Hypertext by Marie-Laure Ryan

The seventh chapter of Marie-Laure Ryan's book Narrative as Virtual Reality deals with selective interactivity, or the hypertexts to be more exact. A hypertextual system is composed of fragments of texts that are electronicly linked to each other. Each fragment contains multiple links to several other fragments that will be displayed if the reader chooses to click on the respective link.

     In the seventh chapter, Hypertext: The Functions and Effects of Selective Interactivity, Ryan Displays an x-ray image of the theories that circulate the academic field. She initially catalogues types of interactivity, lists the effects of such texts, offers a text typology with detailed explanations and finally names the properties of electronic medium and its relevance to hypertexts. It is conveyed that there are different interpretive scenarios for the readers as they deal with hypertexts; each casting a tailoring a different role for the reader. One might consider such a reading experience like navigating through the landscape of text; solving a puzzle by trying to put pieces together or like walking in a supermarket with a shopping cart and putting the desired fragments of text in the cart. She observes that while the there are different approaches to the mode of creating a story out of the aforementioned fragments of hypertexts, the central goal on the part of the reader is to overcome the fragmented structure and achieve a coherent story.

     Furthermore, Ryan defines terms such as 'reactive interaction', 'random selection', 'selective interactivity', 'hypertext' and 'ergodic literature' in order to support her cluster of categories for forms of literature. Similarly, she lists variations of interactivity, atractive aspects of interactivity to the consumer, elements of the electronic medium and conceptualisations of interactivity.

     In the part which she calls an interlude, Ryan focuses on the hypertext Twelve Blue by Michael Joyce in order to practice these theories as well as to convey her conclusions. Ryan Points out the inconsistent and uncertain aspect of hypertexts: the reader of a hypertext is left uncertain whether he has read the full text after he seemingly finished reading. Additionally, the Reader is alone in his reading experience as communicating the individual reading experience is complex and complicated. However, every hypertext has a fixed entry Point, although the course of the reading experience is an individual one.

S. Ketenci & S. Plum

Video Games and Interactive Fiction

In her article The first great works of digital literature are already being written Naomi Alderman makes a strong case for video games being a prominent form of digital literature. Nowadays, literature which originated from oral storytelling has many faces and voices. Alderman focuses on the story telling aspect of narration and there are many video games on the marked that make a point of telling a story. Some offer a 'free play' and a 'story mode'. While 'free play' does not necessarily have a set goal, the 'story mode' usually does. Follow this link to read Alderman's full article.

     Games, such as Dear Esther, stress the importance of the story in the game by reducing the player's possibilities in the sectors of making decisions and taking action. Other games, such as Little Big Planet or Tearaway, combine aspects of hit-and-run, mini-game and riddle or task solving with a narrative voice that reminds of a classical night time story telling situation. Both games encouraged the player to build an own story line or mini game. Furthermore, they promote their online community in which players can share their creations. The interactivity between the game and the player as well as between player and other players bears characteristics of a hypertext.

     Tearaway includes the player not only in the usual way of letting him control the protagonist of the game, it also includes the player as a separate character in the game. The cameras and the microphones of the PlayStation Vita enable the game to add video sequences, photos of the player and his surroundings and his voice to the story line. As the sun, the player looks over the letter on his journey. Video sequences add to the story telling aspect of the game.

     The player has less of an impact on the story in Little Big Planet; however, it stresses its story telling character. The main narrator of the game is Stephen Fry who is a popular narrator of audio-books, television series, films, documentaries and video games. The familiarity of his voice, his story and character introductions, and his extradiegetic quality add to the narrative quality of the game. Hugh Laurie who took on the role of Newton in Little Big Planet 3 points out that story telling remains story telling whether it is a book, a film or a video game. As and old friend and colleague of Stephen Fry, he also indicates Fry's adequate casting as the narrator of the series.

     Incidentally, Stephen Fry is the narrator of the of the film adaption of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005). The story, which has been picked up in several television-, radio, and book series, has also been depicted in an interactive fiction. An interactive fiction relinquishes any kind of visual features and only consists of written words. The platform reminds of the layout of a chatroom or online forum and the action is conveyed solely through words. The inter-textual experience of the game is build on the phenomenon of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; however, a solid knowledge of Douglas Adams' works do not ensure a successful gaming experience. The player still has to take the game as an individual work in order to solve it. Familiarity with the conventions of interactive fiction and trial & error runs added to the knowledge about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are necessary to solve the puzzle. The simplicity of the game make this form of literature accessible to a broad reader-/player-ship.

     To play the game and to find other interactive fictions follow this link.

S. Plum

Literature in the Digital Age

In Adam Hammond’s book Literature in the Digital Age, he examines a number of questions, which pertain to the survival of print literature in an era, where everything is becoming digital. Hammond begins by employing McLuhan’s famously confusing theory “the medium is the message”, which only began to “come into focus in 1993 with the birth of the internet” (3). The theory does not imply the content of the message to be the medium, but the new medium, which “creates a new situation for human associations and human perceptions” (3). 

