Novelling is a digital novel that contains imagery, sound, and video, creating an interactive site for the readers to engage in. It was created by Will Luers (video, design, and coding), Hazel Smith (text), and Roger Dean (sound), and released in 2016. From the project, various texts would be displayed for a few moments, before transitioning to the next texts, and continue to do so in a six-minute cycle. The authors’ goal in doing so is to generate thinking and questioning from the audience on the basis in novel, characters, and words.
The elements as mentioned above are essential in making Novelling the way we see it now. Without the images, we would not gain visuals to match with the texts and create imagery for us to imagine. Without the sound, the texts would be silent and only read aloud by people in real life telling the story, as opposed to voice acting that can sound as if someone else is saying the words. Without it being programmed in a video cycle, it won’t generate videos, switching images, and transitioning that creates a more immersive visual to the texts displayed, nor see other texts that were created.
The Authors of the Digital Project
Will Luers is a digital media artist and writer living in Portland, Oregon. He is a teacher who teaches multimedia authoring, creative programming, digital storytelling, and digital cinema at Washington State University Vancouver in the Creative Media & Digital Culture program.
Hazel Smith is an Emeritus Professor in the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University. She is the author of several academic and pedagogical books, a poet, a performer and multimedia artist, and is a member of austraLYSIS, the sound and intermedia arts group.
Roger Dean is a composer/improviser, and a research professor in music cognition and computation at the MARCS Auditory Laboratories, Western Sydney University. He founded and directs the ensemble austraLYSIS, and his creative work revolves around keyboard improvisation, computer music composition, and writing instrumental music and performs ensemble jazz with the austraLYSIS Electroband.
Luers, Will, et al. “Novelling.” 2016. Luers2022, edited by Kathi Inman Berens et al., vol. 4, Electronic Literature Organization, 2022, https://doi.org/10.7273/issn.1932-2022.4.novelling.work.