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Art, Hypertext & Multimedia

The 12-hour ISBN JPEG Project
Apparently, this project started on December 30, 1994. In essence it consists of Brad Brace's "hypermodern imagery" being posted every 12 hours. Why? "The hypermodern minimises the familiar, the known, the recognisable; it suspends identity, relations and history. This discourse, far from determining the locus in which it speaks, is avoiding the ground on which it could find support. It is trying to operate a decentring that leaves no privilege to any centre." Heavy stuff. If you think it's pointless - that's the point. Some people just like looking at the pictures. 

53 Degrees
Guest access is allowed on this specialist portal site dedicated to the arts and creative industries. It covers work in various categories: visual, multimedia, text and music. Browsing the site you will find works of art as well information about festivals and events. Registration as a user, artist or administrator is via an online form.

Archiving Imagination
Time, space, text and multimedia poetry are up for grabs in this project which won support from the Australian government funding and advisory body. Some of the links work in pop-up windows that can get hidden from view, so if you click to no avail check out the windows on the taskbar before giving up and trying somewhere else. There is an interesting section "collabora" composed of fragments passed back and forth between a digital artist and a new media writer as they explored the idea of online collaboration. 

The Art Deadlines List
This comprehensive and fascinating page is a monthly listing of opportunities for art competitions, exhibitions and so forth which can be viewed on the Web or delivered as an email newsletter. Although the events it describes - including writing contests, jobs, scholarships, festivals and funding  - are not always Web based, many are. The June issue for instance was looking for experimental digital art embedding VRML, Java 3-D, Shockwave etc. into HTML pages. 

Assemblage
Carolyn Guertin is the curator of this collection of new media art subtitled The Women's Hypertext Gallery. The title, Assemblage, is derived from the theoretical perspective of Jacques Derrida - see the site for more details. The contents range impressively wide and show that there's more to HTML than e-commerce and the ad-hoc shoe-horning of text and graphics on to Web pages. 

The Assoziations-Blaster
Billed as a "text machine" this English version of a German forerunner is set-up to allow users to create and explore writing and linking techniques. It is not too demanding of time, and therefore makes a good basic introduction to collaborative hypertext on the Web.

thebluedot
What is love? Good question. You may as well ask an egg as a poet, though. That or visit Yael Kanarek's site where text is never far away from audio in Love Letters From A World Of Awe. It's worth reading the opener through to the end, not only for the text, but also for the link to the main page where flies experiment with rhyme (fear, beer and leer, my dear), and where ingesting virtual capsules leads to a rich world textured with words, visuals and sound. If in doubt, find a fly and click on it. 

Chateau de Mort
Join the cast at the Chateau de Mort and listen as they reveal their dark secrets. Scroll down this page until you find the title - there are a selection of downloadable files of the original play (MS-Dos). 

The Company Therapist
The Company Therapist is based around the work of a psychiatrist hired to cover the needs of a large company this "hyperdrama" explores patient/doctor relationships as well as company intrigue. You can read the manuscripts of sessions with different patients and look at his own and his patients journals and letters. As a collaborative project anyone can submit their own contributions as long as they have the time to make a fairly long term commitment. Writers also have to sign an agreement that hands over the copyright and allows editors to make changes to their submissions. 

The Digital Performance Archive
The combination of performance art and digital technologies is catalogued in this database. Examples include onscreen interactive performances, and the use of technology to analyse performances. An Events page provides links to forthcoming digital performances, conferences, and lectures. The archive is a collaborative project involving Nottingham Trent university and the university of Salford.

The Ensemble
Idle curiosity might be enough to entice you into The Electronic Writing Research Ensemble site designed by Teri Hoskin, but that will soon give way to active curiosity as you explore pages that are by turn poetic, graphically rich, humorous and serious. 

