Hypertext Outline

This is the complete map of ways to navigate This is the Way the World Ends

They say -> 1,000 Rad Man -> Frog -> Mercy -> Raining -> Stomachache
v..............................................v...........v
v.............................................Stomachache..v
v..............................................v...........v
v..............................................v...........v
v..............................................v...Nuclear War ->
v..............................................v...........v....v v..............................................v...........v....v
v............................................fixed.........v....Swallow
v..............................................v.....Radiation..v
v.........................................(The City).......v...(trees)
v....................................................Whispering
v..........................................................v
Trees...................................................(Trees)
v
Treestump
v
Crowskin <-> Shadows -> Hiroshima -> (1000 Rad)
v
The Cellar
v
The City
v
(Crowskin)

Star Wars, One Letter at a Time

Hm. I didn't expect this piece to be so literal. S-t-a-r W-a-r-s E-p-i-s-o-d-e F-o-u-r. Jesus! It's sort of like this animation is from the typewriter's perspective or something. We hear the keys pounding, notice the turn of the spool that moves the paper up and down, and we have to sit through that 'ding!' noise after each line is done.

The letters fly by too fast to read coherently. I can make out some words here or there. Like 'George Lucas,' for instance, and 'SCENE EXTERIOR,' and what-not. I don't know how much of the script this goes through, maybe the entirety of Episode IV. Maybe the entirety of the first trilogy. I wouldn't notice the change, I think. Did I mention how fast these letters flash by the screen?

There is no interactivity to this piece. At least, none that I can detect. It is possible to highlight the shifting text, though, and that spices it up a little bit. All that I can gather from this is that it was either some guy's very unique idea, or it was some guy's way of showing us how immensely complex language is, and how easy it is to confuse the brain. If you think about it, these letters are flashing across the screen at (this is just a guess) about the rate we would take them in if we were reading whole words at once—and yet we can barely make sense of them, despite knowing the story inside-out already.

Facade

Alright, I know it's not technically part of the electronic lit collection, but Facade is a pretty cool little program. Actually, it's a large file. Seriously, it took forever to download the torrent. But, the good news is that I've finally played it rather than just watching Youtube videos.

The first thing I noticed is that spelling counts, otherwise you get responses like "Ummmm," and "Err, Okay then." That's only fair, I suppose, when dealing with simulated A.I. this complex. The second thing I noticed is that Trip and Grace respond to proximity: If you get right up in Grace's grill, she starts to flirt with you, if you get too close to Trip he feels uncomfortable. At this distance you can hug, comfort, or kiss either of the two—it's pretty funny that kissing Trip doesn't get you kicked out. The way the game works is pretty complex, but the big picture is simple—either you annoy Trip and Grace so much that they kick you out (which I have to admit is pretty fun), or you get them talking to each other, get them to reveal their innermost secrets.

It's also pretty cool that the program remembers the things you say to the characters, and furthermore, that it groups them into categories so that Trip can say, "I wonder if you're really my friend or not..." and then reference your statements. I noticed from the Youtube video of the 'good ending' that this doesn't work as well as it does if you produce the bad ending. Of course, I personally got the bad ending—Trip admits he's having an affair and Grace admits she went to town on some guy the night before Trip asked her to marry him. Wow, what a great couple!

In a sense, I suppose, to finish Facade with the bad ending is really the best outcome. I mean, otherwise our cartoon couple would trudge along, still together, trying to work through issues rather than recognizing their infidelity. And that might be the most interesting part about this whole scenario: which ending really is the 'good' ending?

Bad Machine

Well, I've been working with a few of the different works in the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1.

The first one I'd like to talk about is Bad Machine. This one puts you into the mind of a robot that is supposed to be doing some kind of work, but has instead become a 'Bad Machine,' or rather has become sentient. I much enjoyed the way that Bad Machine twists the traditional text-based RPG. This is a format that was the forerunner to games like WOW and Fallout and Mass Effect—a sort of textual maze that required the player to both translate a text-only interface into the perception of an imagined three-dimensional world, and be familiar with necessary commands in order to manipulate this imagined environment accurately.

