Time for a Hypertext Blog

Before taking Electronic Literature I was unfamiliar with the style of writing that I would come to known as hypertext. Hypertext is a new way of storytelling in which the basic elements of writing fiction are combined in a new way to create a non-linear path through a story. In the secondary text Gathering the Limbs George P. Landlow is quoted as defining hypertext as, “Texts composed of blocks of words (or images) linked electronically by multiple paths, chains, or trails in an open-ended, perpetually unfinished textually described by the terms link, node, network, web, and path”. In hypertext there are groups of words/images that are clickable links that transport the reader to other parts of the story; these different parts are known as lexica. The existence of these lexica makes it virtually impossible to pinpoint an exact beginning and end of a hypertext story. Unlike a traditional novel in which the author guides the reader from the beginning to end and the plot is the same each time, in a hypertext the author grants the reader the freedom to piece together their own story. A reader may encounter the same hypertext several times and never find the same path through it twice.

The hypertext which we most heavily focused on was a piece called Patchwork Girl, written by a woman named Shelley Jackson. Jackson was inspired by Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein to put a new spin on the beloved story. In Jackson’s hypertext there are three narrators; Shelley Jackson, the creator of the hypertext who reflects on writing the story, Mary Shelley, the real life author of Frankenstein who in this hypertext is the character responsible for creating the monster, and Patchwork Girl, the Frankenstein-like monster created by the character Mary Shelley. In this hypertext the reader is responsible for clicking through the lexicas to uncover the story of the creation of the monster, the monster’s journey to find her identity, and Jackson’s journey through creating the hypertext.

When first opening Patchwork Girl the reader is presented with an image of a woman’s naked body which appears to be dissected into different pieces. The reader must click on this image to be brought to the main screen of the piece. The reader then has several options because there are five major sections of the hypertext. The body of text; which explores the intricacies of hypertext in comparison to the way that humans are made up, the journal; which is the journal of Mary Shelley and her experiences in creating the monster Patchwork Girl, the story; which is a combination of the modern adventures of Patchwork Girl as well as original text from Shelley’s Frankenstein, the graveyard; which explains the origins of all the parts that make up Patchwork Girl, and the crazy quilt.

In this story one of the main themes deals with the monster Patchwork Girl journeying through the world trying to find an identity. Because she is made up of the leftover parts of different people she does not feel that she belongs anywhere at all. She is unattractive, although she wishes she could be beautiful, she is always falling apart, and she does not feel as though there is anything about herself that is truly hers. Another central part of the story explores Shelley Jackson’s journey through creating the hypertext. These things are related because the style of writing that is hypertext is very similar to the character of Patchwork Girl. Both Patchwork Girl and the work of hypertext are created by the compilation of other things. A limb of Patchwork Girl’s, much like a single lexica of the hypertext, would not mean much by itself. You need all parts of Patchwork Girl, the monster and the hypertext, to create something relevant. Also, the characters of Jackson and Patchwork Girl share a common feeling of being lost. In one lexica Jackson describes the difficulty of writing a hypertext, “Assembling these patched words in an electronic space, I feel half blind, as if the entire text is within reach, but because of some myopic condition I am only familiar with from dreams, I can only see the part most immediately before me”. While Jackson feels that she is lost because she cannot grasp all the elements of her story at once, Patchwork Girl feels equally as lost because she feels the same way about the elements of her identity. This specific lexica is also a reassurance for the reader that happens to stumble across it, because it can be comforting for readers like me who feels lost within a story to know that, at times, the author feels equally as helpless.

It is because of this that Patchwork Girl would simply not be as effective if it was written in any other style than hypertext. We can compare it to the original story Frankenstein, an extremely similar story written as a traditional novel. The hypertext allows for the reader to put together the pieces of the story as they see fit. One of my favorite quotes from Patchwork Girl comes from the section graveyard and is a quote from the character Patchwork Girl, “I am buried here. You can resurrect me, but only piecemeal. If you want to see the whole, you will have to sew me together yourself”. This really defines the importance of the nonlinear story when illustrating a “non-linear person”. The freedom of the reader to explore Patchwork Girl as their own leisure, curiosity, interest makes the work more personal. Although Shelley’s Frankenstein is masterfully written and widely enjoyed it lacks the emotional connection to the reader that Patchwork Girl provides. Frankenstein is the story of the man who created a monster and the monster that a man created. Patchwork Girl is a story of a woman who created a monster and a monster who tried to make more of herself. This difference is certainly felt, if not necessarily seen, by the reader which encounters Patchwork Girl. It is also a great addition that the ‘monster’ in Patchwork Girl is able to express feelings and emotions available for the reader to see, which is not the case in Frankenstein. It allows for the reader to come to the right conclusions of how the ‘monster’ feels without having the guess based on actions.

