This resource is carefully archived and orchestrated at

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vaoy5OMltUG3ldxCBBwugzHAL2xADc5HCwcFAZEbQ_k/edit

Thank you, Deena!

oh, thank you, Deena!

Thank you!

Thanks @Deena

If you have not dived into We Descend, I highly recommend it. It is the mission of any curator — of this or any archive — to bring such traces of an ancient past into the present moment of *our* lives, and to provision their transmission to the generations to come.

We could write an entire archive about broken machines... we all have the stories, right Stephanie, Alan, Rob, and all

March, 2019 interview at ebr: https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/descending-into-the-archives-an-interview-with-hypertext-author-bill-bly/

Bill is an amazing craftswriter

https://www.wedescend.net/WDvol3_ImpA1a/ForewordtoWDVol3.html

As verbs the difference between deduce and educe. is that deduce is to reach a conclusion by applying rules of logic to given premises while educe is to draw out or bring out; elicit or evoke.

And this comes from Bill's refuge...

Great presentation!

Thank you Bill!

Thank you! Wonderful presentation. I didn't know about the beginnings of ELO - that's really useful -

"Unassignable Writings whose origin &or transmission cannot be determined"

https://www.wedescend.net/WDvol3_ImpA1a/OTHERWRITINGSofUNKNOWNPROVENANCE.html

are an example of Legamanon things that are said

The soul is goodThe soul is good.It is heavy, a counterweight within thee.The soul is a stone. It warms in the sun, and can hold its heat long. But it freezes in the dark.The spirit is built of breath, and rises ever toward the highest point in the body's room, escaping in the end when the last door opens.The soul remains planted in its ground, and returns to its earth, while the spirit disappears in the sky.

Navigation aids become their own form of narrative--including how you can not find materials... There is an overmind at work, still piecing this together... the Curator

====We Descend is an amazing form of media archaelogy--just the we descend writing in itself (at the Bill Bly collection) and the actual work itself, so there are many meta levels to Bill the Archivist!

Kyrill, Ilove the mjetaphor--we see te starelight--a snapshot in time, but we do not see the star...

I wonder, if in relation to labor and duration for example, whether the word "Literature" in ELO and "writing" perhaps as well are too limiting at this point? Perhaps history, archeologies, weigh us down too much?

==========In We Descend, there is the remnants sayings--or not sayings. For example, — O stop that noise, ungrateful fool: show some respect for the crickets and their cousins, whatever they're saying. Unless you can sing, don't interrupt the music. https://www.wedescend.net/WDvol3_ImpA1a/thedark.htmlunless you can sing, don't interrupt the musicConsiderable comment is made upon the fact that the customary attribution "as the Remnant say" does not appear with this well-known and venerable proverb, as is the case in almost every other instance of such quotation in the archives.https://www.wedescend.net/WDvol3_ImpA1a/unlessyoucansing.html

Alan, I agree, the term "elit" is far too constricting--not only for this multilevel work, but for so many others

Does We Descend propose a method for authenticating documents?

Have your ideas about authentication changed since 1996?

Adorno on Authenticity might be relevant here.

Yet in We Descend, there is no central authority. Even the writers themselves are only quoted as their own authority--and we don't even know who is quoting the. for example:(Legomenon forLAST ONEThe Author who calls himself the Last One may well be the last but one of the Ancients, a trenchant thinker struggling to comprehend from his lonely perspective what caused his race to destroy itself — sparing only himself and the young Boy who was his last companion.) https://www.wedescend.net/WDvol3_ImpA1a/Legomenon-LASTONE.html

Authenticiy is also a nexus of power; Adorno talks about Heidegger's relation to the conept, from what I remember; it becomes a problematic term -

Yet Bill undermines this belief system:"Text is our enemy: the utterance of the ghosts.Its promise to *endure* kindles ambition, the lust for immortal fame — which is what?" https://www.wedescend.net/WDvol3_ImpA1a/enemy.html

What is an "authentic pattern"? I literally don't understand the conjunction here.

I wonder if Jorge Luís Borges was maybe a reference for Bill, not only in terms of hypertextual architecture, but also for the themes of apocrypha, embedded narratives, and the motto "if this document is authentic"...

Borges, Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote

Actually, the word "authentic" in We descend, as I see it is a code for questinging the texts--who wrote them, who collected them, and what time frame they are in.

