"It is evident from the scholarship available that compositionists are interested in new media. Yet, they do not seem to value creating new media texts for scholarly publication to explore the multimodal capabilities of new technologies. The linear tradition of composition scholars' publications about new media techniques causes me to suggest that this type of scholarship should not be called new media scholarship, but should, more accurately, be labeled scholarship about new media" (p. 407).

Cheryl Ball, 2004.

"...in order to value [new media] scholarship, readers need more new media texts on which to base a collective understanding of the ways cross-generic modes function. Valuing these texts—and making them less rare, which will increase our analytical and interpretational strategies for them—is important for new media scholarship to move forward" (pp. 421-2).

Cheryl Ball, 2004.

The practical problems involved in composing new media include the following:

1. Pedagogical models for talking about new media must contend with extremely complex systems of composition.
2. Tools used for new media composition are exceptionally diverse.
3. Composition processes are unfamiliar and often frustrating.
4. Tools for production have different affordances.
5. Academic acceptance of new media scholarship is slow.

1. Traditional components of scholarly genres don't match trends and affordances of new media tools.
2. Criticism that deals with aesthetic issues of new media does not offer guidance for evaluating texts-as-scholarship.
3. Focus on experimentation in digital new media seems to oppose the formation/expression of scholarly goals.
4. Authors do not have effective models for composing texts that are both scholarly and experimental.

A Proposition: An analysis of the processes through which digital texts are composed and received can help us to develop strategies to assist authors (and readers) in their struggle to blend traditional composition structures for scholarly work with the experimental, play-oriented features of new media composition. The first step in this analysis is an attempt to understand how the components of new media act to create meaning, and how such structures compare to traditional, text-privileged structures for composing scholarly work.

1. Material Rhetoric: The concept that physical contexts affect the rhetorical power of a text and its ability to make meaning.
2. Activity Theory: The effort to understand human interactions with physical/spatial/cognitive/time components in the production of a specific text.
3. Multimodal Theory: The concept that meaning-making is altered and shaped both by the tools of composition (pen, computer, crayon, piano) and by the symbol systems that are used to produce a text (alphabetic text, images, movies, spoken words, music).

1. Transition sentences are used to mark changes in focus.
2. Titles/Headers are used as visual elements to denote change in focus or the development of ideas.
3. Statement of Thesis is made at a particular point in the paragraph structure of the text.
4. Complex, extended sentences are used to explain theoretical concepts or to describe research findings.
5. Clear, structurally marked endings offer both "final thoughts" and, often, suggestions for further research.

1. The use of citations (in a particular format) offer support for the assertions of the text. Citations may be located throughout the text and are used differently in different sections of the text.
2. Predictable progression of ideas is marked by textual elements both within and between paragraphs.
3. Ideas that are presented will be reliably developed (i.e., authors will not bring up topics and drop them).
4. The overall interface (a journal, a book, a downloadable .pdf ) is visually reliable; it can be counted on to remain constant and predictable.

1. EMPDE texts are read on the screen rather than elsewhere.
2. They lack reliably linear order (this can be through user choice or a deliberately incoherent system of navigation).
3. Transition elements (phrases, sentences, and paragraphs) are not always used in conventional ways.
4. Texts must be designed to fit into smaller, visually significant boundaries.

1. The use of more poetic/narrative/creative associations for both visual and linguistic elements means that arguments are often made in ways that are less explicit (in terms of alphabetic text).
2. The reader uses different tools to remember associations, because the concept of place is often experienced differently in experimental digital scholarship.
3. The reader's memory for certain key elements of the argument are affected by design choices.
4. The reader makes shifts in the focus of his/her criticism between aesthetic and argument.
   

1. The reader may experience a sense of alienation from the text.
2. Authors can find it difficult to predict the reading patterns of users.
3. Discrepancies between the writer's experience of composing and the user's reading experience can be difficult to overcome.
4. The location of the text within the Internet shapes the process of reading in particular ways.

1) Visual Planning
2) Navigational Planning
3) Peripherality
4) Ephemeral Transitioning
5) Time/Space Relationships

If we can generate some good, thick descriptions of people's reading and composing activities, we will be better equipped to explore digital productions of scholarly ideas. I would argue that pioneers in our field and others have already begun to use digital tools and spaces in transformative ways. I think we have a rich source of data to explore. Such explorations will allow us to see more clearly the particular ways that such texts alter the composing process and the exchange of scholarly ideas.

"Hyper.Activity" is a web text that began as a conference presentation - that began as a course paper - that began as a simple idea: that composing a "new media" text is a completely different experience than writing a conventional paper. I realize this is an obvious statement, but over the last couple of years, I have remained convinced we do not yet have a a very good understanding of what happens to our efforts to write in scholarly ways when we move into digital environments.

Both the content of this webtext and its visual design are an attempt to think about this issue and to consider the ways in which reading/writing processes for new media texts remain incompatible with the expectations of readers and composers of traditional scholarly work. The physical and design features of the webtext are outlined below:

• The "slides" on the left are representations of the slides from my Computers and Writing 2005 conference presentation. Clicking on the slide will bring up a comment window with additional text.



• Clicking on the Intro icon in the upper left-hand corner of the screen will always return the reader to the introduction screen.

  

• The numbers situated on the left margin of the text blocks in middle and right-hand screens allow readers to access additional text screens. Please click the 0.2 icon above to read the second page of this introduction.

  

Introduction (cont.)

The numbered slide icons in the left screen are the main navigation index for this project. The slides are designed to be read in order, but the navigation allows readers to move quickly among the different screens.

The text in this middle column contains commentary on the ideas presented in the slides. These comments are informal in tone, in an attempt to remain true to the more casual style of presentations at the Computers and Writing conference.

