Mexmix:
Digital Narrative in Face of the Unreadable Machine
University of
Bremen
lscherff@tzi.de
Abstract
Mexmix is a
generative hypertext story using low-fi technology. Its central idea consists
in remixing text on the basis of user behavior. As an example of generative
story writing it allows us to reconsider the role of narrative as artistic
form. It is argued that digital narrative as a context free endeavour does not
exist while only narrative by digital means does.
1. Narrative as Artistic Form
As
we are currently perceiving a return of the grand narratives (in the sense of
[1]) – mainly in form of the narrative of globalization or the narrative of the
clash of cultures – it might be interesting to requestion the narrative as
artistic form.
The
death of the latter has already been declared by Lev Manovich in „Database as Symbolic Form“ [2]. For him
„after the novel, and subsequently cinema privileged narrative as the key form
of cultural expression of the modern age, the computer age introduces its
correlate – database" (cited from [2]). While he did not claim the
immediate death of narrative he clearly spoke in favour
of a turn towards database. Even this might have been a bit hasty.
The idea of the end of narrative is closely connected to
postmodern thought. When Jean François Lyotard in [1] defined the grand
narratives and their role he proposed the postmodern condition to be the
condition of society after the end of those grand narratives.
The
existence of the grand narratives mentioned above hence puts postmodernism
under pressure. As a project of revising
modernism in favor of the marginal it possibly
has to be declared as failed. And while this feels displeasing on the level of
politics and critical theory this might help us to search for the narrative in
the digital.
2. Mexmix as Example
As
a piece of (already old-fashioned) hypertext, mexmix comes as a regular
homepage. It shows pictures, text and hyperlinks. Every word is a hyperlink.
Clicking a word yields a new page, again showing pictures, text and links. The
text, however, is composed – or generated – algorithmically. The crucial
element for this composition is the history of words clicked so far. This set
of words determines the sentences to come. The ideas behind are simple:
Automated collage writing [3] and adaptivity.
Collage
writing here consists in reconfiguring the position of sentences from various sources into a new order. These sources are personal
and public, the former being my eMail inbox, the latter some texts published at
indymedia (please see [4]). The reconfiguration is based on applying a text
similarity measure. Sources and sentences from these are selected by comparison to another text. This other text makes up the
adaptive part: It is, as mentioned, the history of words clicked so far [see
figures 1 and 2].
Figure 1:
The mexmix architecture. Note that it shows a closed circuit nature.
The
story evolving from that is shaped by reader and program. The narration is a
property of the dynamics both develop. One thus can pretend to employ what Mark
Amerika already pretended to employ in Grammatron – one of the most famous
pieces of hypertext based art [5]. The „story is reading you“, Amerika says,
since „neither
the writer nor the reader is determining where that specific navigational route
is" (as cited in [6]).
while (thereIsUserInput) {
ui = readUserInput();
addToHistory(ui);
history = readUserHistory();
cluster = database.selectTextCluster(history);
text[] = cluster.selectText(history);
renderToHTML(text[]);
}
Figure 2: Mexmix as pseudocode.
3. Digital Narratives as Unreadable
Machines
The
technology involved in mexmix is well known: Algorithm and its symbiont
database have opened the possibility to do automatic manipulation of discrete
symbols on a large scale. When Manovich introduced database as narrative's
successor he also gave a very important semiotic analysis of database: French
semiotics (in the tradition of Ferdinand de Saussure) orders language in a
two dimensional field spanned by a paradigmatic and a syntagmatic axis. The
ruling principle of the first is selection of semantically (more or less)
equivalent entities. The principle of the second is combination of entities in
space – ruled by syntactic rules. In terms of French semiotics, Manovich argued,
database is equivalent to the paradigmatic axis of language [2]. Algorithm, we
can conclude, resembles the syntagmatic axis.
Algorithm
as well as database exist in the same realm: the digital. The two dimensional
field of the axes of syntagm and paradigm thus is projected onto one dimension:
the computational. Moreover, this dimension leaves us with a twofold problem:
Neither the syntagm nor the paradigm has been formalized yet. Approaches
towards formalizing the former once looked promising. But since 1956 generative
grammar is context free grammar [7]. Formalization of the latter, Umberto Eco
argued, is impossible [8]. This becomes most evident in Jacques Derrida's
critique of the concept of structure [9] and in his writings about
grammatology.
Therefore, any kind of computational generation of sense must fail. The machines trying to do this are necessarily unreadable machines.
4. Generation as
Reproduction
But
we can read mexmix. Though only loosely resembling traditional (linear)
narrative it might succeed in transporting atmosphere and sense.
It
does so for two reasons: It reproduces and it works in a limited domain. It
reproduces since the source material already is text and already is loaded with
sense. It works in a limited domain since text and image data are not arbitrary
but constrained: They to a large extend share the topic. They even share style.
The
sources mexmix uses hence already are structured in both syntagm and paradigm.
On the level of the algorithm the prestructuring is less obvious. Here the
domain is the domain of formal experiments with language and (hyper-) text.
Especially a tradition in which Dada or Merz are to be mentioned ([3] gives a
discussion of these historic roots of hypertext) as well as contemporaries such
as Mark Amerika [5] and also Lev Manovich for the language of film [10].
Sense,
as an interpretation or an ascription – a result of „sense-making“ [11] – can
be made of what a machine produces only since it already is there. In source
material, in data structures, in decision rules and – this is very important –
in the context the machine's output is placed in.
A
generative narrative therefore works as good as it is written by someone (and I
am not talking about a computer). Only that writing in this case might consist
in writing into a database as well as inscribing structure into an algorithm or
choosing the mode of presenting its results.
Digital
narrative – the consequence – does not exist. Narrative in the digital,
however, does.
References
[1] Jean François
Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, University of
Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1984 (from the French original: Jean François
Lyotard, La Condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir, Les Editions
de Minuit, 1979)
[2] Lev Manovich, Database as Symbolic Form,
http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/database.rtf
[3] George P. Landow,
Hypertext as Collage-Writing, in The digital dialectic: new essays on new
media, edited by Peter Lunenfeld (pages 151-170), MIT Press, Cambridge, 1999
[4] indymedia:
Independent Media Center, http://www.indymedia.org
[5] Mark Amerika,
Grammatron, http://www.grammatron.com
[6] Matthew Mirapaul,
arts@large: Hypertext Fiction on the Web: Unbound from Convention, Cybertimes:
The New York Times on the Web (1997-06-26),
http://www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/mirapaul/062697mirapaul.html
[7] Noam Chomsky: Three
models for the description of language, IRE Transactions on Information Theory, 2 (pages 113-124), 1956
[8] Umberto Eco, Einführung in die Semiotik,
Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 1972 (from
the Italian original: Umberto Eco, La struttura Assente, Casa editrice
Valentino Bompiani, Milano, 1968)
[9] Jacques Derrida,
Die Struktur, das Zeichen und das Spiel im Diskurs der Wissenschaften vom
Menschen, in Postmoderne und Dekonstruktion, edited by Peter Engelmann, Reclam,
Stuttgart, 1990 (originally published in Jacques Derrida, Die Schrift und die
Differenz, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1976)
[10] Lev Manovich, Soft Cinema,
http://www.softcinema.net
[11] Brenda Dervin,
Chaos, Order and Sense-Making: A Proposed Theory of Information Design, in
Information Design, edited by Robert Jacobson, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2000