2: Cases and Observations

Hegirascope

Stuart Moulthrop, 1995/98: hypertext fiction

What if the word will not be still? The text that "reads itself."

Indications: Forms of interactive communication are inherently and relentlessly dynamic. More than any other medium (even multichannel TV), the Web demands a restless mind. But this is not the end of "form."

TRIP

Matthew Miller, 1996: hypertext fiction

The map is not the territory, but hypertexts tend to want mapping.

Indications: Text on the Net is "nonlinear," meaning it may be entered at any point. Reading becomes pathfinding or "ergodics" (Aarseth).

Complex texts demand schemata: the convergence of word and image is about spaces, not surfaces. As Murray says, we do not need pretty faces, we need powerful interfaces.

QuickTimeVR Site Browser

Stuart Moulthrop, 1998/99: navigational utility

You have used the word "utility" in a way I don't understand...

Note how the site of production becomes point of departure: every screen a portal. Okay, so this is not a very good substitute for a site map. Let's play browse-and-seek.

Indications: Spaces, not surfaces: even a trivial trope (cutie-VR) may reveal a way of truth. We want images but we also want articulation, (poly)sequentiality, depth (or a decent depth-substitute).

Sean Cohen's 3D Experiments

Sean Cohen, 1997-98: conceptual exercise

The most sublime act is to set another inside one.

"Yet in the adolescence of our technological age it is hard to go too far" (Joyce). Tell that to young Cohen.

Having spatialized the page into commodious vicus of circularity, Sean takes the next step and makes the surfaces contain surfaces. I think J.L. Borges says something about this...

Indications: Mind those metaphors. Digital forms are radically excessive. In virtual space nothing can't be a screen.

Reagan Library

Stuart Moulthrop, 1999: hypertext fiction

No statute of limitations for crimes against the humanities.

Form is followed by dysfunction. A space for exploration is haunted by the wreck of language and the failure of recall (look upon my memory palace and despair).

Indications: Having turned from surfaces to spaces, we may begin to want places, locales and landscapes articulated by shared experience. Yes, poem, drama, novel, and film have all been here before, but the world's just not the same...

The Book in the Mirror: Chapter V of Watchmen

Jessica Furé and Stuart Moulthrop, 1999: intepretive essay

The (comic) book in the Web site: print is not dead.

You may sometimes want your "multimedia" unplugged. Once media become "multi" we come upon possibilities of recombination. In the right context, Web hypertext can be an interesting tool for interpretation as well as display.

Indications: New media may coexist with old. There may even be points of exchange and synergy.

A Lucid Explosion of Spatial Selves

Margaret Morrison, 1999-2000: hypertext poem

"...exploiting the capacity of the digital environment to be more responsive to human needs."

Landscape of the body... the landscape is the body. Note the implacable dynamic of this work: what if the virtuality will not be still? Navigation is fighting the flow... though you can ride with it, too.

Indications: Perhaps the primary "human need" is to account for the self; but what is the self under digital transformation? What sense of ourselves do we gain from these (hyper)texts? "Broken down, and scattered" (Pynchon) or just... spaced out? Digital media -- the way of the pathfinder -- may imply a "spatial self."