jill/txt

Hello. I'm Jill Walker, a researcher at humanistic informatics at the University of Bergen. This blog is bits of my thoughts about my research on electronic texts:
hypertext, net art,
games, stories.

Right now the blog is hovering between two languages, so some bits are in English and some are in Norwegian. I reckon you'll manage just fine.

[jill.walker@uib.no]

ISSN: 1502-8003

tuesday, september 18

Det er håpløst
og vi gir ikke opp.
(Jan Erik Vold)

posted 12:04

monday, september 17

Help build the Sep11 Attack Archive. The Library of Congress, webArchivist.org and The Internet Archive want to build a "solid historical record of this time" and are particularly interested in personal accounts of experiences, feelings or opinions. They're asking you to put a little link on your browser toolbar and click it when you see a site related to the attacks, and then their robots will archive it - with your comments if you want to comment on the site. That's a really smart way of putting together an archive.

posted 19:48

Yesterday Anne Britt Gran noted in a "kronikk" (not online) in Bergens Tidende, my local newspaper, that the arts and culture section of the newspaper was the only section with no mention of the tragedies in America last Tuesday. "Ikke en kunstner som uttaler seg om terrorangrepene i USA. Ikke en kommentar fra redaksjonelt hold. Ingenting. (..) Så marginalisert har kunsten blitt." She's right. It's appalling. Artists, writers and academics should speak out about this.

posted 11:13

Let's see.

The Gulf war was about massive forces attacking a clear, single enemy, all broadcast live on one main channel, CNN.
This war's medium is the Internet. I'm more likely to look here or here or to check my email from friends around the globe than to watch CNN. When I do look at CNN it's more often CNN.com than the television.
This war will be "unconventional", they want assassinations, the CIA is heavily involved, "human intelligence" (i.e. infiltrators and spies) and terrorist tactics will probably be employed. (Great: turn to terrorism to combat terrorism.)
The enemy is unclear and distributed.
Hubert Dreyfus: "The West has a penchant for turning its philosophical assumptions into technologies." (1992, qtd by Ken Hillis)

The world is changing. Does media change war or the world change media? Is this the Napster approach to war? When will the first Internet attacks come? (Or have they already?)

posted 11:04

A Danish email story, @skepost has been running in the newspaper Politiken for months. It's primarily intended for print, but there's an online version too. I'll start up a separate page with all these email narratives, in print and online - as soon as I get Ceres running. I get to start beta-testing it today! I'm going to try to get this blog running using it but I've no idea how that'll work out. (Via Lisbeth, who writes a bit more about @skepost.)

posted 10:40

sunday, september 16

Slavoj Zizek writes about the terrorist attacks and the American responses with a quote from the Matrix: Welcome to the Desert of the Real!. Zizek is coming to Oslo on the 8th of October, to discuss the attacks and war with Thomas Hylland Eriksen at SANS (Nedre Vollgt. 19) at 7 pm. (Thanks to Frode Molven for that info, and Adrian for forwarding the essay. It was posted on Nettime, a mailing list I'm rejoining.)

posted 21:49

I quite often disagree with Dave Winer - I hated that thing he did a few weeks back about why there aren't many women in high tech, for instance. However, he's had a lot of good thoughts and links the last days, and he has an interesting point here:

OK, now we're going to war, or according to some (like the US president) we're already at war. Now, most of the voices we're hearing are male. That's not a big surprise. (..) Wired says this is the first Internet war, and I think they're right. So this could be the first war where women have a voice. Imho, civilization and infrastructure need to speak up, before we flush it all down the toilet. I fear that's exactly what's happening. I'm not kidding about that. (Dave Winer, 15/9)

