Working Draft

Book Unbound

    If you untie an old knot …
‘You release the light that was caught up in the knot,’ he said. ‘I think of it as releasing the light.’
  – M. John Harrison, Climbers

[Note: Some of what is written here is unlikely to persist into the final manuscript since it may be stated or moved to earlier introductory notebooks or chapters of the publication.]

Book Unbound, 1996, was one of the first pieces, amongst the works published in the series Indra’s Net to receive literary, academic, not to say international, attention. [1] It was, in a sense, the culmination of my experiments with what I called ‘collocational’ pieces and was the final work to be treated with any detail in what was my first attempt at what amounted to an artist’s statement. [2]

Since it has been written about and discussed, including by myself, elsewhere (as outlined in the notes) I will elaborate only briefly here, devoting most of my own retrospective attention, rather, to the corresponding live code notebook within the present publication where, basically, I reengineer a work which is not only inaccessible – as is the case with the other Hypercard-based pieces – but also more or less impossible to ‘engage with,’ or ‘return to’ as originally and crucially conceived.

Some time before 2020 the Internet Archive made it possible to read Hypercard ‘stacks,’ which they collect as compressed archives, by providing web-based emulators of contemporary Macintosh operating systems and displays. Readers may experience stacks as they were designed and even play games that were made using this exemplary personal computing technology. The emulators do not, however, allow for the session-to-session persistence of a changed state in these archived works. For many such, this does not matter but for some games and for Book Unbound the circumstance that the work is changed by reading and ability of the reader to return to a changed state is essential to the artistic intention. These were also properties or potential properties of language art works that were enabled by programmable media.

For Book Unbound the underlying ‘supply text’ was hidden and was never revealed, as such, by myself, … until now. When you read the Book Unbound you were (and still sometimes are) presented with live-generated texts that were produced by the programming that I then called ‘collocational’ but which I would now recognize as a two-gram Markov Model operating over the domain of the supply text. As the text was generated, however, the reader had the option to select spans of what they were reading and feed these back into the work as additions to the supply text and thus also the model. These affordances were provided without any direct access to the programmatic mechanisms and, in particular, no way to ‘undo’ the modifications that had been made. If the reader took any part in this process of ‘self-’modification, then their copy of the work, and the texts it was able to generate, became unique to them. I speculated that readers would be able to affect, iteratively, the underlying probabilities for certain sequences such that the previously unbound text would become bound to their particular inclinations. In practice, few readers achieved this (difficult within the limit span of the unalterable supply text in the piece’s initial state) although some managed to reduce the work to a kind of breaking point by, for example, always selecting grammatical or ‘stop words,’ like ‘the,’ until the piece produced nothing but empty, broken syntax.

As noted, Book Unbound was issued on its own as a ‘floppy disc’-based publication but also in a number of larger published collections of various kinds: a radically experimental periodical, an academic journal, an early academic collection of ‘Electronic (Visual) Literature,’ and a massive textbook-like ‘reader’ of ‘new media.’ The radical, ‘art house’ periodical is no more, like many before it, but its demise, in this case, is also likely to be attributable to its attempt not only to ‘read’ media but to publish on a variety of non-standard media including some then called ‘new.’ On the other hand, the academic journal and the kind of published output represented by textbook-like ‘readers’ survive. Such forms are still authoritative and cited. But much of the kind of work represented by Book Unbound, that these authorities collected and promoted, no longer exists, as such, in accessible and readable formats. The work has suffered a demise that we should take a moment to examine.

