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The
literary hypertext, Rice by Geniwate, is a perfect
example of the type of post-structuralist writing that
flourishes in the mélange of information, art and
culture that is the Internet. There is a tendency in hypertext
writing toward the production of loosely connected postmodern
texts that confuse the audience with apparently arbitrary
links and a lack of any narrative motivation. Although
to some degree Rice could be described in these
terms, its strong thematic resonance enables it to stand
where others have fallen.
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Rice
won joint first prize in the international trAce/Alt-X
Hypertext Competition in 1998, and was supported by both
the Media Resource Centre and the Australia Council. The
author, Geniwate (or, more accurately, Jenny Weight),
originates from Adelaide, where she writes and studies
poetic forms, exploring the possibilities for incorporating
her poetry into digital environments. Rice is a
sophisticated fruit of these investigations.
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Inspired
to create Rice after a trip to Vietnam, some of
the writing draws from Geniwate's experiences visiting
Vietnam while others are a spread of anecdotal and historical
stories. Throughout, the author focuses on the deep but
indeterminable ties between Vietnamese culture and our
own. From the Vietnam War to the modern tourist economy,
connections in blood, money and politics have linked our
two nations in ways as subtle and elusive as the links
in this hypernarrative. The implications for relations
between conflicting social orders — as those that
occurred between capitalists and communists in Vietnam
before, during and after the war — seem particularly
important when considering the state of the contemporary
world. Geniwate explores such ideas of intellectual colonialism
in Vietnam from a range of perspectives in what seems
to be an attempt to investigate the price of peace. There
is also an overwhelming feeling of loss and a sense of
homesickness that echoes across in its fragmentary structure.
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Rice
incorporates a range of intertextual elements. Within
the borders of this hypertext, the audience is introduced
to an interchangeable mix of prose and poetry. The multitudinous
difference in poetic forms used creates a compositional
tension that is held in fine balance throughout the work.
I found the shift from tightly and traditionally structured
poems to more experimental, associative styles a powerful
effect, and the range of prose lexias share this tangential
asymmetry.
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What
affirms Rice as a piece of writing entwined in
its non-linear, deconstructionist medium is, however,
the narrative's inclusion of graphic and sound elements.
The user is guided through the network of ambiguous lexias
by a graphic menu which utilises thumbnail images with
thematic significances that stress Rice's non-narrative
form. To enable the audience to freely explore the story
without too much confusion, each image links the user
back to this main menu. Accompanying the text is a soundtrack
of music and atmospheric noise designed to draw the reader
in. The sound serves to create a more absorbing experience,
rendering the lexias with more colour and resonance than
the writing alone. Along with still images and sound,
Geniwate has also used shockwave animation to further
extend the multimedia potential of the piece.
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Although
the author is courageous in her attempts to use a wide
variety of media to illustrate and contextualise Rice,
she is let down by the quality of some of them. The images
are generally grainy and low-resolution and distract the
reader while detracting from the fineness with which the
written elements are drawn. Despite this, Geniwate maintains
a tight structural grip on an otherwise tangled, enigmatic
narrative. The poems, in particular, speak with unconscious
symbolic strength that draws the user in, and the form
of Rice conveys its message while enabling the
reader to explore a foreign land through a digital landscape. |
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