In manner of becoming a genre?

Deleuze and Guattari's "Rhizome" was a particularly difficult read, which I found while tripping over my thoughts, grasping for whatever I'd learned in biology my sophomore year in high school.

Hypertext

Books, plays, poems, and literature of all kinds commonly refer to what has come before it. These references can sometimes be missed without prior knowledge by the reader. The intertextuality in writing is made more apparent and present with the use of hypertext.

Hypersimilarities between theories of similarities.

On the first written page of Landow's text, he writes of the similarities between his predecessors and contemporaries in the language that they used; those being words like web, network, link, and interwoven. Landow's theories are nothing different, he simply uses the word hypertext to make, that he seems to be an original point and articulation. Hypertext is the way he describes the flow of ideas, both in discourse and internal thought processing. The term, similar to a rhizome, is an infinitely interconnected web branching idea to idea. The differing principle between the two is that rhizome is distinctly non-centralized and hypertext can have centers of original thought that precede and influence further texts by sharing some “hypertext” between them. The critical theory of hypertext is required, according to Landow on page one, because it can generalize writing into a connected web of central ideas, they themselves centralized by core principles and writings. This critical theory would explore the roots of knowledge and show how diverse subjects branch off of similar core ideas.

They are similar ideas, really, with rhizome differing by advocating for a decentralized view of relation.

In terms of the metapicture, the same case will be found: that all these ideas are insanely similar because they're dealing with the same biological entity in the human brain, which is always involved in interpretation, regardless if one is reading an image as text or any combination of the sort of sensual and cognitive reasoning and connections. All these theories are, in a sense, connected by the same generalization they're trying to prove as being their own model, whether it be similarities caused by a similar metapicture shared between ideas, or a rhizome, or hypertext. This creates a similarities between the author's version of similarities, creating a metasingularity in the same tone as a metapicture.

As for Marxism, I don't believe so. All ideas aren't as applicable or thought out as others, as far as layman rhetoric goes. Giving merit to ideas should be based on exactly that: merit. Authorship, in the form of an author-function, exists for a reason, however, based upon their past work's consistency of quality. 

hypertext and metapictures and self-reflexivity: oh my!

                Take a moment, think about how you interpret an image: do you read it as a text or use textuality to construe what the picture is saying? In “Metapictures,” Mitchell discusses, “…pictures about pictures–that is, pictures that refer to themselves or to other pictures, pictures that are used to show what a picture is” (35). In order to derive meaning from an image, it is imperative for it to be self-reflexive, like a hypertext. Throughout Mitchell’s essay, he mentions that visual theory is only made viable through self-reflexivity. Self-reflexive images focus on how it came to be. Similar to Landow’s theory of hypertext, Mitchell offers a sort of consciousness to an image.

Picture About a Picture & Hypertext: Mitchell vs. Landow

Both Landow's essay on hypertext and Mitchell's essay about metapictures discuss the importance of images and their effect on the reader. For Landow, one fundamental characteristic of hypertext is how it is composed of bodies of linked texts that have no primary axis of organization, in other words it essentially has no center. I can't take all of the credit for this idea, but after reading another classmates blog post they asked the question: how is one able to find the center? Before finding out the answer to this I think it's essential to note how Landow's idea of hypertext in some some ways relates to that of Mitchell's idea of metapictures. 

What is the relation?

When reading Metapictures by W. J. T. Mitchell, I could not help but be reminded of hypertext and rhizome. These three ideas relate to the reader itself when comprehending a text.

The Duck-Rabbit

In Mitchell's essay, she discusses the arguments that always come with an image that is considered a metapicture. Though metapictures seem to address a certain global concept, they still leave room for interpretation. The self-reflexivity of a metapicture is dependent and subjective to the 'self' currently observing.

Anna Karenina Needs Hyperlinks

While reading and trying to understand Landow’s  “Hypertext and Critical Theory and Mitchell’s, “Metapictures” I couldn’t stop thinking about the literary theory, reader-response criticism from my discussion leading this week and how both Landow and Mitchell discuss how readers interact with particular texts and how that response could alter the text or how the text could alter the reader. Reader-response criticism is “the response of a reader to a text, esp. as arising from the effect of cultural context and other factors on the reader's experience of the text”(OED). It primarily focuses on “how reading affects readers and how readers respond” as well as “reading as an active process” which creates a “diversity of readers’ responses to literary works” (Bedford Glossary 425-429).

Metapictures, Hypertext, and the Fear of Self-Reflexivity

We live in frightening times. The average person is inundated by scores of interactions that could not have been conceived of fifty years ago. Your phone can talk to you. Your search engine of choice customizes results for you, based on recent searches. Even your books interact with you, allowing terms and references to be searched, while you are still reading. The future is here, and George Orwell is rolling in his grave. Or so it would seem, based on the vitriolic response of critics and theorists to this new age of self-reflexivity. An example of this hair-trigger, fear-induced response can be found in Mitchell’s Metapictures. He quotes Saul Steinberg’s analysis of his own drawing, The Spiral, as “a frightening picture”.

