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Fretwork NOTES:
HiPitched Voices was a hypertext collective of about 35 women begun in Summer, 1993. The participants were from broadly varied backgrounds and ages, and were interested in learning more about hypertext or in using it in their work, whether that was in art or scholarship or business or any other occupation. A special emphasis was given to collaborative work. The strongest group activity was the hypertext writing project in the Voices wing of Hypertext Hotel, a MOO dedicated to hypertext writing. The collaborative and individual work done there by Voices women, and others who visited the MOO, was a free-ranging hypertext, arrested in process approximately a year after it began by the sudden emergence of the World Wide Web. The writing done in this project was not like poetry slams which continue to be practiced in other places on the Internet. The Voices MOO hypertext was more varied in style, and for the most part, less immediately spontaneous. Because of access limitations, most of it was written offline and then added to the hypertext online. Spontaneity was more represented by the making of links by readers and writers, which had the effect of actually changing the form and meaning of the work.
Hypertext HotelMOO had its origins in an ongoing classroom writing experiment conducted by Robert Coover at Brown University. At that time it was a hypertext structure on disk that successive classes of writing students worked on. Visiting writers also contributed to the work. When Tom Meyer, a Brown graduate student, conceived of a way to translate Storyspace files (the program used for the Hotel) into a MOO space, Hypertext HotelMOO was launched. The opening of the MOO included two new wings, one devoted to HiPitched Voices work, and the other to the first online version of David Blair's movie Wax. (http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/wax/). As a MOO, the Hotel was devoted entirely to hypertext writing.
Hypertext Hotel today exists in a partial form on the Web (http://www.update.ch/beluga/hotel.html). The move from a MOO environment was undertaken without enough resources or interest and has apparently never been completed. Almost all of the writing done in the Voices wing was sadly lost in the transition.
A mola is a fabric panel which has been layered, often very complexly, in reverse-applique patterns or images, and used as the bodice section of the blouses worn by the Kuna women of Panama. The few records of the time indicate that when Europeans reached Panama in the 17th century, the Kuna women probably did not cover their upper bodies but instead painted them in geometric designs. It is possible that missionaries persuaded them to transfer their traditional torso paintings to decorated clothing. Today, the Kuna people are one of the few examples of an ancient culture which has survived contact with modern Western society.
Anne Johnstone was a hypertext poet and one of the earliest participants in HiPitched Voices. She was responsible for obtaining sponsorship from Washington University at St. Louis, which provided an email list and an ftp site. She continued to work in support of Voices with unflagging enthusiasm, energy, and time. Anne contributed to the work on the MOO, designed and created a "tour" for the Voices wing, and set up and moderated the live conference session for Computers and Writing in Spring, 1994. Anne's untimely death on February 28, 1995, left us all stunned with the dimension of her absence.
Fretwork REFERENCES:
Block, Stephanie. Discussion remarks. Hypertext workshop. Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY. Sept., 1992.
Butler, Priscilla, ed. "Emily'sRoom." Sequence of lexias in HiPitched Voices wing of Hypertext Hotel MOO. Providence: http://www.cs.brown.edu:7000/, 1994.
Chadha, Gurinder, dir. Bhaji on the Beach. Great Britain: First Look Productions, 1993.
Cixous, Helene. "The Last Painting or the Portrait of God" and "Coming to Writing." "Coming to Writing" and Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991. (p. 105 and p. 25)
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. "The Smooth and The Striated." A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988.
Doctorow, E.L. "Out of the Parlor and Into the Fray." Rev. of Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life, by Joan D. Hedrick. New York Times Book Review, 13 Feb. 1994.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Colored People. New York: Knopf, 1994. (p. 8)
Guyer, Carolyn. "Buzz-Daze Jazz and the Quotidian Stream." Panel on Hypertext, Hypermedia: Defining a Fictional Form, MLA Convention. New York, 28 Dec. 1992.
Haraway, Donna J. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. (p. 193 and p. 190)
Irigaray, Luce. Elemental Passions. New York: Routledge, 1992. (p. 57)
Johnstone, Anne. "fffff." Poem in HiPitched Voices wing of Hypertext Hotel MOO. Providence: http://www.cs.brown.edu:7000/, 1994.
Joyce, Michael. Address. Art 21, NEA National Conference on the Arts. Chicago, April, 1994.
Lippard, Lucy R. Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1990. (p. 8)
Ormezzano, Florence. "Florence's Telephone Booth." Sequence of lexias in HiPitched Voices wing of Hypertext Hotel MOO. Providence: http://www.cs.brown.edu:7000/, 1994.
Reagon, Bernice Johnson. "Coalition Politics: Turning the Century." Home Girls. Ed. Barbara Smith. New York: Kitchen Table Press, 1983. (p. 358)
Schlossberg, Edwin. "For My Father." About Bateson. Ed. John Brockman. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1977. (p. 158 and p. 159)
Trinh T. Min-ha. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. (p. 2)
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