3. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) A chat protocol, which allows servers worldwide to link and allow for users to access them with special software and chat (type back and forth) in real time.

MUDs (Multiple User Dimension, Multiple User Dungeon, or Multiple user Dialogue) and MOOs (MUD Object Orientated): are computer programs users log into and explore. Each user takes control of a computerized persona, avatar, incarnation, or character. One can walk around, chat with other characters, explore, solve problems, and even create ones own rooms, descriptions and items.

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is the most common format for text files in computers and on the Internet. ASCII Art is the drawing of pictures and designs on a computer, using only ASCII characters. ASCII art appears a lot in text-based media, where other graphic images cannot be shown.

HTML stands for "Hyper Text Markup Language" by embedding control characters in a file you can determine the way text, images, and links are shown in a World Wide Web document.

Flash is a multimedia technology developed by Macromedia to allow interactivity and animation within a relatively small file size. Flash contains is own programming language "Actionscript" as well as a powerful vector based (opposed to Bitmap) drawing and animation toolbox.

 
  10. HCI is an abbreviation of Human-Computer Interface. [Shneiderman 1998; p. 638]
  Human-computer interaction is a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them.
  Human-computer interaction arose as a field in the early 1960s from intertwined roots in computer graphics, operating systems, human factors, ergonomics, industrial engineering, cognitive psychology, and the systems part of computer science. Alongside information visualization, another predominant area of study is the computer interface (GUI - Graphical User Interface) as experienced in commercial software packages, information driven websites, various computer operating systems, auto tellers, GUIs are present in any instance of interactive screen based communication with a human user
  The ultimate goal of HCI is to enable fluid or intuitive interactions with the particular computer system in question. In this fluid state the user would not have to think about what menu to choose, or which mouse button to click, but could naturally and fluently perform the necessary actions to achieve their goals - the interface would then become transparent.
  This ultimate goal is broken down into eight golden rules of HCI:
1. Strive for consistency.
2. Provide shortcuts for experts.
3. Offer informative feedback.
4. Ensure closure of tasks.
5. Avoid user errors.
6. Provide easy reversal of actions.
7. Support user control.
8. Reduce memory load.
13. Cracks and crevices- the interstitial
Stuart Moulthrop is a digital practitioner of classical hypertext fictions such as Victory Garden (1991) The Colour of Television (1996; with Sean Cohen), Hegirascope (1995/1997), and Reagan Library (1999). As well as in his body of artworks, Moulthrop has shown in his numerous essays and talks that he is interested in both the broader changes in literacy and fiction and the possible implications that hypertext and the Internet have on our cultural landscape.
  Moulthrop at the Digital Arts and Culture Conference 2001 prominently used the term "interstitial", in his closing keynote speech. It was from his observation of the contemporary practices and the participant's experience of new media art and cybertexts (especially Riven, by Miller & Miller, 1997) that he reapplied the term interstitial. Originally it was used by Michael Joyce in Of Two Minds, 1995. Moulthrop appropriated interstitial to describe works that are inherently "difficult", and whereby interstitial artists are imbued with a "trickster spirit"-- referring in particular to John McDaid, Noah Wardrip-Fruin and the conference based "readings" of John Cayley, Jim Rosenberg, Judd Morrissey, and Lori Talley.
  Moulthrop's use of the term is an evolution from Joyce's, in that Joyce used interstitial to describe the more stylistically obscure sections of his book that were placed between two or more focused sections of writing. When I asked Moulthrop to expand upon his motivation in using the term interstitial, he replied:
  "To me, Michael's usage always seemed more than arbitrary or technical, really almost metaphysical or spiritual -- as if the standing-between stood for something deeply related to the truth or purpose of what we were doing with hypertext, where as I take it we are always betweening something." (Moulthrop, email correspondence , 2004 )
 
  Moulthrop defines the interstitial:
  "At its most direct, interstitial design insists and expatiates upon the materiality of expression. It embodies precisely the opposite of "seeing through," in that it holds forth its own mediation, along with that of other texts, for relentless inspection. It does not take us beyond mediation into the pure and timeless realm of story. It does not lead to the Holodeck… Comics, games -- and, yes, experimental novels -- all occupy cultural interstices, tenuous gaps not covered by "comfortable old hierarchical" forms. What is a comic -- a novel with too many illustrations, or a very fast film? What is a [Cyan] game -- a novel with no characters, or a film with too many cuts? interstitial fictions represent breaks in the illusion of necessity foisted by major media forms. They reveal unauthorized vectors; they make us aware of interfaces, of media, of different ways to go. All of which may be meaningful..."
Moulthrop, Gamely interstitial, Narrative, Excess, and Artifactual Interstanding, 1999.
 