Self-Reference, The Sublime, and Meta

Mitchell discusses the artists self reflexivity in his article, and in regards to art I believe it is best summed up here: "Everything in his world, including himself, has been created by himself(Mitchell, 40". Mitchell relates this notion to modernism and the sublime, which I think are perfectly exemplified by this. Modernism in itself is self-reflexive; 'meta' principles are prominent in many modernist works (one that comes to mind is the literature of James Joyce; he references his own genre, himself, his critics). The sublime, too, as defined by Longinus, can be considered "the expression of spirit", and what better way to achieve this than to use art to reflect ones self. Meta Pictures, then, are works of art/drawing that reflect the author.

Hypertext: It's a Small World After All

Landow’s hypertext and critical theory passage was attention grabbing due to the fact that I had never thought of hypertext in that fashion. To me whenever I had heard the word hypertext I had always thought a clickable link on a webpage that would take the user to another point in the web, nothing more nothing less.

Rhizomes, Hypertext, and Metapictures! Oh My!

Similar to rhizomes and hypertext, metapictures are more like maps in the sense that there is no tracing, no center, just open to interpretation where the reader follows the path they want to follow. What do I mean by open to interpretation? Well, although a metapicture may be self-reflective, there are various possibilities of what an image could mean and there are various ways of reaching that meaning. For example, the most obvious would be to observe the image alone. That’s where the possibilities are really endless because it’s all up to you. You have to try to find viable allusions. But, if you read a text of words describing the image, then the answer is right in front of your face and you don’t have to exert your critical thinking skills as much. Thus this option of reading a descriptive text is narrower and focuses on just one “correct” answer.

Take Steinberg’s metapicture on page 39 of Mitchell’s “Metapictures” for example. What did you first think it meant? You probably thought of something relatively different than what it was described as on the following page. And that is fine, because the reading then goes on to say that instead of the sublime image Steinberg describes it as from the insides, it is also seen as the complete opposite from the outside: a ridiculous New Yorker cartoon. Like Wittgenstein, even though he was specifically talking about the Duck-Rabbit metapicture, I believe that we should just listen to the words that come out of our mouths while we ponder instead of explicitly trying to explain (Mitchell, 61).

What is Self-Reflexive?

Perhaps one of the most interesting concepts that Mitchell explores in his discussion of meta-pictures is self-reflexivity. We've discussed it in class, but before this piece I'd never seen it discussed so thoroughly. I'd thought I had a decent grasp of the concept, but Mitchell expanded the term in a way I hadn't considered. Self-reflexive can simply mean self-referential (as with the meta-picture: a picture about a picture). But there are less explicit examples of meta-pictures that employ a different sort of self-reflexivity. Mitchell explains on page 48: "The ambiguity of their referentiality produces a kind of secondary effect of auto-reference to the drawing as drawing...  [Self-reference] has as much to do with the self of the observer as with the meta-picture itself." This claim leads to the conclusion that an image may not be self-reflexive on its own, but through the discourse that surrounds it.

Image Inception: The effects of Hypertext and Metapictures on the Reader

      It seems that no matter what the specific topic is that we are reading about, we are always brought back to the idea of "the reader" and how their role is played when dealing with a text. This applies with this weeks readings, especially with the concepts of "hypertext" and "metapictures."
 
     Landow explained that a hypertext could have any effect on a reader because it was dependent on what the reader took out of the hypertext. This same infinity applies to metapictures and the idea that a picture within a picture could continue on into forever. Which begs the question of how could we ever identify the beginning or rather the center of these ideas?

    Would we ever know if what we are reading or seeing is just what we see on our own as an individual reader or is it also what others see as the intended center?

Is a Picture Really Worth 1000 Words?

            In "Metapictures," Mitchell is seeing if pictures provide their own metalanguage rather than deriving a model for pictorial self reference from art or language (Mitchell, 38). Pictures are capable of reflection on themselves and providing a second-order discourse that tells/shows something about pictures (Mitchell, 38). As stated on page 38, Mitchell's essay is an essay about pictures, not an essay in pictures. It is an essay about pictures, but in words, so instead of an image as a text, it is full of text about images. He uses Foucauldian concepts of the relationship between pictures and words to ultimately prove that textuality can be used as an approach to attempt to read images, but images and words are so far removed from each other than one can never truly represent a picture in terms of words or a word in terms of pictures.

Beyond Hyperlinks

My earliest experiences with “hypertext” mostly involved unformatting hyperlinked words in a word processor. Copying paragraphs from my browser into Word, I’d yet to conceive of the true value, flexibility, and reflexivity of the blue and underlined words I labored to change back to plain black “words.” They were more or less an aesthetic nuisance, to me — accidental Word Art.  I was probably in 3rd grade, relatively new to writing technologies and totally clueless to the significance of the kind of non-linear reading hypertext encourages let alone the concept of intertextuality .