The bibliography text in the upper right-hand corner of the right screen will offer citation information and texts for further reading that are related to the slides. Clicking on the Complete Bibliography link will bring up a new screen with the entire bibliography.

Finally, the bottom right corner includes a space for discussing examples of new media texts that showcase some of the possibilities and problems of composing in digital spaces. Clicking directly on the example image will open a new window (linking to the URL of the webtext, a larger still image, or a video file).

Users may want to begin by clicking on the icon in the left screen.

One core idea presented in Cheryl's article "Show, Not Tell" is that if we as composition scholars produce more new media texts, we will begin to better understand both the potentials of new media and the parameters that define those boundaries. This is a fairly complex idea because there is some indication that although we are moving toward a more multimodal understanding of textual production (or at least our students are), our sense of the structural and organizational requirements of scholarship has not changed in response to these transitions.

For example, a recent article in Kairos points to the fact that we are shifting towards a new perspective regarding the teaching and production of new media texts (WIDE Research Center Collective, 2005). The authors argue that, indeed, our students are already immersed in the world of connectivity made possible by a range of recently developed technologies. I agree. However, it is also true that the exploration of digital texts as tools for scholarly thought continues to be strongly influenced by the expectations and affordances of traditional, print-based productions.

In academic settings, it can still be difficult for individuals and groups to produce digital scholarship, or to gain acceptance of such work as scholarly (i.e. worthy of tenure and promotion). This topic was recently addressed on the Techrhet listserv, with both new and established scholars indicating that they were often forced to make extra efforts (sometimes unsuccessfully) to argue for the value of many types of multimedia scholarship and publishing. The reasons for this are numerous and include both practical issues of composition and traditional concepts of reading and reception that can impede the success of digital scholarship. Those of us who have struggled with such texts are familiar with the difficulties.

Even more importantly, digital scholarship is made difficult by the fact that the needs and goals (and physical and rhetorical structures) of scholarly writing can be a poor fit with new media practices. This poor fit can involve both the affordances of composition tools and the expectations of readers and writers whose genre-influenced needs and desires for meaning-making often don't match the more poetic/experimental focus of new media texts.

As we work to include the production of such texts as an integral component of composition studies, we also need to work to understand how concepts of scholarly knowledge are transformed as they move into digital spaces. This information can have practical value, helping scholars to understand how to make transitions, while also contributing to an activist stance in which we urge the value of new media to our colleagues, students, and administrators.

My C&W conference presentation began with a brief discussion of the reasons why new media is hard - or more importantly, why it might be hard (sometimes) to be scholarly in new media spaces.

One clear reason is the sheer volume of information and skill required for such compositions. Examples of just some of the issues that new media pedagogy must wrestle with include the use of multiple technological tools, steep learning curves, multiple modes for expressing ideas and making arguments, and textual/rhetorical structures that do not match existing models for scholarly composition. When we combine the problems related to skill-aquisition (learning how to compose) with the complications of style, genre, and form (learning how compositions are valued by readers) it becomes less surprising that we don't have more new media compositions, and more surprising that we have any at all.

In the last several years pedagogical texts have attempted to come to terms with some of these complexities, (e.g., Writing New Media). But few of even the best of these texts discuss methods for creating multimodal, digital compositions that are also convincing as rigorous, scholarly texts. In other words, I think that we are beginning to address the how to issues of new media composition (forthcoming texts such as Selfe et. al's Multimodal Resources will be a wonderful example). However, the complex strategies needed to address the perception of these texts as scholarly are less well defined.

Additionally, I think it's important to note that many of the software programs we use to create new media were originally designed for use by expert practitioners in visual design fields. Even the more basic, general consumer products for producing new media address a sense of creativity and play (e.g., saving photos, making family movies) rather than producing critically reflective or argumentative texts in the manner of traditional scholarship.

Understanding the effects of these software programs on an author's perspective and activities is critical to our understanding of scholarly new media. To do this, we need to look not only at the software and other tools of composition, but at how the use of certain software might affect the discrete elements of the compositions themselves. For example, even if we look only at the simple linking processes used by early hypertext authors using Storyspace (see Joyce, 1995) -- it's easy to see that the software tools with which we compose new media often move us immediately away from the text-only, linear space of the traditional article.

The issue of hypertext-as-genre has been discussed at length by computers and writing scholars, in online journals such as Kairos and Enculturation (see, e.g., Brent, 1998; Brooke, 2002) as well as in print journals such as College Composition and Communication (see, e.g., Spooner & Yancey, 1996), not to mention multiple, well-known texts by scholars such as Jay David Bolter (1991), Michael Joyce (1995), and George Landow (1997). I won't attempt to add to that discussion here, because I am more interested in the practical and conceptual ways that authors of digital texts deal with the issues of composition. Whether or not digital composing tools generate new conceptual frameworks for making knowledge or simply admit the potential of alternative composing styles, frameworks, and materials, our use of these tools, and the decisions we make as we are composing with them, profoundly impact the process, product, and reception of new media texts.

As authors of scholarly new media texts deal with these issues in multiple ways, their decisions often include using elements that could be described as anything from decorative to artistic to poetic, but which are definitely not part of traditional notions of what makes a text scholarly. Further, when readers approach texts that contain the marks of these alternative composing processes, they often perceive a challenging, exciting, and sometimes formidable gap between their expectations and the actuality of a multimedia text.

Ball (2004) wrote that we must "learn about the role that aesthetics can play in composing meaning" (p. 414). She makes an excellent argument for the need to develop new ways of reading these texts that take aesthetic elements into account. I would argue, however, that discussions of the aesthetic qualities of a given text are not adequate to address texts-as-scholarship. For example, the reception of a text based on aesthetic qualities does not ask us to discuss its reliability, or validity, in scholarly terms, and doesn't ask us to decide (as readers) how the author's method of research might or might not be affecting his/her claims. These are questions, however, that we must often ask of texts that we see as scholarly.

