Hypertext
story as space in “With Those We Love Alive”
Exhibited at the 2017 Whitney Biennial, With Those We Love Alive (2014) by Porpentine Charity Heartscape creates a story space designed for user interaction. Differently colored hyperlinks, have different roles — pink meaning advance, and purple meaning scroll through the options. In With Those We Love Alive information is easily digested due to the fact it is highly broken down. Instead of advancing to an entirely new section with large paragraphs of information, sometimes clicking on the hyperlink only brings about one more sentence. It is certainly harder to skim this piece, since the information is so guided. However, this work does not necessarily use narrative, rather it encourages user exploration of the world and space it creates to discover what happens next. In other words, there are times in this piece where there is no clear narrative incentive to advance the work (it holds back on allocating tasks or giving knowledge).
Rather almost more like a game, Porpentine creates a world for the user to explore. The palace courtyard becomes your home base. There are a series of spaces you can visit from that courtyard, and those spaces begin to develop their own meanings. For example, you go to your chamber to sleep (advancing the day), or check your work chambers to see if there is a new assignment.
In this sense, although these spaces are embodied by words — garden, city, chambers, etc — there is something very spatial about them. Maybe not only because we already associate the word “city” with something physical, but rather by the fact that clicking on these words, opens the door to new spaces. Through the continual repetition of visiting theres various spaces, they embody more meaning .
These spaces manifest new meanings in our minds, but also begin to embody the physical world of the user. For example, when you go to the lake, you have the option of doing your meditations, and these breathing exercises take place in the world of the user.
Additionally, there are times in the story where you are encouraged to make markings on your own body. The instructions at the beginning say you will need a pen. Below is an example where the text instructs the user to draw a sigil of “new beginning”. At another point, you are directed to draw a sigil of “burial”.
This interaction between story world and physical world functions quite differently from the other two hypertexts. The story here is much more spatial, not only in the terms that there is a home base to return to, but also in the sense it embodies the world of the user. In this text, the user agency is more personal. The decisions being made relate to the world of the character, but also are embodied in the world of the user — in fact the two begin to merge. In doing so, this interactive fiction becomes much more like a game.
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