  "In phenomena like comics and adventure games, or for that matter in imaginative cybertexts and unconventional novels and films, we may be seeing the emergence of a fictive sensibility more finely attuned to gaps, inconsistencies, tensions, and fissures than to unbroken traditional lines."
Moulthrop, Misadventure: Future Fiction and the New Networks, 1999.
 
  The Moulthrop definition of interstitial art is that it exists in the interstices (spaces between), and capable of binding two or more things together. Closely linked to this interstitial is the term "inter-standing" as discussed by Mark Taylor and Esa Saarinen in Imagologies:
 
  "When depth gives way to surface, under-standing becomes inter-standing. To comprehend is no longer to grasp what lies beneath but to glimpse what lies between.... Understanding has become impossible because nothing stands under. Interstanding has become unavoidable because everything stands between." Taylor & Saarinen 1994, p. Interstanding 1.
 
  Though in its nature not fixed, the term interstitial suggests celebrating all practices that fall between currently established genres and forms, one example could be -- practice that can be said to problematise the labels of fiction and non-fiction, games and art. The artworks located in this thesis can be said to be interstitial practice.
18. The Death of hypertext fiction?
In 1998 the culture of disillusionment or cynicism was rife with statements such as "Interactive fiction is mostly a fiction- great concept what about the demo models" [Niesz & Holland 1984].
 
  27. Flash is a multimedia technology developed by Macromedia to allow interactivity and animation within a relatively small thus Internet streamable file size. Flash contains is own programming language Actionscript as well as a powerful vector based (opposed to Bitmap) drawing and animation toolbox. Macromedia Flash 3.0 (1998-9) is the earliest version of the software to impact on the design and art community (the first ever version was Flash 1.0 in 1996, previously named FutureSplash Animator). Flash 4.0 (1999) offered a more sophisticated interface for timeline manipulation and programming. Flash 5 (2000) consolidated the software as a powerful animation and programming tool. The most recent version - MX (Flash 6) has broadened its range of features into video manipulation and database programming.
  The Macromedia Flash "player" allows Internet users to view and interact with Flash content. This plugin is free to download. Recent figures show that 98% of users have the player installed on their computers. Available in electronic format, see: http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashplayer
 
40. Sample of Aarseth's examples of cybertexts
Adventure: One of the key texts in this study, is the role-playing game Adventure , by William Crowther and Don Woods, released on the U.S. research network ARPANet, the precursor of the Internet, in April 1976. As the microcomputer home market exploded around 1980, Adventure was made available on nearly every type of machine and became the first in a short-lived, but influential, textual computer game genre, which ended its commercial life when the graphic adventure games took over in the late eighties.
Racter: A computer authoring narrative machine, speech engine and Artificial Intelligence, designed by William Chamberlain, (1984). Chamberlain claims Racter wrote the mystery story "The Policeman's Beard". It was argued under inspection that Chamberlain wrote (at least partially) it himself.
Tale-spin: In the seventies, some artificial intelligence researchers focused on making systems that could analyse and write stories. A well-known project was James Meehan's program Tale-spin, which could construct simple animal fables of the Æsop type. Primarily, the researchers were not trying to achieve literary quality, and the stories that were produced typically testify to this lack of ambition. However, some of the "failures" produced by Tale-spin make strikingly original prose, succeeding where the successes failed.
MUDs (Multiple User Dimension, Multiple User Dungeon, or Multiple user Dialogue) and MOOs (MUD Object Orientated), see reference number 3
I Ching: An example of Cybertext in antiquity is the Chinese text of oracular wisdom, the I Ching (Wilhelm 1989). Also known as the Book of Changes, the existing text is from around the time of the Western Chou dynasty (1122-770 B.C.)
A Much simpler example of a non-linear text is Guillaume Apollinaires Calligrammes from early in this century (Apollinaire 1966).
45. Observations from Flash Forward Amsterdam 2001
Davis, Joshua, one-man research and development web site, electronic text, see:
http://www.praystation.com/

