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dd:
Francisco, the HT Conference, annually held since 1988,
deals with technical but also philosophical, and aesthetical
aspects of hypertext. How many participants are scholars of
computer sience, and how many of the humanities? FR: The mix varies,
but generally, the proportion is overwhelmingly
computer-science oriented. In Hypertext '99, 31 papers were
presented. Of these, 27 focused on the science of hypertext,
that is methods of organization, description of software,
methodologies, and systems; 1 paper treated research
problems in the field, such as unifying hypermedia and the
World Wide Web; and 3 based on hyperreading, which is the
rhetoric of hypertext. There were 8 associate papers chairs,
which are the folks who manage the interface between the
authors who submitted papers to the conference and the
reviewers who evaluated them. Of these 8 people, 2 came from
a writing background; the other 6 were computer
scientists. dd:
What are the reasons for such a big gap? FR: ACM - the
Association for Computing Machinery - is the base sponsor of
the Hypertext conferences. As the name implies, the ACM is a
computer science organization; it is not focused on problems
of education, authoring, or style, except as they revolve
around a larger computational or software engineering
problem. Consequently, many humanities scholars don't even
know about the Hypertext conferences. As I mention so often,
cost is also a factor; these are not cheap compared to
humanities conferences, primarily because engineers are
better funded than humanists. dd:
What are the costs? FR: $475 for ACM
members, $565 for non-ACM members, $175 for students if
received in advance. For details look up the website of
HYPERTEXT'98
costs. The cost may not be out of
line, but it is beyond that of virtually all humanities
conferences. The benefit is that, unlike humanities
conferences, one really gets a truly inside look at how
hypertext is actually developed, and the kinds of problems
that confront engineers are important for humanists to know
because they can better understand and exploit the
limitations of the medium. I consider it important for
humanists because current protocols like the WWW seem to be
running out of creative flexibility for authors, and some
have already begun programming their own systems from
scratch using programming languages like Java or authoring
environments like Macromedia Director. So I see the advanced
hyper-author of the future as being very much involved in
the engineering of systems, and there will be little
difference between "hypertexts" and "systems" as such.
Anyone who has ever used HTML to create a hyperstory knows
how quickly one encounters frustrating
limitations. dd:
So, you mean, the hyperfiction-authors as well as the
hyperfiction-theorists have to improve their computer skills
in order to learn and enhance the language they are dealing
with? FR: Exactly: It is no
different than the painter whose understanding of theme,
lighting, and composition are not enough; he still must
understand the mechanics of his medium, including types of
canvas, paint, mixtures, varnishes, and preservation
techniques that are very much in the mechanics of his
medium. And it is the equal ability with both the medium and
the message that enables a Vermeer, a Picasso, or a Monet.
The analogy is true for all the arts. In music, consider
Debussy or Stravinsky. In these cases, it was even
impossible to realize a thematic work (e.g., La Mer, or The
Firebird Suite) without a mastery of the underlying
mechanics, including timbre and orchestration. The moral we
can take away from the work of these geniuses is that a good
idea is just that: a good idea. Its execution is not
something we should take for granted, but on the contrary,
what makes a good idea into a great idea is that the way in
which it is implemented pushes the boundaries and limits of
the medium in which it is to be realized. In that sense, it
is a total creation, a totally innovative revolution both
conceptually and mechanically. That is where I'm going and
where the future lies. dd:
Lets come back to the HT Conference. Are there any prospects
to bridge the gap between computer-science and
philosophicaly oriented participants? Or should the
humanities rather establish their own conference, provided
they get the funds to do so? FR: The best way to
find out is at the individual level. Every
person/writer/artist/theorist should initially and always
understand the importance of SEEING what is being said and
done. In the case of Hypertext 2000, that is why I am aiming
to increase the participation of humanists in the
conference. We need people to come and enter the dialogue,
and contribute their own research experiences and use the
conference for its ideas and work related to hypertext. The
conference is the foremost hypertext conference in the
world, but minimally. Some people, like Deena Larsen, put in
extraordinary efforts every year to get hypertext and
writing/reading to come together, but in each conference
there is one or two new and unique voices that literally
comes out of nowhere and electrifies the attendees. Last
year, it was Jill Walker at the University of Bergen in
Norway, and Alexander Mehler at the University of Trier and
Anja Rau, who will make brilliant contributions in this
field. dd:
The conference takes place either in an European or in an
American city. What about the national gap? Is there an
'national take over'? FR: The most
consistent consideration is in the tone of the papers: each
paper is either very scientific or very
philosophical/rhetorical. The cultural divide is not over
geographical boundaries, but over differences in discipline.
