(To experience “Faith” for yourself, please follow this link: http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/kendall__faith.html)
“Digital texts are never just there,” Piper writes. “They are called forth through computation and interaction, whether by a human or a machine. This is what makes them dynamic…”
There. Just there. Never just there. What Piper seems to insinuate here is that print is just there. Interaction is not there. Here, in hypertext, a reader will also find themselves not being just there. The ability of a hypertext to transport the reader is not new. Rather, it is a borrowed (and enhanced) concept from the reading of print.
Printed works rely heavily on imagination (unless images are incorporated into the work). That is why so much stress is put on authors to use imagery. Words have connotations, but imagery helps to create the world for the reader. Without imagery, illustrations, or an imagination, a printed work can easily become trivial.
“Faith”, a kinetic hypertext poem by Robert Kendall, is a beautiful embodiment of Piper’s statement. The poem is created one progressive “click” at a time and takes a total of five inputs by the reader in order to be “completed”. Kendall’s work is not play, as Birkerts would argue. Despite having sound, moving pieces, and progressing only when prompted by the reader, there is no “play” involved in this text. The word “play” invokes a connotation of “freedom” or “liberty”. “Faith” is structured and only requires a minimal amount of input from the reader. This varies in some hypertexts where the reader becomes the author, but “Faith” does not transform the reader in this way.
Kendall’s work can seem complete without reaching the fifth click and ending the poem. As the poem comes together, the reader has the control to stop the progression of the poem and instead read what is currently presented. The ability for the poem to be “complete” after the first click, and complete the consecutive clicks after, is an insightful artistic choice by Kendall.
While Birkerts would argue that hypertext is only play, Piper says that we have had a history of “playing” with our books. For me, this conjures an image of a stern father Birkerts and a petulant kid Piper at a dinner table. “I said: ‘Do not play with your books!’” Piper understands that the development of language has been play. Carving into bone, the first “writings”, were essentially play. We learned through play. Play develops us. Birkerts sees play as negative, but Piper argues that it only enhances the reading experience and is (*gasp!*) natural.
One of the benefits of a hypertext, like the web itself, is that there is no limit to what you can include. The amount of words, the subjects, the images, the allusions – none of them have a limit. Books, on the other hand, are limited in what can be bound. A book that is hundreds of thousands of pages long will take a long while to put together and will probably not sell well. Hypertexts do not take up physical space and that is a recognized benefit.
An example of allusion in “Faith” was the icon. The word “Faith” appears to come from an illuminated manuscript. For comparison, I have pulled an image from “Moralia in Job” titled “The Initial R” and it is believed to depict St. George fighting a dragon.
Figure 1: http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/kendall__faith.html
Figure 2: http://peace.wikia.com/wiki/Peace_Art_5
Illuminated manuscripts were artistic playgrounds for romanesque artists. On paper, as in hypertext, they could create images from words or letters. Iconography tended to limit these artists, as print can impose limits on authors who would prefer to engage their subject broadly. (I could go into a completely different tangent here, but I’ll digress for now.)
Inklead 