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the design and structure
of the project
The front page is probably the most appealing part of the site over all. Imaged based navigation is not only a very user friendly medium, it is one of the qualities hypertext possesses that is completely unique when compared to all other scholarly processes, in fact, as most critics have pointed out, hypertext is the closest parallel representation of human thought processes we have constructed to date. This may bring with it a sense of familiarity or innate understanding: to be presented with a document that does not require the reader to alter the way they think most naturally may be the best method of conveying information and meaning. The implied hierarchy of a list is escaped when images are used as hypertext, and the interplay of information and visual style is refreshing. Presented with various choices, the reader must decide their direction when interacting with this site. It is this sort of activity in a document that makes hypertext so appealing as a medium within which to present ideas. The main page of this site is an elegant lesson on how to structure information so that the reader is accommodated by the source, and not the other way around. It seems that there was an intent to provide a similar
navigation form on the choices
for navigation page, which offers a skeleton of the ways in which to
read the site. This page is very helpful for understanding the hypertextural
workings behind the project, but it also suffers from underdevelopment
and error. In fact, it could have been integrated into the main page to
perfect the hypertextural elements that are already present.
The dreams and critical expectation. The dreams are the most hypertexturally disappointing part of this project. At first blush it seemed that they were disorganised and poorly collated, and further investigation only confirmed this. After the detailed justification of the dreams as legitimate source in the essay, I expected a great deal from the dreams, their presentation and their interpretation. The authors chose to remain loyal to what they see as hypertext's most important feature: the ability of the presentation to enable to reader to construct their own paths of meaning and understanding. This constant shifting and reorganising of information can be understood through the metaphor of the kaleidoscope, where the restructuring of fluid information allows different narratives to emerge from the same text. In practice this means that the dreams are not as hypertextural or thick as the essay, which is unusual, since the essay is really an attempt to justify the presence of the dreams in the Arnoldian narrative. Presenting the dreams: Real Time or Classified? The dreams are presented in two ways: chronologically and thematically, and both ways utilise hypertext in a different manner. It is not clear if this is deliberate or just another underdeveloped aspect of the site: there are two hypertexts present in the discussion of the dreams and this creates a confusing structure. In the chronological presentation of the dreams the use of hypertext is quite sophisticated and broad, with many different types of sources and media informing the main document. For example, a reference to women body builders in Krasniewicz's dream on 2/1/91 provides a link to still photos taken by one of the authors at the Miss International Competition, 1993. A reference to the film Cat People provides a link to one of the most interesting details of the site: a visual presentation of the dream complete with audio and moving pictures. This is probably the closet the authors come to realising their aims to present a purely hypertextural exploration of Arnold. Unlike the other forms utilised by Blitz and Krasniewicz which are hybrids of the textural and the pictographical, situated uncomfortably on the fission between text and hypertext, this aspect offers a realisation of the fusion between the two. This small snippet is a highly innovative method of presenting the dream as hypertext, which is one of the larger issues underpinning this project. It is a multi-layered representation: the voice of the author/dreamer relates the dream to the viewer while a Quicktime film plays, taking the reader into the dream itself and into collusion with the author. The slipperiness of concepts and the interrelation between hypertext and dream is tangible, it is a perfect example of the capabilities of hypertext to present new meanings and interpretations in our evolving digital age. There are other hypertextural features included in the chronological presentation of the dreams but they are not as significant or useful as the dream sequence. It is unfortunate to note that as one scrolls through this presentation of the dreams, the hypertextural features decrease, to the point where a dream mentioning blue flowers includes a .gif of an opening and closing flower, which is visually interesting but does not perform any of the postmodern reconcepturalising of the dream sequence. It is also a major oversight to present the dreams as such enormous streams of information: had the authors utilised html embedding in their design it would be possible to link directly to a certain dream without having to search for it among pages of text. As time progresses and the authors delve further into their exploration of Arnold it is possible to follow the development of certain themes and to examine the influence of Arnold on their everyday characters. The chronological presentation is quite effective for this, if the reader is not put off by the sheer size of the database: without navigating it thematically it is hard to come to grips with the information therein, and it seems to be exactly this problem that lead the authors to include a subject based navigation of the dreams. But it is this intensely personal turn that the project takes that somewhat compromises it, and a discussion of this can be found here. The presentation of the dreams as broken down into in subjects may appear to be a helpful approach but its usefulness is undermined by the fact that the dreams are again unsearchable and presented with varying standards and templates. The celebrity dreams page has helpful links to each celebrity's mention in the text of the dreams, which would be an excellent feature if it were extended to the other dream pages. Unfortunately, despite the assurances that the site is still a work in progress, this was not completed. Despite the fact that the media/movie dreams page has the potential for a similar navigational structure, the authors have failed to insert hotlinks into the table, reducing it from a vehicle to a citation. The use of hypertext in this area is very poor, with effectively
no links in or out of the individual dreams. This makes the understanding
and contexturalising of the dreams very difficult, and in my mind, this
is the weaker method of presenting the information in the database. If
there were intertextural hotlinks and imbedded html in this presentation
then it could be deemed a successful attempt at a wholistic narrative.
