Pantoume - Some of the Pleasures & Possibilities of Hypertext

There were days in that city when I would not face its streets, previous experience of leers, catcalls, projected identities brute incentives to pull out, if only for 24 hours. Foreign women were defined by an influx of game students who frequented the clubs and, by proxy, the rest of us too were divorced from local femininity, marked for an extraordinarily rampant mitigation of social mores. Pale-skinned, blue-eyed, so tall I could rarely find trousers of the right length in shops, sans camouflage, I was effortlessly Other.

- Text and image, by Kai Fierle-Hedrick & Marianne Morris, respectively, from their collaborative project Pantoume.

Pantoume is a new media project by Kai Fierle-Hedrick & Marianne Morris published in How2, an online journal that is interested in exploring innovative writing projects, non-traditional directions in poetry and scholarship by women. Pantoume exists as an interactive hypertext art work, you can visit Pantoume at How2 by clicking here. Marianne Morris' visual pieces were also exhibited at Cambridge Experimental Women Writers’ Festival. (Click here for a link to that festival).

Sophie Robinson has written an introduction to Pantoume as well as written her own poetic response to the work, titled Sugar and has interviewed both Kai and Marianne about the project.

I think this work particularly interests me in terms of what I have been reading about interactivity and differing levels of user participation across the myriad of new media works. I am particularly alerted to a comment Julian Stallabrass quotes in Internet Art to illustrate his and others' point that user/screen interactivity, that which necessary for new media works (having someone behind the computer screen clicking on the hyperlinks to "move through" the works for example). However, he argues this does not necessarily mean the work should be marked out as "interactive", considering the base level of audience "interactivity" that is required to "read" (that is to view or experience) any work of art, whether materially object-based or hypterextual. It does seem perhaps unusual to mark out these works as interactive when any viewer in any art space, actual or virtual, is required to "move through" the space in order to "read", view or experience the work(s). This actual bodily movement in space does not seem so differentiated from hypertextual leaps. We may conclude that all artworks are indeed interactive, although require different levels of participation from the spectator, viewer or user.

I think our tendency to think of a painting, for instance, as not necessarily interactive comes from our thinking about it as an art object, one that we stand before, in awe and contemplation. Because new media works require a user to activate them, it is difficult for us to perceive them as objects, in the way we do with painting or other works that exist in the actual. I also think that this (non)differentiation has to do with the passivity/interactivity binarism heavily engrained into our thinking about art that exists in the actual and art that exists in the virtual, a binarism that helps us describe how virutal based works are differ from works that exist in the actual. However as I was reading Pantoume, I recognised there is the possibility of reading the piece, by clicking on the hyperlinks, without actually "reading" each page. The presence of hyperlinks makes it easy to "move through" the piece without actually reading Kai's text or really engaging with Marianne's collages, which makes it seem as if the user is missing out on what these works have to offer.

However, in saying this, I think that hypertext makes more tangible (rather than limits) possibilities for reading that exist in the actual. Alternative ways of reading are made more "real" in virtual space. These alternative ways of reading are always possible and may occur in "actual" reading, however our dominant mode of reading a book "cover to cover" in the actual is sharply contrasted with the demands of hypertext. I think it is also useful to consider our normative ways of viewing artworks aswell. Hypertext seems to free us from the linear mode of reading where we feel that we must read every word on the page to understand or make sense of the narrative, and in doing so it makes it possible for us go on reading the book. (Although I do acknowledge there are projects and books that resist this and the argument that "actual" reading has always been hypertextual, I just want to point out that the linear normative mode of reading still prevails - and on the other hand, I think that perhaps there are those who attempt to carry this mode into viewing and "reading" artworks online).

So does moving through hyperlinks at hyper-speed mean we are no longer "interacting" with the work and therefore we should equate with a kind of passive spectatorship? This seems to undermine our capacity to register and reflect upon all that we may see (or interact) with, even if it is only for a fleeting moment.

‘Everything Everybody Owns’: A Script for Performance - inspired by Meg Cranston's Keep Same Over

‘Everything Everybody Owns’: A Script for Performance, There are No surprises: Eliminate the Possibility for Surprise

1. Pre-event: Choose/select/designate a space for the event and ask all the participants to bring to the event everything they own.

