everything

is

text

Please, read it on your laptop.

Hypertext as a

Metagenre of

Modern Art

Abstract

In my thesis I am introducing the notion of‘a hypertext’ as a ‘metagenre’ of modern time, where ‘hypertext’ is verbal and non-verbal information organized according to the principle of ‘rhizome’: a structure, where all elements are autonomous, but reference each other, allowing one to create one’s own connections between them and therefore construct an individual interpretation. (Jan Jacques Rousseau, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Pierre-Félix Guattari, Theodor H. Nelson). A ‘metagenre’ refers to a method of interacting with culture, when an experience is neither absorbed through a strict quantity-quality canoon, nor through sharply defined signs of a composition, but through a conceptual position.

It reflects the culture and the spirit of the times. Metagenre is always interdisciplinary and in this case it is formed under the influence of the paradigm shift (Marchall Mcluhan, E.J.Burlina), caused by the rapid development of technology in the 20th century, merging various types of media into one, where each of the components is relatively autonomous, but is an integral part of the whole. Extracting one component will not destroy the system, but will make the component meaningless.

In this paper I will examine several interdisciplinary artworks, that combine language, literature and graphic design as an example of the metagenre (Voynich Manuscript, Codex Seraphinianus, works of Jim Sanborn and Neo Rauch etc.). I believe researching the metagenre will help to bridge the devision between multiple media and will advance the interpretation of multimedia artworks.

So, what does the interdisciplinary reality mean for a creative world?

The inability to analyse interdisciplinary work holistically, rather than just its separate components is dictated by the limitations of separate disciplines. This means that there is a demand for a new type of analysis. Interdisciplinary artworks should be analysed from a conceptual point of view, which is flexible and subject to personal interpretation, because of the new level to which a recepient is involved in the creative process.

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Unknown author, Voynich Manuscript, 1400e

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Luigi Seraphini, Codex Seraphinianus, 1981

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Jim Sanborn, Kryptos, 1990

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Neo Rauch, Die Vorführung, 2006

   
Introduction

A commonly held view is that there are divisions within disciplines and studies, applied science and arts, technical and humanitarian approaches. The result is an ‘interdisciplinary blindness’, when specialists work with narrow fields, so particularly oriented on one problem or question that the evaluation of something interdisciplinary becomes an assignment for a group of people and the process is not viewed as a whole anymore, but is being divided in many pieces for examination. This approach often creates successful, though very specific views of any phenomena studied. With regard to development of contemporary technology, disciplines intertwine and the world becomes more ambiguous and opaque, when it comes to definitions. More and more things merge into one and it is harder to assign categories. In the art sphere this process becomes visible through the appearance and the rapid increase in value of such terms as multimedia, interactive multimedia, mixed media, hypermedia. Thus we should take notice that interdisciplinarity as a phenomenon has all rights to be treated not as a new tendency, but as a full scale process, that embraces not just the creative sphere, but many more. Interdisciplinarity occurs as a result of the merging of two or more disciplines, that used to be autonomous and separated by the rules, traditions and technologies of a particular genre and previous epoques. These separations have collapsed in our coreless shifting postmodernist world.

Most importantly, in this thesis I am zooming in on the merging of linguistics, literature, art in general and graphic design in particular into one interdisciplinary metagenre, which is a form of expression, that takes place simultaneously in several spheres of art: literature, music, visual art, sculpture, etc. and reflects the feelings and tendencies of today.

In earlier times structuralists considered that the principles of the systematizing of information are axiomatic, normative and over all constant. However, the humanitarian paradigm of the second half of the 20th century shows that these principles possess a rather conditional character. The poststructuralist approach to them will be set apart in this thesis by addressing the works of Jan Jacques Rousseau, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Pierre-Félix Guattari and Jean-Franaois Lyotard. Previously, stucturalistic approach created strict classifications and divisions between genres and spheres of media. It has changed nowadays and the world is understood differently: everything may vary and alterate, depending on a recipient (a subject, who receives and reacts to a message, addressed to him). The introduction of the World Wide Web has created a playground and a possibility for multimedia implementation and the direct participation of a viewer in a creative process. This development is a graphic demonstration of a shift in social consciousness, that is visible in both the analogue and the digital worlds. I am referencing the works of Marschall Mcluhan, discussing his theory of typographic man, which explains how following cultural and technical developments influence social processes, focusing on creative fields of language, literature and visual art. Supposing this reasoning is correct, interdisciplinarity becomes an integral part of our development and demands a definition of the metagenre.

In the first part of the thesis, I describe what a modern metagenre is. My reasoning follows the poststructuralist theory of language and literature to show that they can be applied to analyze the visual arts, uniting those disciplines in one. Through the prism of such notions as hypertext and rhizome that are a way of information organization in this case, seeing the world through language and interpretations, I address its expression in visual arts. Here hypertext represents a type of information (embracing verbal and non-verbal one) and rhizome – the way of a hypertext structure. When it comes to the hypertext, people tend to divide into two groups: whose who know the term from the technological scientific point of view and those who approach hypertext linguistically.

As George P. Landow wittily noticed, one of the most important parallels between computer hypertext and critical theory is that ‘critical theory promises to theorize hypertext and hypertext promises to embody and thereby test the aspects of theory, particularly that concerning textuality, narrative and the roles or functions of a reader and writer’. I am naming both, as I see the unity of these definitions as an integral part for the understanding of the concept of the term. All in all, these are just two different approaches to describe the same thing in a different form: analogue and digital.

