Hypertext remediation
Jerome McGann says that hypertexts already exist in scholarly critical editions. The creation of a critical edition, which consists of tracking and comparing many editions of the same text, determining authorial intent, and making comprehensive editing decisions based on these factors, is “research as hypertext” (McGann). He also states, however, that “electronic texts have a special virtue that paper-based texts do not have: They can be designed for complex interactive transformations” (81). The point of the composition of the hypertext remediation of “The Masque of the Red Death” was to show the changes in the text and narrative that take place just by separating it into lexias and linking it together with visual and textual links. This fragmented version contains all of the alphabetic text of the “original” (or the latest print version), however the reading experience is very different, mainly because of the fragmentation, links, and, perhaps most importantly, increased reader interaction.
George P. Landow, one of the prominent hypertexts theorists, says, “Electronic linking, which gives the reader a far more active role than is possible with books, has certain major effects” (Hypertext 2.0, 76) and he speaks of “…some of the complex issues involved with adding the link to writing, with reconfiguring textuality by using an element that simultaneously blurs borders and bridges gaps, yet draws attention to them” (20). The visual links are twenty-one simple boxes in the seven colors representing the seven rooms in the story; these are displayed in a spiraling pattern that repeats three times, to represent the confusing, maze-like structure of the text and the feeling of spiraling as the red death creeps closer and closer until the reader herself might feel the illness coming on. The textual links here are highlighted in three different colors, according to theme, and the lexias they are linked to will highlight different aspects of the story depending on where the reader chooses to go next. The themes I chose were death, revelry, and time. The first two are the most recurring and prominent, and are linked in an orderly fashion throughout the twenty-one lexias. The time-themed lexias are linked to each other, with two lexias having more than one thematic link.
Landow also says that “linking, by itself, is not enough” (123). This is one of the main issues in the discussion of remediated texts—is it really working in the medium if the narrative was composed to be linear or chronological? Does the addition of the hypertext links with the colorful representations of the rooms take away from Poe’s writing and do the thematic links take away from authorial trust of the reader to make these connections themselves? There has to be a reason for the medium, it must necessarily add to the message to be effective, and often hypertext remediation ends up taking away more than it enhances the reader’s experience. Here I tried to preserve the integrity of the text, while echoing the structure and writing style in the visual spiraling squares and inter-textual links, while not distracting from the words of the narrative. What is unique here is really dependent on the reader interaction with the text. Lev Manovich claims in The Language of New Media that:All classical, and even moreso modern, art is “interactive” in a number of ways. Ellipses in literary narration, missing details of objects in visual art, and other representational “shortcuts” require the user to fill in missing information. Theater and painting also rely on techniques of staging and composition to orchestrate the viewer’s attention over time, requiring her to focus on different parts of the display. With sculpture and architecture, the viewer has to move her whole body to experience the spatial structure. Modern media and art pushed each of these techniques further, placing new cognitive and physical demands on the viewer. (56)
Interactivity has always been a part of literature and art, its status is just morphing as technology makes the reader into a (w)reader (as Landow calls us). Remediating or archiving literature on the web (or the Kindle) does not mean the “end of books” as Coover teased, no more than interactive texts mean the death of the author. The idea of what is “text” may be expanding, however, merging with other disciplines, such as art, and asking for more physical interaction from its (w)readers.