- Harry Goldstein:
- What is your vision of hypertext and how does your idea
differ from say the Brown U. or Eastgate vision?
- Kathryn Cramer:
- I wear a couple of different hats in this and so I have a
couple of different visions. First, I come out of
commercial publishing and so in my capacity as a
barbarian of commerce I insist that type design is more
important for things designed to be read on screen, not
less. I aim my hypertexts and those I edit at the reading
audience (as opposed to the TV audience or the movie
audience) and so on. That's the authoritarian Kathryn.
- HG:
- And the anarchist Kathryn?
- KC:
- The anarchist Kathryn (the one who writes the stuff)...
(yup)
wants very heavily linked hypertext, not to liberate you,
but to liberate me. The Brown vision is, I think, mostly
innocent of the requirements of commercial publishing.
- HG:
- So who is the ideal hypertext reader...and who is your
ideal reader?
- KC:
- I think of the hard cover reading audience as my target
audience. Ideal readers are people you end up marrying or
something. Instead I conceive of who I'm trying to get
this to in quantity. As for distinctions though, between
me and, say, the Eastgate School (as it were...I don't
really believe in the death of print.
- HG:
- Does Eastgate believe in the Death of Print?
- KC:
- The company doesn't. But there is an axis of writers
(actually the folks from the TINAC collective) who are
published by E. who believe in it a lot more than I do.
- HG:
- What are the demographics of the Eastgate audience?
- KC:
- Highly educated, computer literate, w/ postmodern reading
tastes. 30s-40s. That's my impression, anyway.
- HG:
- Why did you form Black Mark?
- KC:
- I sound hopelessly retro when I start talking about the
sensuality of the tactile aspects of reading. I want to
invent trade electronic publishing. That's the short
answer. I was looking for a more efficient way to pay the
bills (read a higher paying job) and I kept being told
there were no jobs available, but that I could get lots
of freelance work.
- HG:
- And will multimedia play a role in your venture?
- KC:
- Oh yes. I want to create titles that are as interactive
as what I've been doing for Eastgate but w/ Macromedia
Director production values. I should say, I am going to,
not I want.
- HG:
- Something more along the lines of Jaime Levy's Ambulance
than something like Victory Garden.
- KC:
- I like the look of Ambulance, but Jaime had much bigger
plans for interactivity than she was able to bring off.
Interactive like Victory Garden, but w/ attention to look
like Ambulance.
- HG:
- What about format...CD ROM...
- KC:
- Pretty much has to be CD ROM.
I was looking for a way
to stay on floppies, but I want good type design...and
some of the aesthetic decisions I've made in the meantime
put me over into CD-ROM.
- HG:
- What kind of aesthetic decisions?
- KC:
- What I'm most focused on is making individual authorship
easier. My programmers would have my kneecaps.
- HG:
- Would that be a good thing for them?
- KC:
- I have some really good guys in New Jersey working on
tools for me and they want to copyright the stuff before
I shoot my mouth off.
- HG:
- Which brings me to the issue of hypermedia over the
internet...
- KC:
- I've been incorporated for 2 months and for about $5000,
I've gotten as...
- HG:
- any idea about how copyrights...
- KC:
- far as I should have gotten w/ $50,000.
- KC:
- Copyright will survive this mess.
A lot of the talk
about copyright being dead is thrown around by people who
just don't know the law. On the other hand, there are
some situations, like publishing something
- KC:
- exclusively on the WWW, which the law was never designed
to cover.
- HG:
- are you planning net distribution?
- KC:
- First I need products.
- HG:
- When do you plan your first release?
- KC:
- I want to stay out of the distribution business as much
as possible. A year?
- HG:
- Will it be one of your own projects?
- KC:
- We're making the tools now, and we've got some really
good author to work w/ but I don't know how long it will
take. I'm working on something called *Subpoena
Vacation*, but I don't see my own writing as my best
commercial prospect.
- HG:
- Who then?
- KC:
- I have too much fun chopping stuff into little bits and
reassembling it any way I feel like.
- HG:
- A la In Small and Large Pieces?
- KC:
- Well, I'm going to start w/ science fiction & fantasy
authors & artists.
- KC:
- -Yes-
- KC:
- We have one particular guinea pig for our tools -- Neil
Gaiman. Whether this will result in a product, for him or
for us, remains an open question. Right now we're just
playing w/ the possibilities of thesoftware.
- HG:
- What has he published?
- KC:
- Sandman comics.