Indeed, it can seem as if the process of experimentation in new media compositions actually opposes the development of more traditional scholarly goals -- goals of coherence, logic, and objectivity. However, these goals for scholarship are not actually created by the print-based structures they are so often found in. In fact, they can often be accomplished, sometimes in startling and thought-provoking ways, in experimental texts (both in print and digital spaces). Rather, the process of experimentation brings to an author the richness (and difficulties) of choice.

In creating digital texts, an author considers different means of communicating (sounds, color, drawing, animation, text), as well as selecting different arrangements for connecting, separating, and juxtaposing information. He/she must also consider practical issues that affect reception, such as screen size, the placement of link nodes, and the level of user interactivity. Each of these choices impacts the author's goals for the text. It is this multiplicity of choice that makes experimentation in scholarly new media so valuable to our discipline. However, it is also one of the reasons scholars can find it difficult to compose -- how does one reconcile such choices with the aims of traditional scholarship?

Perhaps one important task for new media scholars is to define what it is we want to gain from producing these texts -- and to examine how the processes of our production affect our ability to reach the goals of scholarship as defined by our discipline and our academic institutions.

It's possible, certainly, that the goal of producing texts that experiment with different forms (through the use of different kinds of composition tools and environments) is incompatible with the production of texts that are recognizable as scholarship (via standard visual and conceptual cues), but such texts are certainly not outside of the scope of scholarship if the goal is to produce thoughtful and thought-provoking texts that can be taken up and used by our colleagues and students in interesting ways. The task may be to discover alternative ways to signal (visually/textually/perceptually) the sense of logic and coherence that are valued in traditional scholarly work.

The broad goals of scholarship are often unthinkingly associated with the structural and organizational features of scholarly writing. Much as individual quotes from an author are sometimes taken to represent the complexity of his/her ideas, this association, while useful from a practical standpoint, can prevent composers and readers from seeing the value of texts that do not make use of these conventional features in recognizable ways.

As a result, composers of multimedia texts are challenged to find ways to separate the broad goals of scholarship from the traditional, expected conventions that are used to define them.

Working to better understand the components of new media (or perhaps we might better call them experimental multimedia productions for digital environments - EMPDE) is a task that includes many components. Authors working since the introduction of these texts have explored some of these components in more depth than others. For example, The concepts of argument and persuasion in EMPDE texts have received considerable attention over the years (Carter, 1997; Gaggi, 1997; Johnson-Eilola, 1997). However, many of these texts have focused primarily on hyperlinking and the various non-linear structures that linked text seems to afford.

Research and discussion that deals with other physical/visual/perceptual features of digital texts, as well as discussions of the particular affordances of certain software products or composition environments must also be added to these discussions of hyperlinking and non-linear structure.

Further, as additional modes of communication have become available for authors, discussions of rhetorical structure become even more complicated by visual elements, such as image and video; aural elements, such as sound files and soundtracks; and spatial elements, such a 3-D visualization. Although Locke Carter’s (2003) more recent work on hypertext argumentation attempts to create a broad range of strategies that hypertext authors can use to create effective arguments, many of the issues above have yet to be included in any comprehensive study of how EMPDE texts function. Expanding discussions of rhetorical structure to include these new elements is of critical importance. Additionally, Carter’s work divides hypertext into two broad categories: Literary and informational (p. 5). The question for which this text seeks an answer is, “What happens when we want both?”

In section 12 of this webtext, I propose a large-scale online study designed to allow readers and authors to examine their practices in producing and using experimental digital texts. I hope this study will help us consider issues of physical structure and textual features that identify and categorize multimedia texts for readers, which are intertwined with effects of modal choices on the reading experience. In addition, I would suggest that this study might also explore the differences and similarities between multimedia digital productions and other types of print-based scholarship that are beginning to include new styles and voices (e.g., personal writing or auto-ethnography as scholarship), as well as multimodal elements, such as alternative designs for print publications or performance spaces as scholarly productions.

However, for this text, I would like to begin the analysis in a small way by looking at some elements of textual production in traditional print and experimental digital spaces that seem fairly basic and yet are intricately bound up in the production and reception of these compositions. They include some of the visual/stylistic/linguistic cues that are part of the writing/reading of traditional scholarly texts, and the transformation of these elements in experimental digital texts.

In thinking about how we, as a community of scholars, might begin to examine the production of EMPDE texts, I have been influenced by theories from several scholarly trends. These theoretical frameworks have influenced my ideas about how we might best begin to collect information and analyze contributions from participants (see slide 12 for more information on the data collection project). However, as data are collected into the online database for this project, other scholars might wish to use different theoretical frameworks to analyze contributions. In that case, these scholars will want to be aware of the frameworks that have shaped my conception of this project.

1. Material rhetoric: Briefly, this is the idea that the physical and spatial contexts of a text are integral to understanding the particular rhetorical power of a given text. Several excellent discussions of material rhetoric can be found in seminal texts (Nystrand & Duffy, 2003; Selzer & Crowley, 1999). Material rhetoric scholarship can be specifically applied to the production of EMPDE texts, reminding us of the importance of the tools we use, where we click and when, as well as the particular affordances of digital spaces. One of the reasons that I especially like the idea of using theories connected to material rhetoric to understand EMPDE texts is that I think we often lose sight of the ways that digital spaces provide environmental context for texts. These environments are constructions developed through the interactions of our body/minds, our mediational tools, and the sense of spatiality afforded by particular digital environments, and a connection to material rhetoric helps us remember that these constructions have both physical and emotional impact on our work as readers and writers.

