On the hypertext revoution

"In "Hypertext, Hypermedia and Literary Studies: The State of the Art", Landow and Delany suggest that “hypertext can be expected to have important institutional as well as intellectual effects, for it is at the same time a form of electronic text, a radically new information technology, a mode of publication, and a resource for collaborative work… Hypertext historicizes many of our most commonplace assumptions, forcing them to descend from the ethereality of abstraction and appear as corollary to a particular technology and historical era. We can be sure that a new era of computerized textuality has begun; but what it will be like we are just beginning to imagine."

This passage was written in 1991, at a time when hypertext systems were available in somewhat limited forms such as Hypercard and Intermedia, use of the Internet was largely confined to academic institutions, and the term “World Wide Web” had only just been coined. Now, 15 years later, comment and reflect upon the impact hypertext has had on the world."

Well. I can only vaguely remember when it was 1991, and I was probably in the middle of some elaborate colouring job when my brother might call me over to this monstrous computer to watch him play that ancient magenta-cyan alley cat game. And lots of navigating by DOS. So that's as much as I can remember of the days when W3 was not mainstream.

Growing up, the internet was probably an integral part of my life, so it's hard to imagine what an uproar there was when this whole hypertext revolution began.

I suppose like how TV and radio began as a mass media revolution, the transmission of information to the masses, propaganda, education, knowledge sharing and such. So it is with the internet and its interconnected cyberhighways.

However, unlike static media like TV and radio, the user of the W3 is given more control over what he views. Also, with the ease of creating new logs and the accessibility to all these logs, there is not only more information at your fingertips, but almost anyone can have a presence and share information. The user gains more control in these two aspects.

Certainly, as with the media revolution of the 60s, commercialism played a large role not only in its development, but also in determining what is distributed to the masses. While commercialisation of the internet is true, as what we discussed in class on Tuesday, there are less boundaries and rules to stick by on the internet.

The audience is more diverse and there is no official governing body to police cyberspace. Thus, commercial potential of the internet is definitely more lucrative than on other broadcasting media like TV.

Perhaps most noteworthy is that the internet is speeding things up a lot. Developments in technology and academia in particular, would have proceeded at much slower paces if not for the bridging of geographical boundaries among like-minded people and information. However, these very properties of the internet can bring about problems of its own, like eradicating the sense of ownership, not only in copyright, but also in the lax in taking responsibility for one's behavior in cyberspace.

It is thus not the most original thing to say, but our value system has yet to catch up with this whole web thing (like many other things.). While Landow seems to have somewhat exaggerated a little bit about the revolution (IMO), we do realise that like with previous revolutions, people are seldom ready to behave, or rather, respond with reason. I think it is really important to mentally and socially prepare people, but I'm not quite sure how we're going to go about it.

Image(s)

Choose a set of 5-10 images that you feel form a narrative. If they are not digital images, scan them into the computer (there’s a scanner available in the USP multimedia lab). Arrange them in a linear sequence on your blog. You may or may not want to include text captions with each image.

Bring a physical copy of your images to class on Thursday. We’ll be using them as part of an in-class exercise.

Ok, so I got annoyed while trying to find images to fit a certain narrative I wanted, so I drew mine instead. Then I arranged them in a comic strip. XD Click to enlarge.

On comics and non-linearity

1. In his paper “Modular Structure and Image/Text Sequences: Comics and Interactive Media”, George Legrady states: “Meaning in the interactive work is a result of the sequential selection of components that the viewer assembles in the viewing process. The viewer can then be considered as someone who actively constructs the narrative through the assembling of fragmented or modular information elements. The sequential sum of viewed selections becomes the narrative.” This approach to interactivity is reflected in his work Slippery Traces.
   
   Discuss how this approach to constructing a narrative changes the roles of the reader and the author in the process of narrative transmission.

This task given to the user not only gives the user more control, but also more responsibility in the revelation of the narrative. In such approaches, the user has a larger part to play in discourse than in other types of media.

As discussed in class on Tuesday, the challenges faced in such approaches are many. Firstly, there must be enough coherence between components for the user to make connections within the narrative. The user also has to have enough motivation to proceed with the narrative even if there is no apparent coherence. Also, as much as there is freedom to do whatever you want, certain boundaries must be set to ensure that a fulfilling experience results.

2. Write about the narrative that your group has chosen for project 1. Why have you chosen this work? How might you approach the task of re-configuring it as an interactive piece? Be prepared to discuss your group’s choice of work in class on Thursday.

For our project, we chose the 2001 thriller The Others by Alejandro Amenabar starring Nicole Kidman. The Others is a chilling movie with a shocking (wicked!) twist at the end. We chose this movie because the narrative moves in the way a game usually does, in that pieces of information are revealed as the story progresses but aside from subtle hints, the plot is never revealed until a critical bit near the end.

We wanted to approach the task of converting the movie to an interactive form by using poignant still frames from the movie, installing hotspots within the frame where the user can click and be navigated to another still frame. Within each frame there are multiple hotspots. In some frames, hotspots will produce short video segments about the scene in question. In as many frames as possible, we want to have sound effects playing in the background, some sounds will also be integrated into certain hotspots, for example, bits of dialogue. Thus, the user follows a non-linear narrative throughout the first 70% of the film, where the frames are interconnected via a web of frames. Once the user has seen at least 70% of the frames, subsequent frames will proceed in a linear fashion until the climax is reached. Here, the critical scene that reveals the ending will be played.

The main idea was to play with thie nature of non-linearity, giving the user more control over the task at hand, but also preserve some of the narrative not only be restricting the number of hotspots and link-ups in the frames, but also to ensure that the critical kernels towards the end are displayed in a linear fashion so as to do the original narrative justice.