From Page to Screen - WRAP: Warwick Research Archive Portal ...

know how far away the end is. In the print version the length and structure of the text is
immediately obvious, we read in the knowledge that fragment 21 will be the last one and
we know that the higher the numbers get the closer we come to the end.» It is therefore
easier to fail to understand the macrostructure or "the map" of an electronic text and
consequently there is a greater possibility ofgetting "lost in hyperspace" .
2.3: Multiplicity 2: Simultaneity(ofviewpoints / ofnarrative strands)
Fiction is perhaps the most closely bound ofall the arts to the concept ofsequential time.[...]
Literature can convey the passing of time because it implies a temporal aspect. (Sharon
Spencer)':
Visual art faces problems when it wants to represent the
temporality of a process, it is a predominantly static form.
Modern art has attempted in various ways to convey a sense
of motion on canvas: Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a
Staircase (19I2) as well as the attempts ofFuturist painting to
capture the speed, dynamism and movement of the zoth
century are probably the best known illustrations. Literature
has a similar problem with the representation ofsimultaneity.
Reading is fundamentally linear and two events happening at
the same time can be conveyed in text only in succession.
Electronic writing cannot solve this problem, but can help to
find solutions for at least a visual representation of parallel events. On the computer
screen one can have more than one text window open at the same time and can
therefore create the impression of simultaneity by using parallel windows for parallel
texts, and juxtapose on the screen in the same temporal and spatial framework
elements that are both literally (in the computer memory) and metaphorically (on the
hypertext map) stored at a spatial distance.
73 A ccond example, that is not based on a print-text but an original hypertext is Rick Pryll's electronic treefiction
Lies, a relatively short text with only 37 nodes, at http://www.users.interport.net/
-nick/lies (10.10.98).
74 Sharon Spencer, Space Time andStructurein the Modern Novel(Chicago: Swallow Press,I97I) p.XV.
Chapter 2 - page 52