Susan was a political activist during her Berkeley days, but today she wakes up in her large suburban home, still childless. She dresses without showering and eats in silence. After breakfast, she carries out her chores alone until an unexpected event brings her day abruptly to a halt.
Stop & Smell is an interactive narrative installation that explores the boundaries of literature and digital sculpture. It invites readers to construct a narrative by interacting with illuminated paper flowers. As viewers smell the flowers, the text on the wall expands, and ttheir understanding of the story changes. Stop & Smell is an interactive microfiction exploring themes of success, happiness, and expectation.
Stop & Smell was inspired by stretchtext literature, stories in which clicking on links expands a passage to include new text that potentially changes the meaning of the original. By incorporating classic features of literary hypertext—fragmented, combinatory narrative; ambiguous point of view; discursive agency—Flowers hopes to challenge the perceived limitations of the page by introducing the affordances of the screen into an analog setting.
Official Selection: Hold the Light. Electronic Literature Organization. Juried Media Art Show. Milwaukee, WI, USA. June 19-21, 2014.
