NEW MEDIA: How Hypertext is It?
Been playing with Inanimate Alice this morning and while I’m not nuts about the repetitive musical background, the story is nice and the graphics are great (Story #4 just came out recently).
I’m wondering, though; while it isn’t called a hypertext (do arrow pointers count as text?), it isn’t exactly interactive beyond the do you click to go forward and progress the story in a pretty linear path determined by the author, or do you click back a frame or two, or just click out? We recently had a discussion on what is hypertext exactly, and how it is similar to and different from the defined works such as interactive fiction, or the word hyperfiction or hyperlinks. How much interactive user input is required beyond turning ‘pages’ to qualify it? Are user choices necessary so that alternate paths must always be created within the arrangement? In this piece, the only choice to take an alternate was to choose one of four hands that pointed in different directions, or a room of a house plan, or to choice an "album" of photos clearly marked as ‘school’ or ‘home’ etc. All brought the reader back to the intersecting point to then choose another. As a matter of fact, I believe the previous paths were no longer available for choice (always to me seeming to say "you dummy, you did that already" so we’re not even going to give you that option.").
The graphics are great though, and this is an interesting form of new media that I really am getting more and more intrigued by, enough to likely work on it by starting to add more into the Tinderbox projects file.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
July 7th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
I’d say it’d be hypertext if the choices had a meaning — even if they didn’t change the story, if it affects your understanding of the story to know one thing before the other, then I think it counts. I hadn’t seen this site before so I’ve only viewed the first episode, which isn’t hypertexty at all, but still a nicely told story.
July 7th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Hi Chris! I might disagree with you here, in that while I’m questioning the term “hypertext” as text and have no problem with “hyperlink,” I also might say that it doesn’t necessarily have to hold meaning–it might just be a random thought or trail that may or may not enhance the meaning for the reader. Also, in this particular piece, I wonder if there is a need–or even difference–in reading one before another. It’s an interesting concept to consider when writing hypertext surely.
July 7th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Hi Susan,
thanks for checking out Alice and the review! You’ve asked some very good questions. I personally wouldn’t call Alice a hypertext, and the concept of ‘interactivity’ is still an incredibly difficult one to pin down, other than in the sense of the specific genre of Interactive Fiction [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_fiction ]
Our aim with Alice is to encourage readers who have little or no experience of electronic or multimedia fiction to investigate this type of story, so in Episode 1 the ‘interactivity’ is intentionally very limited: forward arrows (page turns), and one click-only game. In Episode 2 this is expanded to 2 click games, and in Episode 3 there is a further step with the Matryoshka doll collection (find, click, then move/catch). In Episode 4 we have the maze game, which represents another basic step of interactive (in the sense of game) complexity – moving forward, back, left and right; and also the multiple choices that you pointed out in your review, which are intended to be chosen in any order, more to introduce the basic concept of narrative choice than to offer alternate narrative paths to the reader (at this stage, at least).
The idea is that over the full 10 episode arc the novice reader/player could become a proficient ‘game’ player (Episode 10 is a fully-fledged computer game). The interesting challenge will be to maintain the strong sense of authorial narrative whilst allowing greater and greater reader freedom and play. Though I think this is exactly what the best ‘games’ do.
Anyway, thanks again for your post!
July 7th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Thanks for coming by, Chris, and for your response which does prove to me the value in your theory of reader involvement at a pace meant to invite–not scare off–the new reader.
Meanwhile, I think you’ve put some wonderful images and a very interesting story that together capture reader interest to ensure sustained reading. There’s nothing scary about the manipulation; no “am I doing this right?” feeling.
I’m thoroughly looking forward to the next episode!
July 8th, 2008 at 5:04 am
I think for schools this is a really exciting new multimedia literacy resource. try out Inanimate Alice. And its a free online resource!
And better still for schools there is a piece of software now available that allows learners to create their own stories. Valuable for all forms of literacy and this is being sold as a perpetual site licence for schools at £99 ! http://www.istori.es