In the second part I examine interdisciplinarity and its existent examples. I have a closer look at the interdisciplinarity of language sciences and visual arts, by analyzing the following works: Voynich Manuscript, ‘Kryptos’ by Jim Sanborn, works by Neo Rauch and I will especially concentrate on the ‘Codex Serafinianus’ by Luigi Seraphini, as an example of a metagenre. All the named works, and many more that I haven’t mentioned, in my mind, represent a certain shift in the approach to art itself.

The immense explosion of new technology and the opportunities that followed it, erased the lines in media separation. The media world today is far more complex then it used to be. Disciplines keep on merging. Creative professionals will have to work in multidiscipline teams to make progress. The media boom has also broadened up the definition of art, freeing it from the limitations of genres and canons, creating one metagenre for the whole epoque and allowing a recipient to actualise connections between the elements of a work and participate in creative processes. The very way of modern thinking is shifting, becoming fragmented: understanding of order has changed and getting from one way to another in a linear way seems inefficient. As it was mentioned in the book the ‘Fantasies of the Library’, where Anna-Sophie Springer develops her theory on the ‘paginated mind’, we have to reimagine the relations between research, discipline, and creativity.’ And it could not have happened in any other age, than in the age of hypertext and fragmented thinking we are experiencing right now. The question is: how to approach and deal with these works?

Next, I make a conclusion out of the analysis and describe the a metagenre with an ascent on its dominant features. I elaborate on what shape could it take in the world of a rapidly developing technology, what place does it take in a graphic design world and what is possible to learn and discover from this type of information organization.

Hypertext:the unity of definitions

‘Man lives with his objects chiefly–in fact, since his feeling and acting depends on his perceptions, one may say exclusively–as language presents them to him. By the same process whereby he spins language out of his own being, he ensnares himself in it, and each language draws a magic circle round the people to which he belongs.’

In 1967 in one of his first published books ‘Of Grammatology’, the father of ‘Deconstruction’, a french philosopher and literature theotician Jacques Derrida bravely states ‘There’s nothing outside the text’.

Such a provocative statement outside of content sounds idealistically and as somewhat hard to relate to. Nevertheless, it uncovers one of the two most fundamental topics of postmodernism, which defines its problematics as: what is reality? He reviewed the earlier definition of reality already given by the structuralists. They believed that reality perception is structured as a language and laws of the world follow the analogues of laws of grammar. Their view on reality was characterized by such terms as’ linear’, ‘logical’,’hierarchical’ and they believed that everything can be understood.

They were trying to explain and describe the world as a whole, create the philosophy of unity, when Derrida questioned the whole necessity of creating one general structure for all.

Derrida’s statement comes as a form of discussion about something that Jan Jacques Rousseau before had pointed out in his work. Rousseau was investigating the question of the language origin. He compared language to the lens with a small distortion through which we see the world, a certain obstacle on the way of observation. Derrida developed the idea of Rousseau because we, being verbal creatures, look at everything from the lens of language, any piece of information we receive empirically must be interpreted in our minds, as well as any text we read, meaning that there is nothing outside the language.

‘Between being and mind, things and feelings, there would be a relationship of translation or natural signification; between mind and logos, a relationship of conventional symbolization.’ He implied that our way of engaging with the world is essentially textual, marked, as all language is, with ambiguity.

By using word ‘text’ Derrida, as most of the postmodernist thinkers, addresses another term, which was defined several years earlier and carried a name ‘hypertext’. Hypertext is a term invented by Theodor H. Nelson in the 1960s, that describes the form of text as ‘...nonsequential writing – text that branches and allows choices to the reader...a series of chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways’. It is a medium that links verbal and non-verbal information.

Today, hypertext is a way to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will. It provides a single user-interface to large classes of information (reports, notes, data-bases, computer documentation and on-line help). Where a database management system is a collection of programs that enables one to store, modify, and extract information from a database. One of the great examples of a computational hypertext is a work by Olia Lialina ‘My Boyfriend Came Back From War’ made in 1996. It has become the first engaging hyper text net art narrative in which the story unfolds by clicking on images and texts in various sized windows within the frame. Lialina uses a frame-hypertext narrative strategy resulting in possibilities to play with semantically occupied fields, provoking readers to follow the prearranged narrative direction.

Both, literally theorists and computer theorists, while talking about hypertext, in essence address the same abandonment of ideas of hierarchy, center or margins. The French poststructuralist Roland Barthes describes the ideal text, as something that precisely matches something that has come to be called computer hypertext – ‘text, composed of blocks of words (or images) linked electronically by multiple paths, chains, or trails in an opened, perpetually unfinished textuality, described by the terms link, node, web etc’, where ‘the networks (reseaux) are many and interact, without any one of them being able to surpass the rest; this text is a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signefields; it has no beginning, it is reversible, we gain access by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the code it mobilizes extends as far as the eye can reach.’

