Category Archives: Hypertext

The Medieval Hypertext

Since we have Chaucer on the brain these days, I am continually reminded of the conceptual links that should happen when a student of the literature (he or she could be anyone) struggles with the wife of Bath. The wife addresses not just the question of marriage in her own circumstance but also its in relation to the past and to its authorities, reading by literal and historical exegesis. She says

For thanne th’Apostle saith that I am free
To wedde, a Goddes half, where it liketh me.
He saide that to be wedded is no sinne:
Bet is to be wedded than to brinne.

She then “links” to “Lamech,” Abraham, and Jacob.

For more.

Guardfields in eduhypertexts

The fall semester will see me teaching two lit courses online, one straight on and the other as a hybrid course, where students meet with me once a week and make other time for meeting online in the foums of WebCT Vista. This may be my last online course for a while. I’ve taught online courses now going on close to five years and have become fatigued (“Captain, I grow fatigued”) with the environment. The next few years will see a concentration on intensifying the semester by using tech to “grow” the learning space beyond the “arbitrary” classroom. I keep going back to what my friends Larry Johnson and Robert Wren called the 24 hour classroom back in the late eighties.

One approach I want to try is having students talk about a piece of music online and in this way acquaint themselves with the Vista forums and the general geography of the learning space. Once they’ve done some work with the music, considering the lyrics and the phenomenon of music as something to “discuss” and argue about (much as we will do with the literature, then other areas of the course will open using Vista’s release tools.

This got me to thinking about guardfields in Storyspace and their significance to the experience of hypertext. The release tools in Vista behave like guardfields in that they restrict certain kinds of information from appearing in the new media space given a variety of conditions, much like levels in a computer game, which, until certain conditions are met, will open in all their glory. Pedagogically, this is one way of assessing a person’s path through the material of a college course.

Stoning Field update almost final

Neha gives me too much credit for the “totally new” comment in her post over at Narratives. The overall work is really no big deal; the interesting thing for me has been the “making.” Nevertheless, the meat of Stoning Field is basically completed, all the media content in the right place, and now comes the online test on the server for media quality et cetera. The biggest headache I’ve had is with organizing lots of things into multiple files and worrying about size and how to load things up on the reader’s end. The files range in size from small to bigger, the biggest about 7 megs because of video but overall I’m averaging about 5 to 600 kb, which is no sweat for broadband. Most of the video is set for streaming but the files need to go up for test.

Then it’s off to figure what to do with the project once tested.

Overall, the only thing that really interest me about Flash is ActionScript. For example, the following code generates an interesting animation that came about through trail and error and luck. Note the formatting isn’t true in this example:

function gameani() {
this._y += this.speedy;
if(this._y > 100) {
games.g._rotation += 5;
games.g._xscale += 3;
games.g._height += 5;
}
if(this._y > 200) {
for(var i = 0; i < 5; i++) { games.duplicateMovieClip("games" + i, i); games._x = Math.random() * 500; games._y = Math.random() * 500; games._xscale = Math.random() * 100; games._yscale = Math.random() * 100; games._alpha = Math.random() * 100; } } updateAfterEvent(); } function warani() { this._y += this.speedy - 1; if(this._y > 100) {
war.w._rotation += 5;
war.a01._rotation -= 5;
war.a01._xscale += 2;
war.a01._height += 5;
war.r._rotation += 75;
war.r._height += 5;
}
if(this._y > 150) {
for(var k = 0; k < 6; k++) { war.duplicateMovieClip("war" + k, k); war._x = Math.random() * 500; war._y = Math.random() * 500; war._alpha = Math.random() * 100; war._xscale = Math.random() * 100; war._yscale = Math.random() * 100; } } updateAfterEvent(); } games.onEnterFrame = gameani; war.onEnterFrame = warani; games.speedy = 2; war.speedy = 2;

The effect moves then toys with two movie clips, games and war, “tweening” then breaking apart text for a random effect that would be impossible to duplicate on the Flash timeline using the design tools. After duplicating the clips, though, I didn’t necessarily know what exactly would happen. The important part here is working with clips within clips and teasing each nested letter by tracing its “path.” I “know” what the code is doing but I didn’t know what the code would look like on the stage when the animation kicked in. The functions are basic, but even with basic code interesting and unforseen things can happen. Like writing a story, therefore, the code behind the behavior can often lead to things unknown and unseen.

Stoning Field update

As an obsessive, I find that it’s hard to let anything go that’s grabbed my interest, until the next thing comes along. One of the items on the obsession list is Stoning Field in Flash. With this I’m loving the programming. I remember back in the late seventies and early eighties being unable to get into BASIC because I really had nothing to do with it. The use never made sense to me. But the visual programming side of things has really grabbed me because it belies larger interests in spatialand memorial simulation. I work on the fundamental principles and the overall project. Anyway, there are two cells left to go then a whole lot of sweatening and then prep for publication. Then on to MX 2004, Lingo, and the college Composition course being built as a total digital environment.

