Wed. Section, Immemory

Immemory was in one sense very similar to The Patchwork Girl. The interface included the same four cardinal directions plus the additional "components" that were clickable. In fact, from an interface standpoint, there's not a ton that separated Shelly Jackson's hypertext from Marker's "hyperslideshow"(?). It's probably because I respond way better to pictures than to words, but Marker's work was much easier for me to appreciate. (I didn't really enjoy either. I guess I had a hard time getting over their archaic-ness.)

I don't know if I'm doing the wrong thing by comparing the two, but I think Immemory improves on hypertext. I didn't think Jackson's story worked that well as hypertext. I kept trying to find the most linear way to read it. Instead of taking advantage of a new medium, Patchwork Girl seemed to just use hypertext as a way to stand out as profound or original. But Immemory used its medium successfully. It wouldn't have worked very well as a simple, linear slideshow. Instead of just looking for the most sensible route to follow, I got to feel that I was not only reading and seeing a story of the past, but that I was exploring and piecing together the parts on my own. In this sense, I think that users of Marker's work can each come to experience the piece in a way that reflects their own experiences and interests. I'm not sure I liked Marker's work as much as I might have liked to, but I think it was put together in the only medium in which it works. And for this reason, I think it is successful as as form of new media, which is a classification that I have been reluctant to use thus far.