      Hammond continues to discuss the intrinsic swing from literary reading, noting “No group is more sensitive to the changes inherent in the shift to digital forms than readers of literature” (4). In part one of Hammond’s text, he goes further to include Nicholas Carr’s 2008 Atlantic article, “Is Good Making Us Stupid”, in which Hammond examines changes in Carr’s “slackening in his ability to focus” (5). The digital era is causing an inevitable shift in literature as it has been known for centuries; Hammond notes “it is a specific type of reading – literary reading…is most threatened in the digital age” (5). 

     In response to Carr’s argument that the internet initiated the death of literary reading, Clay Shirky disagrees noting television initially casted the first stone, which led to literature’s downfall, however where television didn’t completely destroy literature, stating it “retained some cultural statues”, the digital era finished the job. This new era does, for better or for worse, “bring back literature as an activity”, it, nevertheless, failed to pull literary reading back into the scope of popularity (8). This new form of “digital textuality”, according to Shirky, delineates a new form of democracy, which “expands our ability to create and share written material” (8). 

     Overall, Hammond goes into the history of writing and literature to highlight the shift and popularity of literary reading and its downfall. Hammond demarcates different notions of digitalized writing, and eventually concludes that “the fate of print is by no means sealed” (20). Literature’s embracing of digitalization will call for a literary digital renaissance, according to Hammond, but of course, that remains to be seen.

T. E. Stroud

Twelve Blue by Michael Joyce

Reading a text in a classical print version or a hypertext in a digital version is a main aspect tackled in this text. Michael Joyce claims that reading hypertexts is a highly individual experience that is difficult to share. When a reader clicks on a certain word, one might reach a different description no one else has reached before. By knowing this, a discourse can be established between readers exchanging their different reception and understanding of the text. These different interpretations lead the readers to build up a cultural knowledge and makes reading an interesting experience. It is the dynamic of  the text and not the plot that makes reading an experience.

     In his short story Twelve Blue Michael Joyce tries to derive some cognitive lessons about the knots and  bolts of the reading process. Normally every hypertext starts with an entry address so that the reader knows what to expect or where the journey is going. In Twelve Blue this this is not the case, the entry is presented as a hallway with twelve corridors in different colors. It is the reader´s role to define the way of entering the story. It is a platform with twelve lines divide the picture into eight vertical bars. It is the reader´s role to click on any space he chooses to open a link to a short story, so the sequence of the story is determined by the reader and not the writer hence the adventure.

Screenshot: Twelve Blue

L. Chihabi

Dear Esther

     Dear Esther (2012) is a video game developed by Dan Pinchbeck for the Chinese Room an independent production company. The game does not follow the traditional conventions of a video game, because it imposes a minimum interaction of the player and does not require many decisions to be made or tasks to be accomplished. Instead, the focus is put on the story line which is narrated by an epistolary narrator. It is a piece of interactive visual storytelling.

      Dear Esther offers two hours that will leave you feeling edified, contemplative, and possibly even emotionally moved. It is a story of a shipwrecked castaway on a Hebridean island, delivered through spoken lines of sumptuous, disconnected prose as you walk around detailed landscape. The text written in the game is florid, flitting all the time in an unsettling way between past and present. At the beginning of the game, the narrator will talk about the history of the island. Later on his commentary becomes stranger and more impassioned. The mystery the story poses is supported by the picturesque landscape which becomes increasingly gloomy through the setting sun. The subtle music adds an uncanny feeling to the journey over the island.

     The aspect of immersion in Dear Esther differs from experiences of reading a linear narration as well as from the experience of playing other video games. As a player your focus is shifted to reading instead of experiencing the story line of the game by being a deciding factor of the action. The experience becomes a much more passive one than in role play- or hit and run games. As a reader the experience is altered through the games visibility. Instead of creating the image in his head the reader is presented with the world he immerse to.

     Four years after its original publication, Dear Esther is still an ongoing project. To find out more about the original game as well as updated versions follow this link.

  M. Hamouda & S. Plum

Twitter Narratives

The Right Sort by David Mitchell 

Having already published his many intricate novels, in 2014 David Mitchell decided to use Twitter as the means for publishing his new short story The Right Sort. The short story was published as a series of more than two hundred and eighty tweets in the course of one week.

     Although Twitter made it possible for a vast audience to access the short story in the making, read it and follow the events, it sounded a bit difficult to follow the tweets published randomly by Mitchell in the morning or at night. In the end, the story was published as a reorganized set of tweets, which made it easier to follow and enjoy.

     Using Twitter as a means of creation might seem impossible, however, David Mitchell proved it wrong by this project and had a great reception by his readers.

Black Box by Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan, award winning novelist, took over the twitter account of the New Yorker and published Black Box, a novel published sentence by sentence on the social media platform.

