On Stuart Moulthrop’s “Radio Salience”: Unknown Potentials
Amber O’Hara
May 2010
The development and success of hypertext and electronic literature has advanced greatly with the introduction of electronic encyclopedias, personal computers, the internet, and World Wide Web. This proliferation of works happens to coincide with a supposed decline in the reading of literature (Moulthrop, “What the Geeks Know”). In 2004 the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) released a report titled “Reading at Risk,” which is a sum of information collected by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, over 20 years of polling in a Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. This report articulated despair over the “cultural transformation” taking place where literary reading is on the decline, and society instead turns to electronic media as a source of information and entertainment. Not only did the NEA exclude electronic literature from the survey as a form of literature, but it distinctly separates the two, to the extent of devaluing electronic media. In the report, Chairman Dana Gioia, declared that:
“reading itself is a progressive skill that depends on years of education and practice. By contrast, most electronic media such as television, recordings, and radio make fewer demands on their audiences, and indeed often require no more than passive participation. Even interactive electronic media, such as video games and the Internet, foster shorter attention spans and accelerated gratification.”
This separation is stimulated by a fear that without conventional book literature, we, as a society, will lose our intellectual capabilities for focused attention and contemplation, and thusly, our ability to have complex communications and insights (NEA). Certainly conventional printed media does foster deep attention, but it is also linear, fixed, immutable, stiff and hierarchical, and the proposal that this might be our only means of achieving particular intellectual capabilities is an antiquated one. It is an echo of a similar cry let out by painters during photography’s inception, who declared that it was not an art form. This was echoed again when traditional ‘analog’ photographers opposed and made the same declarations in regards to digital photography.
This is a familiar battle that can be seen waged by the traditionalists of any culture or genre against any new, impeding (or so they seem) developments. But electronic literature is not a negation of print literature, and as Moulthrop says, it is a medium in its own right (“What the Geeks Know”). Despite the NEA’s report, literacy continues to evolve. The shifting, unstable, and malleable electronic environment is merely another space to test, further, and challenge our understandings of what it means to read and write. Stuart Moulthrop’s work, “Radio Salience,” is an interactive hypertext, that, despite Dana Gioia’s claims, requires something much more than passive participation. This e-literature piece’s function and meaning are guided by a set of rules of engagement for the audience. This notion of ‘interactivity’ or act of ‘playing’ seemingly presents itself to the audience as a game. Yet, Moulthrop states in the ‘About’ section of the work, “Also, this is once again not a game. Though what you will see is certainly playable, there is no real contest, no score, no leveling. Let’s play Twister, let’s play Risk.” This interactive e-literature lacks defined objectives, and may prove frustrating to the user. It is not to be interpreted strictly as literature, nor configured precisely as a game. Upon first impression, the work may appear as nonsensical and without point (as it has to my e-lit virgin peers whom I have introduced it to). This frustration has the potential to give way to understanding if an investigative, close approach is given in regards to the work, and such understanding can “[yield] a fresh approach to reading” (Moulthrop, “What the Geeks Know”). Stuart Moulthrop’s “Radio Salience” succeeds is disproving the NEA’s Chairman, Dana Gioia’s, assumptions of electronic literature’s capabilities by provoking complex intellectual insights by making a rather salient point about it’s electronic medium, and the potential nature of literacy.
If one attempts to find meaning in “Radio Salience,” and define that word ‘meaning’ by the same values and prescriptions placed upon print literature, this manner of interpretation will ultimately fail. This is because these being different mediums, they bear different meaning, with differing methods of delivery. “Instead of a looping or sequential preprogrammed unveiling of sense” as in printed literature, with electronic literature we get “Random Access Memory; outside of the prefixed trajectories” (Andrews, own emphasis). In e-literature, and “Radio Salience,” the navigation cannot be separated from it’s meaning, because of it’s shifting, mutable, and unstable nature. The web operates or it cannot exist at all; it does not idle, it is by character movement. User function enables this operation and Moulthrop utilizes this by inciting interaction without clear objectives to express its intention, which is to achieve inconclusion or uncertainty. Rather than equating as a failure, in its rejection of convention “Radio Salience” succeeds in projecting the message that literature itself is anything but clearly defined, and that the limits of one’s language is the limit of one’s world; the idea that literacy is fixed is a delusion of the printed medium, and through the shifting architecture of electronic media the work displays the new potentials of literacy and readership. The notion of literature’s fixed nature is merely an misplaced assumption that is arrived through the facade of the medium through which it is broadcasted.