I've already unsubscribed and resubscribed to a mailing list of mothers that I've been a member of for nearly six years, since we'd all just discovered we were pregnant. I was horrified at all the hatred and bloodlust I saw in these mostly American women, women I've grown to know as a loving, supportive, openminded and tolerant group. A lot of the anger seemed to be directed at anyone not American, who said anything other than "kill, kill, kill!". I'm not really convinced that women are more peaceful than men, though I suppose statistics show it. Thank goodness I'm starting to see that the ruthless desire for revenge at any cost was in part a reaction to a huge shock. There is more thoughtfulness today. People are almost back to where they were before Tuesday, politically speaking. Yes, the Internet lets me hear more individual Americans' views and they hear mine, but I'm not feeling very confident it will make much of a difference.

posted 21:41

saturday, september 15

Fray is a site that has good stories told by individuals, complemented by often beautiful design that belongs with the stories, like the story of an illicit lover where you had to pull apart frames to find the hidden place of the story. The stories are linear, nothing hypertexty or particularly multimediaish - no, they belong to another kind of digital narrative: the personal account, frail, often small (why do I want to say small rather than short?) usually deeply felt stories that invite and always give space to answers from their readers. They've just opened a new group of stories from the last week in New York: {fray} hope - missing pieces. Some of the best stories here are ones in the "what's your stories" section.

Rebecca Blood has good stuff, lots of links and opinions I mostly agree with about this war that so many want to see happen. After seeing too much thirst for revenge and blood (and dreaming too much of screaming children and bombs) I was relieved to see a "what you can do" message I can believe in:

What you can do: Renew friendships with people who are considered enemies, but actually are not. Use the Internet to meet people with strange last names, and ask questions and listen to what they say. If they express anger, try to validate it, not negate it. Have the courage to go through your beliefs. (via Rebecca Blood who got it from Dave Winer)

posted 23:10

friday, september 14

Blogger has a bug so I can't save adjustments to my template. If I had been able to, I would have added blogs by these people: Elin Sjursen, my friend and collegue who's now at MIT. Mark Bernstein, whose home page has kind of snuck up on me as a blog. Mark doesn't use date or time stamps and so you have to watch for a while to realise that it's actually quite frequently updated. Almost daily, I think. Mark runs Eastgate and is a nexus of hypertext and electronic narratives. And he's my personal hero when it comes to presentations. Also Hilde Corneliussen who's working on gender and computing here in Bergen. There would be a link to September's archives too, some of the early posts from this month are already gone from the front page.

posted 13:29

Noah Chomsky writes about the attacks, quoting Robert Fisk: "this is not the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about American missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia - paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally - hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps." Which reminds me of Jernalderdrøm, a book of war and rape through millennia, a book that shows the horror for ordinary people, men, women and children, no matter who is fighting for what.

Auschwitz og Chelmno og Treblinka og Sobibor og Majadanek og Belzec (..) og Babylon og Havlandet og Ebla og Ai og Jeriko og Lagash og Umma og Urkesh og Ur og Uruk og Uruk og Uruk og Uruk - altså: den som har lest om krigere og har sett krigere, som selv har vært kriger, eller som ikke har vært det, eller som har vært beordret til å bli kriger men som har sagt nei, som har sagt nei! har sagt nei! sagt nei! nei! nei! nei!, den vet, eller kanskje ikke vet, men aner fornemmer at en kriger er en kriger er en kriger er en kriger er en kriger, men det er antagelig også alt han eller hun fornemmer aner eller kanskje vet, faen i innerste i svarteste i jævligste! (Steinar Løding: Jernalderdrøm, side 101-6)

For a modern list of wars, you might be interested in looking at The Herald's list of recent Western acts of terrorism.

posted 12:09

The 404 Research Lab has been greatly refurbished since the last time I was there. Fancy design, a randomiser and lots more silly "404 - page not found" messages!

posted 11:47

thursday, september 13

Love, life & email is another email drama - not actually "the first ever interactive email drama", as they claim. Unfortunately it was one of those ones that ran for a fixed period of time, and it's over, so now you can only access the archives instead of getting the emails sent to you in "real time". There are more and more of these email narratives, and none of them seem aware of the other ones that exist. Amazing. Here's my list: Inbox Outbox, Blue Company, Emailshows, Online Caroline, Two Minutes, Two Solitudes and Blue Company. Or see two of my previous posts about email narratives here and here.

