Elastic Time and Space

Example:

View: Robert Enrico / Owl Creek Bridge

A Defnition of Cyberspace

 "Cyberspace is a globally networked, computer sustained, computer accessed, and computer generated, multidimentional, artificial, or "virtual" reality. In this reality, to which every computer is a window, seen or heard objects are neither physical nor, necessarily, representations of physical objects, but are, rather, in form, character and action, made up of data, of pure information." (Benedikt, 122)

The Features of Cyberspace (Based on J.Bolter and M.Benedikt):

  • The space of the computer is shaped by the objects that occupy it.
  • Electronic (topographic) writing is both a visual and a verbal description; the the text is divided into unitary topics (i.e. places) which are spatially as well as temporally realized (vs. speech).
    The writeable elements are words, images, sounds, actions etc.
  • The system of coordinates serving as a basis for order (i.e. as landscape) can alternate within a single space/ event.
  • The natural inclination of computer writing is to change, to grow, and finally to disappear - it is fundamentally unstable, flexible and dynamic.
  • Electronic writing depends on a second order writing (creating links) - on writing navigational cues for the reader, without closing the narrative possibilities; the inner structure surfaces through these visible cues.

Open vs. Closed Environment:

  • Electronic writing provides no sense of the reading space's size (overall).
  • Electronic writing provides no sense of orientation or placement within a larger whole.
  • The ending is always tentative (there are possibly few endings, if any).
  • User additions can be of similar status as that of the original material.
  • The text is open, expandable - reaches out operationally (not only metaphorically).
  • Texts in hyperspace merge; are not just juxtaposed or placed back-to-back, referring to each other as distinct units.
  • The electronic text unit is never as vigorous in asserting its identity as the printed text unit (i.e. book).
  • No governing order/control can be imposed over the overall information web (vs. the governing indexes of an encyclopedia).
  • The underlying structure emerges, collapses, changes.
  • The Internet - a universal writing space - everything in one without losing heterogeneity and without closure.
  • Coexisting alternative hierarchies or methods of organization.
  • Shifting center - Being referenced (margin; outside) = Being there (center; inside).
  • Several (revisable, interrupted, fragmented, alternative, contradictory) lines of thought can exist at once (vs. the overarching exclusive argument or treatise implicit from linearity and closure)

Flexible Linear Models:

  • Physical Space presents itself to us in the freedom to move.
    The very possibility of movement depends on the preexistence of different and discrete locations for the same thing (including our bodies), locations between which continuous movement must occur over time (Benedkit, 127).
    The terms implicit from this definition are:
    • Location
    • Continuity
    • Identity
    • Freedom
    • Change (Time)
    • Direction
  • In Cyberspace these same terms or principles can be violated at any point, thus allowing for:
    • Disappearance
    • Phantoms
    • Warp speed Travel
    • Mirrors and doors to alternate worlds
    • Zero gravity
    • Flattening and reconstitution
    • Scale inversions
    • Direction inversions
    • Juxtapositions of disparate locations
    • Dynamic distances and sizes
    • Shifting and sliding of coordinates

Orientation - Reference Systems:

  • Orientation - A frame of reference which functions as means for -
    • Action
    • Arranging/ accessing knowledge
    • Retaining (personal, social) history and memory
    • Obtaining a sense of security through familiarity
  • Orientation systems include -
    • Coordinates
    • Numbering
    • Abstract names
    • Patterns, forms
  • Types of reference systems:
    • External, fixed, universal coordinates (e.g. compass; left-right).
    • Internal, shifting (directions of winds, landmarks central or marginal)
    • Hierarchical - proximity to top or bottom of system.
    • Time based - following lines of movement or sequence of story/ myth.

Maps; Landscape as Story (see Myer's analysis of the concept of Dreaming in Pintupi culture):

  • "[...] History piles up on land, [...the] terrain absorbs and recalls history, [...] narrative is an unstated component of any map and thus of any landscape" (Lucy R. Lippard, The Lure of the Local - "On and Off the Map" p.76).
  • Official maps fix, superimpose and anchor a view of a place; they are embedded in a hi/story they help to construct and insure.
    Digital maps can be dynamic; they can change or offer simultaneous alternative views of a single landscape/ world.
    They can themselves become a place; disrupting the hierarchy of interpretation (map) and land, or of coordinates (system) and locations.

Cyberspace Reading Paths, Navigation:

  • The reader can determine the pace of reading (vs. theater).
  • The reader can determine the direction of reading and navigating (vs. cinema or traditional writing).
  • Dialogue content and style can be adjusted to specific readers or readings.
  • Relational (spatial) reading can complement or substitute for linear, channeled reading.
  • Spatial navigation of a story can undermining the meaning of a Return - in an expanding revisable space, what does going back mean? (see discussion of repetition)

 
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