In the past few years, i’ve encountered several instances of hypertext that expanded the notion of hypertext and its intertextual significance, including Talan Memmott’s hyper textual novel “Lexia to Perplexia,” which did me the favor of breaking down tedious reader/observer barriers in favor of a more interactive, flexible, and extra-referential presentation. As Landow writes in Hypertext and Critical Theory, such a medium “permits the individual reader to choose his or her own center of investigation and experience.” 

Perhaps the most moderately challenging yet truly important passage to my understanding of hypertext arrives on page 34, in regard to the print medium’s viability as hypertext. From Derrida, Landow gathers that hypertext can be implicit, particularly in non electronic forms. In many ways, per my formative word-processing and hyperlink stripping experiments, bare text in a word processor seems to to occupy the same space, connected to the external world in infinite ways according to the significations and references in words and concepts alike.

While the “meta” prefix doesn’t strike me as particularly challenging on the surface, I had a difficult time applying it here but certainly see what I believe to be the “second-order discourse” described in Mitchell’s “Metapictures.” Hypertext may not be “self-referential” to the point of referencing the process by which it is created (in physical print formats, specifically) but besides being “anti-theatrical”  “decentered” I’m interested in identifying a more concrete relationship between metapictorial and hyper textual forms.

Maus, Radicalized Gaze, Die Ewige Jew, and That Perfect Mouse Metaphor

The mouse metaphor that runs through Art Spiegelman's Maus and the war propaganda film Die Ewige Jew serve as a perfect representation of what Sue Hum was discussing in her essay “Between the Eyes”: The Racialized Gaze as Design. In it, Hum had discussed the difference between site (which is a location) and sight (which creates features with facts in them (194)). She says that our sight of ethnic minorities is created through the media that we absorb ("I argue that the racialized gaze as Design provides a valuable theoretical framework for visual rhetoric, exegesis, and cultural analysis by directing our attention to how designers may unwittingly sustain practices of racialization and perpetuate racially based sociocultural exclusions." (194)) As anybody who has talked to me for than five minutes may recognize, I find this insanely important. Everything from the way that girls view themselves to how people view the disabled to our perception of the world around us can be traced back to media. Spiegelman and Hitler's decisions to use mice to represent the Jewish people is one of the most calculated moves on both of their parts, although they use the mouse for different reasons. I am using Hum's writings on sight to discuss what this means for them and for us.

Links, webs and networks:Rhizomes and Hypertext

Rhetoricians such as Barthes, Foucault, Bakhtin and Derrida heavily influence Landlow’s discussion of hypertext and critical theory. Terms like link, web, network and interwoven are often related to hypertextuality. Landlow makes hypertext the main focus in his chapter. He argues for developing a theory that will accommodate a “new” form of text. In non-technical language, hypertext is text that can be linked to other texts. Derrida described that when active reader’s explore a text, they can refer to dictionaries with “morphological analyzers” that connect words to opposites, cognates and derivations (Landlow 33).

Hypertext is an intertextual system, which means it emphasizes intertextuality. It is a useful tool, especially with the emergence of the richer and dense text. Hypertext is a special form of text that can help us unpack and interpret complex literature. Hypertext can connect us to original texts and understand the rhetorical and historical context that it embodies. Essentially, this allows us to reach a newer level of understanding. Hypertext can connect us to original texts and understand the rhetorical and historical context that it embodies.

Deleuze and Guattari on the other hand, argue for books as rhizomes. Rhizomes allow the connection between multiple texts in across the board. It is referred to as a matrix of independent discourses, which means that there is a chance of something else developing or forming from the original books. Like rhizome, a hypertext can be understood as assemblages (Deleuzr & Guattari). A system for recognizing points of connection in a text can be facilitated by rhizomes.

One of the main and most important points that rhizomes and hypertext can bring us to is the thought of originality and remixing. If all text is connected to one original text then when can this text be truly considered original on its own. This is a challenge that readers are faced with when they come across different texts. Readers also faced the challenge of viewing texts as terms on their own or recollection of multiple terms to create one meaning. Although rhizomes and hypertext is not the same thing, they are reflective of one another, share many similarities, and are almost synonymous in meaning. 

The meta of the meta picture is the meta within the meta of the picture...

It's apparent that the theory of meta picture is almost directly related to the concept of Hypertext.

Rhizome as Center of Interpretation

Last class when discussing Landow, Deleuze and Guattari my group was posed with a question along the lines of who is the interpreter of the text and ultimately who really determines what a text is about. Now obviously a complex question that does not really have a correct answer, but we concluded that Landow believes the reader or audience to be the determining factor. He states that a hyper text has no center, “although this absence of a center can create problems for the reader and the writer, it also means that anyone who uses hypertext makes his or her own interests the de facto organizing (or center) for the investigation at the moment” (Landow 37). This notion makes sense to us as daily users of the Internet, we have the abilities to navigate really anywhere we want. In or discussion our group equated Deleuze and Guattari’s plateau to the space in which the reader can operate or explore. Now this began to complicate things for me as I explored deeper, especially trying figure out what a rhizome is.

