Author: bbey

(Start page) http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/hypertexts/hgsHGS0B1.html

(First click)  http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/hypertexts/hgs/HGS048.html

(Next Page) http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/hypertexts/hgs/HGSXX1.html

(2nd Click)   http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/hypertexts/hgs/HGS066.html

(Last click)  http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/hypertexts/hgs/HGS106.html

          I explored three lexias that were not linked sequentially to each other.  after the automatic introduction, I clicked to the right of the initializing page.  the page’s text structure was as follows:  middle; top = "Hi There! Maybe Later", middle center = "What if the world will not be still", and middle; bottom = "Dance on a Wire".  The text to the left of the center: left; top = "Think fast", left; bottom = "Read faster" and the text to the right of the center: right; top = "Now this" and text on the right; bottom = "Turning and turning" were different font than that in center.  the middle; center text was bold and giving the appearence of a headliner.  It was on this page HGS0B1 that I made my first click, "Now…this".  I followed the same pattern during my exploration, clicking the upper-right text.

          I cliked the right; top text "Now…this" the new page displayed the heading Calalog of Dreams #1004 it had the sequence number HGS048.  On this page, the text urged the reader to click within the text, but the links were not live and when you clicked the outer links you did not get the promised story.  The story said clicking the first link described you as 200 feet tall looking over a sleepy suburia.  The second link describes a scene with Benjamin Franklin in a Parisian fancy house.  The third link set the scene with Gloria Steinem and Barbara Mikulski washing the Senate Chambers with a fire house.  And, the forth and last link placed you in a forest with leaves made of air thin glass. On the right of the text, I clicked "Control".

          After I clicked "Control", I got a black page with only the text that said -click-.  You had to llok for the clickable text.  After finding the word "Violene" written in red with sequence  HGSXX1, I clicked the word.  Clicking it took me to a page titled "The Way it Happens".  This page’s senquence number is HGS066 and on this page the material reflected the Calvino style, where you the reader and the actor are one.  The story line here indicated that there was a driver who last controll of the car and the car takes over and begins to improvise for the driver, or so you think.  On this page, I clicked "Horizon" to the right of the center text.  

          The text selection was titled "Rear View" and was a continuation of the previous story "The Way it Happens".  The car was still improvising control over itself as it came out of a "soft" roll-over in a ditch.  This link HGS106 has a message that was we always see the future in the rear-view mirror. 

         I observed the links number structure and believe that eace group of links have mathematical numbering systems to generate their sequence.  The links that I selected were all even numbers, the computer generated numbers were increments of one 12, 13 up; in order, the beginning page had a "B" follow by "1" and odd number, and and the black page had Roman Numbers.  The text was framed by the type of fonts that set the links apart on the page but presented the page as on theme.  the only other connection was the non-bordered pages that gave the perception of infinity, with the guttered spaces between the words that allowed the reader to connect the text randomly from subtopics while focusing on the material to get its meaning as in UNderstanding Comics.  The page text was connected with a consistent layout and some words were connected to the stroy’s theme such as the word "Control" that linked to the out-of-control car.  There maybe other connection that I just did not see.   

The text material in J. Yellow Douglas’ Gaps, Maps, and Perceptions: What Hypertext Readers (don’t) do, points out that the events witness as film is just a series of cuts.  That the cuts present a story that the viewer’s mine set the stage for what it perceives. 

The viewer’s perception fills in the gutters that align and form the story as in the cuts and reformatting of text in Bustdown the Door, Calvino’s novel, and Hejirascope.  The series of cuts lead the mind to see elements that may or may not be present.  Understanding Comics set the series of cuts in a boarder while your brain bridges the material’s gutters with your own precepts. 

I noticed that my mind began to form perception when I was viewing Hejirascope.  Douglas points out that human perception have biases toward “seeing causality and intention even where these qualities may not exit.  Although, hypertext may seem new, its fundamental attributes as related to perception was study over 20 years ago in Belgium.  The Belgium study observed subject who watched animated images all conclude that they saw causation connected to the movement of the images. 

Seeing connections in hypertext, Douglas Hofstadter suggests, “is perhaps the single definitive characteristic of intelligent behavior."