Stoning Field update

With a little break before summer teaching and other work, I’ve been able to make headway on Stoning Field, a short story that I’m repurposing in Flash MX (not 2004, which I have yet to work with, although I’ve been practicing the new strong typing of ActionScript 2.0).

Anyway, what’s going on with the project?

First off a little background. I started planning the project in Storyspace, a decision that’s really payed off. Storyspace provided first iteration beyond the textual story and also set up the structure of the hypertext later to be mimed in scriptlinks. Next came further thinking about the bottom up creation in Flash, which can be problematic. Why? Because of the involvement of video. Originally, I had considered using very small video clips in certain areas of the work to act as motif and as a means of playing with time. The video clips represent memory as visualized instances and as a representation of “present time” action in the story. While the text of the story may involve a struggle to get somewhere in the “present,” video may represent a mental state or recollection hinted at in some other, earlier area of the story. Okay so far. But I had to crank up the quality of the video clips just a tad because of the optional sizing issues in Flash mcs, and because I can’t really know when the urge might come to say, “Hm, I need something a little bigger here.” A clip can be nested (contained) in a mc then resized on the stage. If it is decided later that a clip should cover say 400 by 400 pixels, the video has to be of sufficient quality to compensate. This, of course, means that the Flash files are going to get larger and larger and you change your mind later then you really can’t get the space back.

I had originally thought that I’d contain every cell of the story in one file and aggregate it in scenes. Quickly, it became apparent that 21 scenes with who knows how much video to come would be too big for Flash to handle with confidence, and I hadn’t reaaly envisioned a lot of multimedia in the first place. By scene 7, the fla was already climbing into the 30Mb range and I was having a difficult time saving for safety onto CD. This issue started to nag at me so much that concentrating on the “real” work became difficult. Luckily, copy/pasting frames and libraries into new swfs and having them “act” like scenes is simple enough. Director is the workhorse, however, for these bigger self-contained projects.

I had already taken the time to consider stage-size, button-size, palette, environment UI, degrees of interactivity, and instance names so the only real pain was the video itself.

Anyway, I revised the project by converting to this new structure: Multiple flas that load into level 0s. This gave me the opportunity to fine tune the embedded video and treat it with a little more respect. In addition to the Flash changes, I went back into Storyspace and retitled and reworked the text spaces to reflect the changes in Flash because Storyspace helps to maintain continuity. While I work, I have Storyspace, a notebook, and Flash open at the same time.

Now I’ve come to the fun part. It’s time to sculpt the later flas to suit the story and to add what needs to be added: animations, photograph and video manipulation, and hopefully the funof scripting.

Paths
In Stoning Field there are two base paths. One dictates the “present tense” (PathA) the other a memorial counterpoint (PathB). Here are two examples:

PathA:

In the desert beyond the stoning field, dust devils ride the sand. They disappear, reappear, impossible to forecast, invoked out of the elements that generate clouds and other fog and wind forms, blurring the distances, scrubbing the horizon in their circumambulations under the sun. The children see them as they leave the street and enter the field. They feel accompanied.

PathB:

At twelve years, I broke my wrist playing tetherball. The big yellow ball spun above me in quickly decreasing ellipses around the pole. I made a hard fist and leapt for the ball and struck the metal loop linking ball to rope. I remember hearing the metalic ring of a bell behind the crack of the bone. I don’t recall pain, but I do remember the sound and the infexibility of steel.

And I wonder if the authorities banned that loop. Did they put it on trial?

The idea here is to let the paths go but to also “tether” them together. Tethering, play, and odd forces are all ideas that keep coming up in the text; I didn’t have to think about “making sure” things fit together this way. It happened that the “tethers” exist. In the path B example above, it makes sense to “tie” a little yellow ball to _xmouse, _ymouse using a few variables that simulate inertia, flex, or acceleration to give a little push and pull to the interaction with the current frame.

Interesting challenges.

Recognizing the difference

Doug Miller, William Cole, and Hugh Nicoll are commenting on Mark Bernstein’s and Eastgate’s response time to questions, issues, and problems. I recall many times rushing an email off to Mark on this or that concerning Storyspace (I’m one of those who’s waiting for Tinderbox for Win, too) and having a response within the hour or after lunch. It’s just too weird. Shouldn’t Eastgate have a techline with lots and lots of voice instructions? Shouldn’t Dr. Bernstein hide his email so that he becomes increasingly hard to contact?

Good thing they don’t. I hope Mark never tires of the email.

the link and the lexia

Michael van Mantgems hypertext Completing the Circle is a great example of how language structures work in hypertext space in general. Not to mention it being a great story about Haller, a man who weaves and intersects across scotomatic space struggling against the tragedy of the linear.

Consider this lexia, titled Images, and its links:

She moved her hand up his leg in measured, smooth, contractions. She still hoped that his labored breathing could be a sign of sexual arousal.