Picture Theory

Metapictures by W. J. T. Mitchell strives to see if pictures are able to provide their own "metalanguage" (38). Is it possible for pictures to be self-referential and "construct a second-order discourse without recourse to language." (38) ? From what I understand about picture theory thus far, according to Mitchell, is that in order for an image to be considered a "metapicture" it must undergo so some sort of self-reflexivity. This construction is something similar to that of Landow's hypertext theory.

Hypertext Transforms and Shifts

After reading both Landow,Deleuze and Guattari's articles I learned some very interesting things about how, "hypertext transforms any document that has more than one link in to a... directory document that can employ to orient oneself and to decide where to go next," (37). This had me confused and I struggled to understand what he meant at first. But once I realized that he was stating how it’s up to the reader’s interpretation of that document and they decide how to use that information, it shows how Landow really focuses on how hypertext is a piece of a book. A text, book or literature that interlaces together, he says how "Intertextuality shifts attention from the triad constituted by author/ work/ tradition to another constituted by text/ discourse/ culture," (35). I took this to mean that the attention is no longer on the author's work, but that the reader has their attention on the text and the significance behind the text. 

Decentering and Recentering in Self-Reflexivity

While grappling with Mitchell’s Metapictures, the most obvious connection to the readings of our most recent theorists was multiplicity’s effect on decentering and recentering. In Landow’s discussion of hypertext, he argues that it is “an infinitely recenterable system whose provisional point of focus depends upon the reader” (36). The multistable iconography that Mitchell discusses, like the duck-rabbit and the necker cube, explicitly embody this decenterable and recenterable system, not through word-based text as we so often think of when considering self-reflexivity, but rather through a direct spatial representation of how our perceptions of a seemingly static object is capable of shifting, calling attention to the absurdity of the notion that pictures, and text in general for that matter, contain one point of view.

What Exactly Does It Mean?

While reading Mitchell's work I realized that metapictures are, in a way, things that make us have epiphanies about anything. What I mean is that the Duck-Rabbit picture that was used in the text shows us a funny picture at first glance, but then the picture progressed into a psychological phenomenon that perhaps the artist did not intend. This idea of epiphany is absent with hypertext, even though both ideas include making connections through further thinking.

Rhetorical Velocity and Genre Theory: Building the Future

   Rhetorical velocity is an idea which applies to how an author will anticipate the future use and possible recomposition of their work in new ways or media. It is an incredibly abstract and high order concept because it involves the author trying to prepare for new methods of information delivery that may not even exist yet. The chief benefit of doing this is that it allows one's work to stay relevant and in the public's eye a bit longer; something with a significant amount of rhetorical velocity can be constantly recycled with each generation and become a "classic" in the sense of a great work. When something has a great amount of rhetorical velocity, it has the potential to be considered "timeless." Timelessness is the ultimate goal of all artists. To create art is to try to be remembered, and to be remembered is to be immortal. The greatest artists of all time like Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, and Van Gogh are remembered for their incredible works but also for the mystifying aura that their works now have thanks to the "larger than life" persona given to them by the timelessness of their works. Ridolfo and Rife identified this concept and also cited its main disadvantages, such as the work being used for something that the original creator did not only not approve of, but changes the entire meaning of the original work. While it may be difficult for someone to change the meaning of the original Mona Lisa, in today's world, most music and digital art can easily be remixed into something entirely different from what the original artist had intended. For example, Chaka Khan's hit song "Through the Fire", a ballad about overcoming the obstacles and arduous life events to maintain the love she has for her partner, was remixed by Kanye West into "Through the Wire", a song about West's own near death experience in a car wreck and how it changed his outlook on life. The song's title comes from how West wrote and recorded the song while still recovering from his injuries, and he recorded the vocals with his jaw wired shut.

   Miller's genre theory puts forth the idea that genre is a hierarchy created by ideas, concepts, and art works that can be classified by similar characteristics. However, the driving force behind this idea is the idea of creation. When a new idea or concept enters this hierarchy and develops its own branch, a new genre has been created. The explosion of electronic music over the past two decades is an example of this. First, there was the ever popular-and still often mislabled-techno, which then developed its own subgenres like deep house, dubsteb, drum and bass, and trap. Miller's model also puts the broadest forms of genre at the top, and gets more specific as one goes down the model. For example, "techno" would be under electronic music, and electronic music itself is under music. How authors and artists keep developing and pushing the boundaries of current art forms is how new genres are created, and with the rise of home recording studios and affordable music equipment as well as the Internet, new genres have come about in droves. One artist can found an entire genre simply by themselves. Such an example is that of Washed Out, which now tours as an ensemble band, but began as a one-man music project in south Georgia. His laid back synths and hypnotic drum loops became classified as a new genre of "chillwave", named for its dreamlike sound. Today, artists are not playing by the traditional rules as much, and as a result are creating many more genres than in the past.

