Category: Reflections

http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/hypertexts/hgs/HGS0B1.html – First Page

http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/hypertexts/hgs/HGS0B2.html – Second Page

http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/hypertexts/hgs/HGS0B3.html – Third Page

In the first 3 ‘pages’ of the storyline in "Hegirascope", there are patterns within the statements and links on each page.

The statements on the top seems to have a connection with eachother, perhaps giving a different description for what Hegirascope is. For example, the statement on the second page says: “Structure without Order”. The third page says: “A World Inside a World.”

The statements on the bottom all relate to different comments about ‘lines’. For example, on the first page, it is “Dancing on a Wire”, the second, it is “To Live Beyond the Line”, and the third, it is “A Time Outside the Lines”.

The large, bolded comments in the middle of the page seem to give hints about what you are doing and what Hegirascope is about. On the first page, it asks the reader, “What if the word will not be still?” With this question, the page switches to the next, almost as if it is answering the question for you. The next page tells the reader, “Where you are going, there are no maps”. They are right, there are no maps, Hegirascope is like a maze that you are trapped inside. On the third page, it says “As in a dream….” Hegirascope is like a dream, it’s chaotic, unmapped, and unplanned.

There is also a pattern within a lot of the links. A lot of the links in these pages lead you to a story from the so-called “Catalog of Dreams,” a collection of related stories that are often linked to within Hegirascope. One common pattern between all three of these pages is that each first link in the upper-left hand corner of each page links to one of the stories in the “Catalog of Dreams”. The titles to each link give clues to what each ‘dream’ is about. “Think fast”, which is the first link on the first page, links to a ‘dream’ about speed and urgency. “Lines of light”, which is the first link in the second story, links to a ‘dream’ about the perception of the sky and light.  Finally, “In your dreams”, which is the first link on the third page, literally links to a dream – it links to the same ‘dream’ as the link from the second page.

There are also some other random links to the Catalog of Dreams. Both the second and third pages have another link to the “Catalog of Dreams”. “Now… this”, the third link on the first page, also links to a story in the Catalog of Dreams. So does “Dream on”, the fourth link on the third page. There might be a pattern that every other page has an additional link to the Catalog of Dreams.

On the second page, there seems to also be some interconnectiveness among 2 of the links. “Read faster” links to a story about “Zick”. “Turning and Turning” links to another similar story about “Zick”.

There is also some other interconnectedness with the links on the second and third page. 2 of these links both connect to a collection of stories titled, “Ideas of Order in Park Slope”. The link entitled, “Hello, Chaos”, the second link on the second page, links to one of these stories, and so does the link, “Poet, Lover, Fool”, which is the second link on the third page.

Playing around with the links and writing everything out helps uncover these patterns in Hegirascope’s text.

(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.   

Hegirascope—— I DO not understand the stories, however, I am intrigued to find out- to find out the intent of the creator; to find out what the connection is between this piece of artwork/literature and the meaning of textual media…..

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."

J. Douglas discusses interpretive skills throughout Gaps, Maps, and Perception: What Hypertext Readers Don’t Do.  On page 3 of the article, Douglas mentions that nearly half the time we spend at the movies is, in fact, spent in the blackness between frames and how the human eye and brain have learned to form fluid, tangible reproductions.  He points out that interpretive skills have been around as long as humans have existed living in the wilderness which were essential for survival in a highly competive natural environment.

I immediately made the connection between hypertext and cinema filling in the gaps, then forming a mental map, which shapes the perception.  Then my mind wandered and I thought of all the other was humans have learned to use interpretive skills outside of just reading or watching film.  These skills can be used to form a hypothesis about what will happen next, just like any pattern in a real life scenario.  The more you drive to shopping malls and look for parking, you use interpretive skills to judge what kind of drivers will pull out without looking or the signs of who is coming and leaving.  This applies to hypertext in this aspect: the more you "surf" the net or read hypertexts, your understanding of what to focus on increases and your judgement is sharpened as a result.  Just as in baseball, you learn when to look for the fastball, say a 3-0 count, and when to expect the breaking ball, a 1-2 count. 

The Hejirascope reminded me of a lot of things.  At first because of the way the stories just seemed to end, it reminded me a lot of Italo Calvino’s On A Winter’s Night a Traveler.  After reading for a little bit longer, I then started to compare it to the Create Your Own Adventure books.  For obvious reasons, you have a choice on which link out of the four to click on.  There were two ways which I found seperated this exercise from a CYOA story.  The first is that the stories typically don’t match up.  I think I did click on one link that went to what seemed like an extension of the previous link.  Another way that they are seperate is that there seems to be a time limit.  You are given a certain amount of time to read each blurb that comes up, and then to choose a link or destination.  Thanks to the ‘back’ button, however, it is up to you whether or not time is a factor.  The first time I ran through it, I hit the back button every time it cut me off.  After about 10 minutes of this, I decided to just go with the flow and see where it takes me.  Just as if I chose my own destinations, the resulting pages that came up were just as random as the ones that preceeded them.  At times though, some of the blurbs did match up — only not in succession.  An example of this are the stories of Mr. Perlmutter.  In a matter of about 5 straight minutes, I read about three or four blurbs on him, but at very random times.  It seemed like you’d get the end of his story in one blurb, and then the beginning of his story in another.  In a way, it did sort of tie things together.  Maybe I just read too much into though. 