Paterson, James, electronic text, see:
http://www.presstube.com/

Pitaru, Amit, electronic text, see:
http://www.pitaru.com/
Paterson, & Pitaru, Pagan Poetry, electronic text, see:
http://www.insertsilence.com/
http://www.showstudio.com/projects/031/031_interactive.html

 
  52. There is a continuing scarcity of examples due to recent trends in new media art. The majority of the available examples concentrate on abstract visualization and looping experimental visual forms and not sequential or narrative structures, available as electronic texts:
Tan, Manuel, http://www.uncontrol.com
Brown, Daniel, http://www.play-create.com/pieces/flowers.html
Stearns, Jeff, http://www.deconcept.com

Manovich, (2002) Generation Flash, Postscript: On The Lightness of Flash: Turntable and Flash Remixing.

 
  53.

New Wave Hypertext Fiction
[Joyce 1999].
[Coverley 1997- Ongoing].
[Montfort & Gillespie 2000].
[Memmot 2000].

 
  35. Reactive physical performative codes
  Typographic Tree, by Digit, is an interactive installation, which via a small signpost invites participants to sing to mushrooms, which sit on top of a tree stump. As soon as a participant begins, a digital tree begins to grow using nothing but the tone and volume of their voice they can control every aspect of the tree's growth. It's size, complexity, colour and even the amount of flowers in bloom.
  Typographic Tree was exhibited at ICA, London, UK, (November, 2001) and The Media Centre, Huddersfield, UK, (July, 2002). Documentation available in electronic format:
http://www.digitfeed.com
  A modified version of Pagan Poetry, by James Paterson and Amit Pitaru was performed at Flashforward Amsterdam (November, 2001). In this version their animation responded to volume and pitch instead of the participant's investigation. With a baby grand on the stage Pitaru played some improvised jazz piano and their animation responded to the volume and key of his live performance. Original version available as electronic text at: http://www.insertsilence.com
 
  47. Lisa Jevbratt, 1:1(1999) electronic text, see: http://c5corp.com/1to1/
Part of the Net art at the Whitney Biennale 2002, available in electronic format:
  http://www.whitney.org/artport/exhibitions/biennial2002/jevbratt.shtml
 
  80. The normative definition of: "Truly interactive" denotes works that are made possible by a continuous feedback loop. That being: a participant who offers input into the programme, which will adjust what follows according to the participant's individual choice and ditto -- what follows is a loop of the previous exchanges -- ad infinitum. The output of which is a unique participant experience configured to his or her choices -- an experience that no one else will achieve.

Such a level of processing requires a complex and costly computerised parsing ability. Therefore feedback-looping artworks are at present extremely rare [for a rare example see Mateas2002]. Whereas the majority of artworks use pre-recorded or pre-organised content that are in turn called up as the participants make choices. Thus significantly more common than "true interactive texts" are structures that use forking paths and multiple-choices.

     
  36. Post-digital and post-contemporary paradigms
    Post-digital refers to works that rejects the hype of the digital revolution, e.g. the familiar digital tropes of purity, pristine sound and images and perfect copies are abandoned in favour of errors, glitches and artefacts [Cascone 2000].
    Post-conceptual refers to work where there is no distinction between works of self-expression and works of social critique e.g. they are part and parcel of the same activity and they stand alone. Post-conceptual is associated with the anti-theory turn in art production of the mid to late 1990s. This paradigm abandons much of post-modernism's practices e.g. of re-use, appropriation, media-critique, re-presentation, cut-up, "deconstruction".
     
33. Manovich, Generation Flash, Postscript: On The Lightness of Flash, 2002.
Examples of the flash neo-minimal aesthetic, for electronic texts, see:
Davis, Joshua,
http://www.praystation.com
http://www.singlecell.org/june/index.html (June 2001)

Tan, Manny,
http://www.uncontrol.com