Another interesting argument was given by Jean-François Lyotard. Though, the argument has to do with the problem of fragmentation and delegitimation of knowledge, it is applicable towards the unity of computational and critical theories. In traditional societies, legitimation of cultural, social, political and technological spheres was bestowed by what Lyotard calls ‘grand narrative’ and the power structures built around those grand narratives such as The Holy Bible for the Christian world, Mahabharata and Ramayana for the Hindu world, and Torah for the Jewish world etc. The knowledge inside those books was a manual guide of morality. During the last two centuries, science has become a discourse in itself and has made an attempt to take the sacred position once held by the respective grand narratives of various societies. As a concequence, according to Lyotard, we now have two definite domains of knowledge. One is scientific or technical knowledge and the other is narrative knowledge. Where ‘narrative knowledge’ is understood as the kind of knowledge prevalent in ‘traditional’ societies, and is based on storytelling, sometimes in the form of ritual, music and dance. Arts, as we call it. Yet, as Masaki Yada, a Japanese visual artist, has astutely noted out in her essay, the disadvantage of scientific/technical knowledge does not represent the totality of human knowledge and thus cannot offer total legitimacy to the way we live and the way we understand our world. So instead of becoming trees in themselves, scientific knowledge and narrative knowledge could form rhizomes with the world and grow together.

Hypertextuality in literature was introduced quite early and is a characteristic feature of the written text, that doesn’t have linear narrative, which is used to create the effect of a game, one of the main features of the postmodernistic literature: the reader forms a storyline himself, broadening the possibilities of reading. It is often called a hypertext fiction or erodic literature. Among the most famous examples of such a structure are: ‘Dictionary of the Khazars’ by Milorad Pavic, which takes the form of three parallel encyclopedias dealing with the same historical events, ‘Hopscotch’ with its multiple paths of reading by Julio Cortázar, ‘Book of Imaginary Beings’ an encyclopedia, where the imaginary creatures of imaginary world are described, ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’ by Jorge Luis Borges–a short story, where the plot itself describes the idea of infinite texts, ‘Finnegans Wake’ by James Joyce, where the author has abandoned the narrative conventions and the plot creates the ouroboros structure, consists of multiple allusions and neologisms, making almost unlimited space for the interpretation. Also ‘Pale Fire’ by Vladimir Nabokov ‘can be read either unicursally, straight through, or multicursally, jumping between the comments and the poem’ as it was noted out by Espen Aarseth. Thus although the narration is non-linear and multidimensional, the reader can still choose to read the novel in a linear manner without risking misinterpretation. Another example is a ‘House of Leaves’ by Mark Z. Danielewski with its unconventional layout. It contains copious footnotes, many of which contain footnotes themselves, including references to fictional books, films or articles. Some pages contain only a few words or lines of text, arranged in strange ways to mirror the events in the story, often creating both an agoraphobic and a claustrophobic effect. The novel is also distinctive for its multiple narrators, who interact with each other in elaborate and disorienting ways.The amount of material, its various forms, and the ability of the reader to choose what links within links to pursue, creates the possibility of ever new connections being developed through abrupt juxtapositions.

All of these books drive the reader into a wandering, multi-pathed perusal of the text, typically confusing readers, who try to read them as continuous linear texts. They all use typographical devices to direct the reader here and there, leaving the physical format of the book just as it has existed for centuries. Readers now make their own books out of the materials the author has prepared, becoming in a real sense co-authors of the work.

Consequently, hypertext is a form of organization of a material the components of which are presented not linear, but as a system of clearly marked possible transitions between those units, connections between them. And if follow these connections one may receive material in a any order, creating linear texts. The notion of hypertext is usually associated with ‘nonlinear, or, more properly as multilinear or multisequential’, the conception of ‘textual openness, intertextuality, and the irrelevance of distinctions between inside and outside a particular text’, and the cultivation of multivocality, in that ‘hypertext does not permit a tyrannical, univocal voice’.

After all earlier mentioned examples, one may notice, that taking its beginning in analogue world in a form of a codex, a hypertext reached out far from the margins of one media format. Hypertext became a multimedia phenomena and is dominating not only over the modern ways of information perception, but also its interpretation. With the development of the Internet, the revival of a text-based culture took place. The image is present but secondary in the interactions with the computer screen. Any visual information becomes a code, which is textual in its essence. Everything we put online becomes a part of a hypertext. Through Google, for example, we enter the world of hypertext directly. There’s a choice to ‘search by image’, but it is also secondary. Nowadays, indeed, Derida’s statement ‘there’s nothing outside the text’ obtains a new meaning. It changes our analogue world as well. Art can be considered as a hypertext as well. An art world, to give a technical definition, consists of the network of cooperative activity involving all the people who contribute to the work of art coming off as it finally does, using the conventional understandings they share.

Moreover, the borders between the artistic disciplines has disappeared as well. Painters make sculptures (as Franc Stella with his paintings-sculptures), artists – make music and videos (Ed Atkins and his installations), architects paint (Eric Staller and his light graffiti), designers who make interactive installations (as Dutch Studio Lust) etc. Therefore, the works like Voynich Manuscript, ‘Codex Serafiniauris’ by Luigi Seraphini, works by Neo Rauch and Jim Sanborn are interesting to examine as the examples of the analogue hypertext form from the point of view of modern metagenre.

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Olia Lialina, My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, 1996

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Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves, 2000

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Frank Stella, Raft of the Medusa, 1990

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Eric Staller, Ribbon on Hannover Street, 2000

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LUST, Type/Dynamics, 2013

   
Rhizome as a from of information organisation

Returning to Derrida and Barthes, we think figuratively and the world is text because we are able to systematize and to put figures in a certain order, manner. And every complex of organized signs is, in a way, a text. Therefore all our culture in general and our consciousness in particular – are the complexes of discourses and texts systematized in a certain way. When readers move through the network of texts, they continuously shift the organizing principle of it, changing their experience. Hypertext provides a re-centerable system, whose center depends on a reader, creating a structure, which we call rhizome.

