“Notes Toward a Mental Breakdown – An Interactive Fiction” by Ballard, Christensen and Ernst
Conference:
Type(s):
Title:
- Notes Toward a Mental Breakdown - An Interactive Fiction
Program Title:
- G-Tech
Organizer(s)/Presenter(s):
Description:
The 1976 story by English author J.G. Bollard that forms the base material of this work consists of a single 18-word sentence, each word of which is footnoted. The interplay between the footnotes constitutes the narrative detail of the story. This formalist structure has many similarities to the linked text structures we hove come to call “hypertext. ” This hypermedia realization is on extension of that basic structure, expanding the number and complexity of the links, adding illustrations, and grounding the (new) whole in a computer-mediated form. The illustrations that accompany the text are derived from Max Ernst’s 1934 collage novel Une Semoine de Bonte. There are significant connections between Ballard and Ernst (one of Ernst’s poems is quoted in Notes…) and Ballard has produced collage art of his own. Finally, collage is one of the forms associated with post-modern sensibility. It is only appropriate that this interactive realization use the collage sensibility, transforming it into a new medium. 1934, 1976, 1992: Notes Toward a Mental Breakdown should be seen as a collaboration between three “authors” over a span of years and involving quite different aesthetic worlds.
