#cybertext

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Generally, I prefer reading straightforward linear texts in straightforward linear books page by page in a non-confusing arrangement of thoughts where one idea follows another. Unfortunately, as I look around myself at this very moment I can see two open books to the left, a small pile of photocopied pages to the right, an iPad, a laptop and my notes all annotated, cross-referenced and collated to accompany my re-reading of Katherine’s Hayle’s Writing Machines (Mediaworks Pamphlet) . My reading, in fact, is an act of multilayered and multicursal pathway of linking, reading, connecting, proceeding. How very appropriate for this book, I suppose. 
How cybertextual!

The term cybertext was coined by Espen Aarseth in Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (1997). Regardless of what it may sound like, cybertext is not a genre of literary or digital text, it is not a type of link or hypertext (even though hypertext can be present in cybertext) - cybertext is an approach to "communicational strategies of dynamic texts". The term itself is confusing in many ways (no clear definition, broad area of application, some ambiguous terminology - such as trivial/nontrivial effort), one thing is certain, though - it is not media, period or genre specific. It is about communication, interaction, performance within the text and with the text - it is not about literary or visual style.

"The concept of cybertext focuses on the mechanical organization of the text, by positing the intricacies of the medium as an integral part of the literary exchange. However, it also centers attention on the consumer, or user, of the text, as a more integrated figure than even reader-response theorists would claim.

...cybertext is used here to describe a broad textual media category. It is not in itself a literary genre of any kind. Cybertexts share a principle of calculated production, but beyond that there is no obvious unity of aesthetics, thematics, literary history, or even material technology. Cybertext is a perspective I use to describe and explore the communicational strategies of dynamic texts.(Espen Aarseth, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature )

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One of the examples of cybertext, that Aarseth gives himself is i-Ching (The Book of Changes) - an ancient Chinese divination book. Six yarrow stalks or tossed coins are used to determine the pattern of broken and unbroken lines in the hexagram. The pattern is then looked up in the book and the prophesy is read out for interpretation. The book does not form a linear narrative, but a multitude of possibilities and paths to navigate through.
Here is one of the online i-Ching reading sites  →  易經.

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 Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire is another work that Aarseth mentions as a cybertext. Pale Fire consists of a 999-line poem, written by the fictional John Shade, with a foreword and lengthy line-by-line commentary by a neighbor and academic colleague of the poet, Charles Kinbote. Aarseth suggests, that a reader can choose between a linear or non-linear reading of the work, i.e. to read the poem first and then notes as one sequential story; or to keep jumping between the annotations and the poem.

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Nightingale’s Playground is a piece digital fiction by Andy Campbell and Judi Alston. It is an extraordinary interlinked work in four parts: a browser based read/walk-through, an e-book text, a virtual exercise book, a downloadable 3D immersive experience of Alex's house. The reader discovers the story himself through exploration of those four spaces.

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Here is one more beautifully produced piece of digital art! Hollowbound Book by Erik Loyer is an interactive response to N. Katherine Hayles’ book Writing Machines, in which a newly liberated book binding testifies to its liberation at the hands of Hayles’ theories. It is not a cybertext in it's own right (for what I understood about cybertexts). However, it can be considered part of cybertext that N. Katherine Hayles’ Writing Machines (Mediaworks Pamphlet) is - a book that exists as an elegantly designed 3D object (also available as a PDF for a less elegant DIY binding) and an extension of the book Web Supplement, which includes the lexicon linkmap, notes, index, bibliography, errata, and source material. The reader/user can explore alternative mappings of the book's conceptual terrain with additional functionalities unavailable in print, then print insert pages to customize the book itself. 

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Children's books - like artist's books - often allow themselves the sort of ingenuity that adult books do not. A few blogposts behind I mentioned Myriorama or tableau polyoptique - a form of cards entertainment that became especially popular in the 19th century: a child was able to arrange and re-arrange the cards into any order to build visual narratives. Similarly, my own children in their own time could not have enough of Mixed Up Fairy Tales (Mixed Up Series) - a lighthearted contemporary split page book, where a child can make up their own stories using starting lines, names, events from well known fairy tales. It is the book that provided me with hours of piece on the plane - cybertext or not.

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Aarseth's cybertext is an idea of a multicursal text, which allows readers to biuld their own path though the labyrinth of reading - for example, through a possibility of physical rearrangement of narrative modules. Some of those objects mentioned above are books, while others are games or "whatever they are" (my very very favorite quote by Johanna Drucker in relation to digital book models). As cybertexts, they are a form of text - a text, which is a big metaphorical leap away from it's definition in linguistics. As reader-led narratives, they are a form of story-telling tradition.

 

PS. The idea of cybertext is  confusing in many ways - as I have mentioned above. I would be happy to hear from anyone with useful links on the subject.

 

A curious note that had no space in the text above:

At the start of the book Aarseth cites Penelope Reed Doobs discussion on physical and metaphorical labyrinths of classical antiqity and Middle Ages. She distinguishes two types of labyrinth paths: "unicursal, where there is only one path, winding and turning, usually toward a center; and the multicursal, where the maze wanderer faces a series of critical choices". The two ideas of labyrinth have co-existed until Renaissance, until the concept was "reduced to the multicursal paradigm that we recognise today". As a result we have since grown to regard linear and labyrinth and incompatible ideas.

