Speaking of J. Nathan Matias, I should take a moment to point his newest hypertext,Philadelphia Fullerene. The author describes the work as a:
geodesic narrative montage showing people, events, and themes of ethnic life in mid-19th century Philadelphia. [...] A multidisciplinary project, it pulls together skills in art, engineering, history, writing, performance, and recording.
Nathan was kind enough to mention my work in his description of the piece, so I won’t argue with him, but I would like to point something out in response to one of his paragraphs:
I may be wrong, but I believe that Philadelphia Fullerine is the first (let’s hope of many) hypertext sculptures. Because it’s a hypertext, it encourages readers to explore the history and connections for themselves, in whatever order or manner they choose.
What about quilts? A quilt is not exactly a sculpture, which leaves plenty of room for Nathan’s to be the first of its kind (my dad the art professor might argue more thatn I would). It seems like things like quilts, and like this geodesic hypertext, they have something in common…
By all means argue with me. It’s one of the best ways for us to learn
.
Btw, I’m not as interested in having the *first* as I am surprised that no one has done this before.
Plenty of sculpture tells a story. Go back to ancient egypt, or to the WWII Memorial in D.C. to see examples. In a way, much visual art could be seen as nonlinear, since there are ways that the eye is guided, etc. But (acknowledging my general ignorance of much of art history), I can’t seem to find nonlinear sculpture that tells a story in quite the same way.
Quilts are cool. I live just down the road from the National Quilt Museum. But the quilts I’m used to (Amish and Mennonite) are very utility-focused. At their gaudiest, they contain crazy designs and colors.
After doing some googling, it seems like storytelling quilts are rather common. The story quilts of Harriet Powers are particularly interesting. It seems, Dylan, that you’re on to something. Powers was doing stuff that looks pretty interesting from where I’m standing. I’m surprised I haven’t seen discussion of her work in new media conversation.
However, in what I’ve seen online, these quilts are either linear in nature (there’s a single pattern you need to follow to get the story right), or individual squares are indpendent of each other.
Oh. Yeah. I forgot….
Patchwork Girl sorta refers to the idea.
Of course, patchwork girl! I had intended to mention that one in my earlier comment, but it slipped my mind.
I wonder if you could elaborate on “there are ways that the eye is guided” are these ways through a text (broadly construed) any different than the ways we go through reading? Can they be used with reading?
Have you read Patchwork Girl, and what did you think of it?
No, I haven’t read patchwork girl, but the quilt reference is talked about in this only slightly campy review of Patchwork Girl.
Elaborate on “there are ways that the eyes is guided…”? This is basic graphics design and painting stuff. Sometimes, when you make a painting or do a design, you think about the colors and what the eye will be attracted to. Then you work in the lines to try to guide the eye to various places. It’s possible to hide something (to a casual viewer) that’s right there out on the canvas just through how you do the design.
But even in doing something like that, you’re not demanding that design elements or elements in the painting be viewed in a particular order or in a particular way, We apprehend the work in different ways, even though there may be a common tendency.
Take, for example, Nude Descending a Staircase (don’t worry – no skin), by Marcel Duchamp, which I saw at the incredibly-fun Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Is that linear? Of course not. But it’s more than something to be apprehended in its full, 2d, rectangularity. Rather, your eyes go in patterns, patterns which are partly guided by common reactions to the form and color, patterns which are partly guided by your own self-determination. And there are things that you learn through the painting. When you finally see what’s going on, that there actually is a figure descending the staircase in time, the painting takes on a new character, and you get to look over the painting once again, with new eyes.
That is nonlinear painting. It exists.
Narrative sculpture also exists.
I just haven’t seen nonlinear narrative sculpture before. It would be cool though, to see how someone else managed it.
Implied line, is what its called, the direction that an eye is like to travel, such as the circle (that isn’t) in the center of the painting “I and the Village” by Marc Chagall.
Narrative functions like a line. I tell you “I fell down”. Then, I tell you that “I got up”. Even though I didn’t explicitly state it, it is implied that the getting up that I narrated happened after, and as a result of, the having fallen down. Its as if by telling you one thing after the next, I have drawn a line from the first to the second.
I’m wondering how, with words, to do what the circle in this painting does. Ways to draw implied lines, to say one thing after the next in a way that illustrates their relationship, when maybe it isnt a causal relationship.
To duplicate implied line, one would need a larger wealth of options than a traditional hypertext includes (and perhaps more than HTML can give).
Unless you want to author them all, I think such a thing would be more doable with adaptive hypermedia or a literary hypertext built with an Interactive Fiction engine (though it need not follow the conventions of interactive fiction. See Galatea for an example of a slight departure from those conventions and imagine a huge departure).
But you’re right. Good writing does this sort of thing through power of suggestion. This happens in the Harry Potter books. Take Prisoner of Azkaban, for example. We think, through little hints and narrative choices of the author, that the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher might be evil. In the end, Scabbers, the pet rat, who we thought was dead, turns out to be the villain. The clues were there. Rowling just did a good job of making other details more prominent to our inquisitive eye.
Hypertext can do what your painting does, particularly spatial hypertext.
Look up “Implicit Structure” and Spatial Hypertext (http://portal.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=168826&type=pdf)
nocategories.net – great site
I like your fine site – nocategories.net .
Thank for your work for us!
Thank you, I will add it to my bookmarks
Regards
Swen