Electronic Forms of Expression

Electronic Forms of Expression

The confusion of new forms of media can be overwhelming. For those of us who grew up with the Internet, it may not be all that difficult to grasp its concepts and to tackle its nuances; but for those who grew up with print, the transition between the two could be exhausting. The concepts in new forms of electronic expression are in their developmental stages—still trying to find a dynamic equilibrium between mimicking print and inventing new ways of performance. Electronic media are trying to take advantage of their unique characteristics, while not proving to be too tedious for the audience to understand.

Janet Murray explores the virtual swamp of electronic media conventions in her chapter entitled “From Additive to Expressive Form,” in Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Electronic forms of expression are still in a sort of primordial ooze phase, still clinging on to the life forms that previously inhabited the area, but trying desperately to create an evolutionary creature that is nothing like what a tourist in the area may have seen. In this case, the entire world has access to this digital environment. Murray’s claim is that “digital environments are encyclopedic” (83), or rather that we have the world at our fingertips:

Since every form of representation is migrating to electronic form and all the world’s computers are potentially accessible to one another, we can now conceive of a single comprehensive global library of paintings, films, books, newspapers, television programs, and databases, a library that would be accessible from any point on the globe. It is as if the modern version of the great library of Alexandria, which contained all the knowledge about the ancient world, is about to rematerialize in the infinite expanses of cyberspace. (84).

The Internet has encyclopedic capabilities that surpass any previous knowledge collecting endeavors. The pages that we move through seem almost infinite, offering different perspectives and intersecting accounts. These qualities lend a feeling of omniscience to the surfer. “The limitless expanse of gigabytes presents itself to the storyteller as a vast tabula rasa crying out to be filled with all the matter of life” (84). Filling this “limitless expanse” is not without complication. “The reality is much more chaotic and fragmented: networked information is often incomplete or misleading, search routines are often unbearably cumbersome and frustrating, and the information we desire often seems to be tantalizingly out of reach” (84).