Untitled - witz cultural

't87RECONFIGURINCWRITINGmits the reader to manipulate the process to the extent of replaying all or partof a sequence, make the reader more active. If one employs talking heads orvoiceovers, one must, of course, allow readers to stop them in midsequence.(Voyager's Freak Show CD-ROM makes a witty play on these features by havingits Master of Ceremonies or Ringmaster respond with different expressionsof annoyance each time we cut him offin midsentence.)The one digital form that does not create problems for hypermedia is thefundamentally controllable multimedia document created by Apple's QuicktimeVR (Virtual Reality) or rival software like lpix and Live Picture. Thesekinds of software, whose creations are easily inserted into HTML, producetwo different kinds of manipulatable three-dimensional images, theso-called spherical and cylinder panoramas. In the first, one finds oneselfplaced in a three-dimensional space within which one can rotate 360 degreesby using the mouse to stop, start, and control the speed of rotation or, usinga zoorm function, move closer or farther away. The World Book Encyclopedia'stwo CD-ROMs, for example, include dozens of Ipix scenes in the formatthey call "bubble views," including St. Mark's Square, Venice; Stonehenge;the Maya ruins at Palenque; the Coliseum in Rome; and the Zojoi Templein fapan. Or if one wants a Web example, go to NASA's Mars Pathfindersite for a panorama of the Sagan Memorial Station, or A Wrinkle in Time:q collaborative synchronized tfort by QTVR producers qround the globe Iocreate a hundred panoramic views at the same time on December 21, 7997(see bibliography).The other kind of Quicktime VR (the cylinder panorama) takes the formof a virtual object that users can turn 360 degrees, examining it as they wish,as well as zooming in and out. This kind of image, possible only with computing,has great value when representing three-dimensional objects online.The Victoian Web, for example, contains a Quicktime VR image of an unattributedbronze statue of a young woman that I believe was created by AlfredDrury (1856-1944). While carrying out research that might lead to an attribution,I visited various English photo-archives and collections of sculpturewithout finding any particularly convincing evidence. Several years later,after I had created a rotatable Quicktime VR image of the statue, I came upona photograph of Drury's 1896 bronze, Griseldq, in a 1980 catalogue fromChristopher Wood Gallery in London. Observing the way in which the sculpturedepicted the pleats and folds around the shoulder of the Giseldo, Iopened the Quicktime VR image of the unatlributed statue, using my mouseto rotate it until I positioned the statue as seen from the same vantage point