Category: hypertext

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exam readings hypertext identity transparency visuals

Exam reading: “Writing space”

I’ve probably read at least parts of “Writing Space,” by Jay David Bolter, in three different courses so far. It’s clearly been an influential book in the T&T field (though of course some authors love it, while others use it to argue against):

Summary: Bolter explores the ways in which digital media are changing traditional “writing spaces:” the material & virtual fields of writing that are determined by both technology and the ways it’s used. One important way this happens is through remediation: a new medium taking the place of an older one while borrowing its conventions. For Bolter, one of the reasons new media are adopted is that they bring a greater sense of immediacy, derived from either increased transparency of the medium (“looking through”) or increased hypermediacy (awareness of the medium; “looking at”). Bolter focuses on the ways that the Internet, particularly hypertext, remediate older technologies (e.g., linking is a rhetorical tool that allows associational (non-linear) expression; lack of closure; increased participation from reader). One key feature is the use of visuals in online writing that are not constrained by the text; visuals may replace text or serve as visual puns, and text may try to become as vivid as visuals (ekphrasis). If writing is a metaphor for thought (and writing systems for our sense of self), then “multilinear” hypertext may be more like the associational mind thinks and reflect our postmodern identity. Writing spatializes time (i.e., speech)- going from print to hypertext is in some ways like returning to conversational modes of oral dialogue.

Comments: Bolter suggests that the increased use if visuals is an attempt to get rid of arbitrary symbol systems (i.e., the alphabet) and return to picture writing. However, modern picture writing differs from preliterate picture writing in that more abstraction can be expressed (e.g., icons). Also discusses semiosis (movement from one sign to another via reference); to read is to interpret semiotic meaning in the difference between the signs (e.g., intertextuality, linking).

Links to: Hayles (hypertext literature); Ong (writing systems and thought)

Categories
exam readings geekery hypertext identity

Exam reading: “Hamlet on the holodeck”

Janet Murray’s “Hamlet on the Holodeck” is a 1997 book that tries to reconcile “good” storytelling with not-fully-realized new media. Yes, there are several Star Trek references. Unfortunately, most are to Voyager…

Summary: Murray explores how narrative may change in stories based in new interactive media. For her, the key to avoiding fears of VR addiction and culturally-depauperate stories is to concentrate on meaningful storytelling. She begins by describing storytelling in new media genres (MUDs, 3-D movies, simulators, etc.), the boundaries of which will eventually blur. There are four characteristics of digital environments that make them new: procedural construction, participation, spatial dimension, and encyclopediac scope (the first two = interactivity). Because of these characteristics, new media environments can: satisfy the desire for immersion in virtual worlds, give audiences agency (ability to take meaningful action), and offer a mutable environment that allows transformation of traditional storylines. She also outlines several possible “cyberdrama” formats, some of which are now in use: “hyperserials” (TV shows with added online dimension), “mobile perspective” programs, and virtual worlds for roleplaying. Meaningful storytelling in new media should seem true to the human condition. It could use stock formulas or characters in new ways- example of bardic performances that vary stock elements to create new compositions. Or it could explore possibilities of telling stories with expanded scope (a system perspective), or just explore world-building possibilities.

Comments: Since my focus is not on the narrative properties of new media, I’m skipping a lot of detail in that area (e.g., ways to create plot in a non-linear setting, game goals vs. plot-driven goals, ways to create responsive & believable virtual characters using AI). Provides some good links between more traditional ways to construct stories and ways to use new technologies. World-building ideas make me think of MMORPGs.

Links to: Hayles (e-lit & narrative); Turkle (psychology of interactive environments & AI characters); Manovich (components of interactivity)

I’ll add this analysis of the Holodeck as a narrative device (rather than Turkle’s Holodeck-as-technology):

Categories
exam readings hypertext learning theory

Exam reading: “Electronic literature”

N. Katherine Hayles has studies a number of issues related to human-technology interaction, including ideas about consciousness, technological determinism, and the physical experience of technology use. In “Electronic Literature,” she explores said genres as a set of metaphors for her earlier work:

Summary: In this book, Hayles builds a case for electronic literature (e-lit) being a metaphor for modern human-computer interactions. She begins by outlining the current diversity in e-lit genres, and discusses the importance of interpreting e-lit while keeping in mind both print and new media theories. She discusses three major ways e-lit reflects on HCI. First, it foregrounds “dynamic hierarchies” (feedback/feedforward systems that tie together objects into dynamic hierarchies) and “fluid analogies” (flexible algorithms that structure interactions), both of which inform her interpretation of how consciousness arises (other key concepts: recursive loops, adaptive systems). Second, it supports her interpretation of where agency resides in HCI (thus, what our framework for study should be). She rejects both technological determinism (e.g., media determine what we can/can’t do) and purely human embodiment (e.g., tools are only important in how they affect the human body), and instead argues that agency is distributed among both humans and their tools. Third, e-lit helps us explore the interactions between the conscious mind and bodily knowledge; it “revalues computational practice” and foregrounds how human agency interacts with nonhuman agents.

