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hypertext/cybertext/poetext >>
Creator of poetry-generating programs that thrive on human
input, John Cayley presents a wide-ranging essay on the
possibilities and limitations of cybertext as an interactive
medium. In part, Cayleyâs essay, navigatable in hypertext
form, questions the ãnewnessä of the interactive qualities
of storytelling and performance enabled by cybertext by
placing it into a historical context of not only the authors
of the 20th century who pushed the limits of the book
to encompass multilinear and encyclopedically rich literature,
but also back further to bards, who altered their performances
to reflect the desires of the audience. Cybertext has
the potential to return the bard, in new digital form,
to the Net connected world.
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[from the site:]
ãBard and audience were able to develop a relationship÷not one in which
skill (even mastery) was necessarily in doubt, nor a sense of the ãpriorityä
of the impetus to produce verbal art, but one, nonetheless, which allowed
the work to be significantly, meaningfully changed and, in exceptional
circumstances, co-created. These possibilities, which are not typically or
materially available to pure literary or text-based performance, are not
only accessible but, arguably, extended and radicalized in a cybertextuality
where literary objects themselves both perform to their readers and are
worked with by these readers as co-authors and co-programmers.ä
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