  [Egidija]

 

 

scrolling gadgets {moving panoramas}

Tomas Saraceno, Cumulus at Barbican

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Some time ago I wrote a post digitised scrolls: from the Pond at Deuchar to the Trip to London, at the bottom of which I mentioned a charming Georgian device Trip to London that had been digitised by Princeton University. Trip to London is a box containing a twelve plate scroll that displays a humorous story of a honeymoon trip. It is a close development of the very popular moving panoramas, which came to Europe in late 17th century and by early 19th century they were so common, that there were even ladies' fans with miniature scrolled pictures incorporated into the designs. 

Trip to London

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Moving panorama - to put it simply - is a long panorama in a scroll, which has ends of it attached to two rods. The handles on the rods are then turned to allow the panorama to move across the screen, very much like a basic animation film. Moving panoramas were available in handheld scrolling devices as well as a form of large screen/stage entertainment. They were hugely popular: successful shows drew crowds and boasted years of performances. For example, Albert Smith's Ascent of Mont Blanc was performed for seven years at the Egyptian Hall in London, while Hugo d'Alesi's Mareorama allowed seven hundred spectators per viewing of this show, that offered a multisensory sea voyage illusion, complete with thunder, wind and local dancers.

a card promoting Hugo d'Alesi's Mareorama

Moving panoramas were extraordinary pieces of engineering. They often featured special enhanced sets and effects, merging of medias and mediums into one immersive spectacle. For example, touring panoramas of the late nineteen century England frequently included such novelties as mechanical puppets and slide projections. The most impressive ones, of course, were present at Exposition Universelle in Paris, 1900. The above mentioned Hugo d'Alesi's Mareorama incorporated two screens, each 2,500 feet long and forty feet in height, which were scrolled for the viewers present on board of the full size boat. The boat required hydraulic piston engines and pumps driven by electric motors to stimulate motion. 

 

Hugo d'Alesi's Mareorama

Hugo d'Alesi's Mareorama

Another immersive panorama at Exposition Universelle in Paris was Pavel Yakovlevich Pyasetsky's Great Siberian Railway Panorama in the Russian pavilion. It offered a 45 minute experience of Trans Siberian rail journey complete with stuffed polar bears on papier-mache icebergs, a dinner of caviar and sturgeon in a luxury imitation train with a library, gymnasium, marble bath, smoking and music salons.

This 45-minute experience was an essay in detail. It offered a chance to experience the 14-day journey by rail from Moscow to Peking, a 6300-mile journey over tracks not yet completed at the time of the Paris Fair of 1900.

There were three realistic railway cars, each 70 feet long, with saloons, dining rooms, bars, bedrooms, and other elements of a luxury train. Totally detailed and lavishly equipped, the cars were elevated a little above a place for spectators in conventional rows of seats. The gallery faced a stage-like arena where the simulated views along the train trip were presented by an inventive contraption.

The immediate reality of a vehicular trip is that nearby objects seem to pass by more rapidly than distant ones. So, nearest to the participants was a horizontal belt covered with sand, rocks, and boulders, driven at a speed of 1000 feet per minute! Behind that was a low vertical screen painted with shrubs and brush, travelling at 400 feet per minute. A second, slightly higher screen, painted to show more distant scenery, scrolled along at 130 feet per minute. The most distant one, 25 feet tall and 350 feet long painted with mountains, forests, clouds and cities, moved at 16 feet per minute.

Real geographical features along the way were depicted on this screen: Moscow, Omsk, Irkutsk, the shores of great lakes and rivers, the Great Wall of China, and Peking. The screens, moving in one direction only, were implemented as a belt system. Due to the inexact speeds of the scenery,the 'journey' never repeated itself exactly, providing an ever-changing combination of scenes and a reason to pay to see the attraction again.  (from The Past Was No Illusion  by Walt Bransford)

Pavel Yakovlevich Pyasetsky's Great Siberian Railway Panorama

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Apart from the great spectacles at Exposition Universelle, 1900, there was a range of other - more common and more humble - weird and wonderful panorama devices. There existed pleoramas, dioramas, padoramas, myrioramas, phantom rides for public viewing as well as personal hand panorama reels, magic lanterns and peep-shows.

The Kaiserpanorama, 1900

Phantom Ride

Rotunda, Leicester Square

Coronation Procession of King George IV

Tableau of the procession at the Queen's coronation June 28, 1838

Myriorama or tableau polyoptique by Jean-Pierre Brès
(a set of cards that can be arranged in any order)

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Here are a few of the contemporary moving panoramas that range between overwhelming digital installations of Tomas Saraceno to painted paper scrolls of Adam Cvijanovic.

Helen Douglas, The Pond at Deuchar

Tomas Saraceno, Cumulus at Barbican

Adam Cvijanovic, Rolling Panorama Number 1

Panorama of Achmedabad

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The Trip to London scroll box is a story telling gadget that bridged book and upcoming cinema. It's situation is not dissimilar to the hybrid publishing projects emerging today as a result of media arts niche-ing themselves into the book market, such as FakePress and HybridBook. Moving panoramas were defeated by the cinema, of course. Which of the contemporary story telling gadgets are going to stay?

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Printed book sources:

- Huhtamo, Erkki.  Illusions in Motion: Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles (Leonardo Book Series) , The MIT Press, Cambridge, London, 2013

- Schwartz, Vanessa. Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-siecle Paris . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

- Huhtamo, Erkki. "Global Glimpses for Local Realities: The Moving Panorama, a Forgotten Mass Medium of the 19th Century."

[Egidija]