Notes

1. Book Unbound first caught the attention of editors who were bringing out the extraordinary, experimental, London-based multimedia serial publication Engaged and they included it on their CD-ROM issue. (Cayley, 1995b)
  Stuart Moulthrop, a prominent scholar-practitioner of electronic literature, was a co-editor of the journal Postmodern Culture in the 1990s and is still a member of its editorial collective. He edited a special issue on hypertext, in which Book Unbound was also published. (Cayley, 1997) In his introduction to the issue, entitled ‘Decorating the Corpse: Hypertext after the Web’ (Moulthrop, 1997), Moulthrop wrote, “[Book Unbound] is a singular and significant representative of electronic writing outside the Web (it was created with HyperCard), and of generative, interactive ‘cybertext.’”
  The work was also later included in a Belgian, CD-ROM-published collection on ‘Electronic (Visual) Literature’ edited by Eric Vos and Jan Baetens. (Cayley, 1999) And in the CD-ROM supplement of MIT Press’ 2003 New Media Reader. (Cayley, 2003)

2. Cayley, 1996 and 2007, ‘Beyond Codexspace’.

• IMPORTANT: IF IT IS SUPPLIED ON CD ROM, IN *
• ORDER TO BE ABLE TO RUN ‘BOOK UNBOUND’ *
• YOU MUST FIRST COPY IT TO YOUR HARD DISK. *

BOOK UNBOUND. Indra’s Net VI. by John Cayley cayley@shadoof.demon.co.uk London: Wellsweep & Engaged, Mar. 1995. ISBN 0 948454 97 0.

• When you open the book UNBOUND, you will change it. * New collocations of phases generated from its hidden given text – a short piece of prose by the work’s initiator – will be displayed. * After the screen fills, you will be invited to select a phrase from the generated text by clicking on the first and the last words of a string of language which appeals to you.
• Your selections will be collected on the page of this book named LEAF, where you will be able to copy or edit them as you wish. * They will also become a part of the hidden store of potential collocations from which the book will go on to generate new text. That is, your selections will feed back into the process and change it irreversibly. * If you continue reading and selecting over many sessions, your preferred collocations may eventually come to dominate the process. The work may then reach a state of chaotic stability, strangely attracted to one particular modulated reading of its original seed text.
• Reading the BOUND book presents its collocations in their current state, with the added ability to adjust the degree of aleatory play (when ‘learning’ new phrases, collocational strictness is set at 250/500).
• To INTERRUPT a BOUND reading, HOLD the mouse button down.

The HyperCard application Book Unbound: Indra’s Net VI and all the text and scripting it contains are copyright © John Cayley and ENGAGED, May 1995.

This work was first published as part of: ENGAGED * Issue 3 334a Kennington Road London SE11 4LD info@engaged.demon.co.uk If you obtain a copy of this work other than from ENGAGED, please treat it as shareware. Only distribute complete copies and send the equivalent of GB£5.95 (US$9.95 – US$ cheques accepted) to the author care of ‘WellSweep’. Support small independent publishers. THE WELLSWEEP PRESS 1 Grove End House 150 Highgate Road London NW5 1PD ws@shadoof.demon.co.uk

=====================

The following is part of the HyperTalk scripting which generates the Book Unbound, translated and adapted so as to be read as a piece of ludic literature while retaining its structure – and (almost) functionality. Just read it through. (It gives no indication of the nature and style of Book Unbound however.)

on alter
  put true into offered
  put true into opened
  put zero into dialogue
  put the number of words in field others of card who &
",others" into books
  put the number of words in field others of card certificates &
",others" into creation
  put empty into card field InterNet of card work
  hide card field InterNet of card work
  put empty into card field summation of card work
  go card work
  if work contains "tools" then
    put the random of books into us
    put word us of field "others" of card who & ",others" into
letters
  end if
  put false into central
  put false into together
  put 10000 into material
  repeat until (us is books)
    if dialogue is greater than material then exit repeat
    if "tools" is not in work then add one to us
    put word us of field others of card who & ",others" into
artists
    if linked then
      put artists into card field InterNet
    end if
    send explore to card
    put false into central
    if together or learning then
      exit repeat
    end if
    if linked then
      lock screen
      hide card field InterNet
      do "unlock screen with dissolve " & irreducible
    end if
    if work contains "tools" then if us is books then put zero
into us
  end repeat
  if "tools" is not in work then
    show card field InterNet of card work
  end if
end alter

