Re: [-empyre-] re: Liquid Narrative Topos

["Carlos Henrique R Falci" <chfalci@uol.com.br>]

Well, Jim's comments gave me some ideas to discuss. Let's do it.

He said: "These do not necessarily have to be new media related it is just 
that with digital media there is
really is no copy and no original, just copious reproductions of simulacra. 
How it is entered into by the user/reader/listener/viewer is never the same 
each time. Streams of recounting swirl around us everyday
in digital worlds."

Well, I wanna discuss this first comment, that arises from Aarseth's concept 
about cybertext. I almost disagree with Aarseth when he says about a 
nontrivial effort in the reading of a text. But he also says that ergodic 
literature is a process of traverse the text, and not only reading. Despite 
of I consider reading a process of crossing text. Thus, I think Aarseth 
losts one great chance of develops a good concept. And I agree with Jim when 
he affirms that we are surrounded by endless recombinations. That's why I 
said there is no onthological difference betwenn cybernarratives and other 
type of narratives. But, let us come back to traversing idea. If we take all 
meanings of this verb, we can perceive that it can mean travel through the 
text. And this is still an approach for cybernarrative real concept. It's 
not pass over ou through or across the text, but how, as "reader", we create 
the narrative, the ambience around itself? When I talk about immersion, 
think that cybernarrative must be capable of create its proper ambience, the 
place of immersion itself. And this ambience is temporary, it vanishes. 
What's the relation of digital media with this definition? Or, what's the 
specifity of digital media here? Cybernarrative combines a support less 
fluid than the body, to compare with theater, with a so intense flow as that 
one allowed by free movement of the gesture.
Well, this takes me to another form to think cybertext, based also on 
Aarseth. This author considers cybertext as a "perspective on all forms of 
textuality", a model to explore "textual communication that will accomodate 
any type of text".
If we accept this concept, then cybertext will be a relationship and not a 
spacialized form, fixed by a group of signifiers.

And this takes me to the problem below indicated.



"From what I understand about the term narrative and the theory work around 
it, there seems to be a fixed or static state to it. In the term 'Liquid 
Narrative' I detect an attempt to enlarge the ability of narrative to 
account for becoming or the movement and change of a performative new media 
text."



This attempt could lead the concept of liquid narrative to something that 
will not possess none of the characteristics of a fixed narrative, of a text 
that must be oppose itself to the expectations of the reader. And would not 
have an aesthetic effect. If aesthetic effect arises from the encounter 
between text pole and reader pole, what happens when text pole seems not 
exist anymore? Or, what signifies read a cybernarrative?

I'm not sure about my considerations, but like Jim, I wanna arise more 
questions and not only agreements.

[]s
Carlos