ELO performance

The best part of the ELO conference, much like the best of last year's Digital Arts and Culture, was the chance to see hypertext writers and electronic poets perform their work.

Writers write, and writing is usually best appreciated alone, in comfort, and in your own time. But hypertext reading can be tricky. Some hypertexts need to be approached with care and deliberation, others are best breezed through wit and humor. Knowing how the author imagines the reader's voice and pace can help us get a handle on an difficult work.

Performance also lets us step away from a work. We have to approach it fresh, because we're not in control. It was good, then, to hear Caitlin Fisher read her award-winning hypertext, These Waves Of Girls, and to let her choose the links and imagine the voices, let her decide what to dwell on and what to skip over. She reads well (not everyone does: authors are not always skilled actors), and as she reads the critics and controversies fall away, leaving us the work's gentle pleasures and charms.

One of the subtle costs of Big Awards is that they may shine too bright a light on subjects best viewed at dawn or dusk. Some work may be easier to meet when it's dressed in jeans and old flannel instead of an evening gown; if we rely on awards for our introduction to new work, we might miss small delights.