1. Material rhetoric (con't.)
2. Activity theory: Activity theory, as articulated by David Russell (1997) and Charles Bazerman (2002), describes research that considers the physical/spatial/cognitive/time components enacted in the production of a given text (see also Prior 1998; Prior, Bazerman, 2004). The connections between these components and the producer(s) of the text intertwine to shape both production and reception of the text. Components of activity theory can be used to analyze EMPDE texts as scholarship, allowing us to focus on both the attributes of the scholarly genre (either in new media or in traditional print venues) through examination of the expectations of the composer and reader, and the mental, physical, and spatial activities that are enacted in addressing those expectations and needs. One of the key concepts of activity theory is that it uses the "activity-system" as the unit of analysis. At the very least, this implies the inclusion of many of the components of the composition process that I outlined in slide 4 as critical to our understanding of the components of EMPDE texts.
3. Multimodal theory: Gunther Kress and the New London Group's multimodality (2003) connects to activity theory through its focus on the way that meaning is altered and shaped by the mode of expression (see also, Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Kress, 1999; Prior, 2005). For these scholars, this has meant looking at tools of production that include, but are not limited to, digital spaces as well as the use of different kinds of symbol systems for expressing meaning (images, written text, etc.). In connecting multimodal theory to activity theory, tools of production and symbol systems are seen as existing in (and affected by) time, space, and the interactions of individuals and groups. Additionally, the focus of multimodality on modes that are physical, such as drawing, or speaking, or even singing, is a reminder that it is not only in digital spaces that scholars can seek to question the conventions that govern the definitions of scholarship.

The elements of textual structure for traditional scholarship that are listed on the slide (left) are certainly not the only linguistic/stylistic/visual cues that mark print-based scholarly compositions. They are simply a few of the most prevalent and obvious methods used for coherence, continuity, and navigation that I observed during my tenure as an associate editor for the journal Computers and Composition. This position gave me the opportunity to read all of the manuscripts submitted to the journal, as well as the reviews for each manuscript. During the time I spent in this role, it became clear to me that the inclusion or exclusion of these elements had a significant impact on how reviewers would perceive the text.

One might argue that tools such as clear transition sentences or the use of headers are simply conventions, which are not used consistently in different journals or across different disciplines. I would agree, but counter that within a community (in this case the community that is formed by reviewers and readers of C&C), these elements can solidify into critical tools for navigation and understanding. They create reliable structures for containing and disseminating ideas. Without these elements a text runs the risk of presenting the reader with content that cannot be quickly or easily conceptualized. In my informal observations, neglect of these elements can render interesting content inaccessible to reviewers.

While we may not often spend conscious attention (as scholars) on these elements, as authors, we understand their value, and pay attention to the transformation of these elements across different journals.

We know, for example, that some journals encourage the use of headers, while others do not (articles without headers typically employ more complex sentence and paragraph-level transitions). The application of these conventions also has disciplinary meaning. For example, journals in the social sciences are more likely to insist on the inclusion of a methods section, often explicitly labeled as such. Computers and Composition, a multi-disciplinary journal, includes some articles that identify an explicit methods section, while others do not. On the surface this may not seem a critical difference, but it actually implies an underlying focus on certain aspects of scholarship and research that identify a text as belonging within or outside of particular disciplinary boundaries.

As conventions solidify over time, participants become less aware of their constructed nature. One of the key values of EMPDE texts, articulated since the early 1990's in computers and composition scholarship, is that the lack of familiar cues can actually spark discussion, as authors and readers struggle to fill the gap between their expectations and the reality of the text.

As a result of expectations stemming from interaction with general scholarship, disciplinary research trends, and grammar and style trends for scholarly writing, readers come to texts with certain frameworks already in place. The list on the left includes some common expectations for readers of print-based scholarship in the discipline of computers and writing. It is important to remember that these expectations are not confined to the presence of certain elements. They extend to much more broadly conceived expectations regarding the meaning of certain elements when they are used in specific locations in a text.

For example, the use of citations is a critical element of much scholarly work; but citations are used differently across disciplines and for different types of scholarly texts. Readers of a particular journal not only expect to see citations in a certain format (MLA, APA, etc.), they expect that citations will be used for different purposes throughout the text. In the case of reviewers for Computers and Composition, for example, texts that present citations in the first 1/3 of the article are placing these citations in a specific relationship to their own work, even when no literature review header is explicitly used. Particularly when citations that refer to scholars whose work is considered theoretical are used in the introductory pages, reviewers expect that the author will provide information about how these theories specifically relate to the author's work. Reviewers quickly pick up on and mention instances when theoretical frameworks are not adequately cited and explained, even when these frameworks are not explicitly established as foundational to the author's work.

Citations, then, provide quick cues to the reader that certain scholars are going to be used to shape the author's argument. These types of citations are most typically found in the first 1/3 of the document. Additionally -- focusing specifically on APA style for a moment (since that is the style that Computers and Composition used and also the style in which this webtext is written*) -- certain features of APA citation style allow the reader to view a quick list of related scholarship. For example, I might note here that multiple scholars have discussed both practical and conceptual aspects of citation activities in scholarly writing (see, e.g., Allen, 2004; Leverenz, 1998). A list like this does not indicate a foundational relationship -- rather, it indicates that the noted scholars have produced work that pertains to the topic of that particular sentence or paragraph. Such citations typically do not require extended attention in the text, and reviewers would not note a lack of contextual information as a defect.

If, however, I were to discuss in more detail the work of Carrie Leverenz (1998), whose research argues that both MLA and APA citation styles privilege authorship in ways that make them problematic as tools for citing online resources (p. 196), such a citation would indicate a closer affiliation (either complementary or adversarial) with the author's work.

