Book Description

Hypertext was going to revolutionize the very way in which we read and write. However, while hypertext's non-linearity has been embraced by enthusiasts keen to experiment with interactive literary genres, to date, the non-linear medium has made little impact on scholarly discourse and argumentation, which have traditionally heavily relied on linearity. Is this because hypertextual narrative is simply incompatible with the requirements of certain genres? Or could it be that hypertext's essential characteristics have yet to be fully understood and exploited? Cinematic Hypertext is for theorists and designers ready to consider a new paradigm for framing the medium and its characteristics: film. Clara Mancini guides the reader through an eclectic mix of ideas from technology, psycholinguistics, visual design, narratology and film theory. En route, Cinematic Hypertext offers an intellectual workout for media theorists and coherence relations scholars, with analyses of cinematic grammars, film clips, hypertexts, and hypertext systems, grounded in an underlying theory of Cognitive Coherence Relations.Those ready to build experimental systems will find design principles and guidelines, and the evidence reported will be of particular interest to those wondering if the theory behind cinematic hypertext is valid empirically. The result is a novel way of thinking about hypertext which complements existing hypertext paradigms, with Mancini inviting the reader to design hypertexts capable of communicating through a visual language inspired by the power of cinema.