In his
book
Earth Moves: The Furnishing of Territories,
Cache describes a new mode of the production of objects
– and please, whenever you hear the term
‘object,’ let the term ‘text’
reverberate through this ‘object.’ The new mode of
production concerns "systems in which objects[texts]
are no longer designed but calculated" (88). [This is a
further link to my paper, in which I stress the importance
of a textual calculation as the main, and maybe the only,
structural difference between hypertext – whatever that
is - and printtext – whatever that is. As Aarseth
notes, introducing, for good reasons, his own terminology,
"I suggest the term cybertext for texts that involve
calculation in their production of scriptons" (75), with
scriptons being "strings [of signs] as they appear
to readers" (62) as opposed to textons which are "strings
[of signs] as they exist in the text" (62). The
important point is that a ‘traversal function’
operates in-between these two plateaus: "the mechanism by
which scriptons are revealed or generated from textons and
presented to the user of the text" (62). This computational
machine, which takes the place of the more static
bookmachine or, more generally printmachine, intrudes into
the logic that formerly played itself out predominantly
between the signifier and the signified [stable
signifier, fluid signified]. The stability of the field
of the signifier causes printtexts to be
‘designed’ in the sense of ‘plotted’
– and this means both that they have a plot and that
their structural diagram can be plotted, as in drawn. A
necessary caveat (amongst many others): of course printtexts
are also calculated if they are written on or transferred to
a computer. Only hypertexts, however, are machinically
calculated in terms of structure rather than, say, in terms
of storage or presentation. Their form of calculation is
‘stronger’ than that involved in ‘mere
digitalisation.’ It involves a higher intensity of
calculation, such as the one that concerns the shifting,
dynamic positionings of signifiers].
But back to Cache: The new,
calculated mode of production differs essentially
from that in which objects were designed in earlier
systems. In these earlier systems, complex objects were
built up from simple, basic forms. In opposition to this
mode, the new form of production "allows complex forms to be
designed that would be difficult to represent by traditional
drawing methods [modes of plotting]. Instead of
compositions of primitive or simple contours, we will have
surfaces with variable curves and some volumes" (88). With
this method, you start from the complex rather than from the
simple. The result is "a non-standard mode of production. In
fact, the modification of calculation parameters allows the
manufacture of a different shape for each object in the same
series. Thus unique products are produced industrially. We
will call variable objects created from surfaces
"subjectiles," and variable objects created from volumes
"objectiles" (88). [This is the most direct link to a
theory of hypertext. Hypertextiles, I argue, are produced
precisely according to a ‘non-standard mode of
production.’ If a book edition consists of a series of
identical objects, a hypertext edition creates, from a
modifiable discursive matrix or reservoir, ‘a different
shape for each text of the series.’
Cache approaches such
objectiles:subjectiles – and I won’t further
differentiate between the two terms - from a number of
vectors. All of these, I argue, can shed light on the
[hyper]textile, which, in this light, is understood
as a truly ‘industrial’ object. What are the
vectors? Modeling, Production, Representation, Function,
Marketing and Consumption. Let me tick these
off:
1. "Modeling: the
primary image is no longer the image of the object but the
image of the set of constraints at the intersection of which
the object is created" (97). This I take to mean that the
image of the object – considered as a diagram within an
empty, infinite modelspace – does not lie at the origin
of the object. Rather, the origin of the object lies in its
relative position within an inherently complex, dynamic
spatial context. This space defines the parameters
within which the object can be modelled and as such it is,
and will remain, an integral part of the object. Like the
objectile, the [hyper]textile is not a stable
textual object that can be separated from its spatial
context. This characteristic refers to the difference
I have developed in my essay between what I call topology1
and topology2, as well as to the idea of folding, which I
propose as one mode to conceptualise the movement of and
within the hypertextual continuum, and which, I think,
captures the spatial movement of and in hypertext more
adequately than for instance ‘linking’ or
‘navigating.’
2. "Production:
digital machines and productive technologies in general
allow for the production of an industrial continuum. From
the mold we move toward modulation. We no longer apply a
preset form on inert matter, but lay out the parameters of a
surface of variable curvature ... the design of the object
is no longer subordinated to mechanical geometry; it is the
machine that is directly integrated into the technology of
the synthesized image" (97). Here, I would propose to read
‘mechanical geometry’ as ‘plot’ or
‘narrative structure.’ Rather than providing a
fixed story, the traversal machine, by intervening
into the plotgeometry, turns it into a
plottopology.
3. "Representation:
henceforth, the image takes precedence over the object"
(97). Thus, the image of the object is more original than
the object itself. Apart from being a concise comment on the
temporal logic of post-structuralism, this statement
proposes that its representation is more originary than the
‘original’ textual object itself [the
scriptons are more originary than the reservoir of
textons]. There are, then, only versions of a merely
virtual object, which is considered as a field of
possibility. Rather than a massive object, the
original is a set of probabilities and topological, machinic
diagrams. In a hypertext, a fluctuating discursive landscape
produces ever-changing discursive
geographies.
4. "Consumption:
… the purpose of the norm is not to stabilize our
movements; on the contrary, it is to amplify the
fluctuations or aberrations in our behaviour. Changes are
the mode of the norm" (96). Cache develops his concept of
the norm in opposition to that of the fixed and unbendable
law. The norm is malleable. It defines a dynamic forcefield.
It fluctuates in time and space, and, more directly, it is
not so much a vector that one always has to travel on, as it
is a vector that defines every line of inclination that
swerves away from it. In relation to the hypertextile, the
law of ‘linear’ narration [at which point my
discussion of linearity and non-linearity enters the
foldspace] is only a measurement against which to define
what I have called, in a variation on Douglas Coupland,
deNarration.
5. "Function: a field
of surfaces thus governs the object that has now become the
set of possibilities of their intersection. But the surface
of the object also becomes separated from its function when
the latter is no longer mechanical but electronic. Just as
Leibniz had conceived it, texts, information, images, and
sounds are now all the object of numerical manipulation"
(97-8). This numerical manipulation is precisely what
Aarseth has defined as the ‘traversal machine.’ It
also designates, I think, the idea of a
‘neo-material’ poetry of the code, although this
poetry functions on a very ‘low’ plateau of the
text.
6. "Marketing: an
alea puts form in a state of fluctuation that offers us a
true image of the norm. … it is this quasi-object that
is but a fragment of a surface of possibilities where each
exemplum is different. Yet it is not a personalized object
… it is an ordinary object that may well entertain
singular relations with a user" (98). This characteristic of
the objectile opens up a further vista onto the
hypertextile. Although a hypertextile produces a new
‘singularity’ every time it is ‘done’
– as in ‘doing hypertext’ - it is not
customized. Rather, it provides a fluctuating textual field
that, through its machinics, ‘may well’ come to
‘entertain singular relations with a user.’ The
alea - which can be read as any randomisations that may
traverse a hypertextile, as the catastrophic logic of
bifurcation or as the field of probability opened up by the
machinic interventions into the field of scriptons –
make the hypertextile both singular and at the same time,
completely ‘alien.’ It is here that the tenets of
complexity theory – as well as those of Artificial Life
- may become important postologically.
I hope this mapping has
brought back some of the arguments developed in more detail
in my essay: the importance to think hypertextual space as
topological, the idea of the hypertextle as a folded text,
as well as the idea of an emergent – and therefore
immensely ‘alien’ text, which is not really
covered by Cache, but which I feel might lie at the point at
infinity of a hypertextual poetics.
see extended
Hypertext-Version
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