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One of the major difficulties in designing our section of this site
was in settling on exactly what the term hypermedia in narrative involved. It seems that
there are just as many definitions for hypermedia as facets to its overwhelmingly large
and amorphous identity. In the broadest sense, narrative hypermedia involves the
integration of graphics, sound, video, text, and animation into documents or files that
are linked in an associative system of information storage and retrieval. These files
contain cross references called hyperlinks that connect to other files with related
information, allowing users to easily move, or navigate, from one narrative or section of
narrative to another through these associations. Narrative hypermedia is built around the
idea of creating a working and learning environment that parallels human thought –
one that is spatial and associative rather than simply linear. This environment allows the
user, or reader, to make associations between topics rather than moving sequentially from
one to the next, as in traditional media. Hypermedia topics are thus linked in a manner
that allows the user to jump from subject to related subject as they wholly engage with a
narrative.
Employing a provisional, commercial definition of the subject,
hypermedia can be understood as systems that combine the use of products produced by the
computer, telecommunication, and television industries, including the
advertising-entertainment industries or services. In socio-economic and institutional
terms, hypermedia deals with the ongoing melding of the computer, telecommunication, and
television industries (http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/page6.html). Though it has many
varying applications, hypermedia is the combination of traditional media through new and
emerging technologies into a stimulating and conglomerate form of narrative.
To employ a theoretical term, hypermedia is extremely rhizomatic in
nature, meaning that it thrives on multiplicity and non-linearity. It branches seemingly
endlessly like natural rhizomes, continually growing in depth and complexity. One author
writes,
Knowledge of the rhizome as a totality is impossible, precisely
because "totality" and other absolutes have no meaning in a rhizome. The rhizome
is as individual as the individual in contact with it -- it is that individual's
perception, that individual's map, that individual's understanding. It is also, and at the
same time, a completely different something--another individual's perception, another
individual's map, another individual's understanding. It provides no structure for common
understanding. (http://www.pscw.uva.nl/sociosite/topics/hypertext.html#top)
Its power derives from its flexibility, variability, and from its
ability to incorporate, transmute, and transcend any traditional tool or structure. Like
the rhizome, hypermedia is dangerous because it is so thoroughly amorphous, thus
challenging all the hierarchical systems we are accustomed to and how we understand them.
In tackling this subject we have divided narrative hypermedia into
types or genres, including hyper/cybertext, short films/animation, depth model narrative,
and epublications, which we will explore in more detail individually. In each section you
will find a brief history of each media, an overview of current applications, and a look
into the future of that genre. Each page also includes a section of annotated links to
interesting and engaging examples of that particular media on the web. Finally, we have
provided a page of five questions with answers from a cutting-edge author, critic, and
professor in the field of hypermedia. |