* Note from the CoverWeb Editors: We would like to add here that Kairos has no official style guide that it follows. Instead, we use whatever style an author uses when she submits a text (and edit the text accordingly, as needed). Typically, authors submit using MLA or APA, and often, some combination of the two, in which case the editors tend to switch the text to APA. The reason for our fondness of APA has, we believe, two causes: (a) Cheryl, whose main role when she was associate editor of Computers and Composition was to copy-edit accepted manuscripts to fit APA style, knows it better than MLA. (b) We tend to get more submissions that are close to APA, perhaps, because C&C also requires APA -- so it's predominance in the field of computers and writing seems to be increasing.

Authors of EMPDE texts must still make decisions about the use of traditional textual elements and remain conscious of the ways that a reader's expectations may be disrupted by the experimental structures of the digital text. However, they must also begin to deal with additional choices, which are shaped by both the practical affordances of software tools and the evolution of conventions for digital texts. Many of these new choices deal with spatial relationships -- both because of the ways that digital interfaces shape the information and because of the fundamental discreteness of digital objects (Manovich, 2001). Since digital elements can be linked in multiple ways, through different kinds of contextual, linguistic, and spatial relationships, the author must not only consider relationships of first/next, but here/there and then/now.

Conceptually, these considerations can take the shape of some of the issues in the list on the left. For example, texts are no longer necessarily constructed (see the linkmap from example 5) to be read in a linear order, and the reading experience may be disrupted by a perceived lack of textual integrity (i.e., the reader has difficulty experiencing or remembering the text as a concretely bounded conceptual space).

Physically, the choices related to the creation of multilinear textual and visual spaces can affect the author's ability to make use of structural elements that are familiar to print-based texts. For example, if the author cannot make reliable assumptions about the reader's reading pathway, the ability to use the conventions of the transition sentence is deeply affected. Instead, an author must seek to imagine potential pathways, while nevertheless creating nodes of meaning that are independent.

This kind of structural arrangement affects, in turn, the reader's conception of a scholarly argument as one that is built through transitional linking. Another physical issue is the dependence on visual relationships, which means that a composer might be forced to constrain text within nodes to fit into certain spaces. While this kind of detailed trimming and pruning may be common to scholarly forms like the conference proposal or research grant, they are not typically a common element of the more lengthy scholarly article.

For example, in this text, I began with the idea that the entire article would be contained, through the use of layers, on a single visual “page.” Originally, I attempted to achieve this by limiting the main block of text for each “slide” (this center screen) to a couple of paragraphs. This did interesting things to my writing process, forcing me to notice ways to reduce wordiness that were similar to writing a short conference proposal. In the end, however, I felt the lack of space hampered my ability to adequately address the topic. To solve this problem I altered the design to add sub-numbers (e.g., 5.1) to give myself more space for text. I borrowed this idea from the print design used for many technical manuals and reports.

The further an author moves into the realm of the experimental digital text, the more likely it is that he/she will experience problems such as the one Adrian Miles notes (see example 4b), when he discusses his efforts to arrange his text so that its "scholarly-ness" (np) can be appreciated by readers. The list on the left offers some specific examples of how the reading/writing experience is changed by integration with digital spaces.

First, the ways that an author of an EMPDE text can create associations -- connections that may be designed to persuade, argue or simply to explore ideas -- are based on a broad range of visual and linguistic tools, many of which have associations with more experimental, poetic textual productions. For example, in a traditional print scholarly article, an author is unlikely to attempt to create associations by forcing a reader to perceive gaps in his/her knowledge visually or spatially, or to ask the reader to manipulate visual objects and perceive associations through interactive means, both of which are possible in experimental digital texts.

The reader, in turn, experiences these connections and associations in ways that are mediated by the digital environment. In a traditional scholarly article, the reader uses memory skills that allow him/her to place ideas in particular ways, including a sense of the article's overall length, the association of particular ideas with visuals such as graphs or statistical charts, and the visual chunking of texts into paragraphs, pages, and sections. While many of the skills used to read EMPDE texts are similar in some ways, they can be radically different in others, and they are often not consistent across different texts, even in the same journal. As a result, the reader navigates, and consequently remembers his/her reading differently -- perhaps through the memory of clicking/linking in particular ways, or by remembering the response of the text to his/her manipulations.

When readers encounter texts that seem to demand or require aesthetic appreciation, those perceived demands can supercede the author's attention to issues of scholarly concern. In other words, readers may have difficulty assessing and incorporating texts that make seemingly conflicting artistic and scholarly demands.

When we think about the difference between composing and reading EMPDE texts and traditional print scholarship, I believe we intuitively see many of the key alterations -- we simply understand that it is different. A much more comprehensive analysis is, I think, needed to more clearly define and examine these differences, and to understand how they impact the perception and practical use of texts that are designed to achieve the aims of scholarship.

I also think it's important to examine how these difference can sometimes act as impediments to the production and reception of EMPDE texts. For example, it's common for new (and even experienced) digital readers to feel a sense of alienation from texts that ask them to employ unfamiliar practices. In some cases, this alienation is productive -- causing the reader to pause, and sometimes re-think his or her expectations. However, it's also possible that frustrated readers will refuse to spend the time necessary to tease out the scholarly value of a text that seems to actively resist such efforts.

Unfortunately, it can be difficult (or even impossible) for authors of EMPDE texts to predict the different ways a reader might approach an experiment digital text, including issues of reader choice and issues related to hardware and software that affect the reading process for digital texts. In composing a traditional print text, an author can make a host of assumptions about how his/her text will be read, and although these assumptions will not encompass all possible readings, they will generally provide adequate support for the composing process. The author can also employ a combination of his/her knowledge of rhetorical, grammatical, and visual structures with his/her assumptions about reading styles, and use this combined knowledge to create a fairly accurate picture of what readers might need in order to access the content of the text.