He pressed deeper into his seat, trying to create a safe distance from his dream. Fragments. He took a few deep breaths to prepare for the images that were beginning to appear in front of him. Fragments of faces. Pieces of time. A first kiss. Dreams intersecting. Dreams changing. Dreams compressed.

Here Haller is in a car with Mary. Theyve parked; theyre watching the Albuquerque light line through the darkness. The scene has snugged into the car. The paragraphs disclose irony in that what Mary hopes Haller is thinking doesnt quite match his internal state; shes seeking closeness through physical touching. Well learn later that Haller wants a closeness that was beyond sex, an intimacy beyond mere penetration. The reader is invited into both characters heads. But to see these characters develop we must traverse the links, perhaps opening narratives we may not expect, unanticipated forks.

In “Images,” the text links include fragments of faces, a first kiss, dreams intersecting, and dreams compressed.

A first kiss links to this text, titled Movement:

Her body moved despite her.

This sentence length paragraph begins with the word Her which recalls the initial word of the prior lexia She. It could be that the pronouns refer to the same woman, but does the link itself, embedded in the prior paragraph, compel a different expectation given that a first kiss suggests movement back into the past. In addition, the destination of a first kiss is enigmatic: Her body moved despite her, a description that doesnt really correspond to the narrators attitude toward Mary, who hoped that his labored breathing could be a sign of sexual arousal. The first paragraph of Images is thick with Marys movements, her desperation. She moved her hand. The movements are measured and smooth. Hallers breath is labored. But hes concerned with dreams and the links would suggest in the context of the writing mental drift, internal considerations, perhaps even regret, all of which would suggest a journey through the past, thus the links would be memorial in nature. These anticipatory considerations all form continuity across the paths of the hypertext.

Her body moved despite her sources to Sex Scene:

The anticipation of what lay ahead caused him to shiver uncontrollably. His skin became rough as it constricted around him. Every sound, every texture was distinct and immediate; the sweat trapped against his scrotum the roughness of his underwear the softness of her bed the slap of her feet against the tile bathroom floor the flush of the toilet the click of the lightswitch the shadows playing outside and against the far wall dancing, dancing in and out of focus the rustle of sheets the coolness of his fingernails as they slid along his own thighs the tug of underwear the clinging of elastic the delicacy of her breath the hardness of her lips the strings of saliva stretched between their tongues the smoothness of her freshly shaved legs the thin sheen of sweat across his back her fingers burrowing into the matted fur on his chest the press of fingertips to nipple the weight of his body pressing down on hers the fumble of hands the resistance of elastic and silk the crack of hips spreading open the whiteness of clenched and quaking hands the pressure of penis against vulva the pressure of penis against vulva the pressure of penis against vulva the pressure of penis against vulva. . .

I leave it here. Is this the past? Obviously. Continuity can be read in the path from Images to Movement to Sex Scene, only one path out of Images in the use of pronoun, the specific tone of the narrator space to space, persona, subject, and, of course, the link itself, whether it be a word or a word group. In the hypertext, source, link, destination are all at play in meaning, forming a new semantical grammar and logic. Indeed, the juxtaposing of The anticipation of what lay ahead caused him to shiver uncontrollably with Her body moved despite her with He took a few deep breaths to prepare for the images that were beginning to appear in front of him. Fragments of faces. Pieces of time. A first kiss. Dreams intersecting. Dreams changing. Dreams compressed, snipped here as I would be likely to think about them in readerly retrospect, invoke not a distorted set but a vigorous rereading and concentration on the reasons why the paths have been constructed as they are: in other words, Im being asked to pay attention to structure, to meaning, to context, to details in my act of reading, rereading, and understanding. As I read I move back and forth; I try out different paths; I concentrate on the context and action, and, importantly, forgo the habit of thinking that Im missing something or being tricked because if I follow one path, I may be missing something on another (It could that I could just click through 20 spaces and stop and try to find my way “out” or the edge of the circle). Im forgetting that in order to read Completing the Circle I have to read it in some predisposed sequence. I go where my interests are pushing, given the density and attraction of the link structure. Im not free to go where ever I wish, since the hypertext is woven before Ive begun to read it just as any story is. I sense the story and just read, constructing meaning and finding continuity along the way.

what does the link mean?

But remediation allows for afterthought, and this is where I went: Beside the wooden bridge and railroad trestle, along the banks there are no Union soldiers, but instead the men are raggy-clothed and skinning possum for a meal. But hyper-reality, not fiction, changed the links to empty banks.

New Haven city streets where beggars sat on blankets at the front doors of the Malley’s, Eli Moore’s and Kresge’s to catch the shoppers at their slower pace. These too, are gone.

This is a great transition in terms of carrying over an “impled” link in terms of the hypertextual, a technique I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

In the writing, what is the nature of the link?