Through a close reading of “Radio Salience,” that dispels any assumptions of instant gratification associated with such works, it is revealed that the notion of literature’s fixed nature is a misplaced assumption, and that if indeed the nature of a work is fixed, it is merely the medium through which it is broadcasted, not literacy itself. Through Moulthrop’s complex use of play, structure, visuals, sound, and of course language he succeeds in creating a work which defends and validates its own existence.
In this work the parameters that elicit a particular level of readerly engagement from its audience are outlined in the ‘About’ and ‘Rules’ hyperlinks that accompany it. ‘Rules’ outlines the requirements of the reader. These are simply to match at least 2 of 4 panes which contain changing imagery, each image being layered among others that are in a constant state of dissolving and appearing, and to respond by clicking the mouse, or screen. If the reader succeeds in correctly matching the panes an undistorted collection of all 4 panes, forming the whole picture, is revealed. Also, text appears gradually as it is read by an electronic voice. If the reader clicks incorrectly they receive a ‘death screen.’ This action that is required on behalf of the reader to engage the work “replaces both the passive representation of conventional literature and passive spectacle of animated, programmed work” (Andrews). This new type of readership puts the reader more directly in charge. Rather than being the target of literature and it’s chosen device through which it is articulated, the reader is the device. The reader is constantly modifying and reconfiguring by executing (.exe) their own decisive power. This opens the reader up to possibilities of user multiplicity that cannot be found in conventional print literature (Andrews). This user multiplicity blurs the lines between audience and artist while simultaneously deemphasizing the role of the artist. In “Face It, Tiger, You Just Hit the Jackpot: Reading and Playing Cadre’s Varicella,” (which is a game that is referenced in Moulthrop’s death screens and in his ‘About’ section) Moulthrop discusses the differences between narrative works and games. In reading for plot the reader is expected to follow a set path laid out by the author to a certain conclusion. And, “Games by contrast are governed by ergodics or pathwork [1], a more complex economy of signs in which any momentary understanding of the system is subject to further vagaries of play, as is the very text that is presented for reading” (Moulthrop, “Face It, Tiger”). This encourages experimentation, reconfiguration, and repetition. The same can be said in regards to “Radio Salience” that, “We may reach conclusions, but the game is only over when we he have configured it correctly (figured it out) or when we decide to withdraw our attention” (Moulthrop, “Face It, Tiger”). This is emphasized through it’s lack of objectives, scorekeeping, or certain conclusion, in fact, when playing “Radio Salience,” the reader is unaware of what sort of outcome might even be favorable.
The ‘Rules’ descriptions of “Radio Salience” merely offers the audience directions for engagement. If these ‘rules’ (which they hardly are) are not adhered to, the reader will not experience the work in its entirety. But these rules do not offer clear objectives to the reader, being that there is no ultimate goal or winner, or any method of scorekeeping that is ideal to most individual’s notion of a gaming experience. For an in-depth reading of the work, it is necessary to investigate Moulthrop’s ‘About’ section as well. It begins with a quote by Borges: “I have known that which the Greeks do not know – uncertainty.” This comes from Borges story “The Lottery in Babylon,” which Moulthrop references again in the following line, “Just another entry in the Babylon Lottery, this project explores indeterminacy, accident, and resonance, taking as its muse the breathless voice of the airwaves, or radio. What did those Greeks know, anyway?” In Moulthrop’s essay “What the Geeks Know: Hypertext and the Problem of Literacy” expounds upon this further. “The Lottery in Babylon” is a story of a society where a numbers game evolves from a sweepstakes into a means of social control by determining the good and ill fates of the civilization and it’s individuals (or is thought to be). Moulthrop relates a more modern understanding of Borges’ uncertainty to modern literature and it’s navigation through the electronic medium. In the electronic medium an infinity of information is accessible to us, which is undefinable and surrounded by a space through which we fluidly, through patchwork, or links, move from one particular data to another in a “universal without totality.” The uncertainty of the web is “a foundation for modern literacy” as we select from trillions of shifting electronic documents our own discourse, which offers a new approach to reading (“What the Geeks Know”).