It's difficult to categorise the site under one heading, because it attempts so much. However, the poetic impulse is strong. The task of the Ensemble, in their own words, is to "contribute to research on writing, and to writing as research, in the (cyber) way of facilitating a continuing inventive practice, a composing and recomposing, of textuality that is interdisciplinary, poetic, critical, and personal. The Ensemble wishes no reference point, except that of querying 'research' and 'writing'." All that and time-travelling with Rosalind Brodsky too. 

The Ensemble is based in the Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, South Australia with an impressive array of grants and assistance from the likes of The South Australian Department for the Arts, the New Media Fund of The Australia Council and The Australian Network for Art and Technology. 

The Fray
On sites like this, even the most curmudgeonly anti-art, anti-literary, reactionary technophobe will find something to appreciate. Probably. Perhaps. Anyone actively looking at how words and pictures can, via the Web, carry you to new places in story and reportage will want to bookmark The Fray and spend some time exploring it. From the streets of Haight Ashbury to Burning Man in the desert "the fray is a place for people who believe the web is about personal expression and a new kind of art." 

Future Suture
Upgrade your browsers, download some more plug ins, slot in an extra 128 meg of RAM, get yourself a T3 connection too. Which isn't entirely fair, because while it isn't designed for legacy systems, a standard dial-up connection and a fourth generation browser should see you OK at this site. There are four multimedia projects here, and they make demands on the wet ware as well as the hardware accessing the site. If it's interactivity you crave, you've got it here. Even the overarching metaphor of the title is taxing in a way that any Zen master would approve. Visit the artists' worlds and see what you think. Future_Suture, from Perth, Western Australia, is a joint initiative between The Film and Television Institute and IMAGO Multimedia Centre with funding from the Australia Council for the Arts, New Media Arts Fund. 

Grammatron
This is a kind of online novel by the virtual artist Mark Amerika. Kind of because although it is a written fiction, as the blurb explains it also consists of: 

 "...over 1000 text spaces, 1700 links, an original soundtrack delivered via Real Audio 3.0, unique hyperlink structures by way of specially-coded Javascripts, animated and still life images, and more storyworld development than any other narrative created exclusively for the Web. Future versions will integrate state-of-the-art Virtual Reality languages for a more immersive, collaborative experience..."

Hegirascope 
If you are used to being in control when you surf the web this will be a totally new experience. Take a jump into the narrative and prepare to get a little disorientated. 

The Heist - a hypertext novel by Walter Sorrells
If you like crime or mystery novels this is the site for you. Explore the events during and leading up to the "The Heist". 

Holo-X
Jack in and turn on, you're warned and teased, with this dangerous multimedia drug that combines hypertext and virtual reality. Mixing sound, animation and text in real time, and seasoning with interactivity, is not a recipe for speed on a dial-up connection, but Alt-X and Berkeley Interactive Design have done their best to make the experience as compelling as possible. Your host is a manic grrrl, fuelled by ginseng and grass, called Slut (Sorceress of Language In Uncharted Technologies). Her world and story are there for you to explore in all their 3D glory. And graphic it is, in all senses. Tripping yourself silly can have dire consequences for reality at the metaphysical and physical level, but only if your browser has the Cosmo Player VRML plug-in - a link is supplied. 

"Holo-X weaves a variety of multimedia elements into a truly unprecedented interrogation of contemporary mores, gender assumptions, identity politics, radical sexuality and conventional hypertext," Jay Dillemuth, one of the program's co-creator, says. "It's a collaborative experiment in avant-capitalism where fully funded narrative artists are able to use the latest web technology to create intellectually-stimulating, adult entertainment."

Lenov
This was originally in Russian and has been translated into English to give it a wider audience. You can also add to the story by filling in a simple form. 

Lies
Where simplicity is the road to perfection. Read it and then go back to the start and read it again. When you can explore the world of "Lies" why settle for the truth. 

