instead, they are neo-cartographers, jumbo-size doodlers and bipedal pencils, mapping their track lines across cities, roads and farms, and sharing them online. New York Times
Examples of the massive changes that have been taking place in the way we communicate over the past decade was made really evident to me when I had a quick browse of textually.org. In 2003 they published a story that quotes from Shakespeare were to be offered to the public by text messages, short bursts of his genius in SMS form. And to think that these days Twitter makes the delivery of short, snappy words of wisdom so easy and uncomplicated, and most of all, for free!
If you’re like me and you delete most of your text messages and e-mails, you can’t help but be aware of the fact that most of what you have written/received will get lost forever. This isn’t a huge problem to us, but what will people in years to come have to examine our society and how we lived? Artist Ginger Anyhow has found an inventive way to translate impermanent SMS communication into handmade souvenirs.
Is it a good thing that communication these days is so impermanent? E-mails replace holiday postcards a lot of the time and wouldn’t it be sad if in years to come people didn’t have these kind of artefacts to learn about people from? Grab a pen and notepad and write someone a letter right now!