posted 14:05

Torill has a link to Aftenpostens collection of American front pages - they didn't include this one.

posted 12:20

People are starting to point out the symbolism of the attacks. The terrorists targeted what can certainly be seen as the three pillars (or powers) of America: Capitalism (the World Trade Center), the Military (the Pentagon) and the third target which was never hit was probably either the White House or perhaps the Capitol, which could have killed congress - so that's Government. It was done on the day of the year that Americans date 9.11, 911, emergency (I've seen this pointed out in blogs and discussions but can't find them now, sorry). The method was almost a tribute to the land of freedom and opportunity where anyone can learn to fly a plane. This has been planned on many levels.

I'm frightened by the hatred and the desire for revenge we're seeing. "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind", said Gandhi, and Jish reminded me of it, along with a personal story of harassment and anti-Arabic sentiment. People are buying guns en masse (like that will help) and otherwise sensible people are screaming for revenge and slaughter. There have been bomb threats against American mosques, Islamic schools and Arab businesses. Robert White has a sane article about the problem with retaliation. He writes about the last US attack on Bin Laden's base: "Does anyone doubt that the incident gave Osama Bin Laden five eager recruits for every one of his soldiers who died?" This is the problem of course. There's nothing like losing your loved ones and fearing for your life to make a nation (or any group of people) rally together and demand revenge.

posted 11:32

wednesday, september 12

Amazing photos from Manhattan at this blog: lightningfield.com. Also take a look at this email with photos. Other blogs with a lot of first-hand stories: east/west, scripting.com, saranwarp.com, worldnewyork, Mookie and likeanorb. This personal journalism is in many ways much more compelling than CNN and the papers. I've been needing to talk about this and read about other people's experiences (yeah I know I'm a long way away from America but nowhere feels far away these days), making sure that the few people I know in Manhattan were OK. The image that sticks with me most is yesterday wasn't on TV at all, it was sitting outside in the sun with some neighbours, our kids playing oblivious to our concerns, we were joking as one does in times of crisis and then a Bosnian neighbour said, very quietly, "We sat just like this after hearing the Serbs had attacked. Joking about it, having a barbeque in the sun. Nobody believed there would be a war."

posted 10:27

essays:

Do you think you're part of this? Digital texts and the second person address
(or pdf) Cybertext Yearbook, Jyv?yla University. You can order the whole anthology from roisko@dodo.jyu.fi.

A Child's Game Confused
a hypertextual riff against (or with?) some netpoems. JoDI 1.7, 2000. Speilet lokalt.

Men er det litteratur?
en introduksjon til skjermtekster. Bob nr. 7-8, 2000.

Men hvorfor virker ikke musen?
en anmeldelse av nettkunsten på høstutstillingen. Kunstnett Norge,okt 2000.

Jeg taster, derfor er jeg
en kronikk om websåpeoperaer. Studvest, 18/1999.

Piecing together and tearing apart: reading afternoon, a story.
about Michael Joyce's classic hypertext fiction. Won Ted Nelsons Newcomer Award, Hypertext '99.

Tripp trapp tresko i cyberspace
en hypertekstuell anmeldelse av Juliet Ann Martins elektroniske diktsyklus xxxoooxxx. vinduet.no,1998.

Hypertextual Criticism. Comparative Readings of Three Web Hypertexts about Literature and Film
my MA thesis on non-fiction web hypertexts. Dept of Comparative Literature, University of Bergen, 1998.

Jernaldervev: lesefragmenter
en hypertekst om min lesning av Steinar Lødings papirroman Jernalderdrøm. 1998. (Dette er ikke en hypertekstuell versjon av romanen men en anmeldelse av den.)

jill/txt

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