100 DAYS PROJECT: #35
Day and Night
This one is actually a group of short shorts, more of a poetical nature tied together by theme and motifs into a whole.
While it may appear that you can get lost in it forever, there is actually a method to the mapping process and long-time hypertexters may discover the secret of getting through and both seeing all lexias while repeating very few.
It started from the word ‘morning’ and indeed, that was the first space written in. From there one element of nature, one element of man’s time led the threads. This piece called for a hop-skip-and jump pattern while maintaining a fairly rigid structure to be explored by the writer as well as the reader. Or something like that.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
June 26th, 2009 at 7:17 am
These images are beautiful; I’d definitely consider it a poem, an ode to nightmares and bad things. Had a huge “duh” moment on this one, realizing (*finally*) that the links are coded to the pages that are visited. So many here are intertwined that with the color-changing links the reading time is really cut down. Knowing that every single link doesn’t need to be visited (except to see how/what is connected) is reassuring. I don’t think I’m “missing” anything.
And I’ve thought of a way to display these. We’ll talk.
June 26th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Thanks, Mary Ellen. It’s a mishmash of poems that came at me all day yesterday. I was even talking funny to customers.
On the links, yes, they’re as relevant to the text as possible. And, if you hover you can see the title in the browser bar of where you’d be going. Sometimes you may want to return to a page that’s been color-coded as “visited” if you remember it as being a place of many forking paths (with all due respect to Borges). And of course, there’s always page-backing up that in this particular piece, I found myself doing quite a bit.
June 27th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Um, yeah, about those titles… Just saw those today, when I flipped back from a page that said “Sins”, when I thought I was reading “Love and War”. I’ve gotten so used to blanking things out from my vision while reading on the computer that I’m missing a lot of things in Hypertext that are deliberately put in to aid me. Has anyone else ever mentioned this as a problem? (humor me!) We touched on it in reading development this year, that internet literacy is a totally different skill from traditional literacy, and that we are all self-trained (so far) in this form. Who’s to say that what is placed, and where it is placed, is the proper placement? Experience tells me to look at the center of the page. In fact, I’ve started reading your works on full screen to minimize distractions–and thus, have missed all of your page titles.
Don’t ever invite me to dinner and cook a big meal. Just cereal will be fine 😛
June 28th, 2009 at 5:52 am
“reading (…) on full screen” – Do you mean versus a feedreader?
Placement is a part of these hypertexts, and is used as color (the only one I’ve had time to play with color on aside from setting the theme color for mood is “Dark Moves” when the lights go out”) to differentiate between threads, time, space, pov, etc. The positioning of the text boxes on the screen indicates a shift of pov, backstory, etc.
If you’re going to be studying hypertext literature, these short-shorts are a good base before you get started. I can also try to code into the posts the ability to enlarge the maps (though most online and older CD hypertext lit is much longer and gives ability to browse the links but the maps aren’t available).
Anything for you, ME!
June 28th, 2009 at 7:43 am
Not only am I going to tell Barbara Wall about you this summer, I’m going to suggest she call you in as a consultant.
June 28th, 2009 at 8:58 am
I don’t know who Barbara Wall is, but she’s not likely interested in a non-academic, non-degreed (above AS). Besides, I’m not as smart as I may sound on paper. It’s the old “baffle ’em with bullshit” tactic.
June 28th, 2009 at 11:29 am
That’s my game, sister! BW is the Director of Trinity’s English writing division, technically my “boss” now that I’m an associate. It’s her Electric English class I’m taking this summer. She is all over this stuff, and degrees be damned, if you’ve expertise in an area you should be considered a resource. Even though I’m chasing the parchment, I still don’t hold much value in it. (Shh….)