The End of the Book

Hypertext, Hypermedia and Digital Narratives

AK 2100

Art and Technology

Sept. 21 , 2005

RemediationBolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media.

Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press, 1999.

Remediation as the mediation of mediation: each act of mediation depends on other

acts of mediation. Media are continually commenting on, reproducing, and replacing

each other and this process is integral to media. Media need each other in order to

function as media at all

http://www.vodafone.com

Hypertext:

a straightforward definitionby Theodor Nelson

"I mean non-sequential writing -- text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen. As popularly conceived, this is a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways."

Hypertext - Historical Landmarks

Vannevar Bush and the

Memex

Primary organizer of the

Manhattan Project

Military Industrial

Complex

Bush envisioned a device

called the Memex

Hypertext - Historical Landmarks

Memex: used microfilm

technology

Envisioned as an

alternative to linear

forms of info retrieval

and organization

An enlarged, intimate

supplement to memory

Turning information into

knowledge

Hypertext - Historical Landmarks

Douglas Engelbart and

the Augment System, 1968

Described as a co-

evolutionary process

Collaborative method of

sharing knowledge

Turning information into

knowledge

Hypertext - Historical Landmarks

Theodor Nelson - coined

the term hypertext

A utopian vision of the

future

Goal was to make all of

the world’s knowledge

available through a

single system called

Xanadu

Hypertext - Historical Landmarks

Aspen Movie Map, 1978

Intermedia System, Brown

University, 1985

Apple Hypercard, 1987

1991, WWW created at

CERN

Mosaic, 1993; Netscape,

1994

Hypertext - Issues and Concepts

Hypertext development

often driven by

competing theories of

mind

Paradigms of scientific

and intellectual

development

Representative of how we

“really” think

A more liberating

medium than print

Hypertext - Issues and Concepts

Associative learning

Author no longer in

control - reading/

writing becomes

collaborative

Writers become

“Wreaders”

The death of print

culture?

The ‘Death’ of the Author

“… a text is made of multiple ‘writings’,… but there is one place where this

multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not … the author. …[T]o give

writing its future … the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the

Author”

!! ! (Roland Barthes “The Death of the Author” Image, Music, Text, 1977:148)

Hypertext - Issues and Concepts

Hyperfiction

Can be linked to tradition of

experimental writing

Physical nature of the book and

typography and the convention of

the realist novel - implies a

connection between form and

content

Modernist authors tried to

establish new relations between

tests, authors and readers

The computer as a form of escape

from the “prison of print”

Hyperfiction

Shifting the balance of authority

“The computer frees the writer

from the now tired artifice of

linear writing, but the prices of

this new freedom for the writers

is that the writer must allow the

reader to intervene in the

writing space.” (Jay Bolter)

Theodor Nelson

Hyperfiction

Hyperfiction can be linked to may

concepts and theories related to

modernism, postmodernism and

contemporary literary theory

fragmentation

multiple narratives

quotation, pastiche

unreliable narrators

multiple perspectives

the text as a labyrinth

Hyperfiction

Storyspace: mean to reflect the

mind as a web of verbal and

visual elements in a conceptual

space

Offers a new paradigm, based on

spatial metaphors

Texts become tangible objects

that can be picked up, moved

around and connected with one

another

Hyperfiction

General Categories

Completely text based

Simple Hypermedia - visuals

and sounds as supplements

Dynamic hypermedia - radical

departure from text based

narrative

http://www.well.com/user/jmalloy/gunterandgwen/titlepage.html

Completely Text Based Hypertext

Hyperfiction

General Categories

Completely text based

Simple Hypermedia - visuals

and sounds as supplements

Dynamic hypermedia - radical

departure from text based

narrative

http://ensemble.va.com.au/water/

Simple Hypermedia

Hyperfiction

General Categories

Completely text based

Simple Hypermedia - visuals

and sounds as supplements

Dynamic hypermedia - radical

departure from text based

narrative

http://www.markamerika.com/filmtext/

Dynamic Hypermedia

HyperfictionSome examples for discussion

Afternoon by Michael Joyce

Kokura by Mary-Kim Arnold

http://www.eastgate.com/

Kokura/Welcome.html

Patchwork Girl by Shelly

Jackson http://www.altx.com/

thebody/

Virtual Progressive Dinner

Party http://

www.heelstone.com/meridian/

templates/Dinner/dinner2.htm

These Waves of Girls by

Caitlin Fisher http://

www.yorku.ca/caitlin/waves/