   One reason why this is happening is because of the remix culture in today's world. In the past, remixes were a much smaller market due to licensing and distribution issues as well as creation logistics. Now, I can download Taylor Swift's latest single, plug it into Pro Tools, and transform it into a new and different song, all from the comfort of my bedroom desk. Remixes also appeal to an audience because hearing a familiar song in an exciting new way is refreshing and fun. It is for this reason that rhetorical velocity has become more important than ever. Rhetorical velocity is now being considered with much more importance because any artist is constantly facing the possibility of remix. With this, the possibility of new genres increases greatly, as some artists focus on remixes entirely. The Norwegian music producer Kygo has built a worldwide online following with his remixes, and is in what is being known as the new, rising genre of "tropical house", so named due to his upbeat, warm instruments which remind one of sitting on a sunny beach. As the number of genres, and thus the number of works, increase, the possibility of remixes increases exponentially, so much so that original singers have resorted to releasing a capella versions of their songs again in the hopes of being featured on the next remix hit single. With that level of rhetorical velocity, why even bother with the music for the original song?

Unpacking and Repacking the "Assemblage"

This week, we were graced by the presence of numerous critically confusing texts; however, I was fortunate enough to discover that there was a common thread, I guess you could consider it to be a nuance of sorts, between a few of our assigned readings. But first, I ask you to think: What is an assemblage? At first glance, I flightily thought of an assemblage as something simple and mundane, like decoupaging a collage of pictures and using modge-podge to strategically arrange snippets of paper and images onto a substrate in an arts and crafts assemblage. Speaking from the literary aspect of assemblage, clearly I am wrong. The Oxford English Dictionary describes an assemblage as “the joining or union of two things; conjunction; the joining, putting together of parts; a collection; a work of art consisting of miscellaneous objects fastened together”. In this blog though, I decided to chart the course of “assemblage” and see how this term was interrelated throughout a few texts, taking on similar but different meanings in regards to who the author of the text was, and also, put it into context with the documentary we watched last week, Good Copy Bad Copy, and see how assemblage can be seen similarly to another two words.

Self Reflexivity

Upon entering class Tuesday with my schema in hand, I was confident in my understanding and affirmations about hypertext, as according to Landow, Deleuze, and Guattari. However, when presented with the question regarding “self-reflexive” work, how it comes to be and how it might challenge theory, I was stumped. In fact, I was not sure I knew what the term meant even in a literal sense. After brushing up on Tuesday’s reading and attempting to synthesize Mitchell’s “Metapictures”, I return to the question of self-reflexive work in relation to language and literature.

The Hypertextual Metapicture

The way Mithcell describes the metapicture and its characteristics reminds me immediately of hypertext. He repeats over and over at the beginning of the essay that he is focusing on pictures about pictures and NOT words about words. But if he had been focusing on the latter, I would argue that he would basically be making an argument regarding hypertext.  I truly took me by surprise and intrigued me just how similar the two concepts are, both of which ultimately serve to present the reader or surveyor with a great deal of power, allowing them to embody originality.

Rhizome Examples?

In the pieces we read for Tuesday, both groups alluded to a Rhizome not having any set direction. This is due to letting the author maintain the path they want a piece to follow. During this reading, all I could think about as an example in modern day when this happens is a comic book.

In some comic books, they offer a "Choose Your Destiny" option. When a reader gets to the bottom of a page, they are given an option to turn to one of maybe two or three other pages in the book. From there, the story will continue based on what the reader wanted to happen at that point in time. But could this work for something that does not allow your own freedom, like a regular novel or a play?

The only work I could think of where choosing what part a reader goes to of a story and still be able to get everything the book has to offer is Louis Sachar's Holes. I can only say this from personal experience, because I have done this before. In Holes, there are actually three storylines to follow: Stanley Yelnats in present day, Kissin' Kate Barlow in the late 1800's, and Madame Zeroni from the mid-1700's. The chapter's are intertwined and do not switch time periods in the middle, making it fully possible to read only one of the three stories.

Another place I could see this idea working is in a play. A vignette play is a play where every scene is a new story. It could have the same surrounding theme or be in the same place as the last story, but may not have anything else to do with it. Almost, Maine is an example of this. For instance, there are about twelve scenes surrounded by the idea of love, whether that be finding, rekindling it, or destroying it. A person could just do scenes that emulate one of these ideas and that would be choosing the path the reader or director wants to take in this case.

When a reader holds authority, the reader can make anything happen with the text. My only question is that does this idea takes away power from the author?