     The story appears as a female spy’s handbook: the female intelligence officer, posing as a ‘beauty’, infiltrated the realm of the violent and most dangerous target. The handbook-style of the narration displays what happens to the agent, what her choices are, which choices she makes and ultimately what the consequences of her actions are. Furthermore, this form of interior monologue shows a coping mechanism of a woman who is caught between the role she has to play to fulfill her mission and the emotional self that is violated and endangered by an aggressor.

     Egan’s portray of this spy is thrilling and engaging. Similar to a John Le Carré novel, the reader fears for the protagonist to be exposed and at the same time hopes for more daring moves by the protagonist that lead to greater knowledge. Egan’s protagonist, however, is not fully entangled in her professional life. She has a life away from her job, the wish to come back to a husband after a successful mission, which opposes the notion of the ‘Black Box’. Upon losing her cover the agent’s basic aim is to ensure her body to reach her agency as a black box, a record of her actions and discoveries.

     The limitations of a twitter post create a sequence of short to medium length sentences which add up to 47 short chapters. The jumps from post to post, from sentence to sentence, play along with the flow of the actions. The reading speed increases through jumps but also through repeated beginnings of sentences. The text has a list like character in chapters such as chapter 43. The handbook that is mostly directed at the narrator herself, consists of short commands, observations and choices that match the length of a tweet. 

Z. Lessan & S. Plum

Ghost Texts and Hyper Texts

On the Birthday of a Stranger by Michael Joyce initially presents as a collection of several short textual elements which could potentially bare a connection, creating a continuous plot. While progressing through the 26 texts which are all accompanied by a single black and white image each, the reader soon notices that even though some stories share a similar topic, none have an actual connection that could be seen as a classical “story line”. The reader more or less creates his own story while reading the next. Apart from the 26 initial texts, each page also shows one phrase at the bottom, which is used in order to navigate through the story. As well as this the text also includes 7 “ghost texts” with coloured images, which the text can skip to randomly, during any point of the story.

     These “ghost texts” also create one of two major similarities between On the Birthday of a Stranger and Twelve Blue. Both texts change throughout the reading process. While Twelve Blue has certain textual elements which disappear after being clicked for the first time, On the Birthday of a Stranger presents with magically appearing stories, making the two works ergodic texts. The second similarity that can be found is that both texts present with a central “hub” or menu. While Twelve Blue presents with a piece of abstract art on almost every page, On the Birthday of a Stranger has a map, which can be accessed through almost every page by clicking on the “coordinates” highlighted in red. This means that in both cases the reader is given a guideline, something to orientate himself while trying to understand the concept of the text itself.

    The Brain Drawing the Bullet  is a fictional hypertext based on a real event, the murder case of W. S. Burroughs’ wife, Joan Vollmer, in Mexico, written by Alan Trotter. The story is told using the Cut-Up method, established by W. S. Burroughs, meaning that the element of “chance” is added to a text.  The hypertext presents with 10 editorial and 10 story related texts while the author’s own views of the events are constantly interrupting the reading.

         Another element which can be traced back to the Cut-Up method, is the ergodic nature of the text. Certain textual passages have the chance to change after, before or during reading, creating yet again a similarity to Twelve Blue. This might be the only similarity between the two texts that can be found. While both have certain story lines, The Brain Drawing the Bullet focuses on one character yet does not allow you to follow him due to the disruptive nature of the texts. There is a lot of repetition due to the fact that you are witnessing the constant retelling of an event. Additionally Alan Trotters text presents which a much simpler structure, with the complete text being visible on one page. The reader uncovers more and more text but does not actually skip from page to page. This also makes a menu, as presented in both On the Birthday of a Stranger and Twelve Blue, obsolete.

 J. Petri & K. Freeman

The Decisions In Reading

A seemingly new aspect of digital literature is its interactivity – the possibility for the reader to be a deciding factor on the course of a story. However, there is a long tradition of interactivity in narration, namely in face-to-face storytelling, in live performances as well as in books that offer different options in continuing a story. Nevertheless, digital literature and the possibilities the Internet offers widen the scope of interactivity of the reader.

     Jorge Luis Borges picked up on the phenomenon that is interactivity in literature in his short story The Garden of Forking Paths. The narration deals with the concept of unlimited choices in a story line. The ‘labyrinth of words’ the novel of unlimited possibility poses appears as a riddle to the ones who try to make sense of it in the story. Borges’s idea of the unlimited novel, his ‘labyrinth’, is closely related to the Internet.

     The ‘labyrinth’ has become an established aspect of online reading. Search engines do not only provide the reader with texts but also with countless follow-up options or parallel reading opportunities. Knowledge is as accessible as never before; however, it has to be found in the maze of the internet. Borges unlimited novel is a printed version of an internet search.

     In an article the Yale University of Art picks up on this relation of the short story and the Internet. To read the full article follow this link.

S. Plum