A VISUAL COMPENDIUM for NONLINEARITY
A nonlinear text is an object of verbal communication that is not simply one fixed sequence of letters, words, and sentences but one in which the words or sequence of words may differ from reading to reading because of the shape, conventions, or mechanisms of the text (Aarseth Espen, Nonlinearity and Literary Theory).
This visual compendium seeks out these shapes, conventions, or mechanisms that make up nonlinear artefacts. The materials gathered, consisting of existing works, diagrams and articles, have been grouped into three key concepts that contribute to nonlinearity in texts: Network Structure, Branching or Forking and Points of View.
title of work
Adam’s Bookstore
year
Unknown
origin / source
A hypertext fiction written by Adam Wenger
description
The fiction being created with Storyspace, is broken down into narrative fragments which are then tied together in a network. George Landow who features this work in his essay What’s a Critic to Do?: Critical Theory in the Age of Hypertext, mentions that the networked structure of this hypertext allows readers to “enter and leave at any point”.
title of work
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch
year
2018
origin / source
Writer and creator Charlie Brooker, and producer Annabel Jones
description
While creator Charlie Brooker and executive producer Annabel Jones thought the script would be simple at first, it evolved into a complex outline written in the videogame programming language Twine. Brooker and Jones thought: What if the story could remember what you'd chosen at earlier points, and incorporate references to those earlier choices? This was the turning point where Brooker used Twine to map out the intra-linked complexity of paths and iterations of Bandersnatch.
title of work
Canterbury Psalter f. 108v, Psalms 63
year
Late 12th century and mid-14th century
origin / source
Christ Church, Canterbury, England & Catalonia, Spain
description
The Canterbury Psalter is penned by a lone scribe in Transitional Script of varying sizes. The Gallican psalms, known for their broad dissemination in the Carolingian empire, appear in the widest column with the largest script, accompanied by marginal and interlinear gloss. The Roman and Hebraicum Latin versions, with smaller scripts, include fragments of Old English translation and an interlinear translation into Anglo-Norman French, respectively.
title of work
Consider the Consequences!
year
1930
origin / source
American authors Doris Webster and Mary Alden Hopkins [Image from Twitter]
description
The romance novel’s branching narrative was revolutionary for fitting a series of paths with 43 different endings into a book, and thus democratising storytelling. The book follows three protagonists — Helen and her two suitors, Saunder and Jed – where readers can choose which protagonist’s perspective to view the story from. Then, at the end of every section, the book prompts the reader to make a choice between two possible directions.
title of work
Eizouken ni wa Te wo Dasu na!
year
Since 2016
origin / source
Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Sumito Ōwara
description
Speech bubbles are synonymous with manga and they do the talking for the manga’s characters. They section the words of different characters into separate bubbles. At times, when more than one speech bubble is used to describe a conversation, the order of the speeches can be confused. In this example, reading from left to right is the incorrect sequence since the person on the left is questioning the person on the right: “What are you talking about?”
title of work
Forsythia
year
1965
origin / source
Written by Mary Ellen Solt
description
Each letter of the word Forsythia forms the branches and roots of the flowering plant, and at the same time spells out a sentence stating that the plant is a sign for spring approaching: “Forsythia Out Race Spring’s Yellow Telegram Hope Insists Action”.
title of work
From Line to Constellation
year
1954
origin / source
Concept introduced by Eugen Gomringer [Image from Space.com]
description
In Eugen Gomringer’s 1954 essay, From Line to Constellation, he discusses poetry that “can be perceived visually as a whole as well as in its parts” and for this reason it “is memorable and imprints itself upon the mind as a picture”.
title of work
House of Leaves
year
2000
origin / source
Authored by Mark Z. Danielewski
description
The narrative makes heavy use of multiperspectivity as the primary narrator Johnny Truant's footnotes documents his efforts to transcribe a manuscript of a family’s documentary, titled “The Navidson Record”. Truant's footnotes unveil the narrative of the Navidson Record, presenting a family's discovery of a larger-than-expected labyrinth within their home through transcriptions and analysis.
title of work
Hypertext chunks, links and buttons
year
1988
origin / source
David Flint, “Hypertext”
description
Flint posits that three concepts are found in most hypertext systems. First, information is held as chunks, or what we call today “webpages”. Second, the chunks are linked together especially when one webpage cannot possibly hold all information. Finally, the links are activated as buttons and they make it possible to navigate to the linked chunk.
title of work
I Ching (Book of Changes)
year
around 1000 BCE
origin / source
Believed to have been written by Fu Xi.
description
The I Ching is an ancient Chinese divination text and perhaps the oldest of the Chinese classics. The book contains sixty-four hexagrams and is used for guidance and decision-making. In Choose Your Own Adventure books, a reader consciously makes a decision of what to read next, but for the I Ching, the reading of the answers to one’s question is determined by chance or destiny — with coin tosses.
title of work
Jigsaw
year
2007
origin / source
John Stasko, Carsten Görg, Zhicheng Liu, Sakshi Pratap, Anand Sainath
description
This text analysis system was designed to aid in the sense-making processes for analysts who deal with a large number of documents. Jigsaw offers several coordinated views of document entities, placing particular emphasis on connecting entities visually throughout the various papers.
