Many sorts of digital writing ask to be read in a new way, but few present any system as well-developed as do the poems in Rosenberg's Diagrams, which set up a visual and interactive relationship between phrases, one which connects these units of text in a new syntactic way. Instead of asking the user to simply select one link from many, Diagrams Series 6 presents fields of overlaid texts, multiplicities which the reader can sort through by moving the mouse. Rosenberg's resonant and rich language, read at first as fragments, provides a point of entry for the reader, who can, with effort, learn the full system of these poems.
To Begin ...
Mac: Download and unzip diags_series_6_OSX.zip. Drag diags_series_6 onto Squeak 3.6.1Beta5.app.
Windows: Download and unzip diags_series_6_Windows.zip. Double-click diags_series_6.bat.
Author description: Diagrams Series 6 is the latest in a life-long series of Diagram Poems, the earliest experimentations for which began in 1968. Although I have been making interactive works since 1988, Diagrams Series 6 is actually my first work written in a fully interactive way: from beginning to end in one interactive environment where the word object is playable at every stage of its development, from temporary unassembled scrap all the way to its final location in a finished piece. This environment is part of an ongoing project which I call Hypertext in the Open Air, implemented in a programming system called Squeak. It allows the works to be played on all popular computing platforms, including Macintosh, BSD, Linux, and Windows. Diagrams Series 6 strives to return to the intense diagrammicity of some of my earlier non-interactive works, Diagrams Series 4 and Diagrams Series 3. The diagram notation acts as a kind of external syntax, allowing word objects to carry interactivity deep inside the sentence. Interactivity, in turn, allows for juxtapositions to be opened so that the layers in cluster can occupy the same space and yet be legible. A problem we all have: a multiplicity, we must all occupy the same world space, do no harm, and yet be free. Carrying multiplicity inside the thought, inside the sentence: the thought as world. At a time when our world is in deep painful need of more multiplicity of thought.
Instructions: After clicking to start Squeak and Diagrams 6.4 or 6.10, click on the box next to "Introduction" to see full instructions. Instructions on running Diagrams Series 6 on other operating systems are available in Rosenberg's read me file.
Previous publication: Rosenberg published Diagrams Series 6: 6.4 and 6.10 in 2005. Diagram Series 6: 6.4 and 6.10 is available at Rosenberg's site, http://www.well.com/user/jer.
Rosenberg's work is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. The Squeak VM is available under the Squeak License.