INTRODUCTION
First of all, I wanted to point out that this work was created by Stephen Linhart thanks to the program ‘ButtonTalk’.
Stephen Linhart was born in 1960 in New York where he designed his first computer game at the age of eight. His education at Oberlin College and the University of Pennsylvania was eclectic in the extreme. Since 1982 his creative work has included digital collage, interactive entertainment, algorithmic art, screensavers and Web art. Million of visitors have seen his work on the Web.
Subsequently and finally, I’m going to talk about the work, according to four sections which are very important to deal with in my opinion. These are: Characters, Summary of the work, Space aspect and personal opinion.
Into this work appears a couple of characters who talk each other and have ‘physical’ appearance due to their importance in the text, instead of those characters who are mentioned but have no much importance.
- Main characters:
- Ourselves: we are whom the events happen; the best thing of this is that the protagonist can be a woman or a man and he/she can dress whatever we want because it’s a non-defining protagonist, we can imagine it as we want. Apart from this, this character can have multiple personalities like: curious (searching paths) or lazy (having a nap instead of searching), a bad person (stealing the woman’s lute) or a good person (flattering her)…
- ‘The Woman’: She is a mortal woman (although the protagonist doesn’t trust her). She wears a red cloth ‘as a kilt’, a thin blue wrap with elaborated gold deigns and holds a lute of strange triangular form. Apart from that, she is a musician of the court and plays at lord’s feast.
- Secondary characters:
- Umbriel the Queen: queen of the marble towers which appear in front of a wall near to dark see.
- Guardians of the towers: they guard the towers and kill the protagonist with an arrow if ourselves decide on protagonist get closer to them.
- Other characters with strange eyes or horrible voices.
Obviously, when we read this work, we notice that it’s a hypertext with a lot of links, in spite of this, I really see two important parts or stories in it.
1st Story: the protagonist is into a fantastic world where we can decide if he, in my case, will meet the woman in front of the marble towers and will steal the woman’s lute and flee or will stay with her and will hold a conversation, finally she saying goodbye or taking her clothes off.
2nd Story: the protagonist climbs over the granite slab and goes to other paths but this parts is still in progress by the author.
First of all, I’m going to separate this section in two parts: internal space and external space.
- Internal space: the whole story happens in a fantastic world with glens, forests, gardens of flowers, a river, a dark see, a dome, two marble towers with an archway and a tunnel, there are a lot of walls too and different ways.
In this story also appears references to the space through prepositions of place like:
-‘through pathed gardens’.
-‘over many streams’.
-‘by wooden bridge’
(click on ‘Return most swift to report your discovery to the Queen’)
-‘there is a heavy scent of flowers in the air’
-‘you arrived at this enchanted garden’
(click on ‘Work your way back to the river and the dome’)
-‘Tiny stones whirl around a cloud of gas’
-‘You land on a bed of feathers’
(click on ‘Oh, well. It doesn’t matter. Settle down for a nap’)
-‘You climb easily ever the wall and drop down the far side’
(click on ‘Climb over the wall swift and fleet’)
-‘You make your way merrily toward the nearest tower’
(click on ‘Venture to see if there is anyone in the towers that guard the wall’)
-‘Dark water laps against a stone dock below’
(click on ++++++)
-‘A wall of marble towers above you’
-‘Their glow returns like starlight from the quite water’
(click on the next ++++++)
-‘A mortal woman stands before you in the archway’
(click on ‘Turn away from this dark sea and seek a way out into the forest’
-‘you follow around behind looking over her shoulder’
(click on ‘Hide from the mortal’)
-‘Underneath’
(click on ‘Lady, have you a cloak or tunic?’)
Furthermore, in this hypertext appears a few references to space but they in a metaphorical way because they aren’t a physical space, you can’t touch them:
-‘Your dream of falling in a vast blackness full of stars’
-‘You hide in the dark’
(click on ‘Oh, well. It doesn’t matter. Settle down for a nap’)
- External Space: in this aspect I will talk about the spaces far from the story, I mean, how and where the author shows us the story on screen. Characteristics:
- White background.
- Black text in Times New Roman on left of the screen.
- Links on right.
- The whole story at the same page but thanks to links send you to next hypertext.
- No images.
- The texts are separated from other ones by bars above and below.
- The links change from red color to blue color to know what link we have clicked on.
At the beginning, you are afraid, because while you are reading the story, you don’t know when it finishes, then you don’t pay completely attention to the story and so, I thinks it’s a bit difficult to read, however, it’s interesting to read it because you can choose different ways and every way send you to other part of story, although, finally, they are totally interconnected, is that to say, you have freedom.
Actually, I have enjoyed reading it because it’s a fantastic story with mysterious, when I say mysterious I mean that you are eager for knowing what will happen to the protagonist because it’s a mysterious what there is behind the next link.
Definitively, I would like to recommend this story, although I have to advise that it’s rather confusing due to a lot of links and each one sometimes send you back to the same place.
Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Christian Moreno Lence
molen@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press