The impact of hypertext and rhizomatic reality on the creation of disciplines crossings is crucial. To understand the construction and the principles of hypertext organization, it is important to define what is rhizome, its major principles and show how it works.

The term ‘rhizome’ was borrowed from botanics, where it means a type of a root system, characterized by the absence of a core-root. It consists of multiple chaotically intertwined, regenerating, and pretty unpredictable in its development parts. Defined by Gilles Deleuze and Pierre-Félix Guattari in 1976 in their work ‘Rhizome’, the term became a model of the post-structuralist world, where order, symmetry and centralization are missing.They defined it as a moving, shifting and self-organizing structure. Basically, rhizome is a way of diverse data organization and interpretation. ‘Rhizome’ - everything there on one spread– all the concepts, all past experiences, historical events, people, groups, social unities, always in connection to the outer world. ‘The open circles’ of never finished structure.

‘The world has lost its stem. The subject can not create dichotomy, but it reaches a greater unity – the unity of ambivalency and ultradetermination–in an adittional dimention, to its own dimention.’

There are several major principles of the rhizomatic system defined by Deleuze and Guattari. The first principle of Rhizome is that each and every point of it must be potentially connected to another. The only question is, which connections will the recipient actualize. The actualization itself may take place depending on the realias the recipient recognizes, on the level of knowledge of a subject, on emotional experiences etc. Which is of course very different from the linear way of organizing of information, as ‘tree’(branches that go out of a stem) organization. Next is a principle of multiplicity. Multiplicity doesn’t have subject or object, but it possess size and dimensions. It doesn’t have an ending or a beginnig.It is a developing, moving and changing structure, which has a plato– the most stable temporal part of the whole system. According to this principle, rhizome doesn’t have a hierarchy. The fourth principle of rhizome is that it may be broken, but it will go on with new and old lines.It regenerates, recreates itself. The fifth principle is cartography and the sixth – decalcomania. The last two principles mean a reality self-creating processes, it doesn’t copy a reality, it creates a new one. A map is a rhizome in the sense that different points on the map form connections with different points of a terrain without a particular beginning or end.

As an example let’s have a look at the traditional galleries. Usually they are organized from the ancient canvases to the modern ones (diachronically) as in Hermitage or based of the art schools (centric hierarchy, the founder as a middle and the students as the pheriphery) as in Barnes Foundation, or thematically (which often represented by a second hierarchy, meaning not just Madonna’s with a child, but all Madonna’s from before Christianity to modern times) as in Sir John Soane’s Museum. Sometimes the pictures can be exposed by collections using the same principle the collector put them originally together. We do not know which principle he used, but we got used to systematize the figures and search for logic. Most of the time we find it. However, all the named cases have a certain format – all of them are exhibited in the gallery. What happens if we remove the context of the gallery too?

On August 6 1991 the first ever website was published. It was a page explaining the World Wide Web project and giving information on how users could setup a web server and how to create their own websites and web pages. This event brought into life a new paradigm case of how modern information works. The life as we knew it before sank into oblivion. The invention of Internet has introduced the concept of a constant now, the next step to brake down our linear narrative. Through hypertexts online we endlessly create new connections, building up new texts around us. It is a greatest visualization of a perfect book, when everything is on one page, one level. It posseses all six principles of a rhizome. Earlier, additionally to all its functions, hyperlinks used to serve as a search tool. After the search engine invention, the context of using a hypertext has changed and the cartography principle has became even more distinct. Today WWW is an unfinished global developing system without an end or beginning. Internet is a map with multiple entrances, each of them may be a new starting point. Even if a part of it is damaged, it keeps on existing. Erasing any website will not influence the whole. One can not just turn it off. The significance of a hypertext is in the fact that each element of it is autonomous and expresses a finished thought with usually an explicitly formed allusion on something else (hyperlink, resource, reference etc). The principle of multiplicity is obviously represented through networks, users, web-sources, servers etc. Therefore, Internet is a full-scale rhizomatic hypertextual post-modernist postructuralist system alive.

In other words, there is no hierarchical relationship like tree and root, and the rhizomatic network allows foreign ideas to become connected easily, embracing multiplicity and diversity in the model of cultural and social engagement. Accordingly, tendency towards rhizomatic connectivity has become even more apparent in recent years than when the idea was first developed. Now rhizomatic structures can be found everywhere. The way our brain is, our highly sophisticated technology of communication works is rhizomatic too. The change of this social dynamics has switched the old systems where allegories, allusions and symbols are the main targets of consumption, as, for example, the semiotic consumption exemplified in Warhol’s screen prints with cultural icons. This has been replaced with more functional aims and consumption of connections and interaction. Without any doubt, these processes had a great influence on contemporary artists.

Therefore, the emergence of artists working in multi-media, representing the metagenre of modern epoque is the result of the widely available digital devices that technological advancement has made possible, and its process has accelerated due to the rapid expansion of global capitalism.

As an example of a hypertextual rhizomatic artwork, I would like to mention Ed Atkins: a British artist, who creates high definition computer generated imagery, surround soundtracking and writes scripts for his works. All types of media interacts in his work, not only works with each other, but also with a space where he presents it. His work investigates the impact of a hyperreal virtual world on the viewer’s physical reality, inviting us to question our relationship with the digitalized, technocratic information culture that we inhabit. Some see a parallel between his works and Tino Sehgal’s, who also captures another level of what we consider ‘live’. His work is by all means interdisciplinary, combining video, sound, animation, performance and space in one. By means of computer technology he creates a complex system of symbols, text pieces and autobiographical references that then enter his visual pieces as hypertext. However, the participation of a recipient stays here on a level of interpretation and does not imply direct involvement in a creative process.

