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01/19/2005 Archived Entry: "Imagination"

Imagination
I'm waiting for the snow to taper off this morning so I can make my way to the gym.…
Lately I'm thinking more of the new media models which drive much of the general interest surrounding hypertext or related applications, and I'm thinking of the unbreakable tendency to frame everything in terms of the restrictions of print literacy - we look at the new through the rear view mirror of the old, McLuhan says (or something like that). One of the basic problems involved in theorizing new media, writing, and rhetoric is the failure to imagine what doesn't yet exist. To imagine what doesn’t exist is to allow for an encounter, a meet-up, a linkage, that we wouldn't expect; it is to apply the avant-garde principle of the accident to invention. It is to move beyond the familiar.
Two literary models often adopted by some new media folk are Borges and Calvino. Their work is applied for its so-called non-linear approaches, the desire to highlight non-linearity as the sole property of new media writing, at least as it applies to narrative. This is the quest for the familiar; we already read Borges for non-linearity. Slap that on the Web. But the more applicable move, it seems to me, is the model of imagining/re-imagining what doesn't yet (or ever) exist. The alternative worlds of Borges. The invisible cities or unfinished manuscript of Calvino. The What If principle of composing.
The composition model is not in the imagination but in the completion of skills (outcomes) or the restriction of thought for purposes of organization and focus (outline/thesis). It is reconfirmation when carried over into literary or film studies (“tell me what the text means”). A new media update would be to accept the imagined possibility (not an anything goes/and not a “be creative” prescriptive) of a situation. This imagined possibility - like Calvino's invisible cities model - involves a series of encounters and/or experiences. Meet ups. Out of those encounters, what has happened? What was unexpected? The mashup might be one example of the encounter realized (albeit for musical purposes). What if these two bands came together? The mental move is to reapply the encounter to other kinds of compositional experiences/situations. It is not a practice of pure fantasy (“what if I was living on the moon?”), but rather an investigation of what if in terms of unexpected results – of possibility. It is to take the linking principle and allow links freer reign in terms of the “hook up.” What if this and this link up? What is that encounter? What if I imagine this text in terms of this situation? What if I imagine this street in terms of this image? What if. . . .

I think about weird stuff, like what would happen if Mr. T and E.T. had a baby. You'd get Mr. E. T., wouldn't you? And he'd sound something like this: 'I pity the fool who doesn't--pho-one ho-ome!'([2F06])

Posted by Brendan @ 01/20/2005 07:22 AM EST

Borges does, however, anticipate the large-area-role-playing game model of composition you seem to be advocating, so maybe this is just a different slapping. Imagine the possibilites of "The Cult of the Phoenix."

Posted by Jonathan @ 01/19/2005 04:07 PM EST

Go back to early hypertext theory (or even those today based in your little temp home there at Tech).

You'll see Borges used in that way many times - all the library stuff in particular.

Posted by jeff @ 01/19/2005 02:33 PM EST

I'm trying to think of something by Borges that would be "non-linear" in any meaningful sense and failing. Miserably.

Posted by Jonathan @ 01/19/2005 02:23 PM EST

Dear Mr. Dog,

If you are interested in meet ups, I can recommend some bookcross meetups in your area. Come to the Ferndale meet up this week! We're talking about Dr. Phil's new book this time.

Posted by Meet Up Detroit Bookscrossing @ 01/19/2005 10:40 AM EST