I couldn’t help but notice the aesthetics of the site itself.  Due to the color combinations of the text and the background, it was very easy to read the text.  However, I think that because almost every successive page presented a different look to it — sometimes a radical change, not a sublte one — it seemed to be more of a distraction than anything to me.  I’m not the quickest reader, so the changes threw me off and sort of frustrated me at the same time.  This activity did relate to the Bush piece on how technology is changing and has the ability to advance.  The internet is a new media that has given this Hejirascope the chance for being.  Without the Internet, it may not have the same affect, say if it were presented to a person through note/flash cards or something like that.  The immediacy of it is what makes it important.  The ability of the media and technology to keep on throwing the new blurbs out on a timeline, for example, is what makes this activity effective.   

Out of all the interactive game we have played so far, I found Hitch Hiker guide to the Galaxy the most user friendly.  The graphic help in determining what objects are in the room and where I am at a certain point.  The hints are great also, because some of them does guide you to the next step but they do not completely give the answers away unless we really want it.  I like how the hints are given in progression so that still leave me the freedom to try things on my own until I am really stuck and need to refer back to them again.  The hints are also quite humorous as well.  For example, I am trying to obtain the bable fish and that attempt got me into a big mess.  I still haven’t obtain my bable fish and was then kicked off to another space ship.   I’ve been playing this for hours and thinking that I should go do my homework and realized that this is part of my homework.  One thing about this game I realized is that I really have to be persistent at things.  Certain parts required me to do the same command over and over again.  Reading the series on the Hitch hiker Guide to the Galaxy and playing the interactive game are two different experience.  Playing the game I am the one making the decisions to examine things and find out what works and where to go.  The terminology of the game and the book are similar such as the characters names, the bable fish and the setting, however the game requires more problem solving skills and of course interaction on my part to advance the narrative.

hey all!!!! okay about the comic book……………….."And all that’s needed is the desire to be heard, the will to learn, and the ability to SEE."  A qutote taken from Understanding Comics, The Invisible Art, I find that this last statement made by the artist/the writer/the creator is- although very simple- very profound. This message speaks for all genres of art, of creating and expressing oneself- whether this is through literature, composing, painting, et. I enjoyed the book, it included a number of insights that i had never thought of prior to reading it

On pages,  118-120 in Scott McCloud’s Understand Comics, he discusses the usage of single frame using abstract art to convey intangible emotions such as joy, madness, and anxiety.  80 percent of the frame examples he uses would not match the image that comes to my mind when thinking of that feeling.  However, I believe this concept of using frames like the ones shown in comics ties back into the concept of interactivity.  Granted there weren’t surrounding frames for each emotion on this page which would have helped the reader shape a better analysis of what the art was supposed to mean, but even if they were it would still be up to the reader to fill in "gutter" space or interpet each abstract image in his or her own way.  As for Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Game, I found it the most frustrating of all.  It would only let me get out of bed but not exit the room and no graphics ever appeared on the screen. 

I was never one to read comic books growing up.  I still don’t read comic books.  I think part of it was because I never really watched a lot of cartoons growing up either.  One thing that I’ve always wondered is how do you read from each panel to each panel?  Sometimes the pages aren’t constructed in such a way that each panel is side by side and it is then easy to know to read from left to right, naturally.  Scott McCloud addressed this point in his book about comics.  While I was reading this book, I kept on catching myself first trying to figure out where to go from frame to frame when it wasn’t totally obvious.  The more I read, however, the easier it was to pick up on.  It wasn’t until maybe around 60 or 70 pages in that he touched on this area.  It was pretty breif, but the mention was made to help us as the readers realize that there are things in this world that are natural to us.  It is only normal for us to read from left to right, top to bottom — in the West anyway.  In the East, some things are different — including reading and writing styles/formats.  Differences between the two cultures are also noticable when it comes to comics.  Japanese-style comics were different and in some ways more advanced or ahead of the curve. 

After thinking about relationships between comics and some other sources of media, one common theme I found between comics and the game Zork is that both are read from frame-to-frame.  In between the frames are the ‘gutters’ of comics where the reader becomes involved and participates.  In the game Zork and others alike, the user is participating by playing and making decisions.  Also, the game is presented one "frame" at a time.  Each scene or space that you are in is a frame of time or space.  This is another relation I was able to come up with.  Scott McCloud talks about time and space in his book and how the size of a frame could possibly play a role in how long a scene is, or extend a dramatic moment by lengthening one frame over another.  Zork is able to present this through the text it responds to you with.  Based on the text, you can then determine which space you will be going in.