Tino Sehgal, in his turn, staged an exhibition in 2010 at the Guggenheim Museum, which unveiled his recurring strategy of constructing a social situation where the artwork plays a role of filling a social gap. The installation called ‘The Progress’ involved people from different age groups standing at different levels of Frank Lloyd Wright’s building, while they were giving visitors some unique and sometimes philosophical instructions. The highly innovative and experimental piece was aimed to produce a new relationship to visitors by inviting them to participate in a kind of telephone game that the artist created for a specific purpose. The significant part of this piece was that the audiences themselves were involved in creating a participatory and collaborative aesthetic experience, which they encountered while engaging in it. Participation of the audience here makes the work not only interdisciplinary, but also directly hypertextual, where each of the participants creates a story on its own and the performance doesn’t stop if one of the participants leave. Each has their range of interpretations of the happening, each of them were involved.

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Marc Ngui, Rhizome, Illustration for ‘A Thousand Plateaus'

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Marc Ngui, Rhizome, Illustration for ‘A Thousand Plateaus'

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Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger, 1975

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Ed Atkins, Hot head…Ribbons, 2014

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Tino Sehgal, The Progress, 2010

   
Interdisciplinarity as a metagenre

‘The combination of text and image, we all know, generates a semblance of meaning, even if we understand neither the one, nor the other.’

As it is mentioned above, metagenre is a form of expression, that takes place simultaneously in several spheres of art: literature, music, visual art, sculpture, etc. and reflects the feeling and tendencies of the epoque. To define it properly, one must define what a ‘genre’ is. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, genre is a particular type or category of literature or art. And ‘meta’ is a prefix appearing in loanwords from Greek, with the meanings ‘beyond’ and stands for something more abstract, of higher level. The necessity to address the term is marked out by the predominant position of multimedia usage, indersciplinaraity and hypertextual thinking over all. There are several definitions of a metagenre, three of which are given by Russian scholars. In this thesis, I will use the definition by E.J.Burlina, who sees metagenre as a ‘major genre of an epoque’. She defines it as a ‘formed space-time type of ending up a composition, expressing a certain historic concept’.

Moreover, Burlina underlines the tight connection of a metagenre with the culture and spirit of time. Both things are less revealed in simple genres, because a metagenre, as a scientist thinks, takes place simultaneously in several spheres of art: literature, music, visual art, sculpture. In other words metagenre is a ‘culturological aspect of a genre’, which makes it an interdisciplinary, syntactic genre. Hence the definition: ‘Metagenre is a way of functioning of the method in the culture, when the experience is absorbed not through a strict quantity-quality canoon, not through sharply defined signs of a composition, but through a conceptual position’.

Interdisciplinarity involves the combining of two or more academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It is about creating something new by crossing boundaries, and thinking across them. It is related to an interdiscipline or an interdisciplinary field, which is an organizational unit that crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions emerge.

Hitherto, a line between multidisciplinarity, crossdisciplinary and interdisciplinarity must be drawn. Multidisciplinarity, crossdisciplinary and interdisciplinarity are involving theoretical and practical knowledge of different disciplines with a purpose of creating the most complete outcome. The three terms are not different in it’s essence, but possess a brief semantic peculiarity. I prefer the prefix ‘inter-’ as it means ‘in between’ from Latin, because ‘multi-’ as multiplicity of anything is not usually associated with the difficulties of classification or does not imply the depth of involvement of one discipline or another. Rather then ‘in between state’ always creates the feeling of something unfinished, partial and not whole. As well as a term ‘crossdisciplinarity’ which is even presented as a synonym of ‘interdisciplinarity’ according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. However, according to the same source, ‘cross-’ stands for a compromise of two things. I find this term not exactly appropriate either, because there’s no compromise in the metagenre, every element serves its purpose to the full extent of the discipline required with no sacrifices made and no loss of its value. Therefore, I choose the term ‘interdisciplinarity’. I find so engaging the idea that each and every element of the metagenre, every discipline is presented not in its full glory, but only partially, only one aspect of it, that, contributing to all, creates a new meaning, but becomes useless out of the context.

In metagenre different elements, materials, and media, blended in such a way, that none of them is complete on its own. For example, text can not be read, images do not create a narrative, graphic part and a format give only a hint to the object’s notion. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that all of it was not a result of a pure coincidence, but a part of a meticulously executed plan. Whether it was an author’s intention or not to create a mystification, ambiguous as language itself. These works become inevitably intriguing because of gaps that the author left for us to fulfill with our imagination. They become challenging objects with expected story behind.

Therefore, modern metagenre is represented by hypertext, organized as rhizome in form of multimedia in both analogue and digital worlds. Altogether, it creates the interdisciplinary playground for creativity.

‘Many artists are demonstrating that for them discrete worlds of art are not adequate to express the complexities of this age, nor is the traditional exalted object appropriate for the present time.’ This pursuit of an appropriate method for communicating complexity often leads to a multi-, inter- or cross- disciplinary, approach involving sound, performance, theatre, architecture, etc. By utilizing a multi-, inter- or cross- disciplinary approach, artists are able to explore issues with more depth while creating artworls that are engaging to multiple human senses.

