Rise of the Transtextuals

In my most recent searches into the void I have come across the concept/theory/ideology of transtextuality. Right off the bat I was hooked. "What the hell is transtextuality?" "What the hell is transtextuality?" "What the hell is transtextuality?" This has become my internal mantra. I have scoured the net and found many theorys and writings at length upon the subject, but every addition to this new current literary trend leaves the hallmark question answered by yet another question. Still undefined and awash of speculation built upon few source materials, I am so drawn towards this emerging classification of communication. The deeper I fall down this rabbit hole the stronger my current realization become...I am a transtextual.

Transtextuality was originally coined by Gérard Genette in his book Palimpsests which can be found within the Google Books library. Of course, being ever so busy attempting to fool myself and everyone else into believing that I am the budding erudite, I have not read Genette's book...yet. Despite this minor roadblock in time management, I see no reason as to hold back my insightful take on the whole transtextuality thing. There is a plethora of regurgitation amongst the blogashere on Genette's concepts; here is the gist of it all. According to helmer.ca there are four sub-categories of transtextuality. They include intertexuality, paratextuality, architextuality, and hypotextuality. this is the comman basis for the breakdown of the trantextuality within the multiple net pages dedicated to it's definable understanding, though some sources do interchange intertextuality for metatextuality but their definitions remain identical. Intertextuality and or metatextuality refers to the concept of one text referring to itself as well as a secondary text referring to a primary text where in the understanding of the secondary text helps to define the primary text. Paratextuality is the textual information that surrounds and or supports the main text. this can be defined through the uses of specific fonts, illustrations, embedded videos and audio files, headings, prefaces, dedications, footnotes, and ect. Architextuality comments on related texts connected through genre. this definition I find a bit elusive but it's terms are easier understood as helmer.ca puts it "the division of a play into acts". Finally, hypotextuality refers to a secondary text that supports a primary text by creating interjections into the original text. I understand this concept most clearly in regards to the modern phenomenon of the remix and remix culture. Essentially that is the basis for the transtextual, all originally conceived by Genette and published in France in 1982 but it's prime importance is just now being conceptually understood and practiced through the renaissance of new media.

Currently, rhetoricians are revisiting Genette's proposed transtextuality and correlating it to modern communication modes and means. The ideals of transtextuality are specifically the fundamental elements of new media communication. all four of the predefined transtextual sub-categories are explicitly utilized within current new media trends. As the lines between consumer and creator are becoming ever so blurred transtextuality is becoming the norm. Within my own interpretations of the subject, this new media revolution is slated to make transtextuals out of us all. We are collectively referring to and morphing texts upon texts. Within the bounds of social media we are creating volumes upon volumes of text genre all of which intesects and interprets one another anew. many of the new media artists and designers are basing their work on cross platfomisation as remix of idea, concept, and content lead towards new contextualizations. personally I feel that the crux of transtextuality lies within the unfettered bounds our new media. We are still in the fledgling infancy of our "new printing press". we are all still learning to typeset our new communicative paradigm. This new openness and availability towards active communication lends itself towards the concepts of transtextuality. It is time to open the closet door and embrace our transtextual tendencies.

FLUXUS FUXUS: Shelley Jackson- New Media Author and Artist

Recently I bumped into Shelley Jackson. Of course our encounter was metaphoric and far from literal, but through the onslaught of short bursted information centralized within keyword searches about the incredible creativity that this woman has exude over the last twenty years; I began to feel some sort of kinship towards her. I never realized how in depth and "out of the box" an author/artist could be. Shelley Jackson is doing things that literally blow my mind. Certainly she is not the "be all end all" of text creation, but what she is doing is flipping the script on what modern publishing and literature is and can be. Jackson is on the front lines of the new media renaissance and she is paving inlets into this vast open new media terrain so that future creatives can tread deeper towards the evolutionary precipice of which we seek.

