Hypercompendia

I’ve decided to tackle Paths to enable it to be read online rather than offering it as a Storyspace download. This has been on my mind since last July when I first made it available and was concerned because while I improved and rewrote the Mac version, I never went back and made all the corresponding changes in the Win version and that’s what the majority of people have been downloading.

So, while I waffle on whether to fine tune the structure and create some more reading paths, I’ve been playing with form and color and have come up with this as a final:

Even as I claim that I’m learning the purpose and impact of patterns of linking, I find myself going back and fixing, changing, modifying links to offset a sometimes itchy feeling that a passage may be better off linked to an earlier segment of story, a different lexia that returns the reader to a point in the story where he must stop and reread the information to understand it from a different angle.

What I am finding also is that there is a certain importance to the color of text links. Two things have come up. One is that the initial links can be more emphatic in color, more in contrast to the inactive text. This relevance of color tells the reader that there are interesting things to be found, the brighter color a present of sorts as well as an assurance that he will not overlook them by reading the entire space of the lexia before wandering away. I find this point rather important; I don’t know how others read a hypertext story, but I’ve learned to squelch that impulse to click on the first link I come to and instead read the entire text of a space before moving on.

A more interesting element is the ‘visited’ link, and here I find that a still obvious but more subtle color is a soft reminder that the reader can go back to places he’s been, and yet there is a way of knowing that fact so that he may choose not to do so. There is the careful selection by the writer (my apologies to Barthes, but writer here refers to the originator of the text) of particular words that refer back (and forward) to a portion of narrative that may be either enhanced in meaning or be offering an alternate view.

My hope is that I can transfer this positive experience in practicing on short short stories to the longer stories I’ll be writing in hypertext.

I’ve likely learned more about hypertext link negotiation with the seven short stories I’ve worked on in the past few days than I’ve learned in writing more sprawled out, trying-too-hard-to-be-complex stories of the past couple years.

One of the clouds that hangs over my head in writing hypertext is the same one that rains on my hypertext reading; that I’ll get lost or lead someone else into a hole or that I’ll run them around in boring circles of reading the same thing over and over again.  With the short short form, it makes so much more of an impact when you come around to the same writing space again. There isn’t the fear of losing the main story line even when I’ve gone off the beaten track completely with these.

Steve Ersinghaus and I have done some of this kind of thinking before–emails that we sent back and forth, each adding a new plot or elaboration on a single story, though it was somewhat linear in form. Perhaps the collaboration of two minds working together but never working the same was the key there. Can’t wait to get this show of the 100 Stories Project going and with the addition of three more people and sight and sound and organization, it should be awesome.

In the meantime, I’m practicing my hypertext. Only problem is I need more short stories to hypertexturize.

Very disappointed to see that not only is hypertext or any other form of new media not represented at the Tunxis Writers Festival this year, but that the public is not being offered the ability to attend this community college function. Odd, at a college that’s ahead of many in stepping over the edge into the New Media field by offering two courses devoted to New Media, and many others such as Digital Animation that apply.

Maybe this all goes back to Dene Grigar’s essay on how hypertext, et al, is presented at the academic level, Electronic Literature, Where is It?, and whether it is a discipline unto itself or if its relationship to Literature, etc. is undeniable.

Satisfied my colorlust once I learned how to put in total background color without blank spaces in bordered areas (in the html template, need to refer to css with a style note, though there’s got to be an easier way, and added 20 px top and bottom padding to the background-color notation) so I changed one of the four hypertext stories to this:

It just seems to inspire me when I’m working in color and that translates to better story. One thing I’ve also found in working on these stories is that I’m working with the Storyspace hypertext format more naturally than ever before. I’m not afraid to go back to the same writing spaces and I’m getting better at using that as an emphasis point and see how it changes the meaning the next time something is read, just for having some new information since the last time.

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.

I literally left a woman hanging to channel a renewed energy into this concept of a children’s website that exposes them to hypertext story.  Thinking of a name (Hypertales?) and content (a dozen or so short stories geared toward different age levels and interests) and the funnest part, design. But it all has to start somewhere so I revved up my Storyspace engine and starting writing about numbers and things and a little guy named Darren.

Hmmm. Winding down  from my soapbox delivery of this morning, an interesting trail of thought develops. For a few years now an artist has been suggesting that we get together and write a children’s book that she would illustrate. We even tossed a few ideas around but my self-centered writer’s heart, not being completely exuberant over writing for kids, just left it on the back burner.

But this might turn up the flame; a hypertext children’s book…

Via Steve Ersinghaus’ post on Dene Grigar’s informative essay Electronic Literature: Where is it? on the selling of a new media field of study within university courses I find myself needing to voice my own un-academic points. As a student and proponent of the creative arena and its opportunity and promise, I may not have the knowledge of the underpinnings of a campus (though I would suspect the red tape of corporate doings doubled by formal overseer requirements such as state mandates), but I do have enough interest to offer a view from the outside looking in. Maybe I’ll start by following Ms. Grigar’s format in addressing the major points of the issue.