This notion of incertitude in relation to electronic literature is obviously a prominent feature in Moulthrop’s work, and is the subject of his essay “Error 404: Doubting the Web.” Moulthrop believes this error message to be the most profound thing one can say about the World Wide Web. Indeed it is representative of the web’s shifting multiplicity and its use of links as the hopping stones that we use to navigate through it’s pathwork. In it he quotes Harpold in saying that “no link ever runs true” and continues to point out that “even when operating as intended, every link is phenomenologically a “detour,” taking us someplace we did not anticipate.” From this Moulthrop is captivated by the importance of not-finding, or uncertainty that encompasses the experience of navigating through the World Wide Web.
The visual forms that make up the structure of “Radio Salience,” the four panes that the reader must click, correlates precisely with descriptions of the internet and electronic mediums. It literally resembles the ‘patchwork’ nature of the web, where users enter into a state of hyper attention that fits the multitude of changing environments. The images contained within the four panes are layered upon one another, constantly morphing one into the other. The images are also distorted in some way from the original, primarily by color inversion and the fracturing of the whole image. This ambiguous nature ensures that eventually a reader will click incorrectly and receive the death screen, and if they chose to continue they can start over. This operation is similar to the process a web user experiences when navigating the web, a user surfs, and when there is an imagined moment of clarity (aha! That is what I’m looking for!), the user clicks a link. But the ambiguity of the web makes it possible for a link to lead its user to a completely foreign and unexpected destination, or the infamous 404: Page Not Found, and from there the user may chose to click the back button and start again. This is the basis of the term “rickrolling” (i.e. you just got rickrolled…), which is an internet prank where a user provides a masked web link, which is usually assumed or claimed to be relevant to a particular discussion, as bait and switch. Then a user clicks the link and they unsuspectingly lead to a completely irrelevant music video of Rick Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up.” On April Fool’s Day of 2008 YouTube linked every video on the website to this music video. This is just a specific example of an internet phenomena that has risen out of the dubious nature of the web and the facade of links (Wikipedia).
Sound is an essential aspect of “Radio Salience” which is interesting as the title of the work, upon first glance ‘salience’, could easily be mistaken for ‘silence.’ Sound comes here is a few forms, the first being a composition of flipping radio channels that we hear as we watch the four shifting panels of images. This composition consists of inconclusive radio static that one experiences while tuning a radio , a multitude of languages, random noises, talking, news reports, advertisements, and music. Its constantly changing nature fragments the sound clips making them incomprehensible and nonsensical. The sound corresponds with the visuals of the piece in their movement, unstable, and shifting nature. However, there are rather poignant statements made, if they are recognized amongst its surroundings, such as: “This sentence is false” and “Wholly new content will emerge.” Such statements may be speaking about electronic literature itself, and the uncertainty that is experienced through the medium, and the potentials that arise out of such.
When a reader clicks the screen to match the four images, text gradually appears as it is spoken by a robotic voice. This makes it so the ‘reader’ or user does not even have to read the text themselves, or possess the ability to do so. There is much more emphasis, and more responsibility placed on the user, in acquiring these texts than in the actual reading of them. Moulthrop writes in the works ‘About’ section, “Some may ask, are we yet reading? Well, somebody had to, but in most cases they weren’t human.” This is quite literally represented by providing the user with a mechanical reading of the texts. This also challenges the NEA and Dana Gioia’s definition of reading as “a progressive skill that depends on years of education and practice” (NEA). Further, even if a reader possesses such ‘progressive skill’ this skill itself does not lead to an adequate deciphering of the reading. There is no clear connection between the content (and what exactly that is) of the texts and the work, interpretation as it is used to decipher works of conventional print literature leads nowhere in this hypertext. There is no plot connecting the various texts, and no set order, as they appear depending on which of the images has been chosen and correctly matched by the viewer. Here is an example of one of the texts given to the reader:
“Last night, Kay spoke to Bea about the mining condominiums. Bea got all Presbyterian and refused to pay for parking. One of the attorneys for A, whom we shall call Number Seven, telephoned a bomb threat to the International House of Heartaches. This finally caught the attention of N-random (12), who dispatched Gee to Caracas for urgent talks with the government. Meanwhile B, and his estranged doubles partner, Alfonso, were seen boarding a steamer for Greece. No one could say what they were building there.”
