stretchvideo

I'm researching stretchtext these days, Ted Nelson's 1967 conception of an easy-to-use hypertext.

It seems to me that many well-functioning interactive video texts use a stretchtext concept in some way or another.

Web examples:

In hypertext literature, stretchtext is often described as replacement. In a set overall sequence, the user may replace one node with another that is about the same, only longer (or shorter). A different concept is that of the footnote. Gunnar Liestøl used that in the Kon-Tiki and Vikinger CD-ROMs.

Screen shot from Kon-Tiki Interactive

In these videos, footnote markers fly out of the main video pane, becoming animated buttons (micons). Clicking a button plays a video footnote. These do not replace anything, but expand on a sentence spoken in the voice-over.

As I am trying to storyboard some stretchvideo sequences, it occurs to me that footnotes seem to be more functional than replacement. Film is a retrospective art form. Scenes are made by mounting cuts together, and the meaning arising from the montage is understood in retrospect. For a user to perform choices in a video, they will have to react to something they have already seen. If asked if they want to replace what they see right now, they wouldn't know until they've seen it.

Related Overviews

<< Previously in Surftrail:
disputation

Next: >>
#63