According to Nicholas Negroponte, an American technologic visioner, in the digital world, the medium is no longer the message. Instead, the medium would be one of several possible ‘embodiments’ of the message. An individual recipient, however, could shape-shift it into whatever media format he or she preferred: text, printed map, voice-only, video presentation, etc. For Negroponte, being digital is a state of ‘mediumlessness,’ wherein the bit creates media-assignable data that can be accessed through a wide range of chosen interfaces. Mediumlessness boiled down to the hope that messages, and people, would no longer be misunderstood.

Consequently, we make a full trip from analogue hypertext to the cyber world and all the way back, making a conclusion that disciplines and media are just ways to present a concept. The reason for author's choice of media type and disciplines may stay unclear for the recipient and for those who will analyse the creative work. Drawing the complete circle, I want to stop and examine several examples of the hypertextual analogue works. All of them are interdisciplinary, all of them, irregardless of the time they were created in, are still actual and intriguing, not even mentioning the rhizome structure they represent in one or another way.

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Song Dong, Waste not, 2005-2009

   
The problematics of interdisciplinary works analisys

Modern art is beyond media and beyond disciplines.

There’re many ways to analyse a creative work, depending on a discipline. It may be the analysis of visual works, using the iconography by Erwin Panofsky or the Schenkerian analysis of tonality in music by Heinrich Schenker, or a structural analysis by Roland Barthes of literature work etc. These methods prove their inefficiency when it comes to merging of disciplines. However, there’s not one profound method that could analyse all the disciplines presented in one art work simultaneously. Of course, on a descriptive level, at first glimpse one of the disciplines may dominate, but in the end, its dominating position would bear quite a conditional character. As an interdisciplinary artwork consists of two or more disciplines, to analyse them one usually deconstructs and analyses it's pieces. I consider such an approach insufficient as it places the method above the content and the tool above the message itself. So, instead, I will describe the works and leave out the interpretation part. Doing so allows me to broadly specify the key-elements of the metagenre work construction.

First, I would like to mention the Voynich Manuscript. According to the description of René Zandbergen, one of the leading specialists on the manuscript: ‘it is a parchment codex of 23.5 x 16.2 cm, with parchment leaves numbered up to 116, of which 102 remain.’ The cover doesn’t mention any authour. The Manuscript is handwritten in an elegant, but otherwise unknown script. Its text seems to be arranged in short paragraphs. It is richly illustrated, with drawings, among others, of plants and astronomical patterns. It appears to be a scientific work from the middle ages, but due to its unintelligible writing, the contents are a complete mystery. It was created around 1400. The book has come down to us and even now, more than 370 years later, not a single word from its well over 200 pages can be understood. It is presented in the form of what we know as a herbal book, or encyclopedia. Zandbergen cassified its parts as: a herbal section, with drawings of herbs, many of which cannot yet be positively identified; an astronomical section, with illustrations of Sun, Moon, stars and zodiac symbols; a cosmological section, with mostly circular drawings of an as yet unexplained nature; a so-called biological section, which contains some possibly anatomical drawings with small human (feminine) figures populating systems of tubes transporting liquids; a pharmaceutical section, so called because it has drawings of containers, next to which various small parts of herbs (leaves, roots) have been aligned; a recipes section.

I can’t but mention that it’s a challenging assignment to examine typography in case one is not aware of its functional properties. Therefore, it is only possible to describe the visual image it creates. Almost the entire Voynich Manuscript is written in a characters that is not found in any other surviving document.

Even unaware of author's intention, all the components together create a perfect mystification, a fiction, that intrigued people of different backgrounds for several hundred years. A world on it’s own, with it’s autonomous elements, and we are invited to make our own connections because the meaning of the encryption is a secret and we may interpret it in our own way. So what is it? An art work with encryption or a scientific work, that is regarded as an object of art due to its visual lusciousness?

Another book-object, the only real descendant of The Voynich Manuscript is ‘Codex Seraphinianus’. In this case there is a definite author with a formulated intention.‘It’s a book that speaks about crisis and about communication, and it’s quite apocalyptic, suited for the present times. Anything can happen inside the Codex, just like in the Internet.’States the author to us. And yet, there’s still ‘an obsession related to the persistent fascination with mystery.’

The Codex is created in 1978 by an Italian graphic designer Luigi Seraphini. It contains hand drawn pencil illustrations and text, that are presented in a form of an encyclopedia. The Codex has two, originally physically separate volumes. There are eleven major distinguished sections, five in the first volume and six in the second one. We may presume what are the topics of each of the sections, although some appear to be problematical. It starts with something that may be an introduction, nonhuman bipeds, where illustration is dominant over the text; flora, with visualization of migrating trees and description of small organisms, fauna,where non-human bipeds are mentioned again; physical science, where charts and schemes are drawn; technology, then it goes on with human biology, history, writing, food and clothing, games, architecture and urban planning. It ends up with a dramatic illustration of a skeleton hand and an unfinished page.

The writing system it contains, visually reminds of European system, with upper case and lower case letters, what seem to be numbers and punctuation marks. The Codex has many pages filled solely with text.

