Matt Huynh's The Boat

Writing has evolved immensely over time. With the development of new technologies and digital networked spaces, the aspects of writing have become more dynamic and complex. Writing in digitally networked environments opens up a range of new possibilities for an innovative form of writing and a new way of presenting narrative and storytelling. In addition, writing in these environments makes it possible for a greater audience and also gives readers a fresh way of experiencing narrative, providing them with the ability to understand the story in an interactive and complex way. In an online adaptation by Matt Huynh of the story ‘The Boat’ by Nam Le, we experience these modern possibilities of writing in a new ‘ecological’ way.
The concept of writing
Interactivity is broadly recognised as one that ‘marks the most significant difference from old media’ (Ryan, 2011). Looking at the first level of Ryan’s ‘The Interactive onion’ concept, the interactivity is basic and only frames the story, not affects it (Ryan, 2011). Applying this level to the boat, the reader is in control of the action of the page. The reader can scroll through the narrative manually and skip to different chapters, they have the option to turn off the sound and turn the screen on full mode. These options give the reader control without affecting the narrative. But in saying that, the way each chapter is presented as you scroll down gives the reader an effective way to experience this narrative. The text and images move in a fashion that produces a feeling of being on a boat, which in total, makes the reader feel as if they’ve experienced what it’s like to be a refugee. Through interactivity, an enhanced emotion is created, one which wouldn’t normally be felt outside a digitally networked environment. “Digital writing can be understood to call forth particular kinds of body memories associated with behaviours suppressed or sublimated by typographic cultures of text” (Angel &Gibbs, 2013). What Angel and Gibbs argue here is that digital writing environments gives a platform for our senses to surface and influence the way a reader takes meaning out of the narrative, one which was limited in older forms of text. On the website, this is featured through the sound option of the storm which provides elevates the story to a whole new level. This is an example of the application of the features seen in multimodality which as explained is used to enhance the way the reader engages with the story to take meaning out of it.