manifest[ation]o
(continued)

Originally this thing was implicitly connected to my project as a Master's candidate, so the only way to legitimize the ten megabytes of web-space that WWU had so graciously provided me was to make it a literary project.  Therefore, it seemed appropriate somehow (and continues be appropriate) to write about this site in terms mostly acceptable to the methodology of the English Studies discipline.  Both post-structuralism, with its declarations of nothing being outside the text, and new-historicism, with New-Age humanistic tendencies allowing pretty much any and everything into the discussion as long as it fits somehow, mandates that the web-site is indeed in some sense a piece of text.  This of course includes the streaming RealAudio® and the animated gif images.  Sound silly?  Don't be too quick to decide.

What is text anyway?  Checking in with the second edition, 1983 unabridged Webster's, we'll find: "text, n. [ME. and OFr. texte; L. textus, woven; also fabric, structure, text, from textere, to weave.]"  Ten numbered entries follow this etymology, and all pertain directly to writing, and so can be ignored here.  However, the etymology is important because it emphasizes the shifting nature of written communication.  It also should help explain some of the terms and concepts that are so important to the post-structural critic, Jacques Derrida.  It also allows us to shift into a mode of metaphorical understanding, a subversive move (as it closely parallels analogy) in a discursive formation that privileges analytical structure.  For instance, the word "pretty's" etymology shows its original (at least traceable) meaning was "deceitful."  Certainly, most of us no longer consider the term to imply anything dishonest, but can we say the word still carries traces of its original meaning?  More importantly, can we acknowledge that the word's meaning isn't terribly stable?  It's something hard to do facing a 15 pound book of word definitions.  In an attempt to do just that, please now take a moment to use your browser's 'view page source' function to see the true textual structure underlying your visual/audio experience of this written page (it'll probably be under View at the top of your browser).  <sp><sp>it's a lot different isn't it?<br> What we're facing here is a representation of a representation.  Déja vu - Roland Barthes anyone?

But how does this relate to, or parallel, weaving (and is there a connection with the background images on each page)?  Does it in fact suggest that words themselves are nothing except relative positions to what they are not?  Quite possibly, but I can't concede that's all there is to it.  Why are there so many traditions which claim that there are words of power?  What's really useful here is to consider things in terms of metaphor; perhaps metaphor itself should be considered metaphorically.  There are strong parallels between writing-text-weaving, and applied understanding from one discipline to another seems appropriate.  So yes, there is a connection with the background images (as suggestions of woven fabric) and the ideas of text as explored on this site.  Consider how the images (of woven fabric) are simulacrums, that is copies of things that never existed.  The patterns are created with a program running algorithms and assigning colors to graphically represent each of the numbers.  These particular images then have very little basis in what Jameson terms "the real."  Furthermore, they exist simultaneously in more than one place.  I have a draft HTML located somewhere on my hard-drive, and it exists as a HTML file on WWU's mainframe that's named Titan.  Since you (and only you know who you are here) are reading a copy that now exists somewhere in a temporary file somewhere on your hard-drive (or floppy disk, depending on where your temporary files are stored).  However, (remember looking at the source code earlier?) as text, this, and all these web-pages, only exist as representations of 1's and 0's encoded on a magnetic medium through interaction with microvoltage.  You should be able to see here how far we can push 'text' against the conceptual fabric of materialism.  Again the question is posed: are we in fact too close to an emergent technology to really have any idea of what is going on?

The music then should be examined in terms of its 'textuality.'  Considered in terms of metaphor, we should note how like the shuttlecock in a loom and the linear flow of words inscribed on the page 'move' in similar fashions.  So too it is in musical 'conversations.'  However, in a musical conversation, the musicians (if they're listening together in a dynamic situation, or if they're on the same page in a formal one, which is a problematic we'll ignore for now) are actually conversing.  Using the music that is woven up in this project as an example, two sets of spouses gathered together in Studio 419 and played whatever instruments that 'spoke' to us while a analog four-track tape-deck recorded the session through two microphones (free writing exercise).  If these two initial recording tracks are sufficiently minimal (first draft), two musicians might listen to the playback on headphones and record two additional tracks of music 'on top' of the first two tracks (second draft).  From there, the four-track source tape is mixed down onto an audio tape and the audio tape is recorded onto a computer into a digital format (draft editing).  The audio is run through filters and equalizers (revisions and final editing) and then finally digitally converted into another audio format which allows you to listen to the music  (termed streaming audio technology) while you're reading this.  So we can see some great parallels between writing (with print technology) and the recording of the accompanying music.  And we can see that the music has been textualized.  We can finally hold it still and 'solid' long enough to analyze it: text.

Are you still reading this?  If I could tell, I'd be surprised because I've found in the two decades I've been using computers that the computer screen does not promote lengthy reading, or close careful attention.  Is it because those of us who grew up in the age of television, before the time of the (P)ersonal (C)omputer, can't quite get past the similarity between the TV screen and the monitor (and the expectations of instant visual gratification), or is it because as a medium, written representations of words can never quite be concrete enough for us to care?  Is the volatile nature of medium (paper also can be destroyed, but I would posit that text on a floppy disk is even more 'fragile') too similar to temporality (the realm of conversation and bipolar communication vectors) to lend itself to the visual representation of the word as typeset characters?

Finally, is this all really at best only art, and at worst, nothing more than an attempt at applying rationale to an entirely irrational project?  Stated differently, is the medium of hypertext  an emergent language technology, in which since we are a part of, is impossible to really speculate or even understand the deeper implications of in a socio-historical context?  These are things to keep in mind as you continue to browse this electronic site.