6. Epilogue Robert Coover ends his essay
about the "Golden Age of Hypertext" with a confession that
he is still in love with the word. He continues, as he
writes, "to feel that, for all the wondrous and provocative
invasions of text by sound and image, all the intimate
layering of them and irresistible fusions, still, the most
radical and distinctive literary contribution of the
computer has been the multilinear hypertextual webwork of
text spaces, or, as one might say, the intimate layering and
fusion of imagined spatiality and temporality." This is one perspective from
which one can look at the future of digital literature, here
surely due to the fact that Coover himself is an
award-winning writer of printed novels. Another perspective
would focus on narration rather than on words, welcoming
images and sound to join the word, indeed, even to take over
the text. We have seen what interesting new forms of
aesthetic expression lie in this option. Nevertheless,
Coover is certainly right to express the danger of an art
that is based on technology which allows us and tempts us to
produce fancy effects. Gimmickry therefore seems to be one
of the essential features of aesthetic expression in this
new media. The question remains whether this undercuts
digital literature or whether and if yes to what extent it
provides it with its genuine subject matter? In any event, it would not
be appropriate to criticize digital literature for moving to
multimedia and not behaving the same way traditional
literature does. It would be equally inapproriate to look at
digital literature in the light of media competition. That
is, to claim that a given effect could be done in a
traditional medium as well. Indeed, mostly it could. There
are books providing alternatives to navigate. There are
animated images in visual art. There are pictures or
paintings including words. However, the point is that in
digital media those features take place all together, and
not as an exception but as a normal expectation. Since digital literature is
not yet a well-developed art form and is still experimenting
one can not really judge its aesthetic values yet. We have
seen that technical effects does not necessarily mean to
"suck the substance out of a work of lettered art, reduce it
to surface spectacle," it can also mean to give substance to
the surface spectacle. The authors are supposed to think and
act in order to serve this purpose. We, the readers, are
supposed to think twice in order to realize and acknowledge
their effort. Of course, if one does not like to see words
moving or images disapperaring, if one objects to
visualization and technical effects at all, one will object
to digital literature as a whole, and decide to read a
regular old book. Of course, there is nothing wrong with
this. However, this is, as I mentioned at the beginning of
this article, a different story. |