In an experimental digital text, however, authors have fewer models to emulate, and exponentially more choices to consider when thinking about what a reader may or may not do with the text. Additionally, the affordances of software can sometimes prevent authors from designing the text in ways that they feel readers would find useful. It is simple enough to illustrate the frustration that can accompany these endeavors by thinking of the irritation authors of traditional print articles feel when readers “miss the point.” For the authors of EMPDE texts, it is sometimes not even possible to assume that a reader will understand how to >see the point, as can happen when the connection between visual and textual elements is not attended to carefully.

The list on the left contains, I believe, five key aspects of composing and reading practices for EMPDE productions, which can be valuable locations for detailed observation and reflection.

• Visual & Navigational Planning: These are activities through which EMPDE authors make choices about the ways their texts will look and behave. These involve not only choices regarding layout and visual arrangement, but also choices about the kinds of tools authors use to make and arrange visual elements for their texts. Additionally, since very basic navigational differences can have a significant effect on the reception of a text, it is important to examine not only the texts themselves but the processes of composing and reading that may differ most dramatically from traditional scholarship.
• Peripherality: Because EMPDE texts involve exceptionally complex composing processes, we need to gain a better understanding of how authors and readers move in and out of these texts. Peripheral activities -- for example, stopping to learn how to embed a movie clip into a Flash document or to download a shockwave player -- have a significant impact on both the composing processes and reading experiences.

• Ephemeral Transitioning: Since transitions in EMPDE texts are often different from the sentence-level choices and structural elements of traditional scholarship, authors must consider how to connect ideas in different ways -- often these choices are dictated by the software, or the serendipitous synthesis that occurs when, literally, playing with stuff in the software. Since these transitions are ephemeral (by which I mean they occur but they are not necessarily explicit or even planned), it is often hard to control or keep track of them in ways that allow the author to hypothesize effectively about the reader experience.

• Time/Space Relationships: We not only need to examine how time/space are perceived differently in the reception of EMPDE texts, we can also consider how the stop-and-go process of doing different things at different times (playing with software, writing things or drawing things on the paper or on the computer, etc.) may actually have a generative effect on the way the author understands his/her ideas. This is also true of the reading process, in which the reader's perception of the text (its aesthetic or scholarly value) may be affected by contextual elements that might seem to be completely related. For example, a reader's Internet connection speed or level of experience with different required readers (Adobe Acrobat, Flash Player, Quicktime) can affect the reading in significant ways.

The research entailed in examining the processes and activities connecting the production and reception of EMPDE texts is beyond the scope of one single researcher. Additionally, smaller-scale studies, while valuable, do not offer the opportunity to create complex reading/production profiles that can be analyzed from several different perspectives. As a result, I would like to propose here a project that would seek to identify areas of research on reading and writing digital practices. Ideally, such research would be collected and stored digitally, so that it could be accessed by scholars in different locations, who would bring different perspectives to the analysis of the data.

As a first effort in developing this project, I would like to begin to collect auto-ethnographic accounts of reading and writing practices involving EMPDE texts. Particularly since members of the Kairos/Computers & Writing/Computers and Composition community are early adopters and potential authors and teachers of scholarly/experimental hybrids, I believe that this audience is well suited to begin this work.

There are multiple goals for this first phase of the research project. First, these accounts will help us understand what practices readers and writers engage in related specifically to EMPDE texts, as well as how they perceive the differences between more conventional scholarly work and experimental digital texts. Another important goal is to mine these accounts for behaviors and practices that shed light on how we can begin to develop guidelines for producing such texts, and for justifying these productions as scholarly work. Finally, we can begin to consider what aspects of scholarly/digital hybrids are most important to our work as instructors -- helping us to teach our students not only to experiment, but to produce texts that push the boundaries of scholarship.

Individuals or co-authors interested in participating in the project, can choose to create auto-ethnographic accounts of either their reading or composing practices. Interested individuals can contact me at jwalker2@stpt.usf.edu

The purposes of these accounts would be to gain a better understanding of complex reading/writing activities and, ultimately, to articulate both the features of scholarly experimental digital texts and to provide guidelines for authors as they work to create them.

Talking Heads: This odd little image was the title page for my 2005 C&W presentation. It was inspired by Cheryl Ball's article,"Show, Not Tell" (2004). Cheryl (both she and I acknowledging the purposeful informality of using first names in citations) asked some important questions about what constitutes new media and included a critique of an article that I co-authored with Carrie Lamanna, Joseph Squier, and Kathie Gossett (2002). Cheryl argued that this article (and many others) are, in fact, scholarship about new media rather than scholarship that truly explores the potential of new media tools and forms.

Cheryl sent an advanced copy of "Show, Not Tell" to me -- wanting to make sure I understood that her critique of the article did not suggest that the piece lacked value, simply that it did not represent the kind of experimental text she hoped to encourage from scholars in our field. In her email, she mentioned that if I was offended by her critique we could arrange for a "jell-o wrestling match" to settle our differences. In response, I created an image of two mud wrestlers, put our heads on top, and used the image in my opening slide at the C&W conference presentation. (The entire image is not reproduced here because of copyright issues.)

In a way, the remediation of this image to this space (an article in Kairos) seems inappropriate -- or at the very least difficult to explain. However, the modularity (Manovich, 2001) of the image is an important aspect of new media compositions. Not only am I re-using the image, I am allowing the image, with all of its informal associations, to retain space within this new composition. In this space, the image helps remind me of my central argument: that in order to understand why we don't have more new media, we need to understand what makes new media hard to do.

Example Notes: This sketch is the first draft for the layout of this article. It was created at the Computers and Writing conference in June 2005. Even this simple little sketch illustrates some of the important differences in composition activities that accompany digital texts. (Editors' note: For another example of simple drawings carrying compositional weight, see Rich Rice and Cheryl Ball's storyboard of their webtext in this same issue.) For a print-based traditional article, an author might make brief notes or a more formal outline. He/she might even draw boxes, arrows, or otherwise represent relationships and ideas.

