| Cybertext | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Stylistic origins | Cybernetics, Post-structuralist literary theory |
| Formats | Digital |
| Related topics | |
| Hypertext, Interactive fiction, Ergodic literature, Electronic literature | |
| Part of a series on |
| Anthropology of nature, science, and technology |
|---|
| Social and cultural anthropology |
Cybertext as defined by Espen Aarseth in 1997 is a type of ergodic literature where the user traverses the text by doing nontrivial work. [1]
Cybertexts are pieces of literature where the medium matters. Each user obtains a different outcome based on the choices they make. According to Aarseth, "information is here understood as a string of signs, which may (but does not have to) make sense to a given observer." [2] Cybertexts may be equated to the transition between a linear piece of literature, such as a novel, and a game. In a novel, the reader has no choice, the plot and the characters are all chosen by the author: there is no 'user', just a 'reader'. This is important because it entails that the person working their way through the novel is not an active participant.
Cybertext is based on the idea that getting to the message is just as important as the message itself. In order to obtain the message, work on the part of the user is required. This may also be referred to as nontrivial work on the part of the user. [3] This means that the reader does not merely interpret the text but performs actions such as active choice and decision-making through navigation options. [4] There is also a feedback loop between the reader and the text. [1]
The concept of cybertext offers a way to expand the reach of literary studies to include phenomena that are perceived today as foreign or marginal. [3] In Aarseth's work, cybertext denotes the general set of text machines which, operated by readers, yield different texts for reading. [5] For example, in Raymond Queneau's book Hundred Thousand Billion Poems , each reader will encounter not just poems arranged in a different order, but different poems depending on the precise way in which they turn the sections of page. [6]
Cybertext can also be used as a broader alternative for hypertext, particularly as it critiques the critical responses to the latter. Aarseth, together with literary scholars such as N. Katherine Hayles, maintains that cybertext cannot be applied according to the conventional author-text-message paradigms since it is a computational engine. [7]
The term cybertext is derived from cyber- in the word cybernetics, which was coined by Norbert Wiener in his book Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948), which in turn comes from the Greek word kybernetes – helmsman. [3] The prefix is then merged with the word "text", which is identified as a distinctive structure for producing and consuming verbal meaning in post-structuralist literary theory. [7]
Although Aarseth's use of the term has been the most influential, he was not the first to use it. The neologism cybertext appeared several times in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was the name of a software company in the mid-1980s, [8] and was used by speculative fiction poetry author Bruce Boston as the title of a book he published in 1992, which contained science-fictional poetry. [9]
Cybertext is part of what scholars called generational shifts involving literature on digital media. The first phase was hypertext, which transitioned to hypermedia during the mid-1990s. [10] These developments coincided with the invention of the first graphic browser called Mosaic and the popularization of the world wide web. [10] Cybertext came after hypermedia amid the move toward the focus on software code, particularly its considerable ability to control the reception process without reducing interactivity. [10]
The fundamental idea in the development of the theory of cybernetics is the concept of feedback: a portion of information produced by the system that is taken, total or partially, as input. Cybernetics is the science that studies control and regulation in systems in which there exists flow and feedback of information. Though first used by science fiction poet Bruce Boston, the term cybertext was brought to the literary world's attention by Espen Aarseth in 1997. [11]
Aarseth's concept of cybertext focuses on the organization of the text in order to analyze the influence of the medium as an integral part of the literary dynamic. According to Aarseth, cybertext is not a genre in itself; in order to classify traditions, literary genres and aesthetic value, we should inspect texts at a much more local level. [12] He also maintained that traditional literary theory and interpretation are not main features in cybertext since it focuses on the textual medium (textonomy) and the study of textual meaning (textology). [1]
An example of a cybertext is Twelve Blue by Michael Joyce. It is a web-based text that includes navigation modes characterized by fluid and multiple sense of structures of electronic textuality such as colored threads that play different "bars" and blue-script text that returns to images of rivers and water. [13] Depending on what link you choose or what portion of the diagram on the side you pick you will be transferred to a different portion of the text. So in the end, you do not really finish reading the entire story or 'novel' you go through random pages and try piecing the story together yourself. You may never really 'finish' the story. But, because it is a cybertext the 'finishing' of the story is not as important as its impact on the reader, or on the conveyance. [14]
Another example is Stir Fry Texts , by Jim Andrews, which is a cybertext where there are many layers of text, and as you move your mouse over the words, the layers beneath them are 'dug' through. [15] The House is another example of a cybertext where one might assume a description of the piece as follows: It is an unruly text, the words don't listen, you are not supreme. You are guided through the piece. This is a cybertext with minimal control. You watch as something unfolds before you, "a crumbling mania", you must be able to go with the flow, to read texts upside down, to piece together a reflection of words, to be okay with texts half read disappearing or moving so far away so continuously that you can not make out those very important words. [16]
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typically activated by a mouse click, keypress set, or screen touch. Apart from text, the term "hypertext" is also sometimes used to describe tables, images, and other presentational content formats with integrated hyperlinks. Hypertext is one of the key underlying concepts of the World Wide Web, where Web pages are often written in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). As implemented on the Web, hypertext enables the easy-to-use publication of information over the Internet.
