Hypertext

Chantelle thinking about the Landow reading, in a long list of things, notes that in hypertext our texts don’t have edges anymore. We sort of might take this for granted and nod, “of course” (though some of you will be schocked by your experience of this made literal in Niki) but in practice most of us haven’t taken this on board. Our essays are on paper, they don’t’ really weave out, or in, or through, and still, in lots of ways, lots of media are silos. (mixbit is interesting here in relation to video as it starts to change this a little for video.) Allison worries about linearity, narrative and hypertext. Linearity is like the hegemonic elephant in the room with it’s bedmate narrative here. Why (I’m serious) does narrative always seem to be used to trump other things? When there are so many forms that don’t really rely on narrative – games, sport, music, lots of poetry. We can make moving works without narrative. If that is the case then we can probably, quite easily, making moving works that are multilinear. Yes? Laura-Jayne has good sketch notes on hypertext, though the copy and paste or typing from the Douglas jumbled down there at the end! Daniel has thumbnail points on hypertext. In hypertext the link is fundamental, which might get discussed, might not, depends on how much unpacking it might do.