Hypertext / Cybertext / Poetext >>
John Cayley
Creator of poetry-generating programs that thrive on human input, John
Cayley presents a wide-ranging essay on the possibilities and limitations
of cybertext as an interactive medium. In part, Cayleyâs essay, navigatable
in hypertext form, questions the ãnewnessä of the interactive qualities of
storytelling and performance enabled by cybertext by placing it into a
historical context of not only the authors of the 20th century who pushed
the limits of the book to encompass multilinear and encyclopedically rich
literature, but also back further to bards, who altered their performances to
reflect the desires of the audience. Cybertext has the potential to return the
bard, in new digital form, to the Net connected world.
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||| HIAFF 3.0 | university of colorado | department of art and art history | digital arts area | in conjunction with alt-x | atlas | blurr
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[Intro] Bard and audience were able to develop a
relationship÷not one in which skill (even mastery) was necessarily in
doubt, nor a sense of the ãpriorityä of the impetus to produce verbal art,
but one, nonetheless, which allowed the work to be significantly,
meaningfully changed and, in exceptional circumstances, co-created.
These possibilities, which are not typically or materially available to pure
literary or text-based performance, are not only accessible but, arguably,
extended and radicalized in a cybertextuality where literary objects
themselves both perform to their readers and are worked with by these
readers as co-authors and co-programmers.
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