structure

In this article Doménico Chiappe makes a list of suggestions to write hypermedia literature:
-A hypermedia narrative will be a novel if there are more than three plots;
-The structure will be nonlinear;
-The hypermedia writer develops a strategy to hit on the mind of the reader with minimum scenes, full of messages;
-It will be told with fragments that the author composes like a puzzle;
-Each chapter will have a beginning and ending;
-Free from the dictatorship of the paper, the links will drive to different narrative levels, that will tell real stories, textual contents, musical, animation, hemerographics, oral, photographical, audiovisual and plastic;
-Images wil be full of interpretations;
-The reader will be free to choose his/her own navigation;
-The quality of the work will compensate the reader for his/her interaction.

The combination of dynamic screen presentations with integrations of visual and textual ciphers is a characteristic of a net projects´ group in Memmott´s work. "Lexia to Perplexia" (2000) provokes attention as a maturated example of this group. Memmott developed "Lexia to Perplexia" as a hyperfiction combining icons, parts of codes resp. punctuation marks and neologisms via DHTML and Javascript. Users can investigate the possible screen presentations of the ten source codes resp. chapters. Memmott´s combinations of textual parts with pictures reflect relations between users (as "remote bodies"), their screens and networks. This article on "Lexia to Perplexia" explains connections between the internal parts of the project and proposes some clues for the interpretation of (relations between) ciphers in the hope to facilitate reading and deciphering.

(Source: Author's abstract)

An essay written as a hypertext about hypertext structure.

This essay discusses the visual characteristics of hypertext (space, contour, depth) by situating it, as an artistic form, in the literary traditions that it extends and modifies. While, from a literary perspective, hypertextuality is nothing new, what is revolutionary is the way that computerized hypertext emulates the spatial and visual qualities that literary texts have historically struggled to effect. To illustrate the concept of spatial form I have chosen to analyze the mola web, a hypertext which is unique, though not abnormal, in the extremity of its link structure. One needs only think of the ubiquitous metaphor of the labyrinth in hypertext criticism or of the recent attention given to spatial user interfaces to see how dependent is the idea of hypertext on a spatial form.

Various non-linear methods of structuring the lexia are discussed, including simultaneities and polylinearity. The simultaneity is similar to Aquanet relations. A distinction is drawn between the typical disjunctivity of the hypertext link and conjunctivity of simultaneities and relations. We begin the process of exploring the rhetoric of the conjunctive hypertext relation. Finally, the structuring of the lexia is intensified and extended into the fine structure of language itself: hypertext infrawhere.

Landow examines the rhetoric of linking in hypertext documents based on his experience with the Context32: A Web of English Literature system and argues for principles of relational logic in linking.

This essay seeks to illuminate certain fundamental aspects of textual and cognitive coherence in the production and reading of hypertexts in general and hypernews in particular. A division into intranodal, internodal and hyperstructural coherence helps to clarify concepts and also seems to reflect certain distinctive features of hypertext as a concept representing a linguistic level above the text level. Likewise, van Dijk's conceptual distinction between macro- and superstructures proves to be useful for demonstrating how axial and networked hyperstructures respectively may maintain, strengthen or weaken various forms of textual coherence. (Source: journal abstract)

A detailed review of Judd Morrissey and Mark Jeffery’s The Precession. Published July 14, 2011.

--

Judd Morrissey’s newest work, theprecession.org is a website that redefines the act of reading literature on the internet in order to draw attention to the ways that reading is changing in our world. The website truly functions as the new book, with chapters that organize his intentions within the project into discrete capitulations of his ideas. My paper is mostly an analysis of the centerpiece of the website, POLI, because of its time-based nature: it uses real-time data capture and provides an extended period of time for the reading of the piece itself. POLI is a significant piece of contemporary literature because of its consciousness becomes political comment through the uses of our various languages.

My primary concerns with this paper are outlining the ways that Morrisey’s work fuses the language of popular media and that of poetry on the platform of web technologies, creating new forms and new standards for writing in contemporary contexts, both electronically and traditionally. Media, according to McLuhan’s definition, has always served large populations of people in ways beyond the content that it provides. Most importantly, media creates modes of reception that utilize the most current technologies and ultimately define demographics and ideologies. Poetry, on the other hand, has always had the reputation of using language that exists outside common usage in order to provide critical reflection for society. Modern forms of poetry seek to create a more ironic commentary that necessarily brings these genres closer together. Poetry that recognizes its proximity to other kinds of media is much more useful in our contemporary age of overlapping modes of perception and increasingly layered information. Key to this insight is the use of form. Morrissey’s work engages with multiple aspects of social forms: he examines new web-based social contexts in which language emerges, and incorporates those same modes into his work. He samples live examples of language that are then integrated into the ongoing fabric of the poem’s structure. What emerges is a piece of work that includes an ironic commentary on the state of and our use of language itself, as well as how we choose and voice our concerns with it to each other.

The play with the term POLI that Morrissey engages with the central poem demonstrates his fascination with larger social structures (polis is a Greek root meaning both city and its citizens) as well as the most basic units of life (poli is the human gene responsible for the production of a DNA enzyme). The title then serves as a catalyst for the understanding of the poem on both its macro and micro levels. Morrissey scatters words and their letters, making patterns to challenge and facilitate comprehension, increasing our awareness of the role of our own facilities. So, most importantly, he involves the reader in a real-time construction of the meaning of the poem from fragments of their own social structures of language and his accurate representation of our haphazard apprehension of them.

This is not something that I feel is limited to Electronic Writing at all, but that Electronic Writing has a crucial role in demonstrating to the entire Writing community.

(Source: Author's abstract for ELO_AI)