Stacks is an application for mobile devices and computers that allows users to stream audiobooks. Users can stream any audiobook from an in-app library of content. Each book stream consists of audio, which is the reading of the text, and a visual component created by the app. While users listen to the audiobook they view a computer-generated animation that matches and complements the story. This animation is made by a computer’s analysis of the pitches, tones, and frequencies of the reader’s voice transferred into animated fractal art with a multitude of textures and colors. Through this audiovisual presentation of a book, reading novels becomes a social experience. People can “watch” books together the way they watch television shows or movies. In an academic application of the program, using two senses to experience reading a book increases attention rate during reading and results in a better absorption of the text. The application is therefore appealing to students as well as book clubs, friends, or families looking to experience reading together. Stacks makes reading a more social, more engrossing experience for users while still conveying the entirety of the original text.
The visual aspect of Stacks is a defining characteristic of the application. Fractal art, very aesthetically pleasing and specific to the text, is the backbone of the visual component to Stacks streaming. Made by computer software, it is essentially the visual representations of math equations. Because fractal art is made using specific mathematic formulas, the exact ratios and intricate detailing of the pieces are very pleasing to the eye. Fractals, while formulaic, can be presented in an infinite number of ways through variations in color, texture, and equations used in the software. Stacks uses the sounds of the audiobook to create an animated fractal that matches the verbal variations of the reader, complementing the text. While there are already programs that use sound to create visual animation, such as the Visualizer option on iTunes, these are often comprised of just flashing lights on a black background and are of little variation. In order to create Stacks, we would need to make a software that uses audio to create fractal animation. Once this software is created, Stacks will be easily made using streaming technology already present in Netflix and Spotify and distributed on the Apple and Android App Stores and Google Play, as well as downloadable for computers through a website.
I recognize that a number of books have already been brought to life through a combination of audio and visual aspects for audiences to enjoy. These take the form of movies or television shows based on stories from books. While these do share Stacks’s goal of bringing books to a wider audience in a new format, there are drawbacks to Hollywood interpretations of books that Stacks solves. First of all, movies are expensive to go see or buy. Users may stream any book for free with their monthly Stacks subscription, making it an economically smart alternative to seeing a film interpretation in theaters or even buying a physical copy of the book. Second, only a very slim percentage of books get made into movies, and almost all of the ones that get theatrically produced are fiction novels. If a reader wants to visually experience a little-known book of poetry, they are not going to find a film version of the book to enjoy. Even if the desired book does get made into a film, it takes at least a year and a half to produce and release a film before a viewer can pay up to fifteen dollars to see it in theaters. Stacks can quickly generate fractal animations for audiobook files, which accompany most books very soon after the print edition is released. Lev Manovich discusses automation of new media in his book The Language of New Media. He names the many talents of computer programming today, such as the ability to “automatically generate 3-D objects such as […] ready-to-use animations of complex natural phenomena” in support of the idea that automated creation means “human intentionality can be removed from the creative process, at least in part” (32). By taking away the human element of the visual creation the animation is left to work with the creative piece that is the book itself, and allows for a much quicker turn around of products than if someone made a film for every book ever made.
The element of discussion surrounding texts is often dropped after a person graduates from high school or college and stops reading books for academic purposes. Stacks introduces a social element to books that will make their experience much more appealing to the masses. When a person reads a physical book or an ebook, it is a quiet solitary experience that is very individualized. When the book is taken out of the inside of one reader’s head and projected onto a screen with an audio component, reading a book becomes a social activity. Stacks allows people to hear stories together the way they bond over television shows. With the opportunity to pause between chapters or at any time during the text, Stacks creates collaborative discussion. Everyone is on the same page, or rather, at the same part of the Stacks stream. By bringing back this discussion-provoking reading environment, people get much more from the texts than if they had read it alone.
According to Hayles’s How We Think, “the sheer onslaught of information has created a situation in which the limiting factor is human attention” (12). Students of all education levels, from elementary school to college level and beyond, have a difficult time focusing on reading texts due to the stillness of the activity, the need for a quiet setting and the act of thinking only about what they see on the page, ignoring all other senses. Stacks focuses the user’s attention and makes any text easier to absorb by utilizing two senses: sight and hearing. With two senses working at once the brain processes the text in two different formats, which develops stronger connections in the brain and makes the text easier to absorb. This creates an experience that fits Hayles’s definition of a “close reading,” which “correlates with deep attention, the cognitive mode traditionally associated with the humanities that prefers a single information stream, focuses on a single cultural object for a relatively long time” (12). Close readings and deep attention are brain functions that are being used less and less in our daily lives, but Stacks brings it back to the surface by incorporating it into our already technology-driven lives.
As far as marketing goes, Stacks would benefit most fro advertisements on websites like SparkNotes or Shmoop, which are centered around reading and literature analysis, as well as websites like College Prowler and Rate My Professors, where high school and college students are always online. The logo is the word “Stacks” in bold lettering, with the vertically straight part of the “k” made of a pile of books and a fractal web of lines inside the “a.” Advertisements will read: “Stacks: Stories for the Senses.”
Works Cited
Hayles, Katherine. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2012. Print.
Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2002. Print.