Nonlinearity Today

When one talks about nonlinear narratives, what is often understood today is a plot structure applied to books and films only. Yet decentered, disordered and dispersed nature of nonlinearity manifests itself in various ways nowadays thanks to technological developments, such as the internet. The World Wide Web, for example, is an information system where documents are interlinked by hypertexts, which in turn are interconnected with hyperlinks that lead to multiple paths and endpoints. A click in a search engine can be a basic example to understanding how hyperlinks work: keywords bring many results out of order. On the other hand, interactive books may simultaneously contain multiple endings and beginnings, leading to inspiration of nonlinear ‘gameplay’, allowing users to put together different pieces of a potentially puzzling storyline.

The same approach is adopted by journalists and scholars. Sharon Daniel, a digital media professor and activist, launched a series of projects called Blood Sugar and Public Secrets in a nonlinear format. Public Secrets is constructed out of algorithmic quotes and records of incarcerated women who experienced social and economic injustices in the context of a broad spectrum of public institutions such as prisons, criminal justice and public education systems.


Blood Sugar- Sharon Daniel

On the other hand, Blood Sugar focuses on drug users and public health systems in the U.S. Recorded statements made by incarcerated women and excerpts from theoretical texts are algorithmically juxtaposed in constantly shifting narratives organized by topic, theory and speaker. The interface is constructed out of quotes. Each screen or view constitutes a kind of emergent and transient, multi-vocal text. These texts and images are framed by animated voice-over narration. In the introduction, a piece of anecdotal theory takes the viewer alongs the boundary between inside and outside. In the end, a voice-over leads to an advocacy tool-kit titled ‘what you can do’.1

1 http://artsites.ucsc.edu/sdaniel/on_politics_and_aesthetics.pdf
http://www.interactivefactual.net/interview-sharon-daniel/
http://vectors.usc.edu/projects/index.php?project=57

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