Writers and philosophers have a grand view that lacks
details and computer scientists are the opposite. You can
imagine how interesting this synthesis becomes in a single
conference when, as happened last year, we have panels on
hypertext writing or the philosophy of hypertext being
attended by computer scientists who are not familiar with
the work of the great modern thinkers or even the classics
in literature. It is inspiring for both sides to learn about
each other. dd:
O.k, lets talk about the gap regarding examples under
discussion? There are not only English written hypertexts in
world. In Germany, for example, the first competition in
internet-literature took place in 1996, and since then the
community of authors and friends of digital literature has
been quite active. Have you ever heard something about a
German or French hyperfiction at an
HT-conference? FR: Yes, well, this
is an excellent point. I was referring to style and tone,
but the actual data is even more important. The problem we
have is that there is not a sufficiently large number of
literary hypertext articles submitted. At other conferences,
the sample of work is much more international in character.
I am thinking especially of Digital
Arts and Culture,
which is also annual (and this year will take place in
Atlanta, Georgia Oct. 28-30, 1999. DAC '99 is different from
the ground up because it is not scientific in nature, and
can therefore incorporate an international field of artists,
new media practitioners, scientists, theorists, and members
of digital industry. This year's DAC conference will feature
more than 100 speakers, performers, and artists, from over a
dozen countries, and keynote speakers and performers will
include Robert Coover, Elliott Peter Earls, N. Katherine
Hayles, and Michael Joyce. And here is the important
balance. The HYPERTEXT conferences (12 so far) are the best
known and best attended, and have a history that is
absolutely crucial for anyone interested in the field. DAC
is only on its second conference, so it is just getting
started. Rather than starting from a scientific position,
the DAC conferences are completely multidisciplinary and mix
several presentation formats: scholarly papers, live and
mediated artistic performances and readings, and gallery
installations. The fact that many of the conference
presentations will be delayed-webcast over the
Internet
(and several lectures and performances will be webcast live)
is an added bonus: a case of the medium and the message
being one and the same. dd:
What is your advice to a young scholar (say from a 'poor'
department of humanities) who would like to take part in
this conference and to share his/her thoughts and theory on
hypertext? FR: The first mandate
of every scholar applies here too: one must read, write, and
participate. And one must do this as much as possible,
without fear of alienation from departments or advisors.
Anyone involved in hypertext will soon find out how little
other people understand of his or her work. But that is only
temporary; the entire world is going hypertext in one form
or another. Soon there will be hypertext interfaces in
portable phones. It will be a way of life. Therefore,
someone interested in the field should really know something
about the medium from the reader's, the critic's, and the
creator's perspective, too, so that one is not stuck in a
removed analytical position. There is a tremendous need for
the creation of tools for creating content, and for theory
on styles of authoring and what exactly happens in
interactive digital communication. Let me take another pass at
this question: the entire field of hypertext is involved in
some way with that of digital creation. Hypertext is one of
the only fields which can belong exclusively to the computer
medium (interactive visualization, for instance, is
another). Because of this, all hypertext relates to one or
another dimension of human creativity. This is precisely why
it is so rich and hard to contain. But one doesn't have to
stay only in hypertext in order to explore the richness of
human creativity in this digital medium. Interactive
animation is a perfect example of digital creativity without
hypertext, and the best work in this area that I can think
of is that of John
Maeda at the MIT
Media Lab, whose projects include all kinds of interesting
transformations along acoustic, visualization, typographic,
and other forms of digital data representation. Eventually,
because of Maeda's work and the work I see in the DAC
conferences, hypertext will become only one (though still
central) ingredient in digital art and
communication. dd: I
am sure it already is considered the approach of Germans to
digital art and communication. Whereas the winners of the
New York University Press Prize of hypertext are word-only
hypertexts, the winners of German competitions of digital
literature (as Pegasus in 1998 or the Ettlinger competition
for Internet-Literature) employ, besides words, other media
like images and even sound, or focus on interactivity as a
crucial aspect of digital communication. Is there hesitation
on the part of American hyperfiction-writers to take a
further step to an aestethics of intermediality and
interactivity, that, as I think, the net is forcing us to
do? FR: The production of
hypertexts is not the same as the production of hypermedia.