I find that this style of writing is also extremely appealing because it is very realistic, and in a way it mimics the way that memory works. When reading a traditional novel a reader might find that there are parts of the story which seem irrelevant because the plot often documents events chronologically rather than by importance. This is not the way that the memory of humans works. Usually a person remembers things that are significant and forgets those things which are not. Memories are not stored chronologically so that one needs to filter through events before or after to find a specific one. In a piece such as Patchwork Girl, which deal heavily with the memories and experiences of characters like Jackson, Shelley, and Patchwork Girl, the use of hypertext works exceptionally well because it is so realistic. It is similar to being in the consciousness of a character, stealing a look at the memories and experiences which are important to each individual character. When viewed in this way each lexica is important because the mere fact that it is included means that the memory or story is emotionally significant. Some readers might find that hypertext can be confusing, but I feel that it is easy to become willing to sacrifice comfort for the poignancy of the piece that the hypertext provides.

Citations

Jackson, Shelley. Patchwork Girl. Watertown, Ma: Eastgate Systems, 1995. CD-Rom.
Sánchez-Palencia Carazo, Carolina, and Manuel Almagro Jiménez . "Gathering the Limbs of the Text in Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl." ATLANTIS 28.1 (2006): 115-29.

The Next Generation Hybrid: Interactive Fiction

Interactive Fiction is a new type of storytelling that virtually combines the characteristics of both a story and a game. In this new type of literature the reader is no longer restricted to simply reading the text, but can participate in the actions and decisions of the main character. In A Beginner’s Guide to Playing Interactive Fiction Ramsberg explains, “You usually take on the role of the main character in the story. The game tells you what happens to the character, and you tell the game how the character should act”. In many of these stories there is a puzzle for the main character (controlled by the reader) to solve, but this is not always the case. Some pieces of IF rely on a captivating plot to secure the reader’s interest in the story so that the reader will continue to “play”.

When a reader opens a piece of interactive fiction and prepares to play they are usually greeted with an introduction or prologue. This introduction explains the background of the story, who the main character is, and (sometimes) the objective of the main character within the story. The parser, which essentially acts as the “mind” of the game and processes all input from the reader, allows for the reader to hit “Enter” once they have finished reading and the game begins. In an IF such as Whom the Telling Changed the reader is given several options before they are presented with the prologue. The parser asks the reader if they would like to receive instructions and also asks the reader to pick a preferred way to view the text that would be especially important (for example: bold, italics, underlined, etc.). Once the reader has done this, however, the prologue begins. A photograph from the prologue of this IF is provided.

Because the reader is no longer just a reader when it comes to interactive fiction, there are some things that need to be learned before it is possible to successfully work with an IF piece. Although not all interactive fiction is the same there are still some things that are fairly consistent throughout. Interactive fiction always has a player character, which is typically the main character and is controlled by the reader. The reader makes decisions as the player character that helps to develop the plot. IF also has non-player characters which the player character can encounter during the game. These non-player characters are programmed into the game and can usually be interacted with, although the variety of things that they can do or say is limited to their development by the author. In the IF Whom the Telling Changed the player character can interact with Saiph, Sihan, Isi, and Nabu who are non-player characters. The player character can touch and speak to these characters.

In IF the reader is granted the responsibility of making decisions for the player character, which means that the reader must not only choose who talk to but must also choose where to go and what to do once they arrive. In many interactive fiction pieces the setting is based on compass directions. For example, the parser might say something along the lines of, “The bathroom is west of the bedroom”. This means that if the reader wishes to move from the bedroom into the bathroom the reader must type in a command along the lines of, “Go West”. Commands like, “Go to bathroom” or “Leave bedroom” might not be recognizable by the parser. In this case the parser will produce a message to the reader in brackets, which indicates that what the parser is saying is not part of the story. The parser’s message might look something like this, [I do not recognize this verb]. Ramsberg suggests, “When interacting with IF games always try to express yourself as simply as possible. If you have tried several ways of expressing yourself and the game refuses to understand what you want to do, you are most probably on the wrong track…” When, as a player, you do arrive in the location of your choice you may have an opportunity to command the player character to perform other actions that interact with the room and the objects in it. If the description of a room states that there is a bottle and a key on a table you may be able to tell the game to interact with the key by typing, “Take Key”, “Touch Key”, or “Examine Key”.

