The Rainbow Jukebox
Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink
The selection of a rainbow for the dominant image of Jumpin' at the Diner was prompted in part by a nostalgia for those roadside dancing spots of the past, the exuberance of early rock 'n roll.
But our Rainbow Jukebox is also meant to invoke the dazzling spectrum of work that is featured in our look at 40 men doing Web-specific literature today.
From cherry red to deep purple, apple-blossom pink to mellow yellow, these pieces represent a few of the new and exciting directions in electronic literature. Hypertext, once characterized by text-dominant link-and-lexia, has changed with the advances in technology. New works take advantage of images and sound, of software such as Flash, Shockwave, Quicktime, RealAudio, and MP-3. They feature intricate coding systems that often combine html, dhtml, shtml, xtml, Javascript, Java applets--including moving panels, ramdomization, and time-based navigation.
In the process of integrating these technologies, the writers and artists have managed to harmonize with the traditional genres* --in an intregation of words, image, and sound.
So what has happened to genre in this larger sense? At this stage in the process, we still have some difficulty knowing exactly. But the process has been fascinating. First, the genre lines began to disappear. Electronic fiction and poetry writers started integrating more images into their work. At the same time, poets who had been experimenting with visual poetry and language poetry found a home in electronic writing--the use of text-as-image was well suited to their mission in many respects. And, not surprisingly, visual artists commenced employing far more narrative into their works on the Web, as well, perhaps because the Web is a text-friendly environmnet and because it is sequential in nature.
Second, the genres began to fuse in puzzling ways. Not only were writers learning to use images, artists verging toward full-blown story-telling, but the communities began to merge, too. Artists and writers were soon working together--collaborations formed between poets and artists, musicians and novel writers. In quick succession, the work of writers was appearing in art galleries, and the work of artists could be found in many literary 'zines. Everyone was dancing to the catchy, new beat.
This blending of forms made our selection process difficult. Our outside number was 40--but the list doubled weekly. We began narrowing the criteria--quite arbitrarily. We decided to include English-only selections. We constucted flimsy boundaries where there are none: including in our list works that had a fair degree of interactivity and linking, favoring works that seemed to develop a narrative idea, selecting pieces that took explicit advantage of Web techniques.
Nevertheless, we found such a wealth and range of excellent work, that, finally, our criteria was quite inadequate. In addition to the 40 works featured on the Diner Rainbow Jukebox, you will see a Special Category called "Rockers" for works that might well have been included....everything from electonic literature that is mainly text-with-index-links, to pioneers in the hypertext field, to work which accompanies gallery installations.
And because the field is evolving so swiftly, we asked Jay Bolter and Stephanie Strickland to comment on this collection. They have provided our readers with vital critical insight to this unusual phenomenon.
Finally, and, most importantly, this collection represents only a moment in time--a flash frame. Another week of looking at websites, and we could add another 40 writers and artists. This list is emphatically NOT comprehensive enough to embrace all the fine creative energy out on the Web; rather, it represents just a sampling of the rainbow of styles and approaches, a short medley of the impressive Web-specific work in English being done by men on the WWW.