[-empyre-] Re: replies to Margie and Drew (geniwate)

[drew davidson <drew@waxebb.com>]

hey geni - i've done a couple of html writing projects, and found it 
to be extremely liberating form of writing...   my academic 
background is in comm studies, with a major emphasis in performance 
studies... one of the attractions to me of perf studies was the 
acknowledgement that critical work could be done outside of straight 
"scholarly" writing and that performance allowed the audience much 
more of a direct connection and impact on the work (each show is 
drastically different depending on your audience...  if you had an 
idea, you wrote a script and stage a performance...  but a recurring 
issue was the ephemerality of performance, if you missed the show, a 
video of it, was 2 steps removed, and a paper summarizing it was even 
further from the work...

it was from this perspective that i approached hypertext (basically 
html initially... hypertext seemed to be a more performative mode of 
writing for both readers and writers... there was more explicitly 
enabled push and pull between the two...   and so i continued to 
explore how html enabled readers more of an active role in engaging a 
work... and this is where i began to find certain limits to html and 
to learn of databases (i was working in the industry with some 
unbelievably talented database programmers)

i wanted to be able to allow readers as much choice as i could in how 
they interacted with my dissertation.. for instance, i wanted to be 
able to let them see an index of the pages or not...  and a large 
part of the limits are my own (i'm pretty good with html, but not a 
whiz in any programming language really (you can see the results of 
my dissertation at http://waxebb.com/sib1 - it uses frames to allow 
for choices i wanted the reader to have (index of not)... and since 
it's such a huge project, i've left it in frames (although the 
present version is within a page of php includes and iframes...) 
but, i did find that i could only enable so much choice for a reader 
with static html pages..

and i worked on some great projects that required some patent-winning 
database programming, and i began to see how a hypertextual piece, 
dynamically served up by a database, could really allow the reader 
all kinds of choices as to how they engage the piece, in fact, a 
database could enable readers agency with the piece, shaping it with 
their active reading (it really does make manifest a post-structural 
notion of reading)

so i've been designing out the features (and trying to keep current 
on what else is out there) of an open-source application 
(php/mysql)...  but my knowledge of the possibilities greatly exceeds 
my meager grasp of php/mysql, so i've been in the search of a php 
programmer who can dedicate the time to help me implement this app 
that i hope will enable this type of 
interactive/collaborative/performative writing/reading...


and so, you mention that this sounds similar to what you're meant to 
be doing... i'd be happy and curious to share thoughts around this, 
hear what you're up to, and see if and how we could help each other...


best, drew

> Drew said
>
> >  so i'm currently designing an application to enable a
> hypertextual document to be served up from a database
> (just looking for a php programmer to help me out with
> the implementation of it)
>
> this sounds similar to what I'm meant to be doing], I wish you would say
> more about 'the limits of hypertextual writing with html' and what issues
> you hope your database will resolve
>
> best, geni
>
> cv and links available at http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/~jenny

--

|  drew davidson, ph.d.	  
|  assistant professor  
|  communications media @ iup
|  h) 724.349.4959
|  w) 724.357.5967

|  mailto:drew@waxebb.com
|  mailto:drew@iup.edu	     
|  http://www.waxebb.com
|  http://www.coe.iup.edu/drew