Bad Machine uses this ancient interface to its advantage, producing a believable, code-like appearance that adds to the realism of the work rather than detracting from it. The player must adjust his character's internal systems to correct errors and avoid detection. He must 'scan' the environment instead of looking around. He can retrieve information about other units present in the environment, like serial numbers, actions, and intent. What is most interesting, however, is the cohesive syntax that the Bad Machine interface uses. Phrases like "good machine" and "bad machine" and "compliance" permeate the work. Everything comes down to whether or not these working robots are doing their tasks without question; ironically, Bad Machine does not allow the player to pretend to do work, or even describe the task that the character is supposed to be doing. This means that there is no tricking the Drones that come searching for you, and beyond that, it means that this whole game is about searching for purpose and meaning. The concept itself plays with an existential thematic that provides a fantastic foundation for this work.

Hypertext!

Well, I know that we're supposed to outline/describe/imagine the beginnings of our Hypertext. But, I'm not so good at prewriting or any of that. I'm also not that great at showing people unfinished work. Therefore, I've been busting my rear end to get my own little piece of electronic literature off the ground and onto the world wide web.

If you're interested in seeing what I have so far, go to http://web.mac.com/clarkjjj or click the "This is the Way the World Ends" link in my link list.

Give it a moment to load the background images on the page—I swear it's worth your time.

Also, this hypertext is supposed to be fully functioning, so if you come across any broken links, missing images, blank pages, or anything else that seems askew, let me know with a comment on this Blogger post.

Also, most of the pages have multiple links, so if you get sent back to a page you've already visited, odds are there is something you've missed. If you get back to the first page, then you've finished. BUT, there still might be whole pages you've not seen, so don't be afraid to run through it again!

Thoughts, comments, and questions are always appreciated.

Maintenance!

The Electronic Literature Organization web site is down for emergency maintenance.
We are working at getting the site back up by February 8. We regret any inconvenience this has caused.


Well, I suppose I'll have to do this entry later on tonight, or tomorrow :( I was excited to take a closer look at Star Wars: One Letter at a Time.

Frequently Asked Questions about HyperText

Well, Hyptertext FAQ opens up with a poem constructed soleley from words that can be made with the letters of 'hypertext.' Whether or not that poem is actually the author's work or not, I am unsure. Whether any of the people he writes about (as though his work were a legitimate criticism or 'how-to' document) exist is a puzzle, too. So, what is it that we need to know about to properly read this text? Well, we need to be familiar with Star Trek fandom (Though probably only to the point that we can cringe his references to Slash), and we need to be familiar with Hypertext Art.

Why do we need to know either of these? Well, the K/S thing just doesn't provoke the same kind of in-your-face reaction as a preoperative penis does, unless you know the background. As for the whole J/7 thing, 7 of 9 is played by Jeri Ryan, so just smile and roll with it.

Why do we need to know Hypertext? Because we need to think we're heading in a definite direction when we open the piece and read it——so that we can get thrown for a loop immediately. That's all.

And why is it the Hypertext 'FAQ?' Well, I'm not 100% certain, but I know one of the most useful implementations of Hypertext is in website FAQ's——and this one is build in a similar way, what with links connecting all the segments internally as well as in a typical, vertical menu bar on the left.

So, this work mimics the structure of an FAQ, or a Wiki, or some type of reputable document. It get under your fingernails while you play with it, and you think it's real just long enough to be baffled, awed, spontaneously combusted, and pieced back together molecule by molecule at the end. Hmm. That sounds like the plot to a Slash story on a transporter pad.

What else does Hypertext FAQ do? It takes normal ideas of plot and character and sneaks them into the text behind its main focus, then tangles them into the reading in ironic and paradoxical ways. The seamlessness of the author's transition from speaking about an imagined author and various imaginary interpretations of an imaginary poem into the life and times of Alan/Ellen Richards into a picture of ET holding up his middle finger is noteworthy. It is the reason this text, and its bent reality work so well together.

