Tuesday Readings

Mariann Daniel
Tuesday 4/15/08 Readings

The article, “Metaphoric Networks in Lexia to Perplexia” really did help me understand the actual website Lexia to Perplexia. The website is actually really interesting in that one has to interact with it to get anywhere. The site, on the page http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/hypermedia/talan_memmott/plex/03metastrophe.html# which has all the information piling on top of each other by the movement of your mouse over it. I personally think the reason all one has to do is slide the mouse over something and getting a reaction rather than clicking it is because it takes down the barrier of having to click and just lets the onlooker interact smoothly with the site. The termination page, http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/hypermedia/talan_memmott/plex/04extermination.html, which fills itself with overlapping green text, becomes so difficult to read that the site visitor may want to just give up or reroute actions though the links. I can appreciate what the author is trying to do, which is according to “Metaphoric Networks in Lexia to Perplexia”,
“When Lexia to Perplexia hovers at the border of legibility, it hints that our bodies are also undergoing metamorphoses. What we read when we cannot read is not so much the disjunction between us and the computer (for it is always possible to access the underlying code and hack our way into a readable version of the nonreadable text). Rather, the occluded display signifies a trajectory in which we become part of a cybernetic circuit. Interpolated into the circuit, we metamorphose from individual interiorized subjectivities to actors exercising agency within extended cognitive systems that include nonhuman actors.”
However, I do not wish any site I make to be this confusing to its viewer, or perhaps a more suitable term for Lexia to Perplexia, its interacter.

The Cracked Mirror was an interesting site with a simple design and layout when looked after one looks at Lexia to Perplexia. The Cracked Mirror seems to be the same few poems repeated in different parts of the mirror that all lead to the same end, a fully restored and non-cracked mirror—an interesting design to be sure. Chasing Our Tails becomes a little bit more complicated with multiple ways to read the story from any given page. Something I do not think I would like to incorporate into my third website if I make a creative fiction piece. Life with Father is a site that is slightly disturbing. A very intimate site of photos and essays, it is very different than what I thought it would be. Originally, for my third project I had thought about doing a photo/essay site, however, it was not going to be of such an intimate subject matter. It is a very interesting site that allows the reader to go any way they want. I think all the site we visited for today helped me understand what I want and what I do not want to be on my site and how humans and computers are connected more than on just a hardware/software interactions plane