Because the genre is a hybrid, a combination of a game and a story, sometimes the pieces differ greatly in style. The work Whom The Telling Changed is an IF piece that is more like a story. In this piece the reader can make different decisions but the plot and outcome generally stay the same. In a piece like Galatea the reader is granted more freedom and there are a large number of possible outcomes that all differ from each other greatly. Despite this drastic difference in style, the genre combines the best of both words. The reader comes away from the story feeling more satisfied, more personally rewarded, because the fact that they can control the player character makes them feel more like it is their own story. When playing Galatea for the first time I felt extremely satisfied that Galatea liked me at the end of the story. I realized that I had invested myself personally into the piece of interactive fiction because the freedom it granted me to make choices made the work mine, for as long as I played it anyway.

As a novice interactive fiction author I really enjoyed myself. I have always been extremely interested in writing, especially fiction, and I felt that using Inform 7 was a fun way to expand my horizons in a field that I already liked. I am also very interested in puzzles and, to me Inform 7 was a gigantic puzzle. Instead of writing a story that was straightforward and leaving it up to the reader to interpret, I felt like I was responsible for interpreting the reader and the reader’s actions. It was like having to tackle my story from a different angle. One thing is for sure, I definitely underestimated how hard it is to simultaneously write a story and learn how to program it at the same time.

As an IF author I had to write my story from an author’s perspective and also from a reader’s perspective. As a “reader” I had to anticipate the things my reader would be compelled to do, the places they would like to go, and the things that they would be interested in exploring. Once I thought of all these possibilities I had to try to make the IF world as interesting as possible. I wanted the reader to be satisfied with the conversations they could have and the choice they could make. As an “author” I had to decide how to subtly coax my reader into going where I wanted them to go by giving them clues or making certain locations seem intriguing. In a text only story the reader must go wherever the author leads them, so not every part of the story has to be as interesting as the next. However in an IF the reader can choose to either do something or not, so the author needs to make them want to do it and choose to do it themselves.

Sometimes the technology of Inform 7 made me feel limited as an author, which was frustrating. My original story was about a scientist who was going on a dive expedition to locate a rare species of fish. While diving, the player character could either locate the rare fish or stumble upon an artifact (perhaps a shipwreck or a treasure, I hadn’t decided yet) depending on the choices that they made within the story. I loved my idea, but once I started writing with Inform I felt forced to abandon part of my story. Giving the reader a second option proved to be too complicated, because I am not an experienced IF author. Now the player character can only locate and capture the rare fish – there is no option for the play character to make a second discovery.

Using Inform 7 helped me to expand my writing because it inspired me to write about something different than I would normally choose to. My style of writing has always focused on people and relationships through dialogue, but my IF story is an adventure. I could not focus on dialogue in my interactive fiction like I would in a textual story, because it would not move the plot along. Writing my story in the IF style made me think about action and plot in a physical sense, which I do not do often. The result of this is that my interactive fiction is filled with visual descriptions, clues, and actions. There is dialogue, but not nearly as much as there would have been had I written the story as text only.

Symbocation: Exploring Cyberspace as a Novice E-Poet

Electronic poetry is a form of electronic literature that transforms the average textual poem into something much more. While written expression, especially poetry, has always been a large part of any culture, the invention and expansion of the technological world has allowed poetry to evolve in ways that people had never imagined.
As of yet, there is no clear definition of electronic poetry. There is no practicality behind declaring one anyway, considering that it would probably change at the same rate as technology changes, and technology is always changing. However, Deena Larson gives us what she considers to be the broadest and simplest definition of e-poetry available, “poetry that uses both text and sensory information other than text to convey meaning”. What does this mean, exactly? It means that electronic poetry uses not only the text to reach readers but also images, sound, symbols, movement etc. to do so as well. Using these elements is referred to as symbocation (Larsen). As technology advances in our world electronic poets find new and interesting ways to stimulate readers through electronic poetry. Currently there are many different programs that electronic poets use to reach readers through the internet. 

What makes electronic poetry different from poetry one might find in a book is that electronic poetry relies on a reader to create action and meaning. “Like a musician playing an instrument, a user could be said to play an application...A digital poetry object is by default - or almost always - a piece of software that needs a user to become an instrument of/for signification” (Memmott 294). Without a reader to create something of an electronic poem - to hear, see, or interact with it - the poem is like an instrument that is not being played. It is simply an object with no meaning or purpose. 