Understanding Comics was an invisible art until I began to read the book by Scott McCloud.  He took the format of comic text and explained its layout in a manner that I can understand.  I will never look at comics in the same way again.  Comics are more than pictures to entertain; they are juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence.  The sequential layouts are in six segments:  moment-to-moment, action- to-action, subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene, and aspect-to-aspect, and non-sequitur.  After I analyzed these formats I could see how the composer of comic strip includes and excludes material without losing the story. 

I am not patient enough to play Zork.  I started the game and found that I needed to think like the creators.  There is a specific thought process that the user needs to employ to get around the game area.  You also need to know the text code format to get the program to respond to your input text.  You could get stuck for hours trapped in one place in the program.  Most of all, you need good typing skills, missed spell words make the process ever harder.  One thing I did recognize is that playing the game relaxes you if you are concentrating on the quest.      

There were some parts of the text I could understand it was the difference examples of how media is perceived.  Marie-Laure Ryan used metaphors as: Computers as Theatre. The idea of the computer is as if it is a representative of a visual world or system.  It cast the screen as a stage.  The run of the text is seen as a performer and the user as the director as summons the actors.  She said that reading was a treasure hunt that did not build on other knowledge.  So, when we write for cyber media all we need is to understand the textual flow and build upon the text so that it  go in ant direction to complete a story.   

The process I used was to read my story then I looked for connection in the other stories.  Then I linked to those that I thought would continues my story.  I choose some without any thought on how it would lend itself to the overall text of my story and some I chose to match the words I highlighted and a couple I gave no thought at all to them. 
The incipit links are:
densely covered woods linked to a  web page titled Woods Hole Oceanographic was selected because the word woods came up in the title. I wanted to experience how that site would change my story.
joy of living text was selected because I felt that it expressed the joy of living and could bring back the character Bernadette.   
wind or vertigo was centered around a wind mill in the outback of some desert and represented the isolation that Bernadette and Cavedagna felt in their charade.

bridge’s entrance the image of a bridge was just to show a picture of a bridge.

Traversing Through the Winding Road links on the words suffocated and summertime add to the story line.  It gave the text other avenues that could be explored as new stories with in the title.  However the words daisy and accident really did not add anything to the original story text.

When There Is No Story At All links did not seem to have any connection to the story text to me;  however, someone with a good imagination could think up a story that could be weaved into the text to make it coherent.

  

 

After reading the final portions of Italo Calvino’s (“Calvino”) book if on a winter’s night a traveler, I have a much clearer understanding of interactive text. The book was thought provoking in the way it shifted story lines, presented newly created words, and contained all the book’s format in a weaved circular pattern. The book allows you to think of possible new ending to each story’s plot.

I was impressed when begin the 9th chapter relating the airplane to a metallic uterus. The uterus holds the life of an unborn fetus until delivery time; while the airplane holds its passenger until arrival time. The book’s text implied ways that a person could eliminated writers block by just writing and weaving a story with the experiences of you life, someone else’s life, or just vision from your mind. And, if that is not enough, you could mix all or part of the elements listed combining them in any form you desired and continue your story. Calvino did just that when he visualized Lotaria and incorporated her into many different personalities.

The characters she represented are as follows: Lotaria – Corina – Gertrude – Ingrid – Alfonsina –Shelia – Captian Alexandra. Calvino begin reading a book to get the girl, ended his novel with the revelation that he love the girl, and chapter 12 married the girl. He could have asked her to marry his in the first few pages, but instead he took the reader on a textual journey.

I started reading the book and found that it had more than one book within its original title. I did not fully understand text media, but by the time I got to page ninety I had a pretty good picture. The story changed about four times with the title and chapter numbers not agreeing with each other. The themes change, the characters changed, and it indicated a change in the time periods.
Because there were so many changes in the text it was clear to see how Italo Calvino’s writing would be considered Textual Media. He left you with stories that you could finish with the material from your experiences. Calvino used some of the same concepts in his book that we saw in Bust Down the Door! And All Fall Down. I could choose a lot of different paths in his story by choosing different stories ending from the Calvino’s book creating my own active journey 0r Ergodic Literature

I was not sure if the words moved to different places on the screen; However, I am sure that the music calmed my energy. It was much different than the mush from “Bust Down the Door!” I did notice that the words changed for what was falling. I thought that the positions and sized changed, but I could be wrong about that part of the observation.

I do not know much about textual media, but nluu’s reflection gave me some idea of the differences in the media forms.