Points for Hypermedia Critics

Bill Marsh
Factory School and U. C. San Diego
Email: b-theater@factoryschool.org Web site: http://www.factoryschool.org/btheater
Key features: References; Author Details

All the nodes in this issue:

Editorial
Bibliography of Hypertext Criticism

Mez Breeze

Julianne Chatelain Richard E. Higgason Deena Larsen Bill Marsh Adrian Miles Jenny Weight

Hypermedia is a kind of writing that by definition cuts across several kinds of activity. Identifying possible axes of formal comparison might help coordinate a hypermedia theory in relation to the activities it endeavors to theorize. The following general points argue provisionally that hypermedia is formal in three ways: as simultaneously formative, performative, and reformative. Discussing particular works of hypermedia along these three axes might help concretize recent efforts to theorize the complex "cultural spaces and experiences of new media" (Lillie 2001).

Hypermedia is formative in the sense that works or instances (Web-based or stand-alone computer installations) come together in specific contexts that cannot necessarily be captured or repeated. Assuming then that hypermedia instances are condition or context-dependent, it seems important to ask under what conditions a work of hypermedia might come into being--formed, fleshed out, realized--in real times and places? Likewise, how do changes to the conditions of a new media instance affect a potential reading or a series of readings in different times or spaces? These questions suggest a range of sub-questions turning on issues of location (personal/organizational Web site, database-driven, distributed, mobile or stationary), duration (streaming and animation, timeline/flowchart structure, different versions, datedness of mark-up protocol), and composition (types of software, required plug-ins, kinds of content or media elements). Bracketed items offer a short list of potential points of comparison and analysis across hypermedia works and different versions of works.

If hypermedia instances take on potentially variant forms depending on how things come together (or don't) at a given time and place, then hypermedia can also be regarded as fundamentally performative: works of hypermedia evoke experiences unique to the participant(s) in a given setting. Hypermedia instances, in other words, foreground the situatedness of artistic practice and experience. As a computer network-based art form in particular, variables that might otherwise be dismissed as 'externalities' assert themselves as relevant to the form/performance of a given work. For example, machine, connection and processor speed, machine type, browser type, user selections and choices, time of day, cost of access and user skill are some variables that can affect hypermedia practice, production and interaction in more than just tangential ways. To mark, define and explicate externalities of this kind is to redefine what is internal to a given work.

Considerations of the formative and performative aspects of hypermedia also intersect with broader questions about the reformative (remediative) power of hypermedia and its sponsoring technologies (for more on "remediation," see Bolter and Grusin (2000)). Hypermedia performances, in other words, contribute to an ongoing reformation of the sociotechnical arena within which particular instances come together and become available. Obvious questions of distribution and access present themselves, along with more specific questions regarding availability of software, connection speed, browser and hardware requirements, organizational affiliations, as well as gender, race, class, language and ability/disability assumptions, to name just a few points of inquiry. Hypermedia instances both inform and perform epistemological norms, thus offering possibilities for social reform as well. In general, hypermedia theory might benefit from a broader sense of the forms and formalities of hypermedia instances, particularly where these intersect with political questions. There is, as Manovich (2001: 46) argues, a "cultural layer of new media". To treat of the formative, performative and reformative nature of hypermedia is to treat of that layer directly.

References

Bolter, Jay David and Grusin, Richard  (2000) Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press)

Lillie, Jonathan (2002) "An Introduction to NMEDIAC, The Journal of New Media and Culture". The Journal of New Media and Culture, 1(1), Winter
http://www.ibiblio.org/nmediac/winter2002/intro.html

Manovich, Lev (2001) The Language of New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press)