- HG:
- Let's talk about In Small and Large...
- KC:
- Sure.
- HG:
- What do you think worked particularly well?
- KC:
- Are you waiting for me to give a thesis statement?
OOh.
- HG:
- Absolutely.
- KC:
- The pacing (if you follow the links) ends up working sort
of like the scenes with the kid on the Big Wheel in The
Shining. People have fairly fixed expectations that
they know when something bad is going to happen in
fiction. The link structure of In Small and Large Pieces
plays wonderful havoc w/that. Also, I like the way it
looks.
- HG:
- The Unified Parent was really fantastic. What was the
genesis for It?
- KC:
- I knew there had to be something really awful there. As I
recall, they replaced something much more pedestrian.
- KC:
- About 10 years ago, I decided that whenever something I'd
seen on
wrote, it needed to be replaced by something
completely over the top.
- HG:
- If you have an anxiety of influence who is it and why.
- KC:
- Anxiety ... well, this one I think is a lot like Tom
Carson's Twisted Kicks. Of course, there is also
Lewis Carroll all over this thing (literally). Perhaps MC
Escher too. Robert Aickman. Do you know Aickman's stuff?
- HG:
- No, what's it like?
- KC:
- He's a British ghost story writer who died in 1981, or
rather a writer of "strange stories." His stuff
is like this: you can tell that something really
disturbing is going on, but you can never quite tell
what, but whatever it is, it's worse than anything you
can imagine. He had a couple of short story collections: Cold
Hand in Mine, and The Wine-Dark Sea. Great
stuff.
- HG:
- Still in print?
- KC:
- But I'm definitely working w/in the idiom of dark
fantasy.
- HG:
- Does Subpoena Vacation follow along the same
lines?
- KC:
- CHIM may be available from the sf book club. WDS
was published by Arbor House in the mid-80s.
- KC:
- Tea break first. Be right back in about 45 seconds.
- HG:
- Ok.
- Flubber:
- mr. harry?
- Dave:
- Dude?
- KC:
- hi hi
- KC:
- By the way, introduce yourselves.
- Dave:
- Flubber?
- Flubber:
- hi, I'm flubber.
- HG:
- Yes, I think they should.
- Dave:
- Dave of ol' SonicNet here.
- HG:
- David is SonicNet Control
- HG:
- Flubber is a bad dream.
- Flubber:
- flubber of Full Bleed.
- KC:
- If this were a moo we could get a good look at you, but
we're stuck in text-land. Oh well...
- Flubber:
- what a sight you are missing.
- Dave:
- I'm afraid to know.
- KC:
- I'll bet.
- KC:
- Shall I continue?
- HG:
- Any questions for Kathryn?
- Dave:
- I have a question.
- KC:
- Sure
- Dave:
- Are you familiar with Mark Amerika's AltX project?
- KC:
- He's a friend of mine. I don't have easy access to the
WWW, but I know what it is and he's shown it to me.
- HG:
- Care to elaborate?
- KC:
- He and I are somewhat on the same wavelength (whatever
that is), although I'm coming out of science fiction into
this terrain and he's coming out of Post-Modern lit. I
met him at the PONGFEST at Brown last April. It's amazing
how much stuff has changed since all of us impoverished
electronic lunatics got together.
- Dave:
- How so?
- KC:
- Japanese businessmen are flying him into NYC later this
month to tell them about publishing on the internet.
- Dave:
- Besides Amerika who else is currently distributing lit on
the Net that you know of?
- KC:
- I've incorporated and am founding Black Mark. David Blair
has got WAX up on the WWW. Depends on your definition of
distribute and lit. I know there's a lot of cool stuff in
the midst of the garbage available on the WWW, but I've
been isolated from that by lack of equipment and a killer
travel schedule. There are a number of on-line
bookstores, most of
- KC:
- It certainly liberates me, but it allows me to subject
the reader
- HG:
- But what about collaborative hypertexts?
- KC:
- Like stuff one writes passing PowerBooks hand to hand?
Like the Hotel MOO?
- HG:
- Is that the one Coover worked on? Where the reader can
add, comment, delete, become a "real" writer? [They
are refer entire text of various. . . I want to adapt authors more
than I do books.
- HG:
- Like who?
- KC:
- Samuel R. Delany has always been trying to write this
sort of thing, and I'm teaching him the technology. Pat
Cadigan wants to get into this. What the market wants in
hard sci fi guys and cyberpunk, 'cause that's where the
machines are right now.