Self-Reflexivity

I have never truly understood what it meant to be "self-reflexive." The definition, "referring to own's self" is a bleak and obviously 2-D representative of a multi-faceted and revealing concept, yet it got the job done in allowing me to use the word without shame when confronted with the concept. However, the facets of self-reflexivity truly envelop the discourses we partake in on a daily basis - is the choice to order an iced, skinny vanilla latte a choice ripe with self-reflexivity, referring to the orderer and the orderer's life choices?

Rhizomes and Hyperlinks

Before coming to class on Tuesday, I had read Landow and his thoughts on hypertext. He mentioned that hypertext was the function of the reader and this really stuck out to me. I had never thought of hypertext as that way. This motivated me to do more research on the subject and make me think of what I thought hypertext was before coming to this class. I knew hypertext was digitally based but I didn't realize how much exposure hypertext was getting.

The fact that this thing can link topics on the screen to any other related topic or picture or graphic, is kind of impressive if one sits back and thinks about it. It seems pretty cut and dry but as I have read more about it, I have realized that it goes much deeper than that. You don't even realize that the author who adds hypertext, is creating even more originality to his or her text. He found that information useful to his text and added it in there to provide more helpful information for the reader to follow. I also believe that not only is the function of the hypertext of the reader, but I think it is for the author as well. I do believe that most of the responsibility is in the readers hand but I also think the author deserves a little bit of that responsibility as well.

Most of my research led me to believe that hypertexts or rhizomes add intertextuality and supplies the reader with a more interactive based text. I think it also gives us a way to interpret things on a whole new level. The idea of "rooting" is prominent in Landows discoveries and shows me how hyperlinks provide a way into someone else's work. It links the two together in order to provide a even stronger message and background and I also believe that people will be able to convey their message even better with the use of hyperlinks.

Hypertextuality Within A Hypertext to Explain Landow

                When thinking about the term "hypertextuality," the first thing that I think of is a hyperlink. Meaning, the hyperlink is submitted in a text to further prove a theory or as a second resource. Derrida explains hypertextuality by "...properly recognizing (in advance, one might say) that a new, freer, richer form of text, one truer to our potential experience, perhaps to our actual if unrecognized experience, depends upon discrete reading units" (33). In this presentation of hypertextuality, Landow explains multivocality, decentering, rhizomes, the nonlinear model of the network in current critical theory and cause and convergence. Through these illustrations Landow builds on different forms of hypertextuality and cases in which hypertextuality is presented through networks.  

Hypertext: Remixing for the Sake of Originality

Landow's Hypertext and Critical Theory gives its audience new insight into the meaning of hypertext. The merits of intertextuality (not staying bound to one 'text' but moving between multiple sources, even within the same 'text'), are made clear and yet the question remains, is hypertext simply a remix or does  it lend itself to originality?

Hypertext and Metapictures; stuff within stuff

   While reading Mitchell’s theory of metapicture I saw many similarities in Landow’s theory of hypertext. Although one involves text and the other is about picture many of the concepts discussed in both Mitchell’s Metapicture and Landow’s Hypertext and Critical theory seem to have the same basis behind each of these theories function. Both theories are about text within text, and pictures about pictures. This was very hard to grasp at first, but after reading the two text and connecting those similarities, it helped me better grasp the concept of how each function.

What is a Hypertext?

What is a Hypertext?

            I remember when I first learned about what a hypertext was.  I was in summer classes taking text technologies.  This class really taught me a lot and exposed me to many different styles of text that I have never really though of as text.  It took me awhile to be able to decipher the difference between a hypertext as a digital format only because I think it can really be anywhere.  The classic definition of a hypertext is a electronic publication that gives you access to further information by clicking on related sources that leads you to further information on the topic.  The dilemma I have is that why does it have to be electronic.  Doesn’t the index in a book function as the same as a hyperlink.  It still gives you further readings where that topic is present in other parts of the book.  I always struggles with the idea of electronic text as a whole.  Everyone focuses so hard on the format of the book on a electronic format which I think does have an effect on the reader.  When you read a book in a digital format it can be really easy to read like an e-book but can also be very hard to read and understand when it comes down to a pdf that was copied from an original piece.  The benefit of a hypertext is the fact it is a hypertext.  I know from personal experience when I read on my ipad I am able to look up a word by clicking on it and it makes it easily accessible to further readings when you can just go to the works cited and click on a link and be taken to a whole other work. 

            By doing this the reading is able to fully understand what they have read originally and be able to receive more information on the topic at hand.  The question I am presenting though is a text book could easily be a hypertext as well.  It does not have to be confined to the web.  As for a school text book, you can read about a given topic on one part of the book then go to the index with the key words and find other sections of the book where the topic is further addressed.  I do feel that as technology progresses hypertext are benefiting us more and more because we are able to grasp more information easier but I think it is key not to forget the roots of the hypertext which in my eyes is the text book.

