vogmae interactive networked video practice

This essay uses the material thought advocated by Paul Carter to argue for the materiality of writing. It does this by examining hypertext as an academic material writing practice, using ideas from design and hypertext theory. It specifically argues for a crystalline structure in hypertext as the actualisation of virtual possibilities via links and how this is different and novel in relation to existing academic writing.

This is the brief I was received:
"they have no idea what Web 2.0 means but would dearly like to know how, why, when and it [sic] what way it effects the way they do their job."

This essay combines film and hypertext theory to reformulate a hypertextual question that, to date, has been poorly framed. This question addresses the particular relation that may exist between the discursive domains of film and hypertext in terms of a possible affinity between the cinematic edit and the hypertextual link, with a view to reimagining the genealogy that has been imposed upon hypertext as a reading and writing practice. It is hoped that along the way a productive recasting of the relation between cinema theory (of one sort or another) and hypertext can occur, and that this will provide a possible methodology for a hypertext writing practice that is yet to be invented.

This paper proposes that within the practice of writing small scale, local hypertext, critical questions of relevance to all hypertext researchers are foregrounded, in particular problems of excess, context, and teleological interpretation.

The hypothesis I wish to pose is simple. Within link node hypertext it is clear that context is fundamental to link interpretation, and that context is largely reader (i.e., pragmatically) determined, in no manner is the significance of the link exhausted by any particular context in which it may occur. Furthermore, a significant factor in the contextual interpretation of the link is the development of narrative schemas, and such schemas determine meaning retrospectively. This suggests that structure in hypertext is produced pragmatically, and its principal meaningful structures are defined retrospectively. The tension between links as pragmatic, open, and excessive, versus the teleological imposition of coherence, is the space within which hypertext writing defines its own practice.

This is a special issue of the Fibreculture Journal that I edited (with necessary prodding from Andrew Murphie and markup from Lisa Gye). This themed edition is entitled "New Media, Networks and New Pedagogies" and there is an introductory essay by me and then work by a variety of people. (It's a good collection.)