As Raley points out, codework has interesting implications for literacies: “the reader-users will learn to process the meaning of some elements of code: a handful of operators, instructions, and characters” (n. pag.) We will also learn to process these hybrid, irregular, shorthand languages. Indeed, Raley suggests that codework like Mez’s facilitates a kind of oppositional literacy, that the practice of mezangelle might well jam our complacent reading practices and awaken those that lie dormant; or, as Mez herself declares, “move through the neural in waves, swarming into active channels, critically hitting inactive potentials” (n. pag.).

V. Inhabit
Finally, another key area of interest of mine with consequences to literacy is hypermedia in virtual environments, particularly the work of writers built in virtual reality (VR) caves. Powered by high-performance computers, a cave is an eight-foot-square cubicle with high-resolution stereo graphics projected onto three walls and the floor to create a virtual reality experience. Special hardware and software keep track of the positions and movements of visitors entering the space, changing the images within in a way that allows them to feel immersed in the virtual space. Although the cave was initially embraced as a way to produce mimetic representations with application to medicine, archaeology, chemistry, applied mathematics etc., writers, performers, and dramatists, cultural theorists and visual artists are increasingly being drawn to VR as a new realm for their work.

I am particularly struck by the fascinating work undertaken in the VR cave at Brown University, under the direction of novelist Robert Coover. Coover and his students are the first to experiment with the use of written text in the caves, and are working with questions about how the spatial qualities of VR can be employed to create narrative experiences in new and innovative ways. Coover notes that “those of us who have loved the literary experience, the richness of reading, are working to preserve some of that experience inside the new media … while acknowledging that there is no use trying to imitate the printed page” (Curtis 2000a: n. pag.).

One of the potentials of the cave is the creation of animated 3-D worlds and characters that a user can interact with, in effect making the user part of a story. I have been fortunate enough to explore some of these works – to step through boxes of text, to inhabit and explore a storyroom, to shrink a wall full of poetry so that it fit into the palm of my hand, to pull a giant letter “O” over my head before stepping through a doorway to interact with characters at a virtual cocktail party.