Lovebytes
There is plenty to explore at this site. Lovebytes is a Sheffield, UK, company that organises digital arts festivals and provides support for artists working with digital media. Electronic publishing is part of its remit, including the provision of online digital art archives and a portal through which they can be accessed.

mo[ve.men]tion
Firmly at the innovative end of arty Web sites, this will not appeal to lovers of linear narrative (or those who have to pay for the inordinate download times of some of the graphics). It starts with the statement, crossed out, that "today I wanted to see a smear of blood on the bus window". After that, you're on your own in a good-looking labyrinth of post-modern byting of the literary bullet complete with psychopathology, blood puppets, ascii typography as art and more, courtesy of mez - see if you can find the meatbody mug shot. 

Mythopoeia The Making of Myths
This site is based on Suza Scalora's mythological images. Visitors here have been invited to add short pieces of creative writing that are inspired by these images. The result is a site with words and images that are curiously related. Well worth a visit. 

No Dead Trees
No, it's not a botanist's homepage. The idea is to create an interactive novel and not one in the traditional, linear plot style (dead tree). Here you will find vampires, demons, interdimensional time travellers and much more... The site now includes a search engine where you can search for threads to do with particular characters and a random jump point which will take you into the novel at any point during the story. 

Official Spike Webb Home Page
Meet the first net detective and follow his adventures. Spike is an Internet-based life form from unknown origins joined by his co-conspirators Nancy and Roger Tango. Spike searches out the information and clues to solve their cases. Through various incarnations it has developed into a sort of "pulp comic" format which includes some fun animations. You can even join his fan club and receive some freebies. 

Pericles
A French site where literature, linguistics, poetry and the arts combine in a multimedia-rich Web space. Non-French speakers will struggle, which could be an encouragement to brush-up on linguistic skills because this is an ambitious site with lots to say about new media and "hacktivism". Some excellent visuals and cool coding can be found here too. 

Reactive Writing
Leonie Winson's site houses some intriguing interviews with hypertext authors as well as Dark Lethe, her current hypertext novel. An essay on hypertext and collabrative fiction will be appearing soon. 

The Shock Of The View
The Shock of the View: Artists, Audiences, and Museums in the Digital Age is a six month project lasting from September 1998 to March 16, 1999. It is setting out to explore the similarities and differences between traditional art and new digital work. Every three weeks new work will be added, along the broad themes of object, space, performance, and the hybrid. Commentaries by invited curators, artists, educators, and critics and an ongoing listserv will explore the ways digital media impacts artists, audiences, and museums. The bodies behind the collaboration are: The Walker Art Center, in association with the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, the San Jose Museum of Art, the Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University, and Rhizome. 

A Smear of Roses
It's dificult to categorise this site. It has a strong poetic impulse, as well as vivid short haiku-like lines, but the additional use of images, animation and soundtrack add up to something extra: Web poetry and graphics do seem to go together more and more. Francesca da Rimini, an Australian artist/writer has familiarised herself with the new medium that the web/CD-Rom offers and created an impressive work pretty much in a class of its own. Definitely worth looking at but be prepared for some lengthy download times due to QuickTime movies and a RealAudio soundtrack. 

Under The Ashes
Explore this mysterious house and let your imagination run wild. An interview with the author Gavin Inglis can be found at: 
http://www.innotts.co.uk/~leo/hyper/gavin.htm

Victory Garden Sampler
Victory Garden is available on disk for Macintosh and Windows but you can find a sample of it here. Explore the inter-linking lives of the characters and the media coverage of the Gulf war which is carefully threaded throughout the story. 

Weightless
If you have Shockwave and a version 4 browser with Windows or MacOS as your operating system, you can investigate this rich multimedia tapestry of midi files, animated gifs and text taken from chat rooms - a compendium of "ready-mades" according to the site authors, Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead. The bits and pieces taken from elsewhere present a pot-pourri of objects that are immediately familiar to any travellers through cyberspace. Yet when they're presented in fresh juxtapositions that familiarity becomes somewhat blurred.