"Here's what matters. Everybody working on this stuff thinks it's one thing, but I *know* it's not that thing, it's something else. They see what I'm doing, and they say, in effect (though never quite to my face), "Why would *anybody* want to do *that*?" And maybe they're right — I mean about doing things their way: their way works fine, gets some results, some are even interesting." https://www.wedescend.net/WDvol3_ImpA1a/thisroad.html

From "UNKNOWN ANCIENT(s)Writings by one or more Author(s) predatingEgderus Scriptor"

===I knew we would hit copyrights sooner or later

OKAY

At the very least, we need a paper version of all texts, buried somewhere

Thanks

This might be relevant or might not - anyway - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/08/robot-wrote-this-article-gpt-3 - look at this later - who owns the text?

How much does a text need to be changed to avoid copyright issues?

Thanks @Alan!

https://www.wedescend.net/

Thanks Deena and Bill -

thanks Bill and Deena!

Navigation mirroring the reader experience, and the writing experience...

good point!

Good resource Alan, on owning the text!

And the real-life organization puts even more bureaufcacy on the text.

JavaScript is a hole, not a w/hole - it brings corporate neoliberalism to the foreground -

yes

House of Leaves

Yes, the overlaid leaving of texts, writing, and rewriting is like House of Leaves

I confess. I have never read a hypertext "correctly!"

Paper books are just units of hypertext in a library

Rob?? Seriously??? Hypertext definition for me is something you can not translate/reduce to print!!!

absolutely; the idea that books are "linear" is highly overrated.

Books may not be linear, but they allow you to see the whole book. Curtailing the navigation and access to papers allows a relationship with the reader, as Bill is explaining...

You can print any unit of hypertext. A book is just a long one

But the navigation creates the meaning... in and of itself. You can not print the link...

when I read the "Bible" - I jump all over the place among languages for example. and "seeing the whole book doesn't really help to the extent that the book is also infinite in a way Defrenne's "world of the novel" for example. I see hypertext as cuts and openings which in a sense are absolute -

The storyspace map can transform a work into the architecture of the story itself--you can arrange the pages (nodes) in a spatial relationship that shows connections

Here's a question which is maybe problematic - is there any really terrible hypertext works?

Navigating is taking another book off a shelf and opening it. A physical act, different in scale from clicking a link but not that different

Navigation links are carefully set up by the hypertext/elit author, and are not as random as a reader's pulling a book off the shelf.

which gives the reader tremendous freedom for example re: the "Bible"

freedom to explore is the forest. Navigation paths are trails

Nothing random about it, just individual product of context and history. Hypertext is a pale reflection

also hypertext exciting because you literally have no idea necessarily re: what comes next -

Hyper-mediation as the "author" laying down the navigation? or as readers creating their own paths, Kyrill?

if the paths are already there... are three any hypertext works which you literally can't go back, where the previous is erased as you continue?

I would say all possible "lenses" between author and reader

Alan, yes, there are works like that... I can name some in a bit...

William Gibson's cd-rom for example

Or being published by Eastgate

:-)

Alan, Adam Carde's Varicella, for instance (if I remember correctly)

The work of the curator

Aleatoric definition is - characterized by chance or indeterminate elements. How to use aleatoric in a sentence.

The curator becomes the message!

why the "Bible" is important maybe in the discussion - because it's a palimpsest that negates predetermined paths, no matter what one believes or reads or what language (theOT is in Hebrew, Aramaic, but there are also Egyptian words for example) -

And the messenger

Exactly!

The linen trunk--the archival version of a junk drawer

“Circle” by Caitlin Fisher This augmented reality (AR) work tells the story of three generations of women through a series of short poetic videos organized spatially on a table top installation.

https://iloveepoetry.org/?cat=155

And as the collection is passed along, being split up within the text mirrors the real life curation of the volumes being split up and resplit and rearranged...

*Cadre (sorry!)

Can the volumes be read indepentently?

It would be nice, Bill

that's great news, Bill :)

Do you know if there are any intellectual property issues citing the second editor of vol1 in published material?

https://www.wedescend.com/ Don't go here.

thank you!

Thanks

You mean we shouldn't descend there, Deena? : )

you're assuming there will be an election -

Media Ecology Association's Mary Shelley Award for Outstanding Fictional Work

Lunch time!

Thanks, Bill. Thanks, Deena.

Dinner time ;)

bedtime (almost)

Thanks much Bill and host Deena!

Thank you so much, Bill and Deena, this was amazing!