2. Event: Gather the participants in the chosen space and arrange everything they own in the space.

2.1 Arrange everything they own in the space to create an environment
2.2 Or a structural assemblage,
2.2.1 or a series of assemblages,
2.2.2 or an accumulation,
2.2.2.1 or a series of accumulations
2.2.3. or a formation
2.2.3.1 or a series of formations.

2.3 Allow the participants and the audience
2.3.1 to move through the structural assemblages,
2.3.2 or inhabit the stimulated environment

2.4 Record the event
2.4.1 Take photographs of the event and write captions for the photographs.
2.4.2 Make a video of the event
2.4.3 Sketch the event on a piece of white A2 standard cartridge paper with a 2B pencil.
2.4.4 Record the event using the following materials only - a wasp’s nest, yellow card, toothpicks, glue and purple glitter.


3. Specified Environment Version

3.1 Use everything the participants own and will bring to the event to stimulate a specific environment,

3.1.1. Stimulate a real-life environment in the space, by using objects and materials to create,
3.1.1.1 a café,
3.1.1.2 a supermarket,
3.1.1.3 cyberspace,
3.1.1.4 a dance studio,
3.1.1.5 a tropical island.

3.1.2 Create an environment with dramatic or distorted spatial dimensions.
3.1.2.1 Put large objects into small spaces
3.1.2.2 Make an object smaller than it really is.
3.1.2.3 Make an object larger than it really is.

3.1.3 Create an environment for the objects which the objects would not normally inhabit.
3.1.3.1 The chosen space is a swimming pool. Arrange
household appliances under water so participants can dive under water and use them.
3.1.4 Create an environment the participants can inhabit permanently.


4. Specified Assemblage Version

4.1 Pre-select from everything the participants own to create an assemblage.

4.1.1 Not all objects will be used. Participants still need to bring everything they own to the event so the object-selection process can take place.

4.1.2 All objects must be owned by the participants prior to the event,
4.1.2.1 Objects or material cannot be found in the chosen space and used for the event.
4.1.2.2 Objects cannot be purchased especially for the event.

4.1.3 Suggested assemblages:
4.1.3.1 Attach 100 safety pins to1 kg soap powder or laundry detergent (any brand) and pour the detergent-safety pin mixture into a bird cage.
4.1.3.2 Gather together 12000 litres of water (with or without a receptacle), a series of wires or cables, and a ‘Home Is Where The Heart Is’ sign or a ‘Welcome’ doormat.
Create organic forms from the wires or cables and attach them or balance them underneath the sign or doormat.
4.1.3.3 Create a series of face masks using rubber husks from deflated balloons, broken household appliances and fridge magnets.


5. Fluxversion

5.1 Participants must arrange everything they own into tidy market stall layout.

5.2 Then participants are to go and look at the other participants’ stalls.
5.2.1 They are to then,
5.2.1.1 trade,
5.2.1.2 swap,
5.2.1.3 exchange,
5.2.1.4 or barter
with one another, only using objects and items from everything they own.

5.3 Everything the participants own is lumped together in a large pile, and then sorted into new individual lots according to the number of participants. Allow the participants to take away their new holdings.

5.4 Timed Version - Give Fluxversion a time frame.
5.4.1 38 seconds,
5.4.2 35 minutes, 56 seconds,
5.4.3 Or, 2 days.


6. Mathematical / Deterministic / Procedural Versions

6.1 Limit the number of participants to 4.8.

6.2 Limit the number of objects participants can bring to the event,
6.2.1 Ten participants are to bring the number of objects, from everything they own, according to what number participant they are. For example participant one brings one object from everything they own, participant two brings two and so forth…

6.3 Work out the spatial dimensions of the environment or assemblage according to the total volume of all the objects present. Reduce this figure by 74 percent. Attempt to assemble all of the objects in a space that is too small.

6.4 Limit the number of bodily movements participants can make when creating the environment or assemblage to 18 bodily movements per participant.