Unfortunately, the information remains 'cold' to the reader as it fills
the page with line after line of virtually unbroken text.
The essay has some excellent features which make the document accessible from several points. The use of both hotlinks in the body of the text to provide external references and pull down menus at the end of key paragraphs to provide tangential avenues of exploration. The act of selecting a link or menu item opens a new browser window. To return to the original page the reader only has to close this new window and thus be immediately situated back at their point of origin. this is a particularly important feature that successfully combats the danger of becoming 'lost' in the web through a disorienting series of progressions that must be repeated in reverse order to return to the original page-- if the reader wishes to return at all. By ensuring the reader is not lost, a site can also ensure they remain within the bounds of what the site has to offer, and not be tempted away by tangential concerns. This holding of the viewer's attention by privileging the information on the site is complemented by other, more subtle ways. The site clearly attempts to offer a wholistic service, with a great deal of background and detailed information held on the site itself [not on an external page] but this has the consequence of decentralising the narrative, so that the initial focus [Arnold] is somewhat lost in the discussions of other Great Men and Women: Norman Schwatzkopf, OJ Simpson, Linda Hamilton and the authors themselves. In fact it is this need for more foregrounding of the subject that was picked up on by Roy Rosenzweig in his commentary on the site, and it is this intimate level of the authors' personality that forms one of my main criticisms else where. The essay is incredibly well
written and persuasive but it is simply too big: the long paragraphs
and unbroken streams of text may read well but they fail to hold the eye
of the reader in search of a core statement. Large blocks of text can be
intimidating or boring, and in this case especially, there needs to be
a degree of visual style maintained to best present the thesis. Certainly,
it could be a great deal worse: many so called hypertext projects fall
into the trap of becoming 'additive', as Janet Murray would have it, barely
altered straight text articles with only the most rudimentary links and
hypertext in evidence. But this project espouses a radical theory, and
deserves to be critiqued in its own form. While it is expected that most
scholarly articles and lengthy works on the web are hypertextural voids,
information dumps, more is expected from a site such as this which sets
out to be so much more. In reality, the hypertextural structure of the
site often obstructs and repels the viewer, demanding as it does a great
deal of patience and intelligence from the audience.
The essay: innovations and problems At best the essay provides some easy opportunities to explore related ideas and themes: the pull down menus offer a number of links to differing views on their subject, enabling the reader to situate both themselves and the argument at hand in a context. For example, when discussing postmodern theory, links suggested include the Panic Encyclopaedia and Christians Against Postmodernism, two radically different modes of thought and semiotics. This contexturalising of the evidence leads to the impression that the essay has a certain 'thickness' to it, interpretations developed and supported by many diverse theories. At worst the essay is guilty of the cardinal sin of hypertext
scholarship: it contains a vast amount of information but its design and
structure lead to a sense of it being 'dumped' there. Despite the many
links and connections the authors offer to other sites of understanding,
barriers remain. Without html embedding or radical fragmenting of the narrative,
the site will always be difficult to interact with, which has the effect
of problematising the making of meaning and historical interpretation.
Should we include an evaluation of the links in an evaluation of the source? When constructing their argument, the authors took great
care to provide references and links throughout the essay to assist the
reader in meaning-making. Unfortunately, many of these links lead to '404
not found' and disallowed pages. Since the project aspires to provide a
wholistic reading of Arnold it seems only fair that the source material
cited and used in it should come under scrutiny. The most arresting feature
of the pages that were available was the lack of even the most basic hypertext.
Many were lengthy essays, and most were devoid of hotlinks or hypertext
in the body of their argument. I would allow the importance of their inclusion
in the project as reliable sources but it is regretful that they are not
using hypertext to its best capacities. Perhaps a future goal for hypertextural
scholarship could be to create a system of certification, or at least standards
that 'raise the bar' so to speak, demanding more from hypertextural scholars
in terms of quality rather than just quantity.
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