            

Hypertext & Metapictures

      When thinking about and exploring hypertextuality and metapictures, it's interesting to examine the role of the reader. A reader engaging with a hypertext has utmost control of their experience with that text and each reader can emerge from the other side of experiencing this text with a completely different understanding. Landow describes this as the property of a hypertext having an infinite amount of central points, "Hypertext, in other words, provides an infinitely recenterable system whose provisional point of focus depends upon the reader, who becomes a truly active reader in yet another sense" (36). The quality of hypertext having many central points is depicted quite well by Deleuze and Guattari as comparing hypertexts to the root system known as a rhizome.

Nonlinear Structures and How They Promote Active Reading

Landow argued that the lack of linearity in hypertext does not make it more complex or difficult to navigate through. His theories represent how hypertext is a different animal. He describes how the functions are different and not necessarily inferior or comparable on terms of difficulty. I found this highly interesting so for this blog post I would like to analyze how the nonlinear characteristics of hypertext affect the transform the experience for the reader.

Is My Book a Hypertext?

One of the concepts that I’ve been struggling with in my understanding of Hypertext is the idea that the function of a hypertext can survive anywhere and isn’t strictly limited to an online platform. For me, the internet has always seemed to be the only way to create a practical reading experience in which the reader is able to choose a pathway- selecting links and concepts that are interesting to them. For my blog post, I’m going to try to challenge my own understanding of the concept of a hypertext and how it relates to the claims by George Landow and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Is it possible to apply the concept of hypertext to a printed text? If so, I believe that I might just very well know a book that functions as a hypertext.

Hypertext...who are you?

After reading Landow and Deleuze and Guattari's text I learned quite a bit of information. For instance, I learned that hypertext is a fundamentally intertextual system. It has the capacity to emphasize intertextually in a way that page bound text in books cannot. I honestly feel as if hypertext goes well into the change of generation. Since many people prefer to click links instead of flip pages it was a good idea for hypertext to expand. Scholarly articles have began to expand into the non electric form. This becomes more accessible for the people who may need it and do not have to worry about the scholarly articles being torn or destroyed. Landow also said that hypertext provides an infinitely recenterable system whose provisional point of focus depends on the leader. The leader also becomes a truly active reader. In my opinion, this is an important and positive affect of hypertext because you want people to become more in tune with what they are reading. It would increase the reader's comprehension skills and the awareness of the content. I feel as if hypertext makes the people actually want to read mainly because the author creates the text and the reader keeps recreating it . 

      This can create a whole new text everytime a different person reads it and clicks in the links because the links will direct them to certain pages. This is a very interesting conept of reading because we can be told to read "The Hungry Caterpillar" but with it being a hypertextual piece it will allow different people to read the story in a different way. This explains why hypertext transforms any document that has more than one link into a transient center. 

      Hypertext teaches us that we can start off with one thing and end up with another. Hypertext transform and changes . However, rhizomes establish connections between semiotic chains,organizations of power and circumstances  relative to the arts . Deleuze and Guattari's gives us an example that rats are rhizomes. Unpacking that example I can see why that is so because rats do not must appear they come somewhere and then it's the drainage and sewer and the sewer leads to all the water supply in the world. In a way rats are symbolic for the semiotic chains.  

Meta pictures and hypertext connects with class because they both are dependent on the audience, who uses them and how they use it. If these two aspects are being used in the for, of poverty or wealth for that matter, it speaks on its class. 

Rhetorical Velocity and Hypertext

On their own, rhetorical velocity and hypertext are complex concepts with many different avenues of application. When put together, their meanings and applications become even more tangled, but also more useful in understanding them. Each of them require the attention of active and engaged readers, writers, rhetors, and creators. On several different occasions, Landow argues for the need of an active and attentive reader when it comes to hypertext, because hypertext “provides an infinitely recenterable system whose provisional point of focus depends upon the reader, who becomes a truly active reader in yet another sense” (Landow, 36). As Landow pointed out, even Derrida claimed that “the active reader in the process of exploring a text, probing it, can call into play dictionaries with morphological analyzers that connect individual words to cognates, derivations, and opposites” (Landow, 33).

The Almighty Role of the Reader: The Journey to the "Center" of the Search

In class on Tuesday, Professor Graban brought up a really important point in regards to hypertext: it is not author-less. I know this seems totally obvious because there is obviously someone who wrote the words onto the website, but when we think of hypertext in terms of originality, and in terms of Landow, we don't necessarily realize that even though we interpret the hypertext in our own way and thus create our research based off of what we find, there was an original author who created what we are researching. 

Uncovering Originality Through Rhizomes

Landow’s Hypertext and Critical Theory effectively points to intertextuality through the use of literary education and the emergence of the digital medium used in computer technology. He continuously displays that hypertexts do not necessarily limit a reader’s method through which they explore and interpret a text. It actually provides a more personal experience that allows the reader to take on a significant role throughout this process of interactivity. Essentially, people are able to develop knowledge in a non-linear and non-sequential way through the unique procedure of hypertext reading.  

