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.

Let’s begin with hypertext. In Landow’s words, “Hypertext…provides an infinitely recenterable system whose provisional point of focus depends upon the reader, who becomes a truly active reader” (36).  Essentially, hypertext describes the capacity of a (written) work/text to take the reader down an infinite number of experiential paths. This reader has the power to focus on a particular part of the text, say a sentence, and follow any number of ides to reach an original conclusion or knowledge. A different reader could read the exact same sentence and be lead down a completely different thought path and walk away with an entirely different knowledge. At the same time, perhaps another reader reads the same work and finds a different sentence to be a focal point and follows his own original path of thought in the way that the other readers do. In this way, the text supports and triggers an infinite number of interpretations by the reader. This is what makes it a hypertext.

Deleuze and Guattari compare these characteristics of hypertext to those of a rhizome. The term rhizome refers to a mass of roots (of a plant) that continuously branch out and expand without any real central point. This is much like a hypertext. In the aforementioned quote, Landow explains that the hypertext is an “infinitely recenterable system” (36). There is no specified focal point, which opens the text to interpretation. This is very much like the rhizome, which has no real center point. Both feature branches (one of plant matter, and one of knowledge) that ask the individual to make a decision: Which path shall I take?

In asking this question of the reader (albeit discreetly), the hypertext hands the reader a great deal of power, which ultimately leads to original knowledge. The reader makes an infinite number of choices throughout his experience of the text, which results in a completely original experience. In this instance, the link between power and originality is crucial. It is what drives the text to be a hypertext.

What I am left wondering is whether nearly every text could be considered a hypertext. The entire field of literary criticism exists to maximize and emphasize the role of reader-response to a text. It is the individual’s personal and original experience that leads to different interpretation of the text. Think of the most famous and highly criticize works. Yes, many or them seem to have a very obvious moral or meaning, but they could be infinitely interpreted as conveying countless other messages, more discreetly. So, in this way, I definitely think that it is arguable that all text are hypertexts. At the same time, however, I am compelled to argue that a true hypertext yields more natural variety in understanding. It is the text in which the reader is taken on his own path, to reach his own conclusion, instantaneously and without effort (unlike literary criticism). But this is simply, my own, original hypertextual reading of Landow’s essay.

This brings us to the metapicture. Mitchell describes the metapicture as necessarily “self-referential” (41). It is “quite strictly and formally a drawing that is ‘about itself’” (41). Of course, this picture can be about a great number of other things, but essentially it brings attention to itself as a picture. This, in turn, creates an active reader. The metapicture more or less asks the viewer to recognize and meditate upon its self-referentiality, interpreting it as he will. Mitchell presents the example of The Spiral. In this picture, the character within the picture is drawing the picture that he is in and, consequently, himself. The line from his pen is connected, in a spiral, to the line that makes up his simple outline. This is self-referentiality in its most basic form. The picture calls attention to the fact that it is drawing itself, in a  very MC Escher way. This undoubtedly makes the viewer active, asking them to comprehend this. At an additional level, the viewer could interpret the man in the picture as drawing outward or inward, both of which could be interpreted in a wide variety of ways. The nature of the image gives the viewer the power to interpret in any number of ways, which allows him a completely original experience of the work.

Landow discusses hypertextusality in terms of text, but it seems evident that Mitchell’s description of the metapicture is essentially the concept’s pictorial equivalent. Both present the reader/viewer with a number of pathways of interpretation that lead to different knowledge. I explained earlier how this would work in a text. The Spiral demonstrates how this would work in a picture. To understand this more plainly, look at the common example of the Duck/Rabbit image. When individual looks at it, it is perceived as a rabbit. Simultaneously, another individual perceives it to be a duck. The picture was constructed in a way that yields such variation in perception and interpretation. This is all part of it’s meta nature. When the viewer realizes that the image could be seen either way, he is realizing its self-referential nature.

It is clear that the metapicture is simply an extension of hypertext, a facet that Landow neglected to mention specifically, would almost definitely support. Both give the surveyor power over perception and an opportunity to reach an original conclusion. These aspects of the concepts are essential to their existence. Power and originality are crucial.

-Morgan