Untitled - witz cultural

271RECONFIGURINGNARRATIVEmake-believe world. Screen does not attempt to replicate a real-world environment,but instead immerses the user in a reflexive literary representation,one in which words and narrative remain predominant." The reader experiencesthe text as existing in three dimensions rather than on a flat surface. Asthe piece begins, a voice-a second "reader"-begins to read: "In a world ofillusions, we hold ourselves in place by memories." The texts hovering inspace on three sides variously relate the memories of a man and a womanwho feel them weaken, fade, vanish.She uncurls her arm,reaches back to lay her hand acrosshis thigh, to welcome him home,but touches only a ridge ofsheet,sun warmed, empty.After the voice has finished reading, the words, first on one wall then another,begin to fall. Using the VR glove, the reader can at first grab the words andreplace them, but if more than one word is falling, words that she catches donot return to their original position, so despite her best efforts, text becomescorrupted. Then, as the words begin to cascade ever more quickly off thewalls, she moves even faster but misses more and more of them until finally,realizing that she cannot stay time, she stops moving her hand and standsmotionless. Screen thus includes text, movement, sound, and the reader'sown actions, which in one sense are ultimately useless and in anotherabsolutely necessary to read the poem successfully. I do not know ifwe canlegitimately term Screen, which includes elements of narrative, lyric, animation,interactivity, and immersive VR, hypertext, though it does show thepoetic possibilities of New Media.In conclusion, as the example of afiemoon and Waves of Girls demonstrates,hypertext fiction that compels the interest ofreaders is clearly possible.We also find a number of examples of fiction in hypermedia environments,llke Patchwork Girl, thathas a little hypertext branching in the mainnarratives and uses hypertext chiefly to create a contents page. Spatial hlpertexthas also played a role in hlperfictions, such as Adams Bookstore, PatchwarkGirl, and Quibbling, It has also been used to generate combinatorial fictionlike Tom McHarg's just as it has been used in combinatorial poetry likeAarseth's translation of Queneau. Although I suspect that poetry will probablydominate hypermedia, hypertext fiction still seems to have great prom'ise. If, as Didion says, we need stories to live, authors will always find themselvestemoted to tell stories in any and all media.