Complex textual structure of the Real

Even the most conservatively narrative history is filled with complex textual structure, discursion, and linkage. T

This fact does not depend on postmodern analysis or literary theoretic argument, nor does is derive from a novel philosophical or methodological stance; the structures we have discussed all appear, for example, in Thucydides' opening chapters. We need not fear that hypertext will slash apart or cherished narrative simplicity, for this narrative simplicity never existed.

Letting go our irrational fears of electronic writing and leaving aside nostalgia for an imaginary literary past, we can explore afresh the opportunities hypertext offers. Linearity was never an option for historical writing; hypertextuality can make complex structure concrete, clear and responsive to both the author and reader.

It is a shame that too much of the popular perspective on hypertext does not yet recognize this, and that hypertext punditry so often caters to fear and nostalgia.

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The end of narratives

The story is dead.

The basic unit of currency that nearly all of journalism has
traded in since it began is finished.

And it's dead because of big things we've all seen
happening, but that we've been reluctant to put together to come to
the inevitable conclusion - that the story is dead.

It's obvious why we're reluctant to come to this conclusion:
the story is at the centre of everything that we do.
What’s the first question we always ask? 'Is it a good story?'
The language we use about our journalism comes back to the
story.

'Get the story.' 'Tell the story.' 'It's a lead story.' The thing we
tell young journalists to focus on above all else: 'Be a good
storyteller.' 'Use the touching detail of the story to tell a bigger truth
about the world.'

The story has become everything that we do. It lies behind
all our rites and rituals. The things we think make journalism.
Scoops, deadlines, headlines; accuracy, impartiality, public interest
– they all lean on the fundamental assumption that we do our
business in stories.

Journalists have extended 'the story' way beyond what
it was once useful for. It's a great way of learning some things
about the world – but it's rubbish for many other forms of public
communication.

In spite of that, we have stretched 'the story' as a format and
sub-genre further than it could ever really go. And we did that to
create the whole idea of journalism and journalists as a trade and a
tribe apart. We did it to define ourselves. Only journalists could
spot stories; only journalists could find the top line that could
compete for the attention of mass audiences.

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Novel for internet

A novel for the Internet about London Underground in seven cars and a crash

253 ? Why 253 ? describes the ground rules of the novel.
The Journey Planner provides links to the first four cars and individual passengers.
About this Site tells you a bit more about 253 and the author.
Select The End of the Line to read about the end of each carriage's voyage.
Another One along in a Minute describes the sequel you are invited to help write.
On each car section, advertisements appear. These are deeply serious and should be read with great attention.

Simply click on the option of your choice. Relax! It's so easy, travelling with 253.
In cyberspace, people become places.

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Interactive art

VALERIE LAMONTAGNE:

How do architecture and fiction cohabit in the medium of interactive art and Web projects?

DOUGLAS COOPER:

Interactive art is inherently obscene in its structural demands. It requires a kind of rigor no sane novelist would willingly submit to. On the other hand, those of us who regard sanity as the realm of the provincial, happily submit to all manner of restraining devices.

Indigestion, a piece I made with Diller + Scofidio, required me to write the same narrative in numerous iterations. It is a laser-disc installation which involves a video projection upon a table top: the hands of two dining partners, and the food and plates between them. A menu at the side of the table/screen allows the viewer to assign various attributes to the diners: they can be educated, uneducated; masculine, effeminate; male, female. When the attributes are chosen, the hands and the food morph to reflect the new speakers and the dialogue changes appropriately.
Indigestion deals with the false promise of interactivity.

The audience has the illusion of narrative power - they seem be able to control the direction of the story, by making meaningful choices - and yet each narrative proves ultimately unyielding, subject only to the will of the author. And this is generally the case: a complex interacting narrative is invariably scripted, and the audience's sense of contributing to the narrative process is illusory. At best, they're choosing which path they wish to take through a preconceived structure.

I had to deal with every possible combination of various interlocutors, and it was a serious headache. We had been warned in advance that "creating interactive art is like cleaning your loft with a toothbrush" but we only fully realized the truth of this when we'd spent some weeks trying to make all the narrative bits mesh.

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Ergodic Literature

The shortcomings of importing theoretical assumptions developed in the context of print into analyses of electronic media were vividly brought to light by Espen J. Aarseth's important book Cybertext: Explorations of Ergodic Literature.

Rather than circumscribe electronic literature within print assumptions, Aarseth swept the board clean by positing a new category of "ergodic literature," texts in which "nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text". Making a different analytical cut through textual groupings that included computer games, print literature and electronic hypertexts, among others, Aarseth established a grid comprised of eight different operators, many of which have purchase mostly with electronic texts rather than print. The grid yields a total of 576 different positions on which a variety of different kinds of texts can be located. Although the method has limitations, notably that it is blind to content and relatively indifferent to the specificity of media, it has the tremendous virtue of demonstrating that electronic texts cannot simply be shoved into the same tent with print without taking into account their different modes of operation. These innovations have justifiably made Cybertext a foundational work for the study of computer games and a seminal text for thinking about electronic literature. Markku Eskelinen's work, particularly "Six Problems in Search of a Solution: The challenge of cybertext theory and ludology to literary theory," further challenges traditional narratology as an adequate model for understanding ergodic textuality, making clear the need to develop frameworks that can adequately take into account the expanded opportunities for textual innovations in digital media.

Proposing variations on Gérard Genette's narratological categories, Eskelinen demonstrates, through a wide variety of ingenious suggestions for narrative possibilities that differ in temporal availability, intertextuality, linking structures, etc., how Aarseth's ergodic typology can be used to expand narratology so it would be more useful for ergodic works in general, including digital works.

By N. Katherine Hayles

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