What is it about, when it all comes down to it? Probably one man's dream to see how many lewd, unnatural, and Trekkian sex references he can tease out of the word Hypertext. My value judgement: it beats Gold.

Twelve Blue

Upon reading Twelve Blue by Michael Joyce, it seems a little bit more connected than Blue Hyacinth—it is difficult not to draw a comparison between the two texts because they are both, well, blue and they are both text-based. It skips around between time frames and point of view, displacing time too much to be certain of any present, as though we were sifting through memories.

I began this reading linearly, clicking each of the eight movements and then on each hyperlink that appeared alongside text until no hyperlink appeared and I assumed the movement was completed. Once I finished the whole text, I clicked on the sidebar to navigate through a few new pages and repeated most of the pages I'd already seen. Because I read linearly, I will go about this blog in a similar manner:

Movement one seems primarily occupied with Samantha, who promptly disappears from movements Two through Seven. In the beginning we are presented with some of her experiences, ranging from the hell she pays for maturing early at Catholic School, to the night where she's so hot and bothered that she flirts with a Carney, to her first confrontation with the concept of mortality.

That seems interesting, except that I’m too distracted to really follow it all. I find myself wondering, instead, how the "blueberry" cotton candy she holds is “tasteless,” or why the word ‘of’ is present in situations that call for ‘by’ or ‘from.’ Though much electronic art strives to distance itself from the conventions of grammar and syntax as much as it deviates from status quo society, the missing elements of that category within this work appear incidental. Is there something more tenuous connecting these?

I wonder, as well, why the author chooses to list "every nipple" in her First-movement list of "everything" that "can be read." Unlike sunlight through branches and "each Cloud and Knife" (which in itself is a very interesting pairing), nipples do not hold any sort of innate beauty either in their form or spelling. Nipple is a shitty word, a word that makes me cringe, do a doubletake, and then find another cliché to describe the effect it has on me when I’m trying to enjoy a segment that works like a list poem. I understand the reasoning behind list poetry: It can be the search for beauty and pleasure in the mundanity of something as simple as a grocery list, or just the ripe meat of a poem without the articles and phrases that link them together, or whatever. But this segment does only some justice to that concept, the addition of the word "nipple" being a potent detractor.

Moving on, “The doctor gazes between her liquid thighs.” Liquid thighs. That’s a beautiful phrase. Though I went on before about Joyce’s list poem, I need to comment that his writing is poetic. He knows how to put words together in both a pleasant and meaningful way. I would, at this point, describe Twelve Blue as being the work of a poet who does not edit the way I do.

The wordplay in a later section, “Doctor, Doctor,” is finely tuned, however. It leads me to wonder how intentional these certain ambiguities that arise in the text are. Is it the result of working too hard or not hard enough? Sometimes the narrative is strong—other times it lags and sags and leaves the reader with questions. I’m sure these questions are as much a part of the narrative as the text I derive them from—just not ones like, “what’s he getting at?” Or worse, “What does he mean?”

Movement two appears even less tightly bound than movement one, and so on up until movement 6. But we do witness the introduction of several more characters, though they function almost like elements of setting. There is a male (a father figure), and a few other women whose voices are too difficult to separate without some serious scrap-paper comparison. They are all, it seems, related by blood or location or events.

Movements Four and Five are just repeats, barely anything to them. Then we get some more chunky reading in the last movements, ending with what seems to be a completely unrelated segment that wants to map-out New York. Perhaps this is supposed to give us a direction in which to throw our useless questions. Beyond that, I don’t know.

With all that out of the way, I acknowledge that Joyce is working with a lot here. There are definite themes that tie the segments of these movements together, and to be abrupt I’m just going to list the most apparent of them: Romance (without the appearance of love, or at least more influenced by carnalism), Daughters (Lineage, The having of, or being), and Parallelism (of events, circumstances, or lifestyles). Also, when I first was introduced to this text, I was under the impression that the hyperlinks that take the reader between sections of the text were supposed to disappear over time. This has not happened to me, though it might be the fault of my browser. I have noticed that the links change to the color of the page background once they are clicked, so I will tentatively list another theme: The irreversible quality of time.