Reading patterns:  With the new digital readers, i.e., Sony, Kindle, etc., the patterns of reading will be greatly changed and conclusions may not be drawn for a few years yet. My feeling has been that with the reading of news, communication via weblogs, social networking and emails, the door for e-lit is wide open, the opportunity for hypertext narrative the best it’s ever been because it is publishable and readable online.  It is not a replacement for all book-reading but an alternative and handier than ever to upload in minutes rather than involving trips to bookstores and libraries. New generations, used to the information overload and seeming confusion and flash of a website are not as likely to be turned off by the medium.

Literary quality:  I don’t think it’s just the idea of the visual effects and means that diminishes the work as of  not “higher” literary quality, as much as the theory of close reading applies just as it does with traditional text. It would seem that a good portion of readers of new media indeed are those that are more interested in the ‘how’ of the piece rather than the narrative right now. This is exactly the same situation with traditional text in that the majority of readers are interested in conflict, adventure, pace rather than the underlying truth of a piece. The ‘how’ and intricacies that new media allows a piece may be a distraction to some, a joy to others, it being just another aspect of new media reading.  Right now, no one really thinks about the font of a novel or the color of its page; yet there was a time when highly decorative illuminated pages were the norm and we’ve moved away from the visual.

Production and support of e-lit:  e-lit should be a part of every English and literature course, just as software is being used for Statistics course, online research is displayed in history courses, programs are used in engineering courses, etc. The computer is a necessary part of nearly every class taught at any level in schools today. Does it need a separate curriculum? Is e-lit considered new media rather than literature? I would think that while expanded courses should be available, it should be included in the Intro to Lit course just as is Blake, Shakespeare, whomever, as an invitation as much as base knowledge.

To me, the whole new media scenario may need to be sold to the reading public simultaneously as it’s being corralled into a package for the curriculum. I made the comment that no classes had to be instituted to play Pac Man; the appeal of this totally new concept of gaming was thrown out to the public and met with enthusiasm that allowed it to swell into the highly sophisticated games and storyworlds that are available today. This response by the public has in fact created the desire to learn how to create this new medium and resulted in courses in design, animation, and digital storytelling. If the more literary end of new media wants to expand at the academic level, it needs to create a need. Creative growth of the medium will expand with the interest.

There probably should be more hypertext stories written and published (and made widely available) that are geared towards the elementary and high school level of reading. There is a very contemporary (though aging into classic) small library of hypertext available now and its appeal is mainly for the more creative and open-minded reader. Much of it is based on the good old marketing theory of ‘sex sells’. There is also the theory that hypertext must conform to the concept of alternate pathways and other structured ideas that seem to be as restrictive to the medium as any white paper page filled with inked text and  bound to a bunch of others and packaged as a book. There is also the question of new material that might include some of the graphics’ appeal that the ‘classics’ just simply don’t offer. Just as Faulkner needs to be offered alongside Pychon, the original works in hypertext need to reflect the growth in the field on the production side. Few people who have played with Grand Theft Auto, Half Life, or the Sims will ever bother picking up Super Mario.

New Media literature also comes with a built-in obstacle to human nature even as it appeals to man’s curiosity and adventurous side; what I call the “getting in the wrong line at the supermarket” feeling. It is that unpleasant twinge that by making a choice, you’re making the wrong move. I personally love writing in the hypertext format and eagerly am trying to learn visual new media on my own, yet I must admit that I’m not all that nuts about either reading some of it for that reason, and often click out after a few ‘pages’ of floating, disappearing, and elusive text flashes by me. After centuries of being led through a narrative or poem, this concept of the reader creating the story is a hard sell to many who have become dependent upon the author to tell the story all by himself. I’ve done a quick survey of family and friends as to if they’ve ever pursued hypertext in their reading after college and unfortunately realized that most of them, having graduated in the early 90s, were not even exposed to it (and are getting anxiety attacks every time I force them to read it).  But it would likely be a good idea for professors who have included new media literature in their curriculum to send out an email survey to those past students and simply ask them.

I suppose what I’m coming down to here is that while I have no voice as an academic to say what should or shouldn’t be available or how it should be presented in schools, I would as an advocate be a passionate supporter of this field of creativity and would more strongly support it as it shows promise of not being simply something passed through in lit class but available to the general public as an exciting and entertaining form of reading. The marketing to the public needs at least the same attention in order to create a basis for marketing to university structure.

(Added Note: Go ahead, get on amazon.com and see what’s available for hypertext reading, aside from ‘books’ on hypertext.  A few of the oldies but goodies like Joyce and Falco, and they’re often listed as “out of print” (sic) and no longer available.)

Really should–and probably will–form a new category for HTML and CSS, but since the main reason for my getting into it is all because of hypertext writing I suppose for now it all relates.

Just managed to move beyond the problem of the wandering center column of a three-column design format (figure I’ll work out the horizontal alignment later) which was driving me nuts because I don’t totally know what I’m doing yet. I was able to pin the left column in place while remaining fluid, and the right by pinning it to the right edge, but the center column moved to the left if there was no left column in place. I finally managed with both position: absolute and margins of left: 250px and right: 250px to keep the center column in the center without the sides supporting it.  For now, that’ll work, even though it’s not the cleanest way of doing this and it does limit me to the particular widths until I learn to code around them.

Meanwhile, I have to fix paddings and margin widths and the horizontal positioning before I bother getting more fancy with design.