Re: [-empyre-] Re: some questions about vogs

[Jill Walker <jill.walker@uib.no>]

At 19:35 -0300 20/6/02, Nemo Nox wrote:
> There is a big (and in this case very significative)
> difference between edits and links. Edits are always
> internal. They take you somewhere else inside the movie
> (which means the author retains control of the whole).
> But links may take you somewhere else outside the site
> (which means the author loses control of the whole).
> To make edits and links relate more closely you would
> need edits that can take you to a different movie. I
> guess that would be very interesting. :-)

and

>  >this force leaks out each side of the edit/link which
> > is why the meaning of the before and after can change,
> > without changing what the before and after is. ie the
> > kuleshov effect. same content different meanings yet
> > the thing (the image in that case) that effects the
> > meaning (the edit) in no way changes the image itself.
>  >same thing happens in link node hypertext particularly
>  >where complex structures are invovled.
>
> But the Kuleshov effect was meant to be created on
> purpose. The link analogy you suggest can create
> unwanted results (because the links can send the
audience to places out of the author's control).

Mm, but when I link, I link quite deliberately. I choose what I link 
to - I might think I want to link to something that explains this, 
that gives background or further information about this, that shows 
that I also know about this other thing, that brings out an ironic or 
self-ironic twist, that contrasts to this, etc. Mostly I link to 
websites that won't change, or that won't change much. I like to 
individual articles in newspapers, to whole websites rather than 
specific information when the point of the link is to open up and 
touch upon something the reader can explore further, to individual 
blog posts arguing one thing, to art sites or conference sites and so 
on. They might disappear but that's OK, web links aren't stable - I 
don't expect for them to necessarily work for more than a few days.

Sometimes I write self-contained hypertexts that pretty much only 
link to themselves. So an essay would be a bunch of webpages that are 
interlinked. I control the links even more then, since I decide 
exactly what goes on the target pages.

I think that one thing we're needing to learn with the web (and the 
whole postmodern life thing) is not to think in wholes. It's really 
hard to unlearn, and even if we consciously try not to wholes keep 
sneaking in when you don't pay attention.

I think the distinction between internal and external is quite hard 
to maintain these days. And often it doesn't really matter. And I 
think that we control links quite a lot.

What do you think?

Jill
--

Jill Walker / Dept of Humanistic Informatics / University of Bergen / 
5020 Bergen / Norway
http://cmc.uib.no/jill
jill.walker@uib.no