But for a digital text, one of the author's first priorities will be to develop a concept for how the text will look. The author needs to understand visual relationships between elements on the page, and think about how the reader/user will navigate.

One of the problems this process can create regarding the value of digital texts is that evaluations of the product are made using expectations generated from our knowledge of traditional scholarship.

So, for example a tenure review committee may not only have difficulty recognizing the work that goes into creating a digital multimedia text, they may have trouble recognizing the artifact as a piece of scholarship, even if the work is made visible to them. As Steven Krause (2002) noted, this difficulty is often based on criteria related to context, such as the text's location in a recognized publication venue. However, other criteria, based on visual and structural organization of texts, are also at work -- and these boundaries are crossed regularly by experimental digital scholarship.

I think we've actually become used to seeing many of the elements that are included in this 1998 text, "Not a Convergence," by collaborative author(s), Myka Vielstimmig. However, they are worth noting here: the use of vivid images that are interconnected with the text, the use of color, the inclusion of non-linear links, a layout that does not follow the rectangular spatial affordances of print texts, and a mix of scholarly commentary with multi-voiced and often casual interjections.

The problem for new media composition is certainly not that informal text, or non-linearity, or the use of images are not a part of the academic tradition. But scholarship using digital tools has often included combinations of these elements that were dramatically different from print scholarship of the late 20th century. It is the cumulative effect of these differences on both composers and reader/users that I think we must work to more fully understand.

When an author composes in such a space, how does he situate himself (vis-a-vis the text) in time and space? How does this process of situation affect the way he creates text, associates ideas, or conceptualizes arguments? When a reader encounters such a text, how does the alternative structure, layout, organization, and style impact the reading? In what ways?

The example above, a text recently published by Brian Houle, Alex Kimball, and Heidi McKee (2004), discusses the way that Alex's exploration of Macromedia Flash created an unintentional, but useful, effect on the user's reading experience. The article is experimental in form and seeks to examine and disrupt concepts of sexuality and identity. One of the most experimental features of "Boy/Girl" is the way that the sound files can be manipulated by the user.

Clicking on multiple sound files at the same time creates a chorus of masculine and feminine voices, each offering different but thematically related statements. This effect mirrors one of the primary goals of the text, which is to question the boundaries of masculine/feminine identity.

This effect was unintentional, created by the author's incomplete knowledge of the software tools. In a presentation at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in 2005, McKee reflected on the ways the unexpected use of a tool (in this case actually a coding error) worked to create a more powerful reading experience.

This example illustrates how experimental digital multimedia texts can result in structures that (sometimes unintentionally) affect the reading of the text in profound ways. This kind of synchronicity contributes to both the value of such texts and to the difficulties of rigid categorization of such texts as scholarly or not scholarly, particularly since the accidentally fortuitous association of elements in a text has not been an explicit component of traditional scholarly work.

This example of a print article for the journal Computers and Composition includes several visual elements that are consistent across all the articles in the journal. Headers mark the sections clearly while keywords allows a user to file this text in a database or make informal organizational notes. Citation information is clearly indicated at the top of the page.

EMPDE texts, however, require different kinds of navigational tools. Locke Carter (1997) explained that hypertext documents require both authors and readers to understand a broad metaphor for the space of the document, which authors often explain explicitly in an "overview" link (p. 158).

This effort can be seen in the collection of texts titled Violence of Text, published in Kairos in 2003. The editor, Adrian Miles, explicitly states, "without an introductory road map the work that has been achieved here risks being misunderstood as net art rather than the tentative experiment towards novel forms of academic writing that it is" (np).

All three of these theories address the importance of texts such as the one above. Created for an EMPDE text I completed in 2002, this map was an attempt to physically illustrate the relationship of linked nodes within the document. The functions of the map included mapping connections as I composed, as well as attempting to envision the reading pathways of users.

These types of artifacts are critical to an understanding of how the production of EMPDE texts differs from established print-based composition processes. Questions that might be asked regarding such artifacts include the following: How do such texts work as components of the composing process? Are these kinds of draft maps more likely to be physical than digital? If so, what kind of impact do these physical mapping activities have on the way EMPDE texts are conceived, composed, and revised?

As a discipline, we have not yet begun to collect and analyze such artifacts in any systematic way. Doing so will not only help us to better understand the relationship between experimental composing and scholarly compositions -- we will also gain valuable insights about the affordances of digital tools and spaces.

This piece by Heidi McKee, published in Computers and Composition in 2002, contains two sections that provide framework information: section 2 (Theoretical positioning) and section 3 (methodology). Within these two sections, McKee explained the theories she used to ground her work, the research she has done to find similar types of scholarship (an informal review of the literature), and practical information about the study and its participants.

Because texts in C&C use headers, but do not use the same headers (i.e., literature review, methods) for each article, reviewers tend to expect to find this information, but are fairly flexible regarding where, and how, it will be presented. In journals with more rigid header structures, readers are generally less willing to search out this information. It also seems important to note that the emphasis a journal places on the use of specific headers may reflect a disciplinary emphasis on certain models for conducting research.

The ease with which a reader can navigate McKee's (2002) text has several advantages. The clear structure helps to both identify McKee's expertise and clearly outline her research strategies. In addition, readers can use the structure of the text to help them identify potential weaknesses in the research methods or the findings. On the other hand, this familiar structure can also have the effect of concealing problems in these areas -- because the reader's familiarity causes him to gloss over weaknesses in much the same way that an author can find it difficult to proofread text she has just finished writing.

