Hyperfiction Reading Research: An Experiment in Method

[1] Introduction

Hyperfiction reading experiments have been carried out as part of the author's PhD research. The experiment complements and, in significant ways, extends methods for critical metadiscursive commentary on non-linear literary texts, and can be considered a preliminary and partial response to a question posed in the title of an article by G. P. Landow: "What's a Critic to Do" (Landow, 1994). Screen recording software has been used to log readers' navigation of hyperfiction and to generate data amenable to informal qualitative and quantitative analysis. Although this is an exploratory study, it is expected that the data will provide a basis for testing the hypothesis that analysis of navigational choices made within a well-defined context can be used to suggest how a reader may have interpreted the text. The data will be integrated within the various models of reading hyperfiction and contribute to the growing methodological corpus of research on this topic. Whilst the value of results deriving from this meta-interpretational analysis may be questioned, it should nevertheless provide a point of departure for a very urgent and timely debate into the paths that technocriticism might take with regard to hypertext fictional narrative.

[2a] Analysis

Focusing on readings of a well-known hyperfiction, Michael Joyce's 'Afternoon: a Story', the experiment makes use of the fact that reading online allows the movement of a reader through a text to be monitored discretely, such as where the reader has visited and for how long. Readers sometimes 'hover' around the screen using a mouse, and the screen recording software captures this activity for use by the analyst/critic. In Readingspace (the viewing application for Storyspace texts) words selected by the reader are highlighted with a red outline. This is important to the success of the meta-interpretation because the words actually chosen by the reader, even where they do not activate a specific link, are significant in themselves as indicators of an intention on the reader's part. In this way, directions that readers take in fictional narratives may act as a kind of interpretative index for that reading. To this end, the experimental procedure requires analysis of each space visited to assess the relation between its semantic elements; this is referred to as "immediate context analysis". Not relevant to meta-interpretation of the reader, but nevertheless useful to the analyst/critic, is an analysis of the relation between link elements and their destination spaces: this is the "narratological context analysis". Finally, analysis of the connection of pathways along which the reader can negotiate the structure reveals what may be referred to as vortices, since recursal (returns to the same screen in the same reading) is subject to probability factors set up by the arrangement of links. This is referred to as "probability analysis" and its corresponding factors are centrifugal/centripetal.

[2b] Experimental factors

Two objections have to be contended with in this research: randomness and conformity. Between the two extremes of random selection of links by a reader, and a single predetermined reading sequence, this study aims to use reading research to find out what relationship exists, if any, between the content of the narrative and the choices made by the reader. These factors might be deemed to involve an unacceptable indeterminacy of variables, or to lack the rigour and exactitude of more "scientific" analyses, much less to contribute positively to the problem of hyperfiction criticism. Whilst it is acknowledged that no research can give a reliable or purely objective indication of the state of a reader's mind, the fact that engaged readers make conscious choices suggests that their decisions are amenable to objective analysis. Therefore, what this research cannot, and does not, aim to recreate is what is in the reader's mind in the course of navigation; it attempts to augment, using the data available, the range of critical tools necessary for critique of the hyperfictional literary text. Since decisions made by writers in their choice of words are open to stylistic analysis, it would seem reasonable to suppose that the choices made by readers can be considered in the same way. Some choices will be more considered than others and, as a result, measures to guard against undue interpretations are implemented. For example, the reader profile between some screens might suggest a skimming mode. However, in others, the strategy may change to one of close reading and more considered responses. Decisions occurring within a skimming mode would lead to a lower level of confidence in meta-interpretational analysis than in an intensive mode.

[3] Theoretical Perspectives

Although a strong argument can be made against anachronistic theoretical recontextualisations (Aarseth, 1997: 82ff) in a return to the parlance of such theories in the notion, for example, of "form and content" (Ryan, 1997:690), the powerful resonance of these ideas with issues prevalent in our own time often can be too irresistible. Such revisitations might also suggest an almost inevitable reconsideration of the material conditions of literature observed by Aarseth to be "invisible" to most literary theory (1997: 164). In the analyses outlined above (2a), terminology and ideas from existing models have been used. Complementing a standard grammatical analysis of the spaces (for example, that found in the later chapters of Greenbaum and Quirk, 1990: 394ff), and Gèrard Genette's 'Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method' (1980), is Aarseth's (1997) "textonomy" and discussion of 'Afternoon', as well as J. Yellowlees Douglas' (1994) analysis and interpretation of her own readings of the work. There are perhaps models better suited to, or more concomitant with, the aspirations of the research and it is anticipated that interested participants will be forthcoming with suggestions.

[4] Content of poster

1. Title and brief explanation of aims of experiment
2. Diagrams showing structure relevant to analysis
3. Charts plotting reading data
4. Separate key to diagrams and charts linked to interpretations
5. Interpretations linked to diagrams (handout)
6. Analysis of the results in bullet point format

[5] Bibliography

Aarseth, Espen J. (1997). Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Johns Hopkins UP, Baltimore.
Alasuutari, Perrti (1995). Researching Culture: Qualitative Method and Cultural Studies. Sage, London.
Douglas, J. Yellowlees (1994). 'How do I stop this thing?": In Landow (ed) Closure and Indeterminacy in Interactive Narratives.
Genette, Gèrard (1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (tr. Jane E. Lewin). Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Greenbaum, Sydney and Quirk, Randolph (1990). A Student's Grammar of the English Language. Longman, Harlow.
Landow, George P. (ed) (1994). Hyper/Text/Theory. Johns Hopkins UP, Baltimore.
Landow, George P. (1994). 'What's a Critic to Do? Critical Theory in the Age of Hypertext'. In Landow (ed).
Robson, Colin (1993). Real World Research: A Resource for Social Scientists and Practitioner-Researchers. Blackwell, Oxford.
Ryan, Marie-Laure (1997). 'Interactive Drama: Narrativity in a Highly Interactive Environment'. Modern Fiction Studies, 43:3, 677-707.