“The Roar Of Destiny Emanated” by Judy Malloy is an example of electronic poetry that forces the reader to think beyond the words on the page. Interactivecinema.org describes the e-poem as “...a perfect example of thought and physical interaction working together...”. At first glance the poem is a mix up of words and phrases against a stark black background, each word or phrase a different color or with a unique color-fill background. The word “Reset” sits in the middle of the page for the reader to click on. When the reader clicks on the hyperlink work “reset” he or she is transported to a page with six boxes of text filled with random words and phrases that are hyperlinks, waiting to transport the reader to a new page. Each box has a different color-fill background and if the reader waits for awhile without touching the page the colors in the backgrounds change. Once the reader clicks on a word or phrase that he or she finds intriguing the page changes and a new set of words appear, as well as a new background color. However, on this page the written poetry appears in bold font so it is to be easily identified. The page also contains several words in hyperlink that the reader can choose to view another poem. 

One of the most interesting things about e-poetry is that sometimes it allows the reader to be in full control of the action that occurs. “The Roar of Destiny Emanated” is one such poem. However, when a poem gives the reader control of the action the reader must then learn how to interact with that work. Sometimes this can be difficult. Malloy’s work discussed here seems somewhat disjointed at first read. The phrases that the reader is initially presented with are not a story, they do not even really make sense, so the reader must say to his or herself, “How can I make some sense of this? What do I have to do to discover the meaning behind this poem?”. Malloy adds a lot of depth to the poem by producing it as a work of e-poetry. If “The Roar of Destiny” was a poem on a printed page it would take away the reader’s privilege to choose what to read. The beauty of this poem lies in the way the reader can pick the phrases that are stimulating to then read a poem that encompasses this phrase. 

“The Roar of Destiny Emanated” seems to me to be about life in it’s entirety. The random nature of the phrases symbolize the unpredictability of life, the presence of extended ellipses are, perhaps, the pauses that we take in order to think and reflect on the events that occur to us and around us, and the hyperlinks that take the reader to a different page symbolize the idea that one thing always leads to another. Life does not always follow a linear path, much like this poem. Also, the colors of the backgrounds that change when the poem changes symbolize human emotions and the ability to change. While the poems are beautifully crafted, much of the meaning has nothing to do with the written words at all. 

Another highly interesting electronic poem is one called “Fidget” by Kenneth Goldsmith which we studied in class a few weeks ago. This poem is very different from “The Roar of Destiny Emanated” as it allows the reader to physically do less, but stimulates the reader’s mind more. “Fidget” opens as a small box that has a timestamp in the center of it which includes a date and a time. There are many animated phrases floating around the time stamp connected by a line. Most of these phrases appear the same, however some blink, fade, or appear in different colors. When the reader clicks in the box the background changes, as does the time stamp and the text of the animated words. Each phrase illustrates some sort of movement or action. Although the reader cannot physically do much more than click to change the background and text, the poem is stimulating for two reasons. Firstly, the visual element of the text constantly moving gives the reader something to focus on at all times. Secondly, although each individual phrase makes sense by itself, one must read for a moment to understand what bigger action the movements describe. Sometimes Goldsmith is describing himself eating, working out, or reading a book. 

The concept of this poem is that Goldsmith documented his every action for 16 hours, even the things that some people would overlook. He then transcribed each movement to create this poem “Fidget”. The poem shows that people are hardly ever really sitting still. Even when one believes that they are not doing an action perhaps they are tapping a pencil, wiggling a toe, or chewing the inside of a lip. Instead of using a phrase like “Run” or “Eat” Goldsmith breaks the action down even further to show the reader what even smaller movements make up these bigger actions. He uses words such as “Tilt” and “Lips Open”. “Fidget” is intellectually stimulating because it gives the reader a chance to be more self aware. After reading the poem one might ask themselves, what do I do that makes up the movements in my daily life? How can I break it down further? What do I do when I am not paying attention to myself? What am I doing right now? 

Writing e-poetry is certainly not an easy task. In fact, after trying to create my own e-poetry in class, I applaud all of the e-poets we have studied in thus far. I have always enjoyed writing, especially poetry, so I thought that the assignment would be a piece of cake for me. I was surprised when I found myself frustrated after given free time to work on our PowerPoints in class.

I had an idea of what it was that I wanted to write about. I wanted to create a poem about the rain, because I have always loved it. I wanted this poem to include different instances of my childhood and young adult life where the rain tied into something else important to me; my family, my friendships, and important events. I ran into a problem because I had enough trouble formulating my ideas, the endless possibilities of e-poetry did not help to alleviate my stress. I wanted to incorporate something clever (music, movement, images, I did not know what yet) but I did not want to lose the integrity of my poem, especially since it partially centralizes on my childhood which I associate with simplicity. Ultimately I decided that the best way to approach my poem was to use one constant background and incorporate movement into the text. I was inspired by the images in the poem “Fireflies” that uses rich backgrounds to interest the reader in a dusky, earthy world.