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1. Three-Dimensional Dementia: Hypertext Fiction and the Aesthetics of Forgetting

   Hypertext (the non-sequential linking of text(s) and images) was first envisioned by Vannevar Bush and Ted Nelson in its prehistory as an associational, archival storage system suitable for classifying and sorting vast quantities of information. But where library databases, technical manuals and other knowledge-based hypertexts still fulfill this function, literary hypertext overturns this proposed usage, celebrating both information overload and forgetfulness as the desired end of a reading. Promoting disassociation and an awareness of the spatio-temporal dimensions of its environment, hypertext fiction uses the aesthetics of its three-dimensional interface and structure to frustrate memory and to engender a sensory and emotional response in the reader. Focusing on M.D. Coverley's multimedia hypertext Califia, I will investigate how the aesthetics of the hypertext form become an engine of forgetfulness that drives her text through its explorations of lost memories, including the ravages of Alzheimer's, unofficial histories, secrets, missing pieces and the quest for hidden treasure.

   Scott Rettberg - 19.01.2013 - 12:26

2. Intervals and Links: The Indeterminancy of a Link's Possible Future

   This paper proposes that link node hypertext can be conceived of as a postcinematic discourse and that a major mechanism of this geneology is available through the comparison of the hypertext link to the cinematic edit. I wish to consider the hypertext link from the point of view of Deleuze's cinematic 'sensory motor schema' where the link can be considered as analogous to Bergson's zone of indetermination between perception and reaction. This work builds upon recent theoretical work that has attempted to define hypertext as a temporal or cinematic medium.

   Scott Rettberg - 19.01.2013 - 13:32

3. Hypermedia, Eternal Life, and The Impermanence Agent

   The story of hypermedia, in which the Web is a recent chapter, begins with a vision of transforming the brain's associative connections into media - media that can be infinitely duplicated and easily shared - creating pathways of thought in a form that will not fade with memory. In recent years, hypermedia has begun to permeate our lives. But it is not as we dreamed: constantly growing, with nothing lost, only showing what we wish to see. Instead we find 'Not Found' a nearly daily message.

   The story of software agents begins with the idea of a 'soft robot' - capable of carrying out tasks toward a goal, while requesting and receiving advice in human terms. In recent years, a much narrower marketing fantasy of the agent has emerged (with a relationship to actual agent technologies as tenuous as Robbie the Robot's relationship to factory robots) and it grows despite failures such as Microsoft Bob. Now we often see agents as anthropomorphized, self-customizing virtual servants designed for a single task: to be a pleasing interface to a world of information that does not please us.

   Scott Rettberg - 19.01.2013 - 15:14

4. The trAce Experience

   trAce, an online organization located at Nottingham Trent University, UK, offers educational and cultural opportunities for writers. We will be presenting and discussing some of the products related to that process.

   Janet Holmes, Boise State University (USA)
   "The trAce Experience: 'The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot'"

   Marjorie C. Luesebrink, Irvine Valley College (USA)
   "The trAce Experience: Collaborative Aspects of Fibonacci's Daughter"

   Christy Sheffield Sanford, trAce (USA)
   "The trAce Experience: Virtual Writer-in-Residence - Creating a New Profession"

   Sue Thomas, Nottingham Trent University (UK)
   "The trAce Experience: Connecting Writers in Real and Virtual Space"

   Scott Rettberg - 19.01.2013 - 16:29