- - - - -
- - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
- - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
- - - - - - - -
Pif Magazine
ISSN: 1094-2726
Published by:
Pif, LLC
PMB 248
4820 Yelm Hwy SE
Suite B
Lacey, WA 98503-4903
 |
|
| PAST ZINE REVIEWS | MORE ZINES |
New River
Reviewed by Ingrid Woodrow
|
There are some zines that set the standard in their area of specialization: names like Eastgate Systems' Hypertext Now for hypertext, Postmodern Culture for cutting-edge literary criticism, digitalthread for Web design. Edward Falco's New River has been described by Australian hypertext author and teacher Adrian Miles as "THE place for hypertext fiction that explores what can be done in HTML." In an interview recently featured on Eastgate, Miles asserts that New River demonstrates that "less is often more." |
New River |
I admit I had to check the title and the address once I got there to make certain that he was referring to the same New River that I was about to review. He was. So I then tried to convince myself that maybe there was a typo in Eastgate's interview, and that maybe he meant that New River demonstrates what shouldn't be done in HTML. From the slow-loading, blurry picture of a river running around a large rock, the gaudy blue "swimming pool" wallpaper and the red borders, to the carelessly-cropped photo of the aforementioned Adrian Miles and the mismatched fonts on the issue buttons, I thought, "at least it can only get better." But it got worse.
In this, New River #6, there are two hypertexts. At least, to the untrained eye, they might look like hypertexts. Edward Falco, in his Editor's Note, tells us not to feel "too bad" if we've never before heard of their proper names: Adrian Miles' piece is in fact a "cinepoem" and Deena Larsen's is a "micro-hypertext." I ended up at Falco's editorial out of sheer frustration that after three successive viewings of Miles' "I know that somewhere here this is a homage somewhere" all I could establish for certain was that there were some barely-legible Ted Nelson quotes overlaid on a clip from a movie that looked like either a scene from near the end of Zentropa or possibly the death march scene from Fantasia. There was also a blurred picture of the moon, a close-up of a man's mouth, and a back-shot of the ponytailed head of a cowboy looking out a cathedral window. Falco's editorial offered some clarification – the video was apparently from an Orson Welles (spelt Wells) film – but not much else except that Falco found Miles' piece "terrifically interesting."
Deena Larsen's piece, "Mountain Rumbles," is even more perplexing. Why would someone who obviously has writing skills allow their work to be subjected to this horrifying treatment? In the introduction she describes the piece as "a micro-hypertext in eight nodes" (this in itself should set the alarm bells ringing) that uses a "skating rink structure, where you simply 'skate' your mouse on the image and watch the words change and coalesce." I never was much good at skating. Maybe that's why I thought that the java image would have worked better (and have been faster loading) as a simple .jpg file overlaid with an image map. And I wondered why the java programmer, Miko Matsumura, didn't consult with Deena as to which shade of blue they were using. There's some good writing on this piece, but it's obscured by needlessly complex and misguided programming applications.
In the editorial for the premiere issue of New River, Falco includes a large, slow-loading graphic of his fourteen-year-old daughter's Claris Works-created "masterpiece" and compares it to something by "Blake" (Blake? As in Blake's 7, perhaps?), assuring us that "there are new Blakes growing up all over the world, and that they will make culture-changing art on the computer." Furthermore, he instructs us that in an effort to educate ourselves about hypertext and hypermedia, we should consult the works of the Eastgate authors, explore the World Wide Web and, finally, "bookmark The New River." I agree. Bookmark it, so you have a textbook example of a truly horrendous site. A nightmare.
Tell us what you think. Email
talkback@pifmagazine.com
Want Pif to review your zine?
See Review Suggestions for
more details.
Ingrid Woodrow is a writer based in Brisbane, AUSTRALIA. Her novel, Goddess and the Galaxy Boy, was shortlisted in October 1999 in The Australian/Vogel Literary Awards and is currently under consideration by three major Australian publishers. She is completing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Queensland and working on a collection of short stories, one of which received second prize in the Banjo Paterson Writing Awards in June 1999.
Ingrid is the founding editor of the online writing journal Mangrove, which is listed as a "Site of National Significance" in the National Library of Australia's PANDORA archive. Mangrove is also a finalist in the upcoming AIMIAs (Australian Interactive Multimedia Industry Awards). Further information and samples of work can be obtained by visiting http://www.uq.edu.au/~eniwoodr