Un-Symposium: numero seis

Q: How does hypertext relate to storytelling in different media formats?

The reply began with Elliott, who cited the unsuccessful example of hypertext being used in conjunction with YouTube‘s video format, in order to make the point that not all online formats necessarily lend themselves to hypertext.

Adrian refuted this argument, citing the example of Korsakow (pronounced KOR-SA-KOV) films which are “films with a twist: they are interactive – the viewer has influence on the K-Film”.

I just went and watched this film: Money and the Greeks (2012) by Korsakow. Money and the Greeks (2012) is a 90 minute film about the economic crisis in Greece and what people make out of it. It is also a “democratic film,” the tagline stating that people decide what is in the film and what is not. They’re careful to note that “this is not a puzzle to be solved – there is no ‘right’ order. There are just different ways of looking at things,” before you begin your interactive journey.

This being my first introduction to interactive democratic films, I’ve decided that they’re a lot like a ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ story book, in that you can choose what direction the story takes from a myriad of narratorial pathways.

Anyway, I digress.

Adrian further made the point that hypertext gives an archaeology that existed prior to common or current media formats (namely, the Internet), and noted that he was writing using hypertext systems long before the Internet came into being. He further expands that hypertext is not about navigation – this is a trivial perspective. It is about the formal relations between the parts that you build; the computational affordances and reader experience – not just reader agency.

Jasmine chimed in with a perspective that denoted the idea of digital experience as an extension of print, but not only that: it is more musical, it has cadence, repetition, and flow. It is about repetition, loops, redundancies.

Adrian further elaborated: hypertext makes visible the fact that we don’t know what readers will do with a text, what they will take from it, how they will appropriate it to their own experiences. Context is fundamental to meaning. Anything can be made to mean something else by altering the context – meaning is never fixed. He cited the example of popular media and art – popular media leave small gaps, reducing room for interpretation, whereas art leaves large gaps in meaning, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions from a lack of formal relations exhibited by the artwork.

Q: Is the work we publish online only validated once it is viewed by others?

Jasmine began the discussion on this topic, exploring the example of a personal journal in order to prove her point. She argued that writing is just thinking aloud, and whether or not a text has an audience doesn’t make it any less valid.

Adrian took an ontological perspective, employing the philosophical concept of the tree falling in the forest: ‘if no one is around to hear it, does it make any sound?’ Is a television program without an audience relevant? He refuted that other art forms, such as painting and writing, begin with an audience of zero – this does not make them any less valid – and the same can be said for blogging.

He distinguished between blogging and diary writing in that a blog has an outward orientation – it is produced with an audience in mind.

Adrian’s final point was that linking on a blog is the single most valuable economic transaction you can make, as this is how Google’s page rank system evaluates the value quotient of your blog.

Q: Do you think that the digitalisation of literary texts and the use of the e-reader will eventually replace the physical book completely?

Brian argued that, like music, the book will transcend formats – vinyl to CD to mp3, etc.

Jasmine also agreed, and expanded, saying that books in their physical form will become collectors’ items.

Conversely, Adrian argued that our conceptions of literature are premised upon the book, but the book is a dead art-form. He argued that people often conflate books and literature, and our vocabulary is currently inadequately describing literature using an outdated term – ‘the book’. He asserted that similar principles could be applied to film – film is an outdated term for something that isn’t generally shot on film anymore.

He argued that the book publishing industry premises its successes upon cook books, gardening books, and books in the VCE curriculum.

Adrian’s last point on the topic was that in an age such as ours, where technology has all the affordances of a book in physical form, why would anyone want to lug around six textbooks when they could have unlimited access to all of their textbooks via mediums such as the iPad, or a Kindle e-reader? He said that the book’s practical value had diminished to the point of impracticality.

Adrian then delved into a discussion about universities as Fordist institutions (Henry Ford).

Elliott chimed in to give his two cents-worth, launching into a deep seated discussion about the value of the essay as a method of academic assessment. The essay was presented as a cohesive, easily understandable assessment model by a member of the audience.

Adrian‘s two cents: the essay is not a way to measure learning, but a way to gauge the difference between individuals and students. The essay assesses what we know as opposed to how much we have learnt or changed.

My two cents-worth:

In summary, this was an engaging and thought-provoking un-symposium, and I’m glad I went. Points that interested me: 

• The value of the book in physical form: I’d have to say I disagree. I think that digital technologies still have a long way to go before they rival the book in terms of practical value. Whilst I agree that lugging textbooks to and from university is slightly impractical, I’d much rather purchase the book in physical form. I think its value in physical form far surpasses that of its digitalised counterpart in that I like to be able to highlight and write in the margins. I like to be able to flip through the pages, and I really dislike reading textbooks in digital form as it strains my eyes. Technology has yet to resolve this issue. I know that I’m slightly archaic in my practices, but it’ll be a long time before you catch me voluntarily reading a textbook online.
• Discussions about the essay as a Fordist implement for gauging a student’s knowledge, relative to that of the rest of the student cohort. I’d never considered the essay in terms of its purpose – as a way of measuring difference between students (or, more precisely, their knowledge) as opposed to a way to gauge how much has been learnt over the course of an academic life.