Re: [-empyre-] various posts

[Adrian Miles <adrian.miles@uib.no>]

At 8:09 -0500 27/5/03, Patrick Lichty wrote:
> Therefore let me go to a concrete example.  My piece, Grasping at 
> Bits (http://www.voyd.com/gab) is an example of what I'm talking 
> about.  The essay was written as stand-alone lexia that convey 
> concise pieces of information regarding issues of art and 
> intellectual property in light of the Internet. The essay was then 
> 'structured' (in the narrative sense) so that each paragraph could 
> have numerous links, creating an associative/probabilistic sense of 
> flow.  Note that this is very different from a hyperlink which 
> infers a singular link to a given item.  In this case, I was giving 
> 4-5 simultaneous links to a given topic.

Like this a lot, and it is an excellent description of the process of 
hypertext being considered hypertextually (or whatever term you want 
to use). As a card carrying hypertext academic I'd take minor issue 
with the idea that they hyperlink infers a singular connection. This 
is the hegemonic form of the link, largely defined via http and html, 
but is not the only sort of link. Apart from other systems that 
provide much more sophisticated possibilities for the link 
(Storyspace, Tinderbox, Jim Rosenberg's work in Hypercard, John 
Cayley's work in Hypercard all spring to mind) the xlink standard (a 
w3c standard) also provides a more complex idea of the link.

On a related note, links are always excessive, which is why people 
like Nielsen insist on building prohibitions about their use. If they 
didn't have this excess, then people wouldn't need to insist on 
prohibitions. :-) This is the case even with 'singular' links.

> What does this do to narrative? It takes the link or the linear 
> progression (and I believe that in hyperlinking there may be 
> non-linearity, but it is a distinct causal linkage taking you from 
> one point to another) and creates a narrative 'range' of relations. 
> I've always considered this as a sculptural form of writing, as I 
> _am_ creating a narrative, but in very different terms than 
> traditional hyperlinking.  But that takes it back to synaesthenic 
> relations by adding a more haptic element to reading. In this case, 
> narrative flow has been interwoven with the structure, and the 
> structure is part of the HCI.  Perhaps narrative is breaking down 
> and giving rise to a more poetic form, but I would argue that what 
> is happening is the construction of a different form of narrative. 
> I realize that this is an atypical example of the convergence of 
> narrative, structure and HCI, but hope that my referencing it makes 
> more sense.

Enjoyed this, and I'm forwarding it to my hypertext theory students 
who are busy writing essays, much in the manner you describe, and so 
it will be helpful to them. You might be interested in some recent 
work in the hypertext community (Mark Bernstein, David Millard, and 
Mark J. Weal) on sculptural hypertext.

As another example I once wrote an essay in Storyspace, moved it into 
html, then drew a map of the link structure and used colour to 
indicate the link density (links in and out) from each node. This 
meant the reader could read in the manner you've described Patrick, 
or they could use the 'map' which showed some of the pathways but 
more importantly which nodes where 'primary' in terms of their 
density of connection. Was quite an interesting exercise.

Anyone else on empyre been writing as Patrick describes? I'm *very* 
interested in academic writing that really does explore this, rather 
than treat links as singular already defined and evacuated points of 
connection.

cheers
Adrian Miles
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