To find a language for literature

Doménico Chiappe, 2001

Abstract

The appropriate language for electronic media is yet to be created. Such a language should encompass the whole world of possibilities offered by the electronic environment. The multimedia novel project Tierra de Extracción looks for a language that encourages the reading of literature on a computer monitor. The multimedia writing combines the arts to find the “passive interaction” of the reader–user, whose subconscious will blossom with the music, poetry, photography, drawings, and narration, and mixes it with the story. But this new kind of expression coming from a display that modifies all patterns of perception, interest and time also requires an interface that allows the user’s “active interaction”, which means the user will create the story as his or her interest and curiosity grow.

For literature, and the arts in general, to take advantage of the platform and potential of the new technologies, it is necessary to find a language that enables them to communicate each other according to the requirements of the mean: speed, information, multiple reading entries, ludic sense, visual attraction and combination of arts. However, to make this multimedia language coherent, it is critical that all components come from the same point of creation and the “multimedia writing” needs to be fluent.

By point of creation, I do not mean a work produced by a single mind but something that could be called “multidisciplinary workgroups” or research teams that assure all components will be born and grow together, so that they fill up the space assigned to them as the story develops.

The multimedia novel Tierra de Extracción is an attempt to find a language that encourages the reading of literature on a computer monitor. I started the project on my own in 1996 and relied on the collaboration and advice of professors at Andrés Bello Catholic University, Central University of Venezuela (Universidad Central de Venezuela, UCV. Caracas) and Simón Bolívar University. The first part of the project, Tierra de Extracción 1.0, was completed and released in 2000 at the Multimedia Writing Seminar, promoted by the Center for Communication Researches at the UCAB (Caracas). Based on this experience, after the first version was submitted to expert and public consideration, I begun to develop Tierra de Extracción 2.0, also on my own and with the same goals in mind.

Now, after five years of investigation, work, tests and experiments, reading and re-reading, and bumps against the impenetrable wall of market, I can extrapolate the experience of Tierra de Extracción 1.0 and explain briefly what the project Tierra de Extracción 2.0 is about.

1. Writing of chapters to make them behave as mercury links: concise and round

2. Narrating in different levels using hypertexts

3. Using image as a link with the reader subconscious

4. Designing a user-friendly interface so that the instructions are basic

5. Multimedia must have a ludic structure in which the reader makes his or her own way

Before I explain what each of these “steps” means, it is important to make a pause to describe the content of the multimedia novel Tierra de Extracción that will be used in Release 2.0. The story could be walked through the music, consisting of 16 songs split into 44 sections, each of them with a special arrangement to give an atmosphere to the story. People could also navigate through the 67 text chapters, which are written in a way they can be read separately. All of them have a beginning and an end and are linked each other by their main characters instead of time sequence.

In Release 1.0, each text is preceded by an introduction that explores the rhetoric being created using the CD-ROM and Internet. This “multimedia rhetoric” does not use texts but resources that call the reader’s attention, such as a combination of visual (photography and works of art) and music elements. In Release 2.0, being developed with the collaboration of Mr. Meier, the language created by means of technology is explored and the sequence of elements is broken so that each one better fulfills its function in the setting of each chapter. In this new version, the “multimedia rhetoric” does not have a specific place, because it must be present throughout the story, including its very small gestures. It must act as an omniscient narrator.

In both versions, in response to the psyche of human beings and their particular understanding of the world, text is the most explicit way of the novel narration and the word continues to be the perfect icon. While lineal narration is broken, the various elements are somehow linked to the paragraphs. Perhaps in the future, with further development of the language, the prominence of one link over the other will be unnecessary. Maybe other arts, such as cinematography, will not have to support their story with their screenplay either.

In the new project, the reader will see different shades of what is narrated through photographs by Humberto Mayol, Edgar Galíndez, Shell-CIC Picture Archive and Andrés Mata Foundation. And the works of art by Ramón León and Manuel Gallardo will add up an artistic and plural view. In another way of art expression, the music composed by the novel writer and produced by DJ Raúl Alemán plunge the reader into the mood and thinking of each chapter’s main characters. In brief, a set of elements that will lead the reader to establish a free relation of thoughts. Thus, his or her own world will spring along with the narrative one, creating what I call the “passive interactivity”. The “active interactivity” occurs thanks to the ludic character and the need to “turn the display pages”, which will be explained later.

But what is this novel about? Tierra de Extracción narrates stories that interweave in a subtle way and take place in Zulian town Menegrande, where the first big Venezuelan oil well is located: Zumaque I, which started the commercial era of oil production in the country in 1914. The narration occurs in three basic periods: beginning and ending of the 20th century, and a period in between. Stories share a common argument: searching. One character looks for a place to escape from a system he does not understand; another one feels a promise he made forces him to look for a woman beloved by his dead father; a third one tries to find a way to hide his fear; another one just want to find peace. At a certain moment, which very well can be the beginning or the end, according to the path taken by the reader, the stories break the time pattern and find themselves in the same space.

