Ever had trouble identifying with a book’s main character? Don’t worry: MIT scientists have got you covered. They just invented a new sensory vest and e-book system, called Sensory Fiction, which projects the protagonist’s emotions through mood lighting and vibrating sensors. Page turns trigger lighting, sound, temperature, chest tightness, and even heart rate. It’s meant to help readers connect emotionally with the book.
For readers who want a more auditory experience, a new program called Booktrack adds sound effects and music to books. Like Sensory Fiction, the creators wanted to spark a cognitive and emotive effect to the book’s plot. If the author writes, “Suddenly, a roaring crash startled Methuselah,” Booktrack inserts a crash sound. According to Booktrack’s co-founder and CEO Paul Cameron, the soundtracks “enhance your imagination and keep you in the story longer. And they make it fun to read again. If you’re not reading all the time, they might help you rediscover reading.”
These programs open up a swath of interactive reading options to the bibliophile and book-wary alike, though they may especially appeal to those who normally feel bored by books. Nonetheless—the idea feels a bit like a copout for both writer and reader.
Truly excellent writers shouldn’t need a vibrating, mood-lit book to convey the emotions of their protagonists. Good writing produces compelling emotion without such devices. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment serves as a good example: he captured the inner struggles of his protagonists, and built suspense throughout every scene. It’s difficult to read his novel without feeling touched by the raw emotion, pain, and mental struggle portrayed in the lives of Raskolnikov and Sonya.
Additionally, reading is a cognitive and emotional exercise for the reader. Recent studies have shown that reading fosters empathy and imagination, as well as social skills. But what happens when a book activates an emotional response for you? The imaginative work is at least somewhat circumvented. It takes less effort on your part to register emotionally or cognitively with the reading. Your imagination does not have to process and produce the correct feeling, sound, or mood.
I wonder how many people will truly find these interactive tools appealing, at least in their current form. Most readers like to construct their own literary atmosphere. When I sit down with an Agatha Christie mystery, I enjoy a crackling fire and some Earl Grey tea, whereas Moby Dick requires a particular music, something a bit moody and melancholy. As the reader, I have the power to control and shape my environment, to build a specific sort of reading experience. The problem with Sensory Fiction or Booktrack is that they dictate the music, mood, and milieu. Instead of creating the environment that best suits your temperament and taste, a new environment is thrust upon you.
One other conceivable problem with Sensory Fiction and Booktrack: both programs mandate your reading speed. The mood cues and sound effects are tied to a specific timing structure. While trying to read with Booktrack’s trial demonstration, this became rather frustrating. I finished the first page in a few seconds—and then realized the soundtrack was a couple paragraphs behind me. I had to go back, slow down, and read along with the sluggish sounds. Perhaps I read too fast. But I enjoy the ability to control my reading speed—to slowly savor Leo Tolstoy and Alice Munro, or to clip through a YA fiction novel with more speed. The slow reader may find Booktrack similarly frustrating, as they try to keep in-synch with the provided soundtrack.
Reading is not supposed to be a movie watching or radio theatre experience. It’s a separate world—a world that requires a bit more imaginative work, but one that is also fiercely (and wonderfully) independent. It’s a world where interacting with a book is completely left to one’s own taste. If you prefer to read Stephen King at the breakfast table with a bit of Irish rock in the background, you can. If you want to read Les Miserables in chunks, skimming through the boring stuff and delving into the dialogue, you can.
True bibliophiles shouldn’t need a vibrating, pretty-colored book to feel literature “in their gut.” That sort of empathetic emotion can be fostered without fancy lights and gadgets. Mere reading, coupled with the ability to control one’s environment and speed, gives us all we need to experience a book’s delights.
The post The Way We Read Now: Introducing ‘Sensory Fiction’ appeared first on Acculturated.