Stuart Moulthrop arrived in Bergen last night. Stuart has been in hypertext since before most of us knew what hypertext was, and he writes inspiring essays about hypertext theory and digital culture and makes wonderful creative works. One of my favourites is Reagan Library, which is a few years old now but still wonderful. It’s a story of confused memories, and each node of the story is initially full of noise: the words are literally unstable, many of them random. But each time you return to a node, it becomes more stable, and finally, after four readings of each node, the node is fairly comprehensible. Oh, and he gives awesome talks. My favourite was the one he did in our MOO in 1999 – it’s archived here but of course that gives you none of the feel of what it was like, forty or fifty people crowded into a virtual room, yabbering away with asides to Stuart’s capital letter official presentation, and with slides shown in an adjacent window. He also gave a keynote at the first academic conference I was ever at, Hypertext ’98, and I remember loving the slides, the verve and the intensity of it all.

Stuart’s going to be a guest researcher at humanistic informatics for a week and a half – and in addition to giving us a chance to hang out and talk research with him, this’ll mean he’s giving a couple of talks, which you’re very welcome to attend if you’re in town.

So, if you’re in Bergen, come to Stuart’s lecture on the 22nd or his demonstration on the 23rd. I’ll be there, of course 🙂