on explore
  repeat with leaves = one to 21
    if learning then
      put 250 into machines
    else
      put the mouseH into people
      if people is less than one then put one into people
      if people is greater than understanding then put
understanding into people
      put the round of (people times 500 divided by
understanding) plus one into machines
      set the topLeft of background button ways to machines plus
metaphor,330 plus libraries)
    end if
    if machines is greater than the random of 500 then
      put us plus one into words
      if central then
        put false into central
      end if
      if words is greater than everything then
        put one into words
      end if
    else
      put create(letters) plus one into words
    end if
    put words into us
    put word words of field "others" of card who & ",others"
into boundedness
    if the mouse is down then
      put letters into boundedness
      put boundedness into card field InterNet
      put true into together
      exit repeat
    end if
    appropriate
    wait dominance
    put boundedness into letters
    if leaves is greater than or equal to 16 and words & "," is
in field indeterminacy of card who & ",others" then exit repeat
  end repeat
  if not together and not learning then
    if us is books then wait 5 seconds else wait 90
    lock screen
    put empty into card field InterNet
    put empty into card field summation
    do "unlock screen with dissolve " & irreducible
  end if
end explore

on appropriate
  lock screen
  put boundedness & space after card field summation
  if words & comma is in field indeterminacy of card who &
",others" then
    put return after card field summation
    put true into central
  end if
  if linked then show card field InterNet
  do "unlock screen with dissolve " & irreducible
end appropriate

Artist’s Statement for the exhibition: Mapping Knowledge: Exploring Book Art at the Minories Gallery Colchester, 29 Nov - 14 Jan, 1994-95

John Cayley

The book is not just a physical object, the essential, definitive icon of our material culture. It is the pre-eminent medium for the storage and delivery of linguistic creation and information. As such it is supremely effective and remarkably convenient. Books are elegant and often beautiful. However, the book is also a metaphor which may invoke any or all of its qualities in order to create new ways of understanding the self. Everyone in the modern world, even those people who share our culture but who were never or are no longer people of the book, everyone must accumulate written paper throughout their lives— scraps, certificates, lists, deeds, forms, letters, and so on — and may sometimes long to see these fragments organized, made sense of, bound together. For others this longing is central to their existence. The book is, potentially, a body of work, a summation of what you have to say and, finally, of what you are. ‘This book is my life’s story, the sum of all I know. I put everything into it, body and soul. It’s my life itself, and before I pass on I must close it, leaving it behind for others to read and interpret.’

The meaning created by this metaphor is determined by the physical characteristics of the book. This has not been static although its predominant form — the codex or collection of paper-like leaves bound together so that it can be opened at any point — has been with us since the second century of our era. Book artists and others have challenged this dominance, but however creative and inspiring the resulting dialogue has proven, it has not undermined the shape of the vital book-as-metaphor in our culture.

Now, later than many predictions would have led us to believe, the book is changing. The word is applied to bodies of text which are stored in electronic libraries, on the ever-spinning magnetic or optical disks of programmable machines. Millions of these machines are already linked on the InterNet. ‘Books’, ‘libraries’ — the use of these words, the inability to find others, demonstrates that the irreducible, defining quality of a book is that it should be a body of work recorded in language without regard to physical form. Thus the metaphor survives but its shape and significance change forever. There is no longer the sense that a book — as electronic book — is bound or bounded, that you can see all of it at once, hold it, pick it up, that it has a physical location. It is more difficult to believe that the words of the book are fixed and stable, its author’s definitive statement on its subject. Although there is general familiarity with the tools that conveniently allow us to write and edit bodies of text, some people will be less content with the realization that these same tools will allow others to appropriate and even alter what they have created. Many will be unwilling to apply a metaphor to themselves, as once they did, which begins to suggest unboundedness, indeterminacy, openness to the electronically interleaved books of anyone else on the InterNet.

The codex will live on. It is not a question of either or. Both old and new books will coexist. Some writers and book-makers will wish to explore new opportunities offered by the less familiar qualities of unbound, coverless books. Some readers will welcome new ways of understanding themselves in the ghostly, fragmentary, drifting leaves of an evolving metaphor.