It also contains many charts, graphs, and lists. Nevertheless, till nowadays, the only thing that has been deciphered is a number system by Allan C. Wechsler and Bulgarian linguist Ivan Derzhanski.‘Codex Seraphinianus’ is a beautiful example of an analogue hypertext structure because it unites verbal and non-verbal information and every point of it might be and is potentially connected to another because of a form of an ‘encyclopedia’, as the author says himself. The book is an allusion to itself, a reference work that contains information on all branches of knowledge. And it depends solely on a recipient, which connections to actualize, which order to create and what information to select. This artwork is created by an interdisciplinary combination of a fictional language, presumably encrypted information, that could give a clue to surrealistic-looking illustrations. The visibly systematic character of the Codex is a world on it’s own with an unlimited potential for interpretation, numerous rhizome structures. There is no sufficient knowledge about the rules the systemization is based on. The format of a codex, though, forms a sequence on its own, however the importance of the sequence is doubtful and will stay speculative, until we know the meaning of the content, which might never happen if the intention of the author didn’t include this possibility. The Codex incorporates several disciplines: illustration, text, encryption and graphic design (in a form of typography, layout and fictional language design). None of them builds a proper linear narrative, but each of them contributes to the object as a whole.

I can’t but quote Italo Calvino, an Italian writer, the author of the magical book ‘Invisible Cities’: ‘In the beginning, there was language. In the universe Luigi Serafini inhabits and depicts, I believe that written language preceded the images: beneath the form of a meticulous, agile, and limpid cursive (and strength lies in admitting it is limpid), that we always feel on the point of deciphering them just when each word and each letter escapes us. Serafini’s language does not distinguish itself only by its alphabet, but also by its syntax: the objects of this universe evoke the language of the artist, such as we see them illustrated in the pages of his encyclopedia, and are almost always identifiable, but their mutual relations appear psychologically disturbed to us by their unexpected relationships and connections.… Here is the conclusive point: endowed with the power to evoke a world in which the syntax of things is subverted, the Serafinian writing must hide, beneath the mystery of its indecipherable surface, a more profound mystery touching on the internal logic of language and thought. The lines that connect the images of this world tangle and cross; the confusion of the visual attributes gives birth to monsters, Serafini’s teratological universe.’

‘They will be able to read what I wrote, but what I wrote is a mystery itself.’

Certainly, the form of a codex is not imperative, when it comes to interdisciplinary merge of language and graphic design. The famous sculpture ‘Kryptos’ by Jim Sanborn bears an encrypted message. A piece of petrified wood supporting an S-shaped copper screen surrounding a pool of water. S-shaped copper screen contains encrypted text in Latin alphabet. The artist claims that he told the key to it only to the director of the CIA. The artist designed the fourth section to be very difficult to crack. And until now, all the attempts to decipher it failed. It symbolizes the intelligence gathering.

A piece of petrified wood supporting an S-shaped copper screen surrounding a bubbling pool of water. The petrified tree stands for the source of materials on which written language has been recorded the trees that once stood on the site of the sculpture and that were the source of materials. The bubbling pool symbolizes information being disseminated with the destination being unknown. The copperplate screen has exactly 1,735 alphabetic letters cut into it. Kryptos contains codes that are important to the history of cryptography.

Another brilliant example is Neo Rauch, the principal artist of the New Leipzig School. He has somewhat surrealistic style, that doesn’t reach the abstract level. His painting are presenting a new world to a viewer, telling a story and conveying a secret message inside. Painting, says Neo Rauch is for him ‘the continuation of the dream with other means’. Bits of reality are placed in new contexts and encrypted. In this way, Rauch seems to aim at a meaning while simultaneously sabotaging it with artful ambiguity. In his work, though text is not present directly, encryption is present and it means that there should be text behind. And any group of symbols, united with a message is, in a way, a text. It is artist’s own way to create a fictional language, a method to depict a non-existent world.

Typography is a powerful tool when it comes to mystification. The presence of a letter creates a certain credibility, the presence of a language creates a world. It makes an image full and gives a form to information.

There’re many artificially invented alphabets, languages and typefaces. As mentioned above, artistic interdisciplinarity often implies invention of a fictional alphabet and the linguistic system or systems to complete a fictional world. While imagery entertains and intrigues us, text, typography, sets our imagination free.

Interactivity is yet another key characteristic and goal of the metagenre and can occur on multiple levels, sometimes simultaneously. The most obvious perhaps, is the interaction between the viewer and the subject. It is possible to experience some level of interaction with a sculpture or painting, as well as with installation. As Judith Donath, the author of ‘The Social Machine: Designs for Living Online’ explains, ‘when we speak of something being interactive, we are talking about a system in which two or more interactive entities respond to one another.’ Obviously, this responsive interaction is more difficult to achieve with static object art. Interaction via installation art, for example, can be very accessible: some change in the art occurs as a result of the behavior of the viewer; or, it could be more subtle in the way that the artist creates an installation that offers the viewer choices. Often the intent of an installation is to evoke some type of experience for the viewer by essentially placing them within the art. These installation artists “create the world, the rules, and the aesthetic environment that viewers/users must navigate in order to define their experience.” As in the Song Dong installation, that gives a possibility to dive into the world of the late mother of an artist, through observing and interacting with her possessions.

Having described and examined all the mentioned above works, I may conclude that they are hypertextual rhizomatic structures, where the interpretation and understanding depends not only on the elements of design and structure but also on level and way of a viewer’s involvement. Which brings out another important feature of the interdisciplinary artwork: interactivity. Participation challenges the mind and creates the full-embracing experience. A world on its own, that rises up questions and allows a recipient to search for answers. Such a construction creates mystification. And the components towards these mystifications vary depending on the selection of the author. However it is important to mention that they all contain a fictional language, or a sort of visual encryption, that is used to construct a captivating lure with a certain degree of credibility, avoiding direct answers. Linear sequence is absent in the metagenre works, irregardless of a form: analogue or digital. Even if such a work is presented in a format of a codex, it still preserves its hypertextual flexibility.

