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Frame 1 Darkness. The outline of THE BARKER barely visible.
Frame 2 Inset. Lights, camera, action. The Barker stands with her arms spread wide and a grin on her face, on a blank, white background.
BARKER: WELCOME BACK TO ELECTRONIC BOOK REVIEW! THIS MONTH WE’RE HERE TO PRESENT TO YOU—
TITLE: THE INFINITE INFORMATION AGE
(Title should be in a sans serif font reminiscent—if not the same—as the ebr branding. White, with some fluorescent offset colors, so it pops against the black background.)
Frame 3 Inset, again. The Barker is still talking as, outside the panel, the black background fades away into a sea of faces. All different colors, races, sexes, aesthetics, etc. This sea is muted, in comparison to the vividity of the foreground, as to not draw attention.
BARKER: IN TODAY’S FIRST ARTICLE—
CAPTION: “EXPERIMENTS IN GENERATING CUT-UP TEXTS WITH COMMERCIAL AI”
(The captions for the article titles should be white with a serif font. Anachronistic, considering the content.)
Frame 4 The Barker begins walking, the sea of faces behind her. As she does, she’s sliced (figuratively) apart, until she becomes of a series of strips. Each one is a different art style and medium, from photograph to surrealist painting. Some slices are not The Barker, but Barker-esque. Think Wittig and Heckman.
BARKER: POLINA AND JAMES MACKAY TAKE COMMAND OF THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS TO DISCOVER IF LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS CAN COMPETE IN CUT-UP COMPOSITION.
Frame 5 Inset. The same sea of faces as before. Wholly herself again, The Barker vaults out of the panel, her hand flat against its bottom edge and feet already crossing its borders.
CAPTION: IN “COMICS AS BIG DATA: THE TRANSFORMATION OF COMICS INTO MACHINE-INTERPRETABLE INFORMATION”
Frame 6 The Barker drifts downwards, seemingly a part of and apart from the spread beneath her. Her arms are out, one foot pointed; apparently weightless, she touches ground. Behind her the collective unconscious transforms: first into a plethora of global currency symbols, then a dot matrix, then nothing but pure, artificial emptiness.
BARKER: ILAN MANOUACH INVESTIGATES COMMODIFICATION AND FAN LABOR AS COMIC ART’S INFINITE CANVAS FRAGMENTS INTO AN OCEAN OF INFINITESIMAL DATA POINTS.
Frame 7 Wide shot, following The Barker’s landing. She’s small; swallowed up in the enormity of the panel.
Frame 8 The first of a series of inset, small, successive panels. Starting with a close up of The Barker’s face. She looks serious. Maybe, even, disturbed.
Frame 9 Closer. The Barker’s brow crumples, her eyes widening, color draining—
Frame 10 But something catches her attention. Color returns. Pleasantly surprised, she looks directly out at the audience.
BARKER: AH!
Frame 11 An ornate, golden looking glass frame fills the foreground. It bisects the Barker as she runs towards it, out of focus in the background.
CAPTION: “EPISODE 10: IMMERSIVE STORYTELLING IN AUGMENTED REALITY AND VIRTUAL REALITY WITH CAITLIN FISHER”
Frame 12 The Barker walks through series of different ‘devices’—starting with the ornate looking glass—that include a fun house mirror, a smartphone, and various headsets. The fun house mirror distorts her. The smartphone applies SnapChat’s puppy filter. Oblivious to both, she speaks as she walks. (I’ll allow you to place the bubbles for maximum effect.)
BARKER: IN THE LATEST OFF CENTER PODCAST TRANSCRIPT, SCOTT RETTBERG AND CAITLIN FISHER—DIRECTOR OF YORK UNIVERSITY, TORONTO’S IMMERSIVE STORYTELLING LAB—EXPLORE THE POETICS AND POTENTIAL POWERS OF AUGMENTED AND VIRTUAL REALITY…
Frame 13 The Barker stoops.
Frame 14 Taking up the majority of the remaining space, the Barker leans in from the left. She’s now holding a book in her right hand.
BARKER: IN IT’S QUEST TO ‘EQUAL OR EXCEED THE WELL-WRITTEN NOVEL’!
Frame 15 The Barker pauses, staring into the middle distance. She might be looking at the caption that’s just appeared to her right.
CAPTION: MEANWHILE, IN “AFFECT AESTHETIC AND POLITICS OF THE BOOK”…
Frame 16 The Barker starts moving again. This time leaving behind a series of blue, ghostly tracings of movement. They’re illuminated, at points, by manifestations of books that are book-like but not books themselves.
