Interesting thought sitting here, noting that the layout of an airport is similar to a mapview of a hypertext story. The stories here are unrelated, transient in their nature as the people passing through become a single event that becomes a part of this moment only.
The lady across from me is going to Philly too, I suppose. What is her story?
While my attendance at conference sessions may have been spotty, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being here. Thursday’s Workshop Sessions headed by Steve Ersinghaus was a small group, but representative of most of the various forms of creativity and creative tools available to the hypertext artist. Storyspace, Literatronica, Flash (or ‘net art’ as Alan put it), Hypertextopia, Storytron, Hyperdrama, Dene Griger’s human hypertext space; all here and represented for discussion.
It was my extreme pleasure to meet the creators like Mark Bernstein, Chris Crawford, Juan Guiterrez and Mark Marino, and to understand how they design and create for they are certainly as creative with story as they are with technology. And it was fun to share a beer (okay, a couple) and a meal with such folk as these and the artists albeit technologically skilled users as Alan Bigelow and of course, Steve, and those who I’ve known for years via weblogs and finally have had a chance to meet such as Dennis Jerz, who’s proven his journalistic abilities in his reporting of the events on a daily basis.
My thanks too to Jeff Smith for his warm welcome and such great handling of details of the event and particularly his helpful directions to downtown Pittsburgh.
So even though I may not have taken advantage of the full value of the event on the technical side of hypertext and all it encompasses, I’m glad to have spent this weekend in such a mood of inspiration and good people.
At Planet Interactive, a good post on the topic of games, narrative and character by Emily Short that expands the Hypertext 08 workshop discussion.
Missed a lot of the conference yesterday since while I can certainly appreciate the creative concepts of the web and of linking structure in its complicated intricacies, it’s just not something I’m going to be dedicated to learning beyond what I need to do what I want to do. I was amazed at the posters, mostly by young students who appear to be coming up with some great visuals of an elaborate technical system and I can only say that if their current interest extends beyond academic learning, we’re in for some minds that will move the future.
Instead I’ve been enjoying the city. Walking around, finding Market Square (though the "culture and art" exhibits were not quite there or up to their marketing. Today between ht08 sessions I’ll hang a right off Wood Street and check instead the red outlined "culture district" to see if it’s more prevalent as its more stationary than the ongoing Arts Festival in town.
Though there are events I’ll likely drift into, I’d suggest once again reading Dennis Jerz’s excellent ongoing reporting of the conference at Jerz’s Literacy Weblog for updates on the conference sessions.
Likely the only down side in the Creating out of the Machine Workshop was that no one won the Hawaiian Vacation–all expense paid trip for two–as no one pointed out the five-sided cube in my presentation.
Sorry guys. And, Aloha!
I’ve been having fun working on resolving a problem that involves some maneuvering and changing of the Keynote presentation on hypertext I put together so that I can make it available here in the easiest way (at least for the reader/viewer!). One method was to place it into Quicktime and toss it on YouTube or try to embed it here, so this is that attempt: Hypertext: The Transfiguration of Writing and The Writer
But there’s always good things to learn along the way: 1) there are quite a few videos on hypertext (not all quite hypertext, but just use the search term and look through them; one in particular is Battle of Hypertext I believe. 2) that you can’t have a 7:30 timed movie clip without sound. It came out so long because without the ability of manual advancement of the slides, I had to leave 15 seconds per slide to allow some reading. In some cases you’ll be bored out of your mind; in others, you’ll have to speed read. Okay, so that doesn’t work well, but it’s a step in the process, and this weblog is a log of all my adventures in new media stuff, the great discoveries along with the dopey.
So here’s the dopey: You gotta have audio. So unless I put my munchkin voiceover which nobody will enjoy, I tried to think fast of a song that lasts that long. What came to mind first? MacArthur Park of course!
Back to the drawing board.
Let’s give a big round of applause for Dennis Jerz who has been faithfully on-scene reporting (now why’s he so good at that?) on the workshops and now on the conference itself. I’ve given up since there seems to be a special talent and skill for the quickthinking accuracy that Professor Jerz is giving us.
Haven’t had a chance yet to replace the Windows version of Paths and need to work on that today–if possible without the Dell laptop here since I’ve only brought the Mac.
I have the Powerpoint version of the Keynote presentation I made and will upload that one shortly and add it to the previous post and the sidebar. PPT is fine, though you won’t get all the same neat transition effects that Keynote provided.
Then I’m going to be conferencing, Pittsburghing, and reading and writing the day away.
Though without the accompanying commentary (believe me, you’re all the better for it), I think I’ve been able to upload and direct you to the Keynote presentation made at Hypertext 2008 –
Oops–I think what you’ll get is the whole program view instead of just the presentation in ready to play format–I’ll have to rework this…
I am a writer. I can rewrite the rather lengthy post the hotel hookup just lost on me but I am a woman and get cranky too.
Right now the woman in me wins.
Later.
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