title of work
Language as Time’s Shadow: A Brief History of Synchrocognition
year
2023
origin / source
Designed by Darius Ou for Form & Agency, a solo exhibition by Brandon Tay
description
The poster utilises a 3D cube imagery, which upon closer look reveals eight different points of reference for the project such as “Bone Script Oracle” or “Large Language Models”. These key concepts each occupy a node in the cube and the networked arrangement allows people to read in any sequence. Additionally, the ‘vertical ligatures’ of the custom typeface connects letterforms across lines of texts with their extended ascenders and descenders. This additional layer, coupled with the connected nodes, bridges the different concepts together.
title of work
Mean Girls
year
2004
origin / source
Directed by Mark Waters and screenplay by Tina Fey
description
In films, the split-screen technique is used in several ways but they allow the audience to view multiple characters at once or even the same character from different angles. This scene from Mean Girls depicts Cady manipulating Regina into revealing her true opinions about Karen and Gretchen over the phone, not knowing that Karen and Gretchen are eavesdropping on the conversation from the other end.
title of work
more* Workshop Publication
year
2020
origin / source
Workshop at Southland Institute led by Laura Coombs and Mindy Seu, and website programmed by Richard Caceres.
description
The digital publication is co-authored by participants of the more* workshop, who have all contributed images, sound clips, videos and texts of their own on top of a base text. By toggling the checkboxes on the left, a participant’s addition is hidden or shown. The experience of reading this work is disruptive, where the personality of every following sentence changes.
title of work
Multi-branching Narratives
year
REQUIRED
origin / source
Game designer and author Chris Crawford
description
“A multi-branching tree narrative where each story node offers the participant a choice between just two paths. Even here the complexity of the structure grows exponentially if the tree continues to branch outward (Crawford).”
title of work
The Multivocal Man
year
1992
origin / source
A hypertext fiction by Ho Lin
description
In contrast to the strong forking rhetoric found in “Choose Your Own Adventure” games, The Multivocal Man is described to be multilinear as the readers can explore the story through all the lines. The reader’s decision in choosing which links to click or which path to explore does not have a direct impact on the outcome of the story. The start and end is still fixed at the same position.
title of work
My Boyfriend Came Back from the War
year
1996
origin / source
Olia Lialina
description
The work tells the story of an awkward reunion between a young woman and her boyfriend. By using panes, the work highlights that the two are at cross-purposes, with their conversation jumping from an affair, to the trauma of war looms over the encounter, to a marriage proposal that is made and deferred.
title of work
Preparatory Diagram for Magic Carpet
year
2006
origin / source
Designed for the first Singapore Biennale by Xu Bing.
description
The ‘carpet’ is an amalgamation of selected passages from four significant faith-based texts — Buddhist, Gnostic, Jewish and Marx (all translated into English) — into one text. The design is inspired by Su Hui’s 1620 “Xuan Ji Tu”, where a grid of 841 characters can be read in any number of directions and combinations. Xu Bing’s diagram shows some of his annotations that string together words like stars in a constellation.
title of work
Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale
year
2017
origin / source
Netflix
description
As an effort to create new experiences for Netflix programs, Carla Engelbrecht and Todd Yellin, kids/family programming lead and head of product respectively, toyed around with the idea of incorporating a choose-your-own-adventure type of experience. They explored this concept in a kids’ show first where a binary prompt would appear on the screen. Should Puss kiss Dulcinea or shake her hand? The first episode lasted 18 to 39 minutes depending on which options viewers chose.
title of work
Roads Not Taken
year
2013
origin / source
Written by Peter Turchi, as part of Visual Editions’ Where You Are. Website design by The Workers.
description
This piece of writing is a meditation on all the hypothetical parallel versions of Turchi’s life that never materialised, hence “Roads Not Taken”. This vast endless map of words with its various roads is what makes this work feel immersive, leaving it to the reader to decide which road to follow.
title of work
Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68
year
1876
origin / source
Composed by Johannes Brahms
description
The conductor’s score is an integral part in the craft of musicians in orchestras and bands. While each musician may only read scores which contain their own parts, the conductor gets an overview of what every musician is playing at any one moment in time.
title of work
Talmud
year
Around 500CE
origin / source
Figure 2, by Baruch B. Schwarz, A typical page of the Talmud.
description
The Talmud, a key text in Rabbinic Judaism, serves as the main source of Jewish religious law and theology. Interestingly, it originated as a response to the destruction of the Jewish commonwealth and temple, disrupting social and legal norms. Unable to preserve oral scholarship traditions, the Talmud now incorporates the oral Torah (Mishnah) and a Torah commentary (Gemara). Additional commentaries, such as Rashi's and the Tosafot's, were later added, revealing the Talmud's complexity through its text sections.
title of work
The Talmud Project
year
1999
origin / source
David Small, exhibited at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum’s first National Design Triennial.
description
The Talmud project compares writings from Jewish religious texts — the Torah and Talmud, where the Talmud itself makes references to the Torah, the old testament — and philosopher Emmanuel Levinas’ commentary. Small aptly layers the three texts over each other in the interface. By controlling several dials, the reader gets to navigate through this workspace and when they trigger the control, the text of interest comes into focus.
title of work
TextArc
year
2002
origin / source
Originally created by W. Bradford Paley which is now inaccessible. Jim Vallandigham’s version is a partial recreation of the original TextArc built with d3.js
description
TextArc is a text analysis tool designed with the intention of helping people to filter a text quickly. The full text is displayed in an outer ellipse and the inner ellipse is an index of all words that have been used in the full text. Bradford Paley, describes that the word is “attached …by rubber bands to the places it should be in the story”.