A hypertext is typically an individual effort carried out by
a lone writer. A hypermedia piece, on the other hand,
involves a graphic artist, one or more writers, animators,
sound people, etc. There are many roles, and the finished
product is more of a group effort. It is therefore about
digital creation, not just writing. American hypertext
authors are, like Michael Joyce, people who have extended
their traditional print publication voices into the new
medium, and the difference shows in the size of the sites.
Hypermedia sites, which are much more labor intensive, are
smaller in size; usually fewer than 200 links. Hyperfiction
works on the other hand are multiples of this size. Of
course, a text lexia that may consist of 2 paragraphs, for
instance, is easier to create than a hypermedia lexia that
may have required text, graphics, and considerations of
placement. In the sense meant by Barthes, hypertexts are
writerly works, requiring more from the reader for their
completion; and hypermedia works are readerly texts in that
the position of the reader is one of less active involvement
in the interpretation of the work. dd:
Back to the text: What is your philosophy of
hypertext? FR: There is a
tendency to see hypertext as something that divides a text.
Naturally, this creates confusion because we can always ask,
"Why would dividing a text into linked pieces give you more
than whatever meaning or content the whole text possessed
originally?" I consider this view to be a subtractive
understanding of hypertext, knowing what hypertext is by
breaking down a text into lexias, and it is not the best
model for understanding the full measure of hypertext's
potential. Let us contrast this with an additive view:
hypertext as a means not to divide one text, but to
interconnect large numbers of texts. This was suggested by
Ted Nelson's concept of the "docuverse" and is, for
instance, the aim of the World Wide Web. It makes the value
of hypertext much clearer: it is not just a table of
contents for a book, but also a catalog of holdings for a
massive library. Seen in this way, we can then envision the
tools that would help in this aim: systems for categorizing
texts, methods for building and expanding links, and
techniques and tools for searching in multiple dimensions.
Without hypertext at the level of large numbers of
documents, we must rely on classification systems,
librarians, and a lot of luck, if we want to find something
of interest in this space. dd:
You conclude your open
letter
to the hypertext community with the appeal to start a
questioning process in order to bring the humanistic side of
hypertext into the full light of the ACM Hypertext
conference. Is there a specific way to achieve that? What,
for instance, could the German netliterature-partisans do,
if unable to attend the conference? FR: We need a central
venue for identifying the work and interests of people whose
interests touch hypertext in any way. And the WWW is both
the best and the worst thing to ever happen to hypertext: on
one hand, since it uses hyperlinks, it made hypertext known
to the entire industrialized world. But on the other hand,
the quality of the links in current browser implementations
is extremely poor (for example, there is no information
about where links lead, and one must therefore do much more
traveling back and forth than necessary in order to find the
lexias that are most relevant). Still, since the WWW is
still the only realistic way to set up social dialogue
across distances, all persons interested in hypertext are in
desperate need of a centrally sustainable web site treating
literary hypertext. I would encourage an online magazine
such as this one to implement a discussion list, so that the
flow of communication can be fully looped. The need is
definitely there for such a project. dd:
Well, the discussion list is set up. We will see how it
works. For now, thank you for the interview and good luck
with HT 2000. To receive updates about ACM
Hypertext 2000, as well as ACM Digital Libraries 2000, which
will be co-located and held immediately afterwards, you can
sign up by sending a message to listproc@cs.aue.auc.dk with
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