Hypercompendia

I wonder if this new habit I’ve picked up from the twenty-one hypertext stories so far will engrave itself and influence any straight writing I do in the future. This is the map of the latest that I’m working on now. I’ve never done layouts or diagrams prior to story before. I’ve said this before; back in elementary and high school (maybe even college) I’d have the story done and then come up with an outline based on it when required to turn one in. This is a whole new thing for me.

First came the choice of what I’d be concentrating upon in this piece, and with the knowledge of 100 pieces being done, I figured I could go with the theme of the story which for me was the question of time and what it actually means to us. Hypertext offers the best opportunity to play with dimensions of time and I like to do just that because the idea of it all is so fascinating.

The natural layout then is based on occurence and sequence, yet since these are short and another thought struck me, I’ve had to organize and limit the occurences to two and the concept to a simple topic of wishes and how they do and do not make their mark in most cases on time.

It’s a process that goes beyond story; the networking of ideas to run parallel to each. Just as, perhaps does the past, present and future.

After a quick look at the stylesheet for the basic golden grid, I think it would answer some of my questions about setting up a cleaner css for what I want. It may point out the obvious way to apply attributes and values such as border style, text color, etc. that are uniform to the wider designation of positions without each having this list of properties.

Even though I’m not currently thinking along the line of the visual reasoning of the golden grid, I’ve already got nine positions that I think are pretty basic: left, center, right, top and bottom for each–not allowing for three positions vertically since most screens are still pretty short and wide–and a wider (400 px) version of each of the three main positions which will obviously not be used at the same time unless I want overlap.

It’s nice to look through the stylesheet, even (and maybe especially) in its overwritten condition and understand what all that stuff means.

So glad I agreed to join the 100 Stories Project. Last summer, Steve Ersinghaus and Carianne Mack dedicated their summer break from their usual campus duties at Tunxis Community College to put together an awesome creative collaboration of paintings and poetry as a challenge of one work a day for 100 days. Steve and Carianne are once again planning a project, with stories and visuals, and with the addition of John Timmons on sound and Jim Revillini on drums–no not drums, but the same base, the beat that sets the whole thing to blend in digital presentation. I’ll be expanding on story by offering an interpretation in hypertext.

Steve has already thrown out a few stories in preparation and to get with the idea, I’ve been hypertexting them on a 100 Stories Project Page (Link to the right) here until we have a plan for centralization. Officially the project will begin on May 22nd and run through August. It should be a fun process of learning and exploring creative ideas and interpretations pooled together towards a goal.