The Web and the Word
Faculty Mentor Garrett Doherty and Student Bryan Cook
In “The Web and the Word,” a creative activity project, SURF student Bryan Cook worked on the problem of how to present literary texts online. He made a portfolio of online presentations that emphasized the artistic and experimental presentation of text on the Web. That portfolio of online “book art” and online textual experiment will be presented to the College of Charleston community, at the Associated Writing Programs 2008 conference, and on the Crazyhorse website and e-newsletter.
Bryan approached the project with these considerations in mind: There are not many everyday online reading experiences that are also artistic experiences. Text, on the average Web page in view of the average Web reader, focuses overwhelmingly on function and not form – and artistic form hardly at all. Many online reading experiences and textual interactions are uniform and unexciting, and most text on the Web emphasizes the speed and practicality of routine data-delivery: we fill in the ubiquitous data fields on the “Submit Order” page; our online banking webpage presents us the gray-bordered spreadsheet data; CNN.com or NewYorkTimes.com presents neat columns of text in the standard ten- or twelve-point Arial or Helvetica font.
We get much useful, practical text from the Web, but reading it on the screen is not a memorable, elevating, or aesthetic experience. But why couldn’t or shouldn’t it be? Given the great job the Web does at disseminating and delivering visual or aural artistic experiences (think of all the downloads of songs and symphonies you can listen to, or of all the art history archives and YouTube movies you can look at), why could it not also provide a compelling and artistic text-reading experience for the Web viewer?
who illustrated and was a printmaker for his own books of poetry; a renaissance of the use of hand-made papers and antique letterpresses. In terms of our project’s goal, the question becomes: how can this project in some similar way bring the book arts to the Web and present words online that are as engaging, interesting, experimental, and pleasurable to read as the book arts are on paper?