Whereas early works tended to be blocks of text (traditionally called lexia) with limited graphics, animation, colors and sound, later works make much fuller use of the multi-modal capabilities of the Web; while the hypertext link is considered the distinguishing feature of the earlier works, later works use a wide variety of navigation schemes and interface metaphors that tend to de-emphasize the link as such. In my keynote speech at the 2002 Electronic Literature Symposium at UCLA, these distinctions led me to call the early works "first-generation" and the later ones "second-generation," with the break coming around 1995. To avoid the implication that first-generation works are somehow superseded by later aesthetics, it may be more appropriate to call the early works "classical," analogous to the periodization of early films. Shelley Jackson's important and impressive Patchwork Girl can stand as an appropriate culminating work for the classical period. The later period might be called contemporary or postmodern (at least until it too appears to reach some kind of culmination and a new phase appears).
By N. Katherine Hayles
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Labels: Aarseth, ergodic, game, Genette, intertextuality
