# twine and bs johnson's novel in a box burden of interactivity that often effects modern play likewise consider the 'visual writing' / "novels in a box" of b.s johnson and how technologies such as twine may be express such an idea - that of a minimalist random text display (r.t.d) interface what might be interesting: to strip away the interactive promises (fictions?) of hypertext and simply display text in the middle of a screen and nothing else when the player clicks on the text a next random text is displayed. (upon first viewing twine should not repeat - display any text twice - until all the text has been shown) consider the effects of such minimalist interfacing with such experimental hypertextually-unadorned text instead of just a novel in a box we might face 'text in the wild' or just 'code on the nets' in-garme chat dylan kinnett submitted on 2015/01/21 at 3:48 am > have you read "afternoon: a story"? it came to mind when you mentioned "strip away the interactive promises (fictions?) of hypertext and simply display text in the middle of a screen and nothing else" because as an early hypertext that's essentially what this text does. the player can click on any part of the text at all to be taken to something next. sometimes it seems random what comes next. other times it is not random robert h. dylan submitted on 2015/01/21 at 4:26am in reply to dylan kinnett hello mr. kinnett sadly no - michael joyce's sublime hypertextual meditation retails for smooth $24.95 from eastgate and is therefore currently paywalled artificially ('eastgated') from my literary attentions "random" as it's used here is admittedly a fuzzy term. in a sense all hyperlinks in i.f may be considered arbitrary and 'random' even when carefully authored. a link in itself is no automatic guarantee of a connection - as in 'a meaningful inter-relationship.' rather it (also) serves as a cultural meta-rule concerning links between alleged meanings just as johnson's loose leaf narratives / aleatory lexia deal with death and loss / fragmented memory likewise (symbolically speaking) eastgate's summary of afternoon as involving 'tangled strands of knowing and memory the interconnections that bind' could simply be a false or philosophically contestable connectivity - a sign of fragmentation and loss as much as a narrative joining together speaking of which have you read avital ronell's awesome telephone book? now that would be a twine experience to remember / forget (..) am still considering hiding all hyperlinks on this site as an aid to attention and to decrease cognitive load thanks for dropping by to play // republic of bob