6.5 Arrange the objects according to size, in ascending order.
6.5.1 Choose every fifth object and remove all other objects. Retain the negative space that this will leave between the objects.

6.6 Create an accumulative time capsule by arranging everything the participants own according to the years in which they attained that particular ‘thing’ - object or material. Arrange all the objects from a particular year, horizontally, and then stack each ‘year’ (the horizontal assemblage) on top of another to create stratification or a vertically layered assemblage.

6.7 Choose another procedure by which the objects are structured or assembled into layers.
6.7.1 stacked on top of one another
6.7.2 or separately in the space.
6.7.3 Suggestions for structuring procedures:
6.7.3.1 Objects are to be assembled by colour. Put all the brown things together, the white on another, etc.
6.7.3.2 or, objects are to be assembled by shape. Put all the square things on one layer, triangular on another, etc.
6.7.3.3 Objects are to be assembled by other physical attributes.
6.7.3.3.1 According to the softness or hardness of particular objects.
6.7.3.3.2 or, by grouping similar things together. Put all the office supplies on one layer, food on another, clothing, etc.

6.7 Resist creating a casual assemblage. Use things that people own to determine chance operations.
6.7.1 Flip a coin to determine all decisions for constructing an assemblage.
6.7.2 Use a numbered spinning wheel to determine all decisions for constructing an assemblage.
6.7.3 Use die to determine all decisions for constructing an assemblage.


7. Musical Version

7.1 Use the following music score to accompany the event.
7.1.1 Stimulate the sounds of the music score by limiting the sound materials to
7.1.1.1 materials ‘found’ in the chosen space
7.1.1.2 objects and materials from everything everybody owns that are not being used as part of the event assemblage or environment.

7.2 Use the following score to actually create a musical / sound ‘environment / assemblage’. Choose objects from everything everybody owns to create sounds.

7.3 Score:

Materials, such as rope, wire, cord or strings, are plucked for one minute at 2-second intervals.
A participant repeats SOMETHING CONFUSES US INTO SMALLNESS AND WE COME BACK AGAIN over the top of the plucking for 1 minute 7 seconds.
Silence for 35 seconds.
There is a cracking sound of a whip, wet tea towel or glass lasting for a minute.
There is a sound of gushing fluids for 3 minutes.
Silence for 12 seconds.
There is noise of hammers, wood, ceramics, and pots being crashed together for 20 seconds. Then all participants repeat SOMETHING CONFUSES US INTO SMALLNESS AND WE COME BACK AGAIN over top of the crashing noises for 30 seconds.
Silence for 7 seconds.
Crashing resumes for 12 seconds.
Silence for 5 seconds.
Crashing resumes for a second.
Silence for 12 seconds.
Then a series of saws bent almost in two are struck with metal objects for 2 minutes.
All participants repeat WHEN ONE IS BEING NEITHER EMOTIONAL NOR INTELLECTUAL! for 1 minute over top of saws and metal objects.
Silence for 5 seconds.
Someone blows a whistle for 17 seconds.

- Emma Phillipps © 2007

The Critical Proximity of Memory

Today I am posting a selection of pages from a 30 page un-bound book I created. I choose not to bind this book because I wanted it to be a text that could be read in any order and be endlessly recreated by its reader. This book structure is inextricably linked to its narrative, both are conceptually structured around the complexities of remembering and the possibility of recovering memory.

The materials I used for the project, both for the writing and the book as a physical structure, are all recycled or as I like to call them, "waste-language" materials. I made the book from language that people normally throw away, for example, pages of photocopies that come out incorrectly so people throw them away and things like receipts.

I collected text-paper-rubbish and other such waste materials that engaged with language. A lot of collage was involved. I alternated between using the actual words themselves (cut them out and pasted them on the page), copied some text directly from the source material or deviated from the source material by interpretation and extension, to create 'original' text.

This project illuminates the impossibility of making decisions for multimedia writing projects in advance, prior to the making, regarding form, structure and the use of materials, and also decisions about writing (although it is difficult to separate it from my use of materials) that is the process of writing and the physical words that end up on the page. The narrative actually evolved and established itself as I created each page singularly.

I hope to do more projects using "waste-language" materials.