Shelly Jackson grew up in Berkley, received her Bachelors of Arts from Stanford, and her Masters in Fine Arts from Brown University. In 1995 she published her first hypertext novel entitled Patchwork Girl. Apparently, a hypertext novel is a literary work that is displayed electronically and framed through the use of hypertext links. These hypertext links within the literary work allows the reader an in depth control of direction to the narrative, kind of like the choose your own adventure stories I read as a child wherein the reader makes choices about the direction of the story by making selections from different prompts at the end of a set of pages. Jackson's Patchwork Girl is a loose non-chronological adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Shelly later wrote two more hypertext novels with her sister Pamela Jackson. They are entitled The Doll Games and My Body.

One of Shelley Jackson's most recent projects, one in which I have become a supper huge fan, is called Skin. Skin is a short novel of about 2,000 or so words. The short novel is currently being published but not on paper as typical novels are printed and distributed. In this project Jackson has recruited volunteers to tattoo one word form the novel on their skin. This is the only means in which this novel will be published. Jackson has set up an informative web site describing in detail all angles of this project. A short video piece has also been created where in each participant in the Skin project videos their tattoo and says the word. All of these submissions have been edited together to tell a shortened version of the multimedia novel. In an article published in the Los Angeles Times, Jackson discusses the project participants;

I usually call them words, or my words, as in, "I got an angry email from one of my words," or "Two of my words just got married!" I really like the ripple of surreality this induces in listeners who haven't yet become inured to the usage. It comes from my original call for participants: I specify that once they are tattooed, "participants will be known as 'words'. They are not understood as carriers or agents of the texts they bear, but as their embodiments. As a result, injuries to the tattooed text, such as dermabrasion, laser surgery, cover work or the loss of body parts, will not be considered to alter the work. Only the death of words effaces them from the text. As words die the story will change; when the last word dies the story will also have died." I am a word myself: the title, Skin.

The importance of Shelley Jackson's work is still yet to be determined. She is creating outside the norm of her generalized medium, but is that not the point. Within the spectrum of the new media renaissance all restrictions, traditions, and economics are tossed into the fire. Creatives working in this new medium must embrace the multidimensional type set. No longer are we bound to the type faced text. No longer must we hold tight to deteriorating economic models that have defined our expression. Shelley Jackson is of the vanguard of this new paradigm. She creates beyond our past and is actively defining the future: a new horizon of expressed communication.

Hype Huffer

Media hype is the thing. One sees it everywhere. In this postmodernist culture driven by consumerism there is nothing more than the inflated bubble. Certainly there is legitimacy in aspects of the media but generally it is taken outside contexts of measurable truth. It is no surprise that the facts as they are presented in popular culture are skewed for ratings. This has become the constant within many of our own lives. Hype has become the new black as we all add to the gestural descriptions of our exaggerated selves via social media. So where have we as a culture learned to ingrain this behavior of hyper exaggeration? Is it the fault of the media creators; or should the blame of hype rest upon the heads of the consuming masses drawn obediently towards the beautiful car crash?

Speaking personally, I am enthralled by hype. My intentions are to be curator of hype. I lavish my time on the latest trends in music, art, and design. I am constantly seeking the new for I am one of the many seeking a seemingly new experience. Thus is the crux of the hype situation. Reality is cyclical. Constant creative attention must be focused in order to repackage the same old thing.

Hype is a part of our legacy. It was derived around the fires of our first archaic oral cultures. These first cultures communicated without written records, thus the truths of the presented knowledge changed with each oral recitation. The foundations of hype are rooted in our past traditions in that we gravitate towards creative interpretations. The need to exaggerate has evolved with the ways in which we communicate. Many of the first journalistic endeavors produced after the assimilation of the printing press were tabloid orientated. News conglomerates of the past created sensational headlines that were so far removed from actual truth, yet it was these fictitious narratives that influenced political and sometimes militaristic actions despite relevance to actuality.