Where the Sea Stands Still

W H E R E T H E S E A S T A N D S S T I L L

a 'performance hypertext' in html based on
the performance reading with cybertextual projections
by JOHN CAYLEY and YANG LIAN
given at the ICA | London | May 27th 1997

original Chinese poetic sequence by Yang Lian
cybertextual design and scripting by John Cayley
English translations by BRIAN HOLTON
additional calligraphy by Qu Leilei
additional visual material by Gao Xingjian & John Cayley

| Enter the hypertext by clicking on any of the images (apart from the ICA's navigational icons) surrounding this text.

| Within the hypertext, the greenish coloured bar below each text image (like the one below this paragraph) will take you out and back to this explanatory opening page.

| Within the hypertext, if you click on the images surrounding the text you will jump to a new point in the poetic sequence. All such links have been mapped by Yang Lian according to the content and form of his original. There are four possible links from each textual space. The 'southern' link will take you through the poem sequentially.

| Clicking on the central image of English or Chinese text in each writing space will 'toggle' between English and Chinese versions.

| PLEASE NOTE: If you do not click an image and make an explicit move, after a short time (long enough to read the passage) there will be a self-generated quasi-random jump through one of the possible links. (However, if you just sit back and never click, you are unlikely to see all of the passages of the piece since looping around short sequences can occur.) Inevitably, html imposes limitations on the cybertextual potential of this work, which are, currently, more thoroughly realized in the version which was projected for the ICA performance, and which exists as an unpublished 'Hypercard' application.

B A C K G R O U N D I N F O R M A T I O N

Chinese Original. In late 1995 Yang Lian published his Chinese poetic sequence 'Where the Sea Stands Still' (Dahai tingzhi zhi chu) along with parallel English translations by Brian Holton. This is a highly structure piece of work consisting of four sections, each with the same title and each divided into three parts. The poet consciously arranged his sequence in order to indicate thematic recurrences and larger movements. He is concerned to explore a personal understanding of 'spatial poetics,' which achieve a stillness of signification outside time. Yang Lian compares this to the illusionistic space of visual art. He finds it exemplified, to a greater or lesser extent, in all poetic writing and actually instantiated in certain structures of the Chinese written language.

Cybertextual Transformation. John Cayley's work has recently been engaged with the creation of literature 'beyond codexspace' in new media offered to writers by electronic technologies. It was clear to Cayley that the structure of Yang Lian's piece was appropriate for transposition into hypertext, and would also allow the meaningful addition of recreative, generative cybertextual elements. After its more traditional publication, Cayley invited Yang Lian to make a hypertextual map of 'Where the Sea Stands Still.' Yang arranged his already highly structured text into 'writing spaces' and drew systematic links between the distinct elements of his work.

The cybertextual version of 'Where the Sea Stands Still' presents its readers with new challenges and new possibilities as they explore the meaning of the text through its 'writing spaces.' It displays these fragments of the full text one by one on the screen, but not in the predetermined order of paper publication. Using hypertextual linking, the digital version of the text allows readers to follow any one of a multitude of possible pathways through the passages of the poem, discovering for themselves its resonances of meaning and form. Each reading of the text is different, for both the same reader and others, since, although the links themselves are authored by the original writer, the choice of pathway is decided in each new reading.

YANG LIAN is a contemporary Chinese poet who came to prominence in the early 1980s. He is presently resident in London. || JOHN CAYLEY is a London-based poet, editor and translator, much of whose creative work now finds due form in cyberspace. || Brian Holton is a poet and translator who teaches Chinese at university level in Newcastle and Durham. He translates into Scots as well as English. || Qu Leilei is an artist and calligrapher, living in London. || Gao Xingjian is an internationally-known dramatist, living in France, who is also painter.

The paperbound version of 'Where the Sea Stands Still' is available from the ICA Bookstore at British Pounds 3.50, or direct from the publisher, wellSweep, Unit 3 Ashburton Centre, 276 Cortis Road, London SW15 3AY.