BARKER: IN HER REVIEW OF JESSICA PRESSMAN’S BOOKISHNESS, SOL HEO FINDS ‘BOOKISHNESS’ TO BE A USEFUL FRAMEWORK FOR EXPLORING THE INTERSECTION(S) OF POLITICAL, LITERARY, AND DIGITAL CULTURES.
Frame 17 The blankness The Barker has been moving through is disrupted by a door. The door is mahogany, with an ornate, golden doorknob. It’s affixed with a nameplate decorated by serif text, which reads: GADDIS.
BARKER: (Off panel.) OH, YEAH!
Frame 18 The Barker steps into a wood-paneled room filled with glass display cases. Inside are various paper paraphernalia, variously written by hand or by typewriter. Looking out the screen, The Barker presses a ‘Shhh!’ finger to her lips.
Frame 19 The Barker opens a case, placing the book she’s been carrying inside. She lowers her voice as she talks; the font within the bubbles is smaller than the rest of the comic.
BARKER: IN OUR FINAL INSTALMENT OF GADDIS, GADDIS, GADDIS—
Frame 20 The Barker begins to stroll through our somehow-metaphorical-but-literal depiction of the archive (which, in reality, is probably a series of boxes).
BARKER: EBR CO-CONSPIRATOR, ALI CHETWYND TAKES US ON AN EXTENSIVE TOUR OF UNPUBLISHED MATERIALS WITHIN THE GADDIS ARCHIVE VIA TWO COMPREHENSIVE GUIDES.
Frame 21 She leans in to look at a case, which has a viewing apparatus that magnifies one of her eyes.
BARKER: THE FIRST—
Frame 22 The Barker shifts. Her entire face now fills the magnifying glass, chin first.
BARKER: DETAILS THE NON-PROSE WORKS PRODUCED BY GADDIS, FOR A TOTAL OF FOUR STAGE PLAYS, FOUR SCREENPLAYS, SIX TV OR FILM PROJECT PROSPECTUSES, AND 13 POEMS.
Frame 23 The Barker goes back to wandering, her hands clutched behind her back. She’s giving David Attenborough, Stephen Fry, Philomena Cunk.
BARKER: THE SECOND GUIDE—
CAPTION: “WILLIAM GADDIS’S UNPUBLISHED STORIES AND NOVEL-PROTOTYPES”
Frame 24 The Barker falls still beside a large case that contains dozens of manuscripts and action-graphs.
BARKER: IS CO-WRITTEN WITH JOEL MINOR AND DETAILS THE 58 SO FAR IDENTIFIED UNPUBLISHED PROSE PROJECTS WITHIN THE ARCHIVE.
Frame 25 The Barker pauses, drawing back from the case with a wry smile.
CAPTION: (Inner thought.) AND I THOUGHT MY ‘WORK IN PROGRESS’ FOLDER WAS CLUTTERED.
(Let’s go yellow radial gradient on the caption. Hopefully, you get the reference.)
Frame 26 Inset. The Barker turns to the reader, spreading her arms wide and her palms face up.
BARKER: AND WITH THAT, WE’RE DONE UNTIL THE END OF SUMMER.
Frame 27 Inset. The Barker’s hands flutter back behind her.
BARKER: GO OUTSIDE AND TOUCH GRASS, BUT REMEMBER—
Frame 28 The lighting in the archive falls. The warm tones cast into blues, greys, and blacks. The Barker’s glasses glint white, reminiscent of Miller’s Kevin.
BARKER: WE’LL ALWAYS BE BACK WITH MORE:
TITLE: ELECTRONIC BOOK REVIEW
Frame 29 Is not a panel, but a letter. Go standard letter page format… but try to avoid an ‘excelsior’ feel.
CAPTION: A WORD FROM OUR EDITOR:
The Digital Review Issue 04: AI-Augmented Creativity
The 2024 issue of The Digital Review showcases artists and scholars who have long pondered the implications of AI-assisted creativity. They push beyond superficial outcomes to explore the profound possibilities of amplifying human intuition, improvisation, and collaboration.
The works collectively address the central question of how AI shapes and redefines human creativity by probing a symbiotic machine-human production process. Some pieces illustrate how AI can co-create narratives that challenge traditional notions of authorship, while others reveal how AI integrated into a creative process can foster speculative and nuanced perspectives with implications for educational paradigms and our technological relationship to the living world. A notable project demonstrates AI’s role in enhancing middle school education, fostering innovative thinking in young students. The featured work, Jhave’s “Identity Upgrade,” offers a visionary exploration of posthuman consciousness, extended embodiment and collective awakening.
Together, these contributions emphasize experimentation and critical engagement and reflect the evolving dialogue between human creativity and machine intelligence, opening new paths for expression and thought.
– Will Luers, issue editor