This EMPDE text created by Anne Wysocki for Kairos in 1998, uses similar citational cues to those appropriate for a traditional print text. In this section of the article, Wysocki is discussing the application of work by McLuhan and Ong to her own scholarship. The colored squares at the top of the screen indicate the reader's position in the article, spatially signifying that Wysocki may be concluding the framework section of the text and moving on to her own analysis. Indeed, the next node of the text expands outward, using examples to complicate the contributions of McLuhan and Ong.

Wysocki's text shows that composers of EMPDE texts can (and do) use visual and linguistic structures modeled on conventions for print-based texts. Hypothetically, these structures work in similar ways for readers. However, from a material rhetoric point of view, we must consider the possibility that a reader of Wysocki's text (situated, as it is in a digital archive on the Internet) would experience a sense of framing that is also based on spatial and relational cues that are different from those of a paper-based reading.

For example, if a reader of this text is affected by its context in a digital environment, then the text will be read (in some ways) like a traditional text, but other features (the use of visual cues to guide navigation and the chunking of the text into separate, visually isolated components) will seem very unfamiliar. As a result, we can no longer assume that Wysocki's use of quotations is read in the same way that a similar use of quotations would be read in a conventional text. Certainly it is less likely that a reader would automatically identify this section as a literature review.

This example from Adrian Miles' collection Violence of Text (2003) exhibits several navigational/textual features of EMPDE texts. For example, the main text (in the background) has room for approximately two paragraphs of text on one screen. To access additional text, readers must click on previous/next icons. Further, the list on the right hand side of this main text calls pop-up windows (pictured here as the foreground screen). Moving in and among these windows can cause readers to experience particular types of discontinuity (both visual/spatial and past/present/future).

This text also contains examples of other issues related to the transformation of scholarly ideas into a visually rich environment. However, although the text is explicitly framed as both scholarly and experimental, it is not clear in what way readers are expected to approach the text as scholarly, while the experimentation is foregroudned in many of the sub-texts. Closer examination of reader/composer activities might help provide a better understanding of how digital texts move between scholarly and experimental designs and goals.

For example, a directed, close reading of Miles' text might ask readers to explicitly identify when they encounter features that feel scholarly. They could then be asked to articulate (if possible) why they felt certain aspects of the text situated it as scholarly.

This screen capture from my reading of Ellen Cushman's Kairos article, "Composing New Media," (2004) shows some of the spatial/time elements that can be used to interpret EMPDE texts. This clip shows that I clicked frequently in various spots -- hoping that I could reveal more text or alter the composition in some way. I used the mouse to move around the screen, I click randomly on visuals that seem like they might provoke a response.

Because of the nature of this text, my memory of reading it centers on the movement of the watering can. I repeated this screen multiple times, and I was particularly struck by the metaphor. I also found, upon reflection, that I could recall only a few scraps of text from this article. My sense is that my need to experiment with its aesthetic qualities was stronger than my need to find print-based/traditional scholarly merit. Multiple readings helped me appreciate the ways the text created a unique blend of both scholarly and aesthetic merit.

It is fairly easy to hypothesize that one problem with our reading of EMPDE texts is that we have been taught to recognize images and image/texts as inherently less scholarly. This is undoubtedly true in many situations (most notably those that expect print-based, textually rich productions). However, a bias against image doesn't serve to explain or help to describe the continuum of our acceptance of image-rich texts. An important area of study, then, might be to examine the varying levels of image information that can be tolerated (or, rather, expected) by readers who are accustomed to print-based conventions in defining scholarship.

The video capture of my reading of Anne Wysocki's "A Bookling Monument" (2003) seems fairly static. However, for me the experience was deeply interactive, caught up, as I was, in a visceral representation of some of the ideas that this text seeks to examine. Indeed, Wysocki's text asked me to make use of my sense of frustration to see differently.

Wysocki's text is an incredibly rich EMPDE composition -- readings of which might provide a wealth of information about how readers approach and understand scholarly/experimental hybrids. As a brief note on structural cues, the above still images shows how difficult it can be to remember readings of such texts in traditional ways.

I use Madeleine Sorapure's (2004) "Five Principles of New Media," as an example of an EMPDE text that achieves a balance between experimentation and scholarly expectations. Of particular interest, in my opinion, is the design of the navigational elements, which allow a reading to move through a variety of screens and still maintain a sense of coherence.

As a preliminary assessment, I'd say that my reading of this text is successful because Sorapure combines my desire to experiment (things to click on, visual and aural representations to interact with) with my need for a navigational structure that allows me to access chunks of text (with appropriate citations) in a reliable way. As a result, I leave the text with a sense of having both played and learned.

Sorapure's text has many features that seem designed to offer transitions between the reader's expectations and the playfulness and remediation that distinguish EMPDE texts. In this way, her efforts are similar to my own -- to strike a balance between the conventions of scholarship and the challenges and opportunities of experimentation.

(Editors' note: To see another example of Sorapure's experimentation, please see her webtext in this issue - Between Modes: Assessing Students New Media Compositions - and play with the sound option, which mimics the sounds of the Computers and Writing conference location at Stanford.)

Individuals could also choose to participate by completing this online survey. The survey asks participants to explore one of four texts (all used as examples in this article) and to answer a set of brief questions regarding their reading practices. The survey can also be downloaded and completed as a Microsoft Word file, then emailed to jwalker2@stpt.usf.edu as an attachment. Completing the survey should take from one to three hours. Survey participants will also be asked to give consent for the use of their responses.

Take a survey on your reading practices of experimental, digital (EMPDE) texts.

Additionally, I'd like to note here that this project is one that could benefit greatly from the work of multiple colleagues -- not only as participants, but as researchers who bring their own unique perspectives to the collected information. Individuals interested in potentially working with this information, collecting different kinds of data on digital reading/writing practices, or working on the digital repository should contact me jwalker2@stpt.usf.edu

Joyce R. Walker