2. 1 Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature By Espen J. Aarseth Presentation: Lone Albrecht

3. 2 Definitions  Cybertext – information feedback loops – mechanical organisation of text  Ergodic – during the cybertextual process, the user will have effectuated a semiotic sequence, and this selective movement is a work of physical construction that the various concepts of ’reading’ do not account for. This phenomenon I call ergodic.

4. 3 The concept of Cybertext  Hales from Norbert Wiener’s book (and discipline) called Cybernetics, subtitled Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948)  Refers to any system that contains an information feedback loop  Not limited to computer-driven (or ’electronic’) textuality

5. 4  Focuses on the mechanical organization of the text, by positing the intricacies of the medium as an integral part of the literary exchange  Also focuses on the consumer, or user, of the text  Ergodic derives from the Greek: ergon and hodos, meaning ’work’ and ’path’.  In Ergodic nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text.  Non-ergodic – the effort is trivial.

6. 5 Typical reactions to the idea of Ergodic lit.: hypertexts, adventure games etc.  All literature is to some extent indeterminate and non-linear – different for every reading  The reader has to make choices to make sense of a text  Not really nonlinear : reader can read only one sequence at a time!

7. 6  Hypertext, adventure games and so forth are not texts the way the average lit. work is a text.  They produce verbal structures, for aesthetic effect.  The paraverbal dimension – that is hard to see.

8. 7  A cybertext is a machine for the production of variety of expression  You are faced with a forking text  In a cybertext – contrary to a normal text – you are constantly reminded of inaccessible strategies and paths not taken, voices not heard.  Each decision will make some parts of the text more, and others less, accessible, and you may never know the exact results of your choices!

9. 8  For a moment let’s try to apply this idea to your site/the site of your choice – what is it you are faced with here?  You might compare an image brochure with e.g. one of the company sites I have left on the net for you.  Some say: It is difficult to see the variable expression of the nonlinear text which is often mistaken for the semantic ambiguity of the linear text

10. 9 The narrative cybertext  The ’nonlinear’ reader’s pleasure is that of exploring a labyrinth, a game or an imaginary world in which he can get lost, discover secret paths, play around, follow the rules etc.  The ’linear’ reader’s pleasure is that of the voyeur: safe but impotent

11. 10 What is the nature of trying to know a cybertext?  Investment of personal improvisation. – Possible results: intimacy or failure  A struggle not merely for interpretative insight but also for narrative control  The cybertext reader is a player, a gambler  The cybertext is a game-world or world-game  It is possible to explore, get lost, and discover secret paths in these texts – through the textual machinery  A difference not between games and literature – but rather between games and narratives

12. 11  Cybertext is a perspective Aarseth uses to describe and explore the communicational strategies of dynamic texts.  Even if cybertexts are not narrative texts but other forms of literature governed by a different set of rules, they retain to a lesser or greater extent som aspects of narrative – just as in other nonnarrative literary genres.

13. 12 The labyrinth  A metaphor: – As a sign of complex artistry, inextricability – important metaphor and motif in classical and medieval lit., philosophy, rhetoric, visual signs – Paradox: Visual art from prehistoric times always unicursal Literary maze usually multicursal The multicursal motif did not appear in art until the Renaissance

14. 13  Doob shows the two paradigms coexisted peacefully as the same concept at least since Virgil (70-19 B.C.)  Seemingly contradictory models subsumed under in a single category, signifying a complex design, artistic order and chaos, inextricability or impenetrability, and difficult progress from confusion to perception  Apparently no need to distinguish between the two

15. 14  In the Renaissance: idea of the labyrinth reduced to the multicursal paradigm we recognize today  Figurative likeness of the narrative text as unicursal coexisted with multicursal aspects such as repetition, interlaced narrative threads, etc.  Now labyrinthine and linear incompatible – Therefore labyrinth as a model of narrative text has become inapt for most narratives

16. 15  Aarseth suggests the reinstatement of the old dual meaning of labyrinth so that both unicursal and multicursal texts might be examined within the same theoretical framework – which would encompass hypertext

17. 16 Cybertext in Antiquity  I Ching(1122-770 B.C.) written by several authors. By manipulating three coins or forty-nine yarrow stalks according to a randomizing principle, the texts of two hexagrams ar combined, producing one out of 4,096 possible texts  Actually used in binary mathematics

18. 17 End