we have seen, point to the fluidity of sexuality and writing. Notice also,
in Jason Nelson’s two pieces on The Writing Experiment website how the
music is adapted to the particular ambience and import of the text (Nelson
republished-a; republished-b). For example, in his this will be the end of you:
play6: four variable creation the dynamic music organised in repetitive loops
works well with the rapid outbreak of different textual fragments. On the
other hand in his this will be the end of you: play9: curious to know the more
gentle quiet music goes well with the gradual discovery of the underlying
text. The soundtrack can, of course, be verbal. Komninos Zervos’s u cannot
be programmed (republished-b) has an interactive soundtrack in which the
words ‘u cannot be programmed’ are reiterated amongst sometimes super-
imposed variations such as ‘u cannot be erased/hypertexted/cybersexed’.
In new media work there is also the added dimension of interactivity
between the elements, since words, images and sounds can all be ‘interrupted’,
creating constantly changing relationships between them. In Wordstuffs:
The City and The Body, for example, on The Writing Experiment website
(Smith, Dean & White republished), there are various levels of interactivity.
The music was created by composer-improvisor Roger Dean, and was
written using the computer program MAX. There are a number of different
soundtracks, and it is possible to interact with the music by playing it back-
wards, controlling the volume, and activating several tracks simultaneously,
while at the same time scrolling through the hypertexts. There is an inter-
active feature by Greg White which intermittently replaces the musical
controllers: this consists of the image of a body over which configurations of
words and sounds change in response to mouse movements. There is also a
feature called the ‘Word Wired Web’ written by Greg White, in which strings
of words taken from my hypertexts can be pulled in a number of different
directions, with accompanying and interactive sounds. At the same time the
hypertext can take the reader on many different routes, depending on which
links are chosen. The hypertexts are also linked to word and image anima-
tions, again different ones will emerge depending on which links the reader
activates. So the interaction between sound, image and word can be contin-
uously interrupted and rearranged by the reader.
CREATING HYPERMEDIA PIECES
The following strategies are relevant to Exercise 5 which asks you to create
a hypermedia piece:
- Juxtapose words with visual images and animations. For example,
create a hypertext with links to visual objects, or an animation which
250 The Writing Experiment