plays with the layering of words and images. Create tensions and colli-
sions between the meanings of the words and the visual images in the
ways we explored in Chapter 10.- Turn the words into visual images through spatial arrangement, font
and colour. It is also possible to handwrite words on the screen in ways
which make them appear more visually idiosyncratic. - Display words on the screen, and also record (the same or different)
words in a sound file, so that the screened and sounded words
‘dialogue’. You may also want to refer back to some of the strategies for
sonic poetry in Chapter 10: these can be adapted to new media work. - Accompany or offset words with music or a soundscape. The sound
dimension can take many forms: it can consist of speaking, or environ-
mental sound, or music. There can be several sound files or spoken files
which play at once, and these can be interactive. If you do not have
much musical expertise you may want to collaborate with a composer,
or use ready-made sound files which are already on the Web. Again
refer back to Chapter 10 for ways of integrating sounds and words.
Hypermedia is a very broad area, and includes many works which are not
text-based. In order to appreciate the possibilities you need to familiarise
yourself with multimedia work which springs from fields other than
writing, for example, from the visual arts. However, on The Writing Exper-
iment website, work by Jason Nelson, Komninos Zervos and Christy
Sheffield Sanford, and my own collaborations, demonstrate some of the
possibilities of hypermedia work. See also work by Mark Amerika,
especially his piece Filmtext (2003).
TEXT GENERATION AND CONCLUSION
In this chapter we have explored the way in which new media is changing
writing, creating new textual spaces and opportunities. We have also seen
how new media is itself an evolving field which is travelling in many dif-
ferent and new directions. It is now possible, using a computer program,
to generate text according to specific parameters: such software-based gen-
eration of text is not within the scope of this book, and would be a tome
in itself. However, text generation and transformation is an important
aspect of the work of some writers, for example, the poet John Cayley
(Cayley Ongoing), and may prove to be one of the most significant ways
to implement new technologies in writing. Although this is not our main
focus here, many of the exercises in this book—such as phrase permuta-
tion or collage—could be carried out very comprehensively by computer
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