Hypertextualities

As a complete computer-phobe I found this theory very difficult to get my head around. I have however attempted to summise it briefly in my own words.......

Hypertextualities are froms rendered through HTML. Described as "non-sequential writing with reader controlled links" (Nelson 1992). This form allows the viewer to merge into the sphere of the art work itself and often allows them to continue and expand it. For me this seems a strange situation being part of the real and the virtual simultaneously.
Whilst being blocks of text all interlinking one another, hypertext also has no centre, you can enter and exit anywhere. I liked the idea that this gives the reader control over the outcome rather than the author.

Technology and Art

This post comes from a reflection on a reading from Gabriella Giannachi's book 'Virtual Theatres'.

It is interesting to note that the consideration of technology as art only really began to emerge around WWI. It came from a new found obsession with mechanics which can be seen in the work of Meyerhold and also Schlemmers dancers of the Bauhaus. The Futurists movement can be seen to praise the technological age feeling it was their new art form.

Around the 1960's emerged the idea of 'Cyborg art'. In 1984 William Gibson wrote a science fiction novel from which came the term 'Cyber Space'. The book has been so influencial in modern thinking and it is now hard to imagine art, fiction and technology being separated. For me I view cyberspace as quite an alien thing, although I am sure it has affected my life in some ways. I also view the form of cyber space as it creating a new social group in the world. A virtual community on a scale larger than any other previously experienced.

Many views suggest that it is the viewer that constitutes a 'real' performance of virtual theatre. It made me think when it was supposed that the difference here is the performer is inside the work of art.