- HG:
- Is Delany working on anything specific?
- KC:
- He has stuff he'd like to do. I have to find a way to get
him his own Mac. Right now, all the work he does on it is
on a friend's PowerBooks that travels. I'm being a little
cagey here, because lots of people are flirting w/the
idea but might be upset w/ me for saying that they were doing
anything.
- HG:
- What's the first thing you tell a writer interested in
getting into E-publishing?
- KC:
- Learn the software. Unless, of course, they send me a
bunch of stuff on paper, in which case I say no. In this
transitional phase I am in something of a quandary as to
what to tell them to do, but this will pass. I have these
"is it time yet" correspondences going w/ a lot
of authors right now. Adapting books is what everyone
else is going to try to do.
- HG:
- Storyspace? Macromedia? What authoring software are we
talking about?
- KC:
- There are various things available off the shelf, and
then there is custom software. Nothing is satisfactory
enough. But you have to keep fighting the tools.
- HG:
- I think once you've seen a link intensive hypertext
- KC:
- Yes, there is a certain similarity to sex. When you know
what's possible, you are reluctant to abandon those
possibilities. Custom software fills in the gaps between
commercially available things. Working solely w/ custom
stuff would be hideously expensive.
- KC:
- Stretching my fingers.
- HG:
- cracking my knuckles
- KC:
- I don't know.
- HG:
- What software would you suggest someone interested in
electronic writing should become familiar with?
- KC:
- Storyspace is a good place to start because it give you a
taste for a high degree of interactivity. The people who
have actually publish hypertext seem to have the
following habits: about 1/2 wrote in Storyspace, about a
1/3 wrote in Hypercard, and then a few wrote their own
authoring software. Everything is cumbersome in one way
or another.
- HG:
- Are there any specific software innovations that you want
to see?
- KC:
- I would like to see software companies get away from the
idea that one's computer should behave as much like a TV
as possible, and instead use some other artistic models
for the authoring software for multimedia.
- HG:
- Those models being?
- KC:
- Literature is the one I'm focused on, but the arts are
not just divided up into TV and books. There is a whole
rich world out there. Computers are particularly good at
surrealism, for example.
- KC:
- But also, In the creation of literature, I'm trying to
find ways to let other artists play too. Visual artists,
musicians... etc.
- HG:
- How do musicians figure into the mix?
- KC:
- I'm tying to find a way to make use of Geoff Hartwell, my
boyfriend's son, who is a really good rock guitarist.
- HG:
- The only music I've heard on hypertext are Mike Watt's
chinese water torture plinkings on Ambulance.
- KC:
- Well, part of the problem is that you want little bits,
rather than whole songs. Jaime's constraint is that she
was trying to make a continuous soundtrack come off a
floppy. I've seen some experimental interactive film
stuff that used music to maintain continuity during cuts
between scenes, for example.
- HG:
- Do you think narrative can take a cue from music
composition in hypertext?
- KC:
- Yes, (if I'm understanding you correctly) but I don't
know enough music theory to give an articulate answer.
One interesting different between interactive music and
interactive fiction is that the interactive music people
mean is that the computer accompanies the musician
(interacts with the musician). Whereas in interactive
fiction, the interactivity is with the reader, not the
writer. Those delay pedal things ... those are an early
form of interactive music.
- HG:
- A lot of writers are threatened by that.
- KC:
- Threatened by the reader making choices?
- KC:
- Well, a lot of writers are threatened by the idea of a
reading audience.
- HG:
- They labor under a Victorian illusion of the primacy of
the Intended reading reinforced by New Critical academics
who still plague college campuses.
- KC:
- On the other hand, I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that
hypertext liberates the reader.
- HG:
- How so?
- KC:
- It certainly liberates me, but it allows me to subject
the reader
- HG:
- But what about collaborative hypertexts?
- KC:
- Like stuff one writes passing PowerBooks hand to hand?
Like the Hotel MOO?
- HG:
- Is that the one Coover worked on? Where the reader can
add, comment, delete, become a "real" writer? [They
are referring to novelist Robert Coover who started
teaching hypertext fiction workshops at Brown University
a few years ago and has started a collaborative writing
project called the Hypertext Hotel which can be accessed
via telnet at duke.cs.brown.edu
8888 --Ed.]
- KC:
- Yes.
- HG:
- Like Hotel. Like Marble Springs.
- KC:
- We can write in books on paper, but we know the
difference between the text and graffiti &
marginalia.
