[Summary]
A writer and musician, Jean-Paul has offered beautiful hypermedia works
on his website cotres.net since October 1998, while searching how
hyperlinks could expand his writing towards new directions. He wrote in
June 2000: "Surfing the web is like radiating in all directions (I am
interested in something and I click on all the links on a home page) or
like jumping around (from one click to another, as the links appear).
You can do this in the written media, of course. But the difference is
striking. So the internet changed how I write. You don't write the same
way for a website as you do for a script or a play. (...) Since then I
write directly on the screen: I use the print medium only occasionally
(...): [in it] the text is developing page after page (most of the
time), whereas the technique of links allows another relationship to
the time and space of imagination. And, for me, it is above all the
opportunity to put into practice this reading/writing 'cycle', whereas
leafing through a book gives only an idea -- which is vague because the
book is not conceived for that."
***
A writer and musician, Jean-Paul has offered beautiful works of digital
literature, while searching how hyperlinks could expand his writing
towards new directions.
In October 1998, he switched from being a print author to being an
hypermedia author, and created cotres.net (“cotres” could be translated
by “cutters” in English) as a website "telling stories in 3D", either
French-language stories or plurilingual stories.
Jean-Paul also enjoyed the freedom of online self-publishing. He
explained in June 2000: "The internet allows me to do without
intermediaries, such as record companies, publishers and distributors.
Most of all, it allows me to crystallize what I have in my head: the
print medium (desktop publishing, in fact) only allows me to partly do
that. (…) Surfing the web is like radiating in all directions (I am
interested in something and I click on all the links on a home page) or
like jumping around (from one click to another, as the links appear).
You can do this in the written media, of course. But the difference is
striking. So the internet changed how I write. You don't write the same
way for a website as you do for a script or a play. (...)
In fact, it is not the internet which changed how I write, it is the
first Mac that I discovered through the self-learning of HyperCard. I
still remember how astonished I was during the month when I was
learning about buttons, links, surfing by analogies, objects or images.
The idea that a simple click on one area of the screen allowed me to
open a range of piles of cards, and each card could offer new buttons
and each button opened on to a new range, etc. In brief, the learning
of everything on the web that today seems really banal, for me it was a
revelation (it seems Steve Jobs and his team had the same shock when
they discovered the ancestor of the Mac in the laboratories of Rank
Xerox).
Since then I write directly on the screen: I use the print medium only
occasionally, to fix up a text, or to give somebody who is allergic to
the screen a kind of photograph, something instantaneous, something
approximate. It is only an approximation, because print forces us to
have a linear relationship: the text is developing page after page
(most of the time), whereas the technique of links allows another
relationship to the time and space of imagination. And, for me, it is
above all the opportunity to put into practice this reading/writing
'cycle', whereas leafing through a book gives only an idea -- which is
vague because the book is not conceived for that."
Jean-Paul insisted on the growing interaction between digital
literature and technology: "The future of cyber-literature, techno-
literature, digital literature or whatever you want to call it, is set
by the technology itself. It is now impossible for an author to handle
all by himself the words and their movement and sound. A decade ago,
you could know well each of Director, Photoshop or Cubase (to cite just
the better known software), using the first version of each. That is
not possible any more. Now we have to know how to delegate, find more
solid financial partners than Gallimard [a major French publisher], and
look in the direction of Hachette-Matra, Warner, and Hollywood. At
best, the status of multimedia director (?) will be the one of video
director, film director, manager of the product. He is the one who
receives the golden palms at Cannes, but who would never have been able
to earn them just on his own. As twin sister (not a clone) of the
cinematograph, cyber-literature (video + the link) will be an industry,
with a few isolated craftsmen on the outer edge (and therefore with
below-zero copyright)."
“Canon laser”, one of Jean-Paul’s literary works, was first published
as a print work using the first ODP software allowing artists to easily
play with the form of letters (as characters). As a follow-up, a
plurilingual hypermedia version was published on cotres.net in 2002.
In July 2011, the home page of cotres.net has given access to three
literary works taking inspiration from both Paris and the whole planet.
“Solstice” (2008), a universal greetings card, is round instead of
rectangular, to celebrate soft round forms versus hurtful rectangular
forms.
“Agression93” (2009) is a short story about a minor attack in the
suburbs, that can be read in four minutes when only using hyperlinks on
the bottom right of the screen to fifteen minutes when searching
hyperlinks with the mouse and clicking on some of them.
“Aux Jardins de Picpus” (2010) is a guided visit of the small gardens
of Picpus in Paris.