Comments: I’m glossing over the many specific examples Hayles uses from e-lit to support her arguments (book comes with a CD with several examples). I have problems with two big arguments on a scientific basis (given, these are not my areas of expertise): the definition of cognition that calls current attempts at AI “aware” (more of a philosophical issue), and the equation of brain plasticity and the ability to learn with genetically heritable change (this is a bigger issue for me, and supports her assertion that tool use has shaped human evolution- my understanding is that this is lacking in empirical evidence at this point).

Links to: McGann (HCI); Manovich (transcoding-multiple layers of meaning); Norman (knowledge of the mind and of the body)

Categories
exam readings hypertext rhetoric

Exam reading: “Lingua Fracta”

Another exam reading: Collin Brooke’s “Lingua Fracta,” which tries to apply the canons of rhetoric to new media. My approach to rhetoric tends to be fairly informal, because I don’t come from a composition background with a heavy investment in using it in a strict way. Brooke’s approach seems reasonable, but I’m planning to re-read several of the texts he mentions, so we shall see what that turns up…

Summary: In this book, Brooke reinterprets the canons of rhetoric for new media. He begins by discussing three units of analysis: individual texts, interfaces, and broad theoretical constructs; he focuses on the interface level. He breaks down media studies into three levels of scale: code, practice (which he focuses on), and culture. He describes the canons as “ecologies of practice”: dynamic, interlocking, socially constructed and medium-dependent systems of sites, practices, and objects (rather than fixed, prescriptive stages in composition). Invention becomes proairesis: generation of open-ended texts that function as sets of possibilities, rather than as hermeneutic investigations to a conclusion (e.g., social bookmarking sites). Arrangement becomes pattern: usually database-driven, pattern emerges from repeated searches (e.g., tagclouds). Style becomes perspective: the viewer, interface, and objects operate together to create a viewing experience (different from traditional external perspective of rhetorical analysis; e.g., gaming interfaces). Memory becomes persistence: not just storage, memory is a matter of building patterns (“persistence of cognition”- particularly appropriate to Web) and more thorough traditional synthesis (e.g., RSS feeds, tagclouds). Delivery becomes performance: not a simple transaction, it includes both the content and the medium as they interact in a particular social setting (e.g., Wikipedia and credibility).

Comments: Many connections to (non-core) new media, composition, and critical theorists: Barthes (readerly/writerly texts), Derrida (perspective for critique), Hayles (pattern/randomness, embodied memory), Landow (hyperext), Lantham (looking at/looking through). Seems reasonable to look at expression of canons as medium-dependent. Logically organized and understandable (after reading Burnett), making it a hermeneutic text, I suppose…

Links to: Bolter (hypertext studies, Lantham cited); McLuhan (medium); Manovich (B. disagrees with M’s assertion that narrative & database are mutually exclusive forms)

Categories
exam readings hypertext research methods/philosophy

Exam reading: “Radiant textuality”

This is a summary of “Radiant Textuality,” by Jerome McGann. The book stems from the author’s work with applying digital tools to analysis of both literary and visual works. One of his major projects is the Rossetti Archive, which indexes the works of Dante Rossetti, an author/painter. Since my interests don’t lie in literary analysis of this sort, the things I pulled out of this book may not be McGann’s major points of emphasis.

Summary: In this book, McGann explores the applications of digital tools to critical analysis and interpretation of texts. He advocates a “quantum” model for textual analysis, which recognizes that textual interpretations are inherently variable. This method of analysis is performative, rather than traditionally interpretive/hermeneutic. He outlines two major methods for doing this, both of which can be aided by digital tools: 1) “deformations”-deliberately altering words or structure (using filters, in the case of images) to let you make out the underlying structural rules of the text; and, 2) using essentially a role-playing game method (“Ivanhoe Game”) to explore multiple possible constructions of the text. Rather than being vehicles for transmitting meaning, it’s more important to consider texts to be a set of algorithms that enable critical, introspective thinking about the text. Texts contain both graphical (design) and semantic signifying parts, and it’s the latter that have been the subject of traditional interpretation, where he focuses on the former. These “invisible” design elements (organizational & linguistic) constitute a “textual rhetoric” or bibliographic code. Studying “deformations” is useful because it gets at what the text doesn’t do; this lets us see the underlying textual rhetoric.

Comments: McGann’s “radiant textuality” of the title refers to writing (and other types of text) in which the medium is the message and promotes introspection, rather than writing for which the purpose is information transmission. He states that his methods are most appropriate for creative/poetic texts, rather than expository writing, because these texts deliberately lean towards the creative/design end of the spectrum (rather than the expository/”scientific” end). My interests lie on that other end of the spectrum, so I don’t really see myself putting his methods into practice that often. On an aside, the arrangement of this book could be a series of variations on a theme, exploring the same ideas  in various ways in a set of essays.

Links to: O’Gorman (Blake; informational vs. design elements of texts), Hayles (how interaction bet. user & interface co-creates [Hayles] or explores [McGann] texts), Tufte (questions form/design of texts), possibly Sullivan & Porter (quantum poetics rejects set methods of analysis or single interpretations)