Does the Hypertext Need to Switch to Decaf?

Even after reading George Landow's "Hypertext and Critical Theory," I still am very unsure of what hypertext truly is. From what I can understand, hypertext is not a paper product. A book, nor a magazine, or newspaper can be considered hypertext. Unless said book, magazine, or newspaper is located online, therefore making the text "hyper" by using technology.

Rhizome and Remixing

A rhizome is a botanical root, regarded for the unique way in which its roots grow from multiple nodes. Deleuze and Guattari use this word to conceive of an original philosophical rhizome, related to the botanical counterpart in the way it encapsulates multiple options of movement and growth.

 A remix is some kind of media that has been altered from the original creation in some way. This typically encapsulates music, art and literature.

The definitive qualities of a rhizome, or a plateau, which are two of the main analogies employed by Deleuze and Guattari, are that they are the middle of something, as opposed to having a beginning or an end. (Landow, 39) “…semiotic chains of every nature are connected to very diverse modes of coding (biological, political, economic, etc.) that bring into play not only different regimes of signs but also states of things of differing status. Collective assemblages of enunciation function directly within machinic assemblages;” (Deleuze and Guattari, 7) Deleuze and guattari go so far as to assert that most ever thing is a rhizome, connected in one form or another to something else, as if nature itself were a single rhizome in which everything is dependent on something else: “The wisdom of the plants: even when they have roots, there is always an outside where they form a rhizome with something else-with the wind, an animal, human beings (and there is also an aspect under which animals themselves form rhizomes, as do people, etc.).  (Deleuze and Guattari, 11)

Likewise the remix can be thought of as a machinic assemblage that is derived from a regime that lies on a scale that precedes the remix in originality. The remix is part of a linear model, which defines the world on a scale of infinitely varying degrees of originality.  

“The wisdom of the plants: even when they have roots, there is always an outside where they form a rhizome with something else-with the wind, an animal, human beings (and there is also an aspect under which animals themselves form rhizomes, as do people, etc.).

The issues in remixing arise from the ethical and legal issues that already have precedence under whatever laws have been in place. This includes free speech and the right to privacy (Ridolfo&Rife, 231)  copyright and orphan works (Ridolfo&Rife, 232) the right to publicity and contracted rights, (Ridolfo&Rife, 234) and fair use (Ridolfo&Rife, 236)  These laws are in place for protecting the interests of those who make the work that’s considered original, inasmuch as it was used to create a remix. The rhizomic aspects inherent to remix are the root(haha) of the ethical and legal basis that sprouted controversy; considering the fact that such legal precedents are in place for the purpose of protecting the proliferation of creativity while preventing the rape of “original” work. To truly understand the meaning of originality, copying, borrowing, stealing, remixing and the wide spectrum of degrees to which creative works are conceived of with the inspiration of other works, there must be a tangible, developed theory to grasp how each individual work can be defined. On this linear spectrum discussed earlier, all work can be considered to fall on some point of this linear spectrum of infinitely varying degrees of originality. Already we see that my previous claim about the rhizomic nature is not longer valid of this theory if one were to employ the linear spectrum with definable endpoints. That being said, the points along this originality spectrum where remix is defined can be considered rhizomic, because they are surrounded by other works defined as either more or less original. At the most original end of the spectrum one could use nature as the most original, under the assumption that it was designed. Even without design, it exists and functions on a complex level, which has no known origin or copied from any other system. Every system and machinic assemblage known all operates within the plain of existence of nature, the dimension we live in, this universe, the known. “To these centered systems, the authors contrast acentered systems, finite networks of automata in which communication runs from any neighbor to any other, the stems or channels do not preexist, and all individuals are interchangeable, defined not by their state at a given moment-such that the local operations are coordinated and the final, global result synchronized without a central agency.” (Deleuze&Guattari, 17) As the spectrum of originality runs along a linear spectrum, the pattern of the rhizome runs in a lemniscate pattern, or circular, to represent the channels and systems that are codependent, that they “do not preexist”.

Citations

1.     Ridolfo, Jim and Marinte Courant Rife. “Rhetorical Velocity and Copyright: A Case Study on Strategies of Rhetoricla Delivery.” Copy(write): Intellectual Property in the Writing Classroom. Ed. Martine Courant Rife, shaun Slattery, and Danielle Nicole De Voss. Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor P, 2011. Web. http://wac.colostate.edu/books/copywrite/.

2.     Landow, George P. “Hypertext and Critical Theory.” InHypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology: Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins, 1997. 33-48.

3.     Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. “Introduction: Rhizome.” A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, transl. Brian Massumi. Minneapois: U of Minnesota P, 1987. 3-25, excerpted.