Now, after providing a general idea of what this interactive, multimedia novel is about, let us proceed to explain the above mentioned steps, which make up the basic process for multimedia writing.

1. Chapters should be as mercury links: concise and round. An image: a thermometer that breaks and its mercury content escapes and turns into shiny little balls of different sizes that can be merged and separated at will and easily. This means that each chapter, consisting of text, music or image, should be presented separately so that the reader begins to read where he or she wants, but at the same time it should allow to be inserted or to insert any other following or previous chapter without making contradictions. They should be concise. All texts for Release 1.0 will be rewritten so that they fulfill this requirement.

2. The narration takes place at different levels: The multimedia format allows the existence of hypertexts, overlapping of elements and meanings. It enables to define the same event in different ways. It also enables to interrupt one voice to give way to another. When I talk about voice, I refer to the image too. In the case of Tierra de Extracción, the levels are:

2.1. Hypertexts used as an incentive to see and listen

2.2. Music, which is the voice between lines and transmits emotions. For example, an accelerated rhythm with distortionated guitars does not transmit the same feeling as a melody produced by a violin.

2.3. The lyrics express what remains unsaid through the chapters, such as the main character thinking, what the unconscious is shouting inside but not saying out loud or what it does not even know it thinks.

This writing in levels should be as concise and exact as the “mercury links”. They should not be considered as “complements” or “dressing” but as essential parts for the correct operation of the gear. If something does not contribute anything to the story, it becomes excessive and should be erased.

3. Images work as links to the reader subconscious, because they have an immediate impact that brings to mind one’s own experience. It helps guess what follows and forget about the rest. In these days, when all people want to obtain complete information the fastest possible, does the pleasure of reading rely on the prose or is it on the time the narration takes to inform? Is there still a pleasure of reading or is the reading just a tool to get more information? Maybe the writer ability should be to hit the reader’s mind with information. And the information the reader wants is never the complementary one. As in multimedia writing, only the marrow matters when the information is read under time pressure and each element of information, visual, auditive or text, should have the importance of a vertebra.

4. A user-friendly interface to reduce the number of instructions. This premise applies to the design and the interface itself. In Release 2.0, elements will appear only at the moment the reader calls them with his or her curiosity. Multimedia writing requires an active, curious reader eager to press the mouse buttons and discover new possibilities in narration. In this new version, the story develops as the reader moves forward, as if he or she is walking through a labyrinth. The novel could be created in multiple ways by omitting information or seeking the story through other paths. To keep the reader from getting lost in this labyrinth, the interface should be accurate so that it becomes a great tool for the reader–navigator. This is the very interactivity of art: to discover and walk through it with pleasure, not to create after the artist is absent, because the understanding would have no sense and the story message would be bent. I think the creation cannot be a tribal act nor a trivial one, because intention vanishes when it is left at random, unless the precise intention is to leave the story to drift.

5. The ludic structure. The reader makes his or her own way. This is the “active interactivity” where the reader plays the role of an agent that decides which way to follow.

As a conclusion, the display needs a new language and not the one used on paper, especially when it is used to broaden literature’s reach. This new multimedia writing is still in process and, for the present, feeds on the known languages of radio, television and, above all, newspapers. But it should adapt to the future reader, who will leave the classrooms with a knowledge in programming and navigation via Internet. They will know how to do it as much as we now know how to write and interact with the reading in this way. The read–write capabilities would not be sufficient for the literate.

In this search for the new language, Tierra de Extracción 2.0 will be submitted to evaluation by Ph. D. Andreas Meier, director of Multimedia Laboratory at the Simón Bolívar University, who will use Release 1.0 to recreate it by making the appropriate mixes and changes. For this multimedia novel, the intentions will be defined in a way the reader interpret them without even having to walk through a lineal path thoroughly. This is an experiment, an investigation effort, initially applied to literature. But those media that strives to make their way into the “Information Superhighway” could as well use it.

Today, if we take a look at the vast space of Internet, which should become the new language tribune, we will find there is a lack of initiatives to develop a way in which communication should flow through the display. The digital media has limited itself to the moving of the newspaper or magazine content to the computer. Certainly, portals with more resources compete with television in broadcasting speed and are unique as banks of information. But this kind of media is underestimated.

Thus, companies that trade their stocks through Nasdaq deserve to collapse, because many of them are just shops even without furniture or capital. And the ones that offer information, maybe the only product completely delivered through networks, have not developed the best language to communicate with their users. Something similar happens to art, which has not taken advantage of the space open for the spreading of culture via Internet so far. Tierra de Extracción tries to find a way the reader–user enjoys literature, even if it is read on a computer monitor, a way to connect to narration that differs from the one established through paper.