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Forepaper by
Susana
Pajares Tosca, (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
for Messenger Morphs the Media
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HYPERTEXT WRITERS' WORKSHOP POSITION
STATEMENT
I am a graduate student who has been working on web
publishing for some years, and whose doctoral dissertation
(in progress) takes a look at James Joyce´s work from
the point of view of hypertext theory. I started my research
studying Reader Response Criticism and Literary Pragmatics,
so that I was inmediately attracted by hypertext s a
physical way of following reading paths and to play with the
reader´s expectations
After having read a lot of hypertext literature and many
hypertexts (fiction and non fiction), my initial enthusiasm
has been replaced by a need to problematize hypertext theory
assumptions and to push its points, even though I´m
still fascinated by its structural possibilities. (A good
reading on this that is relatively recent could be
Aarseth´s Cybertext)
Sometimes hypertext literature goes further in its
descriptions than the technical implementations themselves,
and I think this workshop is a good opportunity for both
fields to collaborate and to clarify:
- What can we actually do.
- What do we want to do and how could we best do it.
The proposed discussion sessions deal with these and
other related important questions like: readability,
navigation techniques, structure, usability testing, systems
compatibility, etc. I am also interested in hypertext´s
capability of integrating different languages: text, image,
sound..., and the changes this brings to the reading
process, so that some authors don´t talk about
"reading" anymore, although I think the term is still useful
I would like to discuss the actual degree of choice that
the reader of hypertext experiments and how she influences
the development of stories. If hypertext is a
reader-oriented environment, authors and programmers have to
take readers into account when creating structures and
tools. What programs satisfy these needs and how could they
be improved is another interesting question.
Postmodern readers can read almost anything and are
willing to make sense of it. What do readers look for in
hyperfiction? The story? Is it a game whose end is to
assemble the pieces a linear book gives already assembled?
(I´m being deliberately provoking here).
A problem I see when trying to deal with these questions
is that all hypertexts are different, even when done with
the same program, and that the possibilities of choice could
change with each hypertext. Still, we should be able to find
some common ground to start our discussion. _
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