critical.

Narrative which uses space as part of its story-telling technique is not inherently a literary genre. The types and functions of these texts are as varied as those in use in traditional print media. Digital texts most easily make use of spatial textuality, because of the graphic and memory capability of computers but they need not rely on either of those. Graphical computer games are the most popular spatial narratives, but text adventures are equally spatial, and often more cohesively narrative thanks to their inherent textuality. Hypertexts also make use of spatial arrangement through graphical or textual interfaces. A newer form of spatial narrative is a type of text that reveals its scriptons based on the global, not virtual, position of the reader. There is nothing that inherently connects these texts other than their spatiality.

As in Marie-Laure Ryan's "Action Space, Epic Wandering, and Story-World", the means of interacting with and accessing "Disorder" is through its virtual world. Ryan likens this type of interactivity to that of a theme park; the user is free to wander around and choose his rides, but each is a disconnected, autonomous whole. It is probably possible to read "Disorder" in this way, but it will not follow Ryan's model, in which "once the ride has been boarded, the system takes total control of the visitor's fate and (supposedly) provides a thrilling experience with proper Aristotelian contour" (Ryan 56). In fact, the nodes in "Disorder" are almost entirely uninteresting and certainly unfulfilling individually. It is through assembling what the reader learns from them that any narrative structure can be revealed.

In many ways, "Disorder", is more like Ryan's "Hidden Story" than her spatial construct. She even terms the reading the "investigation of the case" (Ryan 55), a term I chose independently to describe my text. In the Hidden Story, the user must discover the history of the world as "Disorder" asks its users to do, but Ryan states that the investigation becomes the narrative in this structure. "Disorder", however, lacks the type of player character that her example Myth has. There is no "I" or "you" in "Disorder", only "him". Also missing is a backstory for the investigation itself; the reader is not told if he is a medical examiner or a firend who has found the body. Furthermore, investigating "Disorder" does not involve conflict or problem solving; the story is entirely accessible to the user from the start. A narrative of a reading of "Disorder" would be rather boring: "I clicked on the lamp; I clicked on the bed. . . ." The narrative (if there is one) is gleaned by interpolating the accessed texts.

The gaps between the textual pieces in "Disorder" are much like what Stuart Moulthrop describes as "the gutter between frames of a comic" (Moulthrop 1). The action of the reader interpolating the texts accessed at different times and locations is also found in Moulthrop's Reagan Library. "Disorder", however, is much less self-aware, if at all. There are no instructions, hints, or ponderances on the nature of cybertext within "Disorder". Another significant difference is that though the locations in Reagan Library reveal different words when accessed at different times, repeated visits to a location reveal increasing coherencies of a particular "text". "Disorder" does not attempt to question the nature or stability of text in the same way, so the nodes carry several distinct scriptons.

Both texts use randomization in determining what a reader will find at their nodes, but they use them to different effects. "Disorder" chooses scriptons at random when nodes are accessed, with the thematic idea to eradicate finality and order from the text as a whole. Reagan Library uses a randomization tool to create its early texts, relying on it less each time a node is accessed, until a final texton is revealed. Thus, while one text uses randomization to eradicate stability, the other uses it to question and accentuate textual stability.

"Disorder", like all cybertexts, is difficult to classify. It is part graphical adventure (the reader moves from spatial node to spatial node), but lacks the player character action and problem-solving prevalent in most computer games. It is part hypertext, but again lacks an essential element--the nodes are not linked textually, but spatially.

Works Cited

Moulthrop, Stuart. "An Interview with Stuart Moulthrop by Noah Wardrip-Fruin". The Iowa Review Web (1 Sept. 2003). 5 May 2004 http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/feature/moulthrop/index.html.

Ryan, Marie-Laure. "The Structures of Interactive Narrativity". Computer and Text/Intro to Digital Studies. Comp. Matthew Kirschenbaum. Beltsville, MD: BelJean Printing, n.d. 51-56.

introduction |	investigate	| after-words
|	technical	| livejournal