From the sore eyes and the headaches from the clicking mouse of the first
week to the fusion with the text to "become an intimate part of
it, rather
than just passively reading." (R) in the last week, Patchwork Girl
ranked as a physical, as well as intellectual, experience. The responses
of the body made tangible the psychological and intellectual collaboration
the hypertext demanded and close critical reading tries to teach.
A finger moving to click shifted the reader from one
text block to the next. The act of transition existed as a movement,
as well as a synaptic exchange. As one screen erased the another, the
reader saw the gaping spaces between the words where imagination could
work. The text elides in time as well as space: what is passed/past
can often not be easily retrieved. Collaboration with the text shifted
from being an arcane intellectual skill to be learned to an unavoidably
physical and sensual act.
For example, R wrote, "This new medium has simply
created possibilities that were not present before." My observations
of the reading process argue that the 'possibilities' were not created
in the medium. Instead, the possibilities inherent in all texts were
seen much more clearly through this particular
medium