Storyspace

Last updated
Storyspace
Original author(s) Jay David Bolter
John B. Smith (UNC Computer Science professor)
Michael Joyce
Developer(s) Eastgate Systems
Initial releaseOctober 1987;36 years ago (1987-10)
Stable release
3.2.0 for MacOS
Operating system Cross-platform
License proprietary
Website www.eastgate.com/storyspace/

Storyspace is a software program for creating, editing, and reading hypertext fiction. It can also be used for writing and organizing fiction and non-fiction intended for print. Maintained and distributed by Eastgate Systems, the software is available both for Windows and Mac.

Contents

History

Storyspace was the first software program specifically developed for creating, editing, and reading hypertext fiction. [1] It was created in the 1980s by Jay David Bolter, UNC Computer Science Professor John B. Smith, and Michael Joyce. Bolter and Joyce presented it to the first international meeting on Hypertext at Chapel Hill in October 1987. [2] [3]

Artistic and educational use

Several classics of hypertext literature were created using Storyspace, such as Afternoon, a story by Michael Joyce, Victory Garden by Stuart Moulthrop, Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson, and Figurski at Findhorn on Acid by Richard Holeton.

Storyspace has also been used extensively in secondary and tertiary education for teaching writing skills and critical thinking. [4] [5] It has been used for teaching creative writing in particular, [6] and was especially popular in the early years of the web, when hypertext linking was less fluid and web pages had to be hand-coded in HTML. Proponents argue that Storyspace's visual maps of how hypertext nodes are connected allow students to focus on writing in hypertext rather than on technical issues, and that linking and/or visually juxtaposing ideas allows students to develop a visual logic. [7]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hypertext</span> Text with references (links) to other text that the reader can immediately access

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.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graphic arts</span> Art genre

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Computers and writing is a sub-field of college English studies about how computers and digital technologies affect literacy and the writing process. The range of inquiry in this field is broad including discussions on ethics when using computers in writing programs, how discourse can be produced through technologies, software development, and computer-aided literacy instruction. Some topics include hypertext theory, visual rhetoric, multimedia authoring, distance learning, digital rhetoric, usability studies, the patterns of online communities, how various media change reading and writing practices, textual conventions, and genres. Other topics examine social or critical issues in computer technology and literacy, such as the issues of the "digital divide", equitable access to computer-writing resources, and critical technological literacies. Many studies by scientists have shown that writing on computer is better than writing in a book

Michael Joyce is a retired professor of English at Vassar College, New York, US. He is also an important author and critic of electronic literature.

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.

<i>afternoon, a story</i> Hypertext fiction by Michael Joyce

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.

The Victorian Web is a hypertext project derived from hypermedia environments, Intermedia and Storyspace, that anticipated the World Wide Web. Initially created between 1988 and 1990 with 1,500 documents, it has grown to over 128,500 items in July 2023. In contrast to archives and web-based libraries, the Victorian Web presents its images and documents, including entire books, as nodes in a network of complex connections. It emphasizes links rather than the searches.

<i>Patchwork Girl</i> (hypertext) Work of electronic literature by Shelley Jackson

Patchwork Girl or a Modern Monster by Mary/Shelly and Herself is a work of electronic literature by American author Shelley Jackson. It was written in Storyspace and published by Eastgate Systems in 1995. It is often discussed along with Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story as an important work of hypertext fiction.

Jay David Bolter is the Wesley Chair of New Media and a professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His areas of study include the evolution of media, the use of technology in education, and the role of computers in the writing process. More recently, he has conducted research in the area of augmented reality and mixed media. Bolter collaborates with researchers in the Augmented Environments Lab, co-directed with Blair MacIntyre, to create apps for entertainment, cultural heritage and education for smart phones and tablets. This supports his theory regarding remediation where he discusses "all media functions as remediators and that remediation offers us a means of interpreting the work of earlier media as well".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. Yellowlees Douglas</span>

Jane Yellowlees Douglas is a pioneer author and scholar of hypertext fiction. She began writing about hypermedia in the late 1980s, very early in the development of the medium. Her 1993 fiction I Have Said Nothing, was one of the first published works of hypertext fiction.

Eastgate Systems is a hypertext publisher and software company headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of hypertext</span>

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital studio</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital Writing and Research Lab</span> American research lab

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<i>Figurski at Findhorn on Acid</i>

Figurski at Findhorn on Acid is a hypertext novel by Richard Holeton published on CD-ROM by Eastgate Systems in 2001 and republished on the open web by the Electronic Literature Lab, Washington State University, in 2021. Re-Imagined Radio presented a radio interpretation of this novel in 2022 in which Holeton made an appearance. It is a work of interactive fiction with various paths for readers to choose from, an early example of electronic literature, and one of 23 works included in the literary hypertext canon.

The ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (Hypertext) is one of the oldest international conference series on the crossroads of Human-Computer Interaction and Information Science. The full list of conferences in the series can be found on the Association for Computing Machinery Hypertext Web page, and papers are available through the ACM Digital Library.

The Unknown is a web-based hypertext novel written by William Gillespie, Scott Rettberg and Dirk Stratton with Frank Marquardt. It won the 1999 Trace/Alt-X International Hypertext Contest. The name The Unknown was used to refer to both the work and its authors.

Twelve Blue is a work of electronic literature by American author Michael Joyce. He is widely known as one of the first writers of hypertext fiction. His first piece afternoon, a story was written in 1987. Joyce created Twelve Blue in 1996 using Storyspace software. This is his first piece of hypertext fiction specifically to be played on the web and published by Eastgate Systems. In 2006, Twelve Blue was selected for inclusion in the first volume of the Electronic Literature Collection, a publication of the Electronic Literature Organization.

References

  1. Barnet, Belinda (2012-10-26). "Machine Enhanced (Re)minding: the Development of Storyspace". Digital Humanities Quarterly. 006 (2). ISSN   1938-4122.
  2. Bolter, J. David and Michael Joyce (1987). "Hypertext and Creative Writing", Proceedings of ACM Hypertext 1987, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States, pages 41-50.
  3. Hawisher, Gail E., Paul LeBlanc, Charles Moran, and Cynthia L. Selfe (1996). Computers and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 1979-1994: A History Ablex Publishing Corporation, Norwood NJ, p. 213
  4. Russell, G. (September 1998). "Elements and implications of a hypertext pedagogy". Computers & Education. 31 (2): 185–193. doi:10.1016/S0360-1315(98)00029-3.
  5. Taylor, Pamela G.; Carpenter, B. Stephen (2002). "Inventively Linking: Teaching and Learning with Computer Hypertext". Art Education. 55 (4): 6–12. doi:10.2307/3193962. JSTOR   3193962.
  6. Murray, Janet H (1997). "The Pedagogy of Cyberfiction: Teaching a Course on Reading and Writing Interactive Narrative", in Barrett, Edward and Marie Redmond (eds.) Contextual Media: Multimedia and Interpretation, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  7. Tan, Kenneth Paul A.S.-S. (2002) "Storyspace: Using Hypertext in the Classroom" The Technology Source, July/August.