As I have mentioned earlier, the existent ways of interpretation will not be able to analyze the work holistically, only with one-sided analysis. These works should be analysed from a conceptual point of view. The concept must become clear from experiencing of the work itself. It may vary from one person to another, leaving the space for interpretation and new meaning. The interdisciplinary artworks must be examined as living structures, not bearing a permanent fixed message.

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Unknown author, Voynich Manuscript, 1400e

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Unknown author, Voynich Manuscript, 1400e

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Unknown author, Voynich Manuscript, 1400e

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Luigi Serafini, Codex Seraphinianus, 1981

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Luigi Serafini, Codex Seraphinianus, 1981

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Luigi Serafini, Codex Seraphinianus, 1981

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Jim Sanborn, Kryptos, 1990

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Neo Rauch, Kryptos, Marina, 2014

   
Conclusion

Modern age doesn’t recognise solitude, neither in form, nor in method. Today’s reality is rhizomatic. Different points of information form connections with other points without a particular beginning or ending, shifting and growing. The contemporary way of dealing with information is hypertextual. Insofar as hypertext works only based on an individual’s engagement with it, it demands to be a specific experience with a possibility of a personal interpretation. Therefore, the most dominating form of creative expression, the modern metagenre, is represented by merging of disciplines. Interdisciplinarity is a form of a modern metagenre, where every discipline is presented only partially, by only one aspect of it, that, contributing to all, creates a new meaning, but becomes useless out of the context.

So, what does the interdisciplinary reality mean for a creative world?

It means rejecting method as a form of discipline separation. Merging of disciplines requires collaboration and general review of approach to the very definition of artistic disciplines at the first place. More than ever people must embrace working in teams. The devision between arts, based on the method has to be reviewed. That might solve the problem of the ‘interdisciplinary blindness’, when focus on a method limits conceptual expression.

We live in the ‘mediumless’ age where disciplines are not more than a state of an idea. And the role of an author is way less dominant, than the role of a recipient, which nowadays is not only a passive viewer, but a co-author. The idea of art ‘beyond media’ recognizes not only the diversity of human communication but also a fundamental transformation in our conceptualization of technologies.

The analysis of works of the earlier described metagenre demands a concept-based approach without limitations of a particular genre or a discipline. Though the expressions of the metagenre may be differing, they share several characteristics. It must be two or more types of media, presented only partly with a certain degree of interactivity. The use of text and hence the use of typography is important and serves not only aesthetic purposes. The value of text behind typography and encryption may be diverse: from meaningful information to an encrypted nonsense. The main intention of metagenre is to create a mystification, a fictional world, that mimcs the real one, arises questions but doesn’t give answers. That provides triggering of imagination, that leads to participation. These kind of works intrigue and challenge us. Instead of a static linear story, metagenre becomes a representation of the world that never took place, but credible enough to participate in and contribute to it.

In this context the intention of the author is not of primary importance. For the reason of the same merge of disciplines, generally the intention and idea of the author steps back, allowing recipient’s interpretation of a work to dominate.

As Umberto Eco famously said ‘It’s only publishers and some journalists who believe that people want simple things. People are tired of simple things. They want to be challenged.’

Unknown author, Voynich Manuscript, 1400e

Unknown author, Voynich Manuscript, 1400e

Unknown author, Voynich Manuscript, 1400e

Unknown author, Voynich Manuscript, 1400e

Unknown author, Voynich Manuscript, 1400e

Unknown author, Voynich Manuscript, 1400e

Unknown author, Voynich Manuscript, 1400e

Unknown author, Voynich Manuscript, 1400e

Luigi Seraphini, Codex Seraphinianus, 1981

Luigi Seraphini, Codex Seraphinianus, 1981

Luigi Seraphini, Codex Seraphinianus, 1981

Luigi Seraphini, Codex Seraphinianus, 1981

Luigi Seraphini, Codex Seraphinianus, 1981

Luigi Seraphini, Codex Seraphinianus, 1981

Marc Ngui, Rhizome, Illustration for ‘A Thousand Plateaus'

Marc Ngui, Rhizome, Illustration for ‘A Thousand Plateaus’ Marc Ngui, Rhizome, Illustration for ‘A Thousand Plateaus’

Jim Sanborn, Kryptos, 1990

Jim Sanborn, Kryptos, 1990 Jim Sanborn, Kryptos, 1990

Neo Rauch, Marina, 2014

Neo Rauch, Marina, 2014

Neo Rauch, Marina, 2014

Neo Rauch, Marina, 2014

Song Dong, Waste not, 2005-2009

Song Dong, Waste not, 2005-2009

Eric Staller, Ribbon on Hannover Street, 2000

Eric Staller, Ribbon on Hannover Street, 2000

Tino Sehgal, The Progress, 2010

Tino Sehgal, The Progress, 2010

Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger, 1975

Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger, 1975

LUST, Type/Dynamics, 2013

LUST, Type/Dynamics, 2013

Olia Lialina, My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, 1996

Olia Lialina, My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, 1996

Frank Stella, Raft of the Medusa, 1990

Frank Stella, Raft of the Medusa, 1990

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves, 2000

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves, 2000

Ed Atkins, Hot head…Ribbons, 2014

Ed Atkins, Hot head…Ribbons, 2014