Search

The search found 56 results in 0.017 seconds.

Search results

1. Possiplex: Ted Nelson ’59 and the Literary Machine

   Possiplex: Ted Nelson ’59 and the Literary Machine

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 06.10.2011 - 17:38

2. Hypernews and Coherence

   This essay seeks to illuminate certain fundamental aspects of textual and cognitive coherence in the production and reading of hypertexts in general and hypernews in particular. A division into intranodal, internodal and hyperstructural coherence helps to clarify concepts and also seems to reflect certain distinctive features of hypertext as a concept representing a linguistic level above the text level. Likewise, van Dijk's conceptual distinction between macro- and superstructures proves to be useful for demonstrating how axial and networked hyperstructures respectively may maintain, strengthen or weaken various forms of textual coherence. (Source: journal abstract)

   Jill Walker Rettberg - 16.11.2011 - 12:07

3. Forming the Text, Performing the Work: Aspects of Media, Navigation, and Linking

   This article proposes a theoretical framework intended to facilitate descriptions and discussions of texts of works in different media. The main theoretical traditions which have inspired this endeavor are, on the one hand, textual criticism (with scholars such as Fredson Bowers, D. C. Greetham, Jerome J. McGann, D. F. McKenzie, Peter L. Shillingsburg, and G. Thomas Tanselle), and, on the other hand, hypertext theory (represented by theorists like Espen Aarseth, Jay David Bolter, Jane Yellowlees Douglas, Michael Joyce, George P. Landow, and Janet H. Murray). The study aims to combine and develop the perspectives of such theoretical traditions in order to suggest a more consistent and extensive set of concepts for the analysis of how narratives are stored and disseminated. The study examines the structural aspects of texts and works, and deals with storage, presentation and reproduction of works. Moreover, the structure of works and texts, as well as the navigation related to these structures, are discussed. The study also includes an in-depth discussion on links and linking, and a new terminology is suggested for the subject.

   Patricia Tomaszek - 29.11.2011 - 15:18

4. Bookend; www.claptrap.com

   Bookend; www.claptrap.com

   Patricia Tomaszek - 29.04.2012 - 15:17

5. Reading Hypertext and the Experience of Literature

   Hypertext has been promoted as a vehicle that will change literary reading, especially through its recovery of images, supposed to be suppressed by print, and through the choice offered to the reader by links. Evidence from empirical studies of reading, however, suggests that these aspects of hypertext may disrupt reading. In a study of readers who read either a simulated literary hypertext or the same text in linear form, we found a range of significant differences: these suggest that hypertext discourages the absorbed and reflective mode that characterizes literary reading.

   (Source: abstract.)

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 10.05.2012 - 16:00

6. Beyond Myth and Metaphor: Narrative in Digital Media

   The concept of narrative has been widely invoked by theorists of digital textuality, but the promotion of what is described as the storytelling power of the computer has often relied on shallow metaphors, loose conceptions of narrative, and literary models that ignore the distinctive properties of the digital medium. Two myths have dominated this theorization. The myth of the Aleph (as I call it) presents the digital text as a finite text that contains an infinite number of stories. The myth of the Holodeck envisions digital narrative as a virtual environment in which the user becomes a character in a plot similar to those of Victorian novels or Shakespearean tragedies. Both of these myths rely on questionable assumptions: that any permutation of a collection of lexias results in a coherent story; that it is aesthetically desirable to be the hero of a story; and that digital narrativity should cover the same range of emotional experiences as literary narrative. Here I argue that digital narrative should emancipate itself from literary models. But I also view narrative as a universal structure that transcends media.

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 15.05.2012 - 14:07

7. The Challenge of Cybertext: Teaching Literature in the Digital World

   This article discusses the changing role of literature in the contemporary media landscape. Literary scholarship may well maintain its importance in the digitalizing world, but this requires it to engage in an open dialogue with cultural and media studies. It is important that more attention is paid to contemporary literature as well as to new media offering significant pedagogical possibilities, which should be better acknowledged. The article's main focus is on the emerging field of digital literature. Cybertextuality, especially, is fundamentally changing our notions of the integrity of a literary work, reading, writing and interpretation. I attempt to describe and put into context one sample case of cybertextuality, The Impermanence Agent by Noah Wardrip-Fruin et al. Finally, I discuss some of the practical problems faced by teachers who introduce digital literature in their classrooms.

   (Source: Author's abstract)

   Reprinted in Online Learning Vol 2: Digital Pedagogies (Sage, New York, 2011)

   Patricia Tomaszek - 09.10.2012 - 15:28

8. When Digital Literature goes Multimedia: Three German Examples

   In February 2000 Robert Coover noticed the "constant threat of hypermedia: to suck the substance out of a work of lettered art, reduce it to surface spectacle". Coover's message seems to be: When literature goes multimedia, when hypertext turns into hypermedia a shift takes place from serious aesthetics to superficial entertainment. What Coover points out is indeed a problem of hypermedia. If the risk of hyperfiction is to link without meaning, the risk of hypermedia is to employ effects that only flex the technical muscles. Can there be substance behind spectacle? In this paper I discuss three examples of German digital literature which combine the attraction of technical aesthetics with the attraction of deeper meaning.

   Jill Walker Rettberg - 09.10.2012 - 22:12

9. Machine Enhanced (Re)minding: the Development of Storyspace

   This article traces the history of Storyspace, the world’s first program for creating, editing and reading hypertext fiction. Storyspace is crucial to the history of hypertext as well as the history of interactive fiction. It argues that Storyspace was built around a topographic metaphor and that it attempts to model human associative memory. The article is based on interviews with key hypertext pioneers as well as documents created at the time.

   Jill Walker Rettberg - 04.11.2012 - 09:43

10. Authors, Readers, and Progression in Hypertext Narrative

    George Landow, Espen J. Aarseth, Stuart Moulthrop and many
    others have heralded the development of hypertext because they
    believe it represents a revolution in textuality that will radically
    alter how we read and write, including of course how we read and
    write narrative. Print texts, we are reminded by the champions of
    this new medium, are linear while hypertexts are nonlinear.
    Consequently, the argument goes, print narratives encourage reading
    in a fixed, straight-line sequence—one word after another, one
    page after another—under the control of the author. Even postmodern
    attempts to subvert the fixity of the print sequence cannot
    overcome the stability of the printed page and the restrictions on
    format imposed by the traditional book. Hypertext narratives, on
    the other hand, are fluid by design; their sequence changes based
    on readerly decisions. To put it another way, as those who advance
    this argument sometimes do, readers approach hypertext narratives
    from variable positions within the narrative, and so their progression
    through the text—indeed, the progression of the text—is not

    Patricia Tomaszek - 16.11.2012 - 15:32

Pages