(2021-05-25) Brander Hypertext Montage

Gordon Brander: Hypertext Montage. Thoughts, also, resist the single linear narrative. They exist as something more like a hyperdimensional cloud of associations.

So how might hypertext shape our thinking?

Remember Walter Benjamin and his thought legos? Benjamin is famous for a kind of free-associative unbundled narrative style called literary montage.

Instead of narrative, montage uses juxtaposition, contrast, connections, to generate epiphany by provoking closure…

Sounds like hypertext.

Benjamin’s essay On the Concept of History reads like a tweetstorm

I create accidental montage while taking notes. Montage is almost an intermediate representation between thought and narrative.

Kuleshov’s insight—pieces can be combined in more than one way to generate multiple meanings, through provoking closure.

There are plenty of tools for carving a toy from a block of wood. Word processors, CMSs, anything focused on publishing, anything with a “rich text editor”. Subconscious is not that.