write me at home
I am obsessed with forms of word art in which the words are moving or ephemeral, in which their effect on the reader/hearer depends partly on whether s/he has memorized (or at least mentally retained some trace of) what has gone before. Reading a paperback novel, I can gulp paragraphs at a time, but I've lost the oral-traditionally-trained memory power of the past. (Despite my quixotic memory exercises; test me on The Sting some time...)
My favorite digital art demands that I remember words and images from one scene to the next, and dares me to hold the greatest possible amount of complexity in my head. I think this sort of challenge is good for me...and good for us as a species.
Related: my obsession with "making users work" via s - l - o - w reading. I use Espen Aarseth's term "ergodic" to describe digital art that makes readers (except he calls them users) work to follow paths.
Rant mode on: Hypertexts are not yet as good as they can be. Games are not yet as good as they can be. I dream that there are amazing new forms, lurking just beyond the intersection of these two known forms, waiting for us to discover them.
I work for an inventor who says he makes his greatest discoveries "by stumbling around." Of course he says one can increase one's chances by experimenting aggressively, with the latest tools...
Usability critiques have been set up as straw men for this conference. Of course there are inherent conflicts between the-edgy-use-of-new-tools and "maximizing click-through." This seems so obvious to me that it's not worth discussing. However, even for artists, there are several fun ways to "use usability":
- One particular usability technique, the study of reading reactions, can be useful to creators of electronic literature.
- For artistic reasons, you may want to reverse "ease of use" guidelines to produce "dis-ease of use". My DAC2000 presentation was about using HCI techniques in these unintended ways. (This talk hasn't yet been revised since I delivered it. And it was also about applying the Media Equation findings of Cliff Nass and Byron Reeves and what digital artists can learn from stage magic. But I digress.)
My current creative project: adding cookies and JavaScript (and a whole new structure of course) to my science fictional hypertext, Murmur of Water, in Rob Kendall's advanced hypertext class at The New School.
Recreation? Come write and link with me; I'm "julianne" on Everything2, Associations-Blaster (English), Slashdot, Epinions, Unimobile, and Groove. Everywhere else I am "juliannechat" - for example at Tripod or Bolt where you can check out the site builder interface (in two of its many skins) that I worked on earlier this year...
My day job? Since 1979 I've been working with online interactive information, connecting inventors and their customers:
This page last updated 10 November 2000.
Original content copyright
2000 by Julianne Chatelain.