Re: [-empyre-] academic writing and hypertext, forward from Vince Dziekan

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

At 18:44 -0700 29/5/03, Vince Dziekan wrote:
> I found it a very invigorating challenge (I'm not
> speaking of the technicalities of scripting, rather
> the techniques of exposition and articulation).
> Personally, I sensed that the "way" I tend to think
> was actually accomodated by the form... don't know if
> you intuitively may feel the same? It seems to
> accomodate/encourage much more of a
> collage-sensibility, but also a sort of way to
> emphasise the not just literal linkages but also the
> more "allusive"connections between entities (ideas,
> resonances, trains-of-thought)... reading the
> "betweens" of the lines as it were.

thanks, I'll check the links when i'm back in office land :-) And 
monash, well that makes things very interesting too (aside from 
non-Australian's, Vince is at Monash, I'm at RMIT, same city).

absolutely about the betweens of the lines. This sort of work 
produces a writing space (or whatever you want to call it, it is what 
i tend to think of as writing hypertext hypertextually, but that's 
just pragmatism on my behalf) where the possibilities between parts 
always present themselves as outside of the space of your writing - 
as a 'call' that your writing or work must respond to - and this 
outside remains a near future that of course always remains as 
future. As I write like this an idea of connection presents itself as 
any of actual (the node that ought to be linked to exists), possible 
(an idea that is yet to be sketched where I make the link to an empty 
node for later content), or something past possible where the link is 
made, the future node linked to but in fact the content never 
arrives. This demand to link and connect is not just within the 
writing or authoring, but also comes from outside, though in a manner 
where I'd probably say is immanent to a hypertextualised practice. 
There is a force immanent to the link which is not 'my thought' and 
is the manner in which there is a demand to link (connect, collage) 
in this medium. This force is productive and lies alongside of, ahead 
of, and outside of writing hypertext hypertextually.

An analogy I have used in the past, and which I still think works, is 
film editing. There is the material in the trim bin, and of course 
there may be some narrative imperative defining a metastructure that 
the edit responds to. But you can cut pretty much any shot at any 
point, and largely join it to any other shot (particularly if 
cutaways are used) and so the demand or imperative of the edit (why 
edit? why edit at that point? what is a 'good' edit? what is the good 
enough edit?) is somewhere between the editor, their decisions, the 
material, the narrative, and this immanent demand for the material to 
be cut. It is this demand to be cut (the ontology that drives this 
force to become part) that I think is much the same as what goes on 
in writing hypertext hypertextually.

So for me the between becomes the pursuit of this demand, which of 
course always remains just that.  It does encourage other 
sensibilities, and it produces a strange amorphousness where you know 
your work surrounds or is attracted to something (i'd call it a 
strange attractor but would expect to be jumped on from a great 
height for that) but can never get to.

cheers
Adrian Miles
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