Tuesday 24 March 2009

A Hypertext Journal

'A Hypertext Journal' - the WWW as Live Interface by Nina Pope & Karen J Guthrie was a prescient piece of work by two artists who travelled to the highlands of Scotland, "... equipped with laptops, modems a digital camera, video and audio equipment."

The journals of Dr Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, who travelled round Scotland in 1773, formed a kernel of an idea.

The interactions, the record of the journey and the "blogging" of everything were novel in 1996. In 2009, Dopplr, Twitter and FLICKR perform the same tasks. To take part, Internet Relay Chat sessions were arranged (in other words, a series of "tweets" were exchanged)....


As Peter Ride points out "...through their open dialogue with the artists, the audience become participants, there is no presumption that the audience is in a position to control the direction of the project."

The Web, version 2.0, already existed in 1996, well at least Somewhere....