Trip Notes: A Project's Process


Road Trip began as a creative research project intended to explore an aspect of the new literary landscape of cyberspace, while acquiring the basic web skills needed to post my creation. My original intent, when searching for a subject, was to satisfy my own curiosity, as a longtime writer of print books and articles, about an entire creative medium all but invisible to the print world.

I very naturally began to ask questions, and those questions seemed my best guide for such exploration. The more questions I asked, though, the larger the project became, discoveries appearing link after link after link, which, of course, is the very nature of the medium itself (my first cyber-insight). There literally wasn't any stopping point, so I began to corral the questions, found an obvious enough metaphor, a road trip, and attempted my question-answering in the manner of normal literary research. Of course, just as there are no originals in cyberspace, neither is there any "normal" (at least not yet).

At the outset, it seemed to be like so much on the internet—"virtual" print literature, that is, print literature with clicking and scrolling. Quickly, though, I saw that sameness had a twist. Now I was intrigued, and the questions multiplied as I discovered more works of cyberliterature. And the more I saw, the broader and deeper my questions became.

The project, then, evolved, imaginatively, into something much larger, broader: My cyber "Road Trip" could have different "paths" and different uses. Not only could Road Trip satisfy its set requirements, but it could also be a web entity potentially usable and re-usable as a resource for both my initial cyberlit education but also future pedagogical purposes—on-going genre and programming education, as well as some simple creative experimentation also of use at the most basic level of instruction.

So Road Trip became two-lane, with an occasional side trip for literary and design concerns. My exploration of cyberspace as literary space now had two major routes:

"Road Way," with its answers to my cyberliterature questions, would contain research, scholarship, and a cross-section of the fascinating creative works, past and present, of this new electronic medium, the embryonic "cyberliterature era."

"Road Reverie" would be an identically-designed page that would be an experiment in cyberspace as literary space, a space for my own creative attempts to answer yet another question: With just the basic, simple hypertextual cyberspace "tools"—those most readily-available and widely-accessible to the beginning cyberwriter—can an imaginative writer do creative work for the electronic medium decidedly different from the printed medium?

Road Way—Notes:

The lessons of "Road Way" are all but self-explanatory since they are designed as questions to be answered. A few other lessons beyond my new literary education are worthy of mention: I found that the medium forced me to write as short as the research mode would allow, ever mindful of how links broadened the reading without lengthening the "scroll." It also forced me to repeat myself in certain places, something I would never do in print text, where the reader is always assumed to be reading linearally, which is the nature of books.

In this sense, then, my adoption of the Q&A approach to my scholarship was also an exercise in the non-linearity of hypertext literature, heightening not only the much-heralded effect but also the inherent problems in non-linearity and the pursuit of their acceptable solutions. Sometimes I thought my solutions acceptable, sometimes I didn't, but every problem, of course, taught me something about the medium itself.

I was surprised, I admit, to find such literary diversity. While longer works of literature attempted in cyberspace seem somewhat "arrested," their scrolling handicap not surprising, the same is not true for shorter forms. Flash poetry, along with other such subgenre-creating, digitally-animating software, of course, is ruling the momentary day, as new media wonders begin to appear. But there are so many pleasant surprises. How else to so suddenly discover American Sign Language Poetry, for example? My choices for "Roadsite" attractions and "Site-seeing" were meant to convey my new-found appreciation for this diversity, past and present, including as many different interpretations of "cyberspace as literary space" as possible. I offer it all in the same way I offer my questions answered—as the fascinating result of literary investigation.

The technical expertise I gained is self-evident, the enjoyment of its acquisition, however may not be so obvious. New skills are a grand thing—after you master them. As for the knowledge gained, my intellectual and creative curiosity for this field is now a fact. As with great print literature, many of these works are world-expanding, the test of depth for any creative work. Also, I came away from this experience with a deep admiration for the cutting edge writer/artist who ventures "here" and creates what seems, for the time being, a true creative labor of love, offered with no obvious expectation of gain. The impact is all the more impressive for it.

I also made the choice to add "Road Way as a PDF," offering its studied Q&A in what is essentially "print-text" form, for anyone wishing easier access to the scholarship. However, staying in the cyberlit mode, I chose not to attempt switching gears, i.e. reworking the notations, the links, or the repetitions forced by the nonlinear Q&A form, in order to simulate a normal print-text appearance.

Road Reverie—Notes:

After my research and scholarly examination of cyberliterature, I came away awed at the creative works I experienced but with the nagging concern that the technological expertise needed to create such works placed the medium, as it stands today, out of reach for the creative writer not inclined, time-wise or skill-wise, to master not only the craft of writing but cutting-edge technological know-how. I didn't want to believe that the use of cyberspace as creative space had to wait for an entire plugged-in generation "to grow into it" before being a viable creative alternative for any curious contemporary writer—especially since our culture is so daily, deeply entwined with the reality of virtuality.

Using only the most basic of web design skills, the rudimentary HTML skills, my goal was to see if I could create a piece that looked modern, unlike the early, simple hypertext creations which now seem dated much like books from another decade or century do. I wanted to play with linkage, fonts and colors available, without the complicated and expensive technology in use by most cyberwriters today, while avoiding the appearance of someone's home page. I also wanted, using only these basic skills, to try to go further than much of the "print text" cyberliterature available, that is, at its core, nothing very different from a bound book or magazine entry on screen. Could there be a synthesis, the best of both worlds, that allowed the "rest of us" in on the potential fun and discovery waiting "here"?

In "Road Reverie," I learned that even inside the smallest parameters of hypertextual linkage, cyberspace can offer a different creative writing experience—from how one thinks about "audience" while creating such a work to how one presents creative pieces for best cybertextual and literary effect. Its "in progress" status also plays into another dynamic beyond the printed page—its forever changeability—always waiting for the input of new creative ideas and further technological expertise.

Road Trip—Conclusion

Through my eye-opening virtual journey down both scholarly and creative cyber-roads, I learned a new language, the language of the web, HTML, "Hypertext Markup Language." And as it is when learning any new language, I now know just enough to communicate on the most basic level, with all its frustrations and partial understanding. That, though, is enough to appreciate and admire the genius of those who have mastered the language's creative fluency, and to want to tag along, watching and listening, to where that fluency takes us all.