Du coq à l'âne
Wednesday 30 of March
I have a great passion for hyperlinks. It is purely poetical, as I have no functional knowledge of the World Wide Web whatsoever. Rather, I find myself astonished by the complex possible representations of the web that my imagination provides through prisms I know better: art history, archival systems, nostalgic images from the era of technical reproduction... and more. To me, it is like trying to grasp the concept of nothingness, or to picture the universe. On another hand, I consider double-entendre, para-text and multi-layered narratives as an ethos. This is why I erected hyperlinking as a healthy hobby. Nothing rejoices me more than pasting a link into the hyperlink window of an e-mail box and see the highlighted term become blue and underlined. The endless potentialities of hyperlinking enchant me almost as much as over-footnoting. Like many others, I could claim it as a main communication mode and as a practice. One that allows open-ended
* In French, "passer du coq à l'âne" means jumping from a topic to another without any apparent link between the two. The origin of this expression is absolutely delightful.
Virginie Bobin