Rather than providing it’s reader with an accelerated gratification through passive participation, “Radio Salience” requires much more from the reader than conventional print literature. This is because audiences tend to approach such electronic works with expectations formed from print literature, and it is difficult to understand that e-literature has a foundation that is built upon print literature, while simultaneously modifying and transforming them. In “Electronic Literature: What is it?” Katherine Hayles states that, “Electronic literature tests the boundaries of the literary and challenges us to re-think our assumptions of what literature can do and be.” After 500 years of evolution, print literature has nearly cemented the manner in which we use signs in our culture, particularly how and why we derive significance within this system. “Radio Salience” asks us questions about how we read, how we derive meaning from this sign system that is language. If we accept Marshall McLuhan’s mantra, “The medium is the message,” or similarly Jerone McGann’s statement that “the way poems are printed and distributed is part of their meaning,” we may come to an understanding that this new media approach to literature is rather a revival or exploration that we can figure new ways of encountering reading and writing (Morris 254).
In “Man’s Rage for Chaos” Morse Peckham states, in regards to art, that, “The role of the challenger requires him to create a disorienting situation by obeying the rules of the game: but the role of the artist permits him to create a disorienting situation by violating these rules. If that happens in a game, the game is over. If that happens in art, the “game” has just begun” (202). Moulthrop’s work is a ‘violation’ of the former rules of literature, and “Radio Salience” in all its form and function, is a clear declaration that indeed, this language game has just begun. In regards to the concept of literature, and what it means to read and write, “wholly new content will emerge,” through this alternative medium. Many of the same objections against computers were made against writing itself when language endured the transformation from oral to written traditions. Plato argued against writing, contradictory enough, in his writings “Phaedrus” and “Seventh Letter,” arguing that “Writing […] is inhuman, pretending to establish outside the mind what in reality can be only in the mind” and that “Writing is passive, out of it, in an unreal, unnatural world” (Ong 79). So the same can be said of computers. However, whereas text is unresponsive, electronic media has the potential to incite action and a new level of engagement with readers. Ignorantly dismissing works of this nature as passive is most likely occurring out of misunderstanding this new medium. Readers who expect electronic texts to function and read as print will, unsurprisingly, miss the whole point. But such debates are not unreasonable, after 500 years of literature evolving through the printed form has solidified a particular expectancy that comes with the written word. Just as writing has transformed human consciousness and our use of language, so has and will the computer through the technologizing of the word.
(3202 words)
Works Cited
Andrews, Bruce. “Electronic Poetics.” _The Cybertext Yearbook 2002_ . Feb 2003.
Hayles, Katherine. “Electronic Literature: What is it?” Jan, 2007.
Morris, Adalaide and Thomas Swiss. “New Media Poetics.” Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006
Moulthrop, Stuart. “What the Geeks Know: Hypertext and the Problem of Literacy”
Moulthrop, Stuart and Nick Montfort. “Face It, Tiger, You Just Hit the Jackpot: Reading and Playing Cadre’s Varicella”
Moulthrop, Stuart. “Error 404: Doubting the Web.” Metaphor, Magic, and Power, Ed. A. Herman and T. Swiss.New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 259-76.
NEA.“Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America” National Endowment of the Arts: Washington, D.C., 2004.
Ong, Walter J. “Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word.” NY: Routledge, 1982.
Peckham, Morse. “Man’s Rage for Chaos.” Philadelphia: Chilton Company, 1965.
Wikipedia. “List of Internet Phenomena.”