- KC:
- The Hotel is more an R&D lab for collaborative
writing than it is a
- KC:
- literary work. I think I'm it's most prolific contributor
and also the one whose read more of it than anyone else.
There were some really lovely moments of real
collaboration, but for the most part people didn't
want to collaborate. Marble Springs is designed as
an invitation, but I am curious what percentage of its
readers really do write more.
- HG:
- And the structure is already laid out. Of MS. Do you
think that the internet can deliver on true
collaboration?
- KC:
- Yes & no. Quality remains an important stratifying
element. If editorial gate keepers are taken out of the
loop, how do we find what we want to read? If one partner
in the collaboration is wonderful and the rest are
terrible, how do you find the good stuff?
- HG:
- Well, what if a bunch of decent writers got together.
- KC:
- I have some idea about that, but I'm not sure whether
that is a really a satisfying notion of artistic
collaboration. Good writers writing together works
sometimes. Sometimes it doesn't. You're getting Kathryn
the elitist here. I actually do a lot of hypertextual
collaboration.
- HG:
- Is there anything you want to discuss?
- KC:
- Do you still want to hear about Subpoena Vacation?
- KC:
- It's about a woman who goes on vacation to Cape Cod by
herself to duck a subpoena. I know what the story is, so
unlike In Small and Large Pieces, I'm starting
from a photo album and working toward text. It will
probably be fully multi-media in it's final form.
- HG:
- Will it be as link complex as In Small and Large
Pieces?
- KC:
- I was thinking about graphics and the user interface in
electronic fiction, and trying to make the interface part
of the narrative itself.
- HG:
- Intriguing, do go on.
- KC:
- I would hope that I can make it as heavily linked (need a
better term) as In Small and Large Pieces. Well, I
scanned in the pictures and then extracted the natural
icons from them and then went back to Cape Cod & took
more pictures, pictures of road signs & such. Then I
combined & recombined them, trying to get them to
tell me what was really going on here. I got to the
limits of my equipment, but I'm getting better equipment
now.
- HG:
- Sounds great...it will be out in 95?
- KC:
- Late 95, maybe later. but who knows. maybe sooner. I'm
going to have to rescan everything when I get better
things and then do the collage work from scratch, using
the things I have now as sketches.
- HG:
- I loved what you did with the scanned images in In
Small and Large Pieces, really added a macabre
texture to the whole thing.
- KC:
- I'm definitely going to use both sounds & music. May
even have Geoff write some music for it. My favorite of
the current Subpoena Vacation images is of a giant
lobster coming over the horizon on a beach and a shadowed
figure in the foreground taking it's picture. But I think
you already know my idiom. I have a sick & twisted
sense of humor.
- HG:
- Do you have a background in visual arts?
- KC:
- Not really, except for quilting.
- KC:
- What you are looking at in Small & Large is not the
influence of WS Burroughs, but my quilting technique.
- HG:
- Sew that flesh together.
- KC:
- I like to cut stuff up and then sew it back together in a
more interesting way.
- HG:
- Kind of like Leather face in Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- KC:
- They are going to put out a limited edition In Small
& Large Pieces sewing kit. Sounds innocuous unless
you've read it.
- HG:
- That's great!
- KC:
- Eric @ Eastgate came up with the idea. I think it's
really amusing.
- KC:
- I think I'm going to get it distributed in science
fiction. It's sort of out and sort of isn't. It will be
shipping to subscribers to the Eastgate Quarterly first,
but Eastgate is all wrapped up in getting Storyspace for
Windows ready, so everything else slides a bit.
- HG:
- Is the windows version radically different? or just
Windowy?
- KC:
- It allows you to pry open the hood a bit more than I
would like. In the Mac version I get to lock things down
better. On Sarah Smith's 386 machine which I have on
loan, the windows version is kind of slow. I'd say do the
Mac version if possible, but if you need to know some
things for your doctoral dissertation, also look at the
windows version (actually, it's not that bad).
- HG:
- It's been really great picking your brain.
- KC:
- I'm pretty tired too.
- KC:
- I like this sort of thing.
- HG:
- It's like time just melts away. Thanks for the
discussion...
- KC:
- Thanks for listening.
- HG:
- and you can really get into things--in a strangely
abbreviated way
- KC:
- yes. Deena Larsen did an interview w/ me in the Hotel
MOO. Strangestuff.
- HG:
- Talk to you soon! Good Night
- KC:
- night.