Hypermedia, an extension of hypertext, is a nonlinear medium of information that includes graphics, audio, video, plain text and hyperlinks. This designation contrasts with the broader term multimedia, which may include non-interactive linear presentations as well as hypermedia. The term was first used in a 1965 article written by Ted Nelson. Hypermedia is a type of multimedia that features interactive elements, such as hypertext, buttons, or interactive images and videos, allowing users to navigate and engage with content in a non-linear manner.
Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature characterized by the use of hypertext links that provide a new context for non-linearity in literature and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text to the next, and in this fashion arranges a story from a deeper pool of potential stories. Its spirit can also be seen in interactive fiction.
Narratology is the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect human perception. The term is an anglicisation of French narratologie, coined by Tzvetan Todorov. Its theoretical lineage is traceable to Aristotle (Poetics) but modern narratology is agreed to have begun with the Russian formalists, particularly Vladimir Propp, and Mikhail Bakhtin's theories of heteroglossia, dialogism, and the chronotope first presented in The Dialogic Imagination (1975).
Ergodic literature is a term coined by Espen J. Aarseth in his 1997 book Cybertext—Perspectives on Ergodic Literature to describe literature in which nontrivial effort is required for the reader to traverse the text. The term is derived from the Greek words ergon, meaning "work", and hodos, meaning "path". It is associated with the concept of cybertext and describes a cybertextual process that includes a semiotic sequence that the concepts of "reading" do not account for.
Espen J. Aarseth is a Norwegian academic specializing in the fields of video game studies and electronic literature. Aarseth completed his doctorate at the University of Bergen. He co-founded the Department of Humanistic Informatics at the University of Bergen, and worked there until 2003, at which time he was a full professor.
Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature where digital capabilities such as interactivity, multimodality or algorithmic text generation are used aesthetically. Works of electronic literature are usually intended to be read on digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. They cannot be easily printed, or cannot be printed at all, because elements crucial to the work cannot be carried over onto a printed version.
afternoon, a story, spelled with a lowercase 'a', is a work of electronic literature written in 1987 by American author Michael Joyce. It was published by Eastgate Systems in 1990 and is known as one of the first works of hypertext fiction.
George Paul Landow was Professor of English and Art History Emeritus at Brown University. He was a leading authority on Victorian literature, art, and culture, as well as a pioneer in criticism and theory of Electronic literature, hypertext and hypermedia. He also pioneered the use of hypertext and the web in higher education.
Stuart Moulthrop is an innovator of electronic literature and hypertext fiction, both as a theoretician and as a writer. He is author of the hypertext fiction works Victory Garden (1992), which was on the front-page of the New York Times Book Review in 1993, Reagan Library (1999), and Hegirascope (1995), amongst many others. Moulthrop is currently a Professor of Digital Humanities in the Department of English, at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He also became a founding board member of the Electronic Literature Organization in 1999.
Noah Wardrip-Fruin is a professor in the Computational Media department of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is an advisor for the Expressive Intelligence Studio. He is an alumnus of the Literary Arts MFA program and Special Graduate Study PhD program at Brown University. In addition to his research in digital media, computer games, and software studies, he served for 10 years as a member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Literature Organization.
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Early conceptions of hypertext defined it as text that could be connected by a linking system to a range of other documents that were stored outside that text. In 1934 Belgian bibliographer, Paul Otlet, developed a blueprint for links that telescoped out from hypertext electrically to allow readers to access documents, books, photographs, and so on, stored anywhere in the world.
Liberature is literature in which the material form is considered an important part of the whole and essential to understanding the work.
Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink was an American writer, scholar, and teacher. Writing hypermedia fiction under the pen name M.D. Coverley, she is best known for her epic hypertext novels Califia (2000) and Egypt: The Book of Going Forth by Day (2006). A pioneer born-digital writer, she is part of the first generation of electronic literature authors that arose in the 1987–1997 period. She was a founding board member and past president of the Electronic Literature Organization and the first winner of the Electronic Literature Organization Career Achievement Award, which was named in her honor. Lusebrink was professor emeritus, School of Humanities and Languages at Irvine Valley College (IVC).
Astrid Christina Ensslin is a German digital culture scholar, and Professor of Dynamics of Virtual Communication Spaces at the University of Regensburg. Ensslin is known for her work on digital fictions and video games, and her development of narratological theory to encompass digital narratives.
John Howland Cayley is a Canadian pioneer of writing in digital media as well as a theorist of the practice, a poet, and a Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University.
These Waves of Girls is a hypermedia novella by Caitlin Fisher that won the Electronic Literature Organization's Award for Fiction in 2001. The work is frequently taught in undergraduate literature courses and is referenced in the field of electronic literature as a significant example of early multimodal web-based hypertext fiction, placing Fisher "at the forefront of digital writing".
Light-Water: a Mosaic of Meditations is a "hypermedia work" that utilizes and layers images and poetry to "create a striking experience of poetic meditation." Created by Christy Sheffield Sanford in 1999, the work consists of ten poems that produce a "visual-literal meditation on light and water." Through the implementation of timelines within the poems and overall work, Light-Water illustrates how "space-time possibilities for literature can now be more adequately realized through the use of spatio-temporal dhtml editors."
34 North 118 West by Jeff Knowlton, Naomi Spellman, and Jeremy Hight is one of the first locative hypertexts. Published in 2003, the work connected Global Positioning System (GPS) data with a fictional narrative on an early tablet PC connected to Global Positioning devices to deliver a real-time story to a user.