Nonfiction and an interdisciplinary lab

The honours nonfiction lab I participated in, in first semester, provided a useful place to ground the nonfictional aspects of my research. In a way it oscillated until, I think, it synthesised. I started by being unsure of the importance of nonfiction to my research question and so I kept it external to my question. I then overemphasised its importance and attempted to position it directly in my question. Finally, I was able to recognise it as contextual to the research but not directly to the research question.
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Documenting a writers’ festival in Darwin

Darwin

As geek-in-residence at Australian Poetry my purpose in Darwin was, among many other things, to stream and record WordStorm and the National Poetry Festival events. Essentially, coincidently enough, to act as a documentarian.

Darwin had up until then collected in my imagination as a hodgepodge of memories of the weather in Malaysia, telemovies about Cyclone Tracy, the often recounted bombing during the war and news reports of the NT Intervention. I expected a town flatish, like an Australian country town, with each side assailed by the environment.
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Nonfiction and the programmatic

I’ve been asking myself what programmatic (or programmed) texts add to nonfiction (aside from educational games). In drafting up the possibilities with programmatic texts they seem to me to be (or at least start with):

  1. manipulation of source nonfictional texts
  2. generation of nonfictional texts
  3. interrogation of nonfictional texts
  4. additional meaning through kinetic aspects of the text (textual behaviour)
  5. interaction with the text

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