Abstract

Since the emergence of the world wide web, hypertext has most commonly been experienced as linked verbal and visual information presented on two-dimensional screens. This article proposes an alternative vision: hypertext as an embodied, three-dimensional environment in which readers navigate information spatially and participate within the hypertextual system itself. Rather than traversing links through clicking or selecting graphical interfaces, readers move among narratives, archival objects, and media that coexist in a shared virtual space. The project developed to reflect this new approach to hypertext is the virtual archival story telling experience (VASTE), an immersive environment that brings together born-digital narratives, physical archives, and multimedia materials in a navigable virtual space. Rather than treating hyperlinks as connections between documents, VASTE reconceives hyperlinking as the creation of spatial relationships among readers, narratives, archival artifacts, and media that together constitute an embodied hypertextual environment.

1 Introduction

Since the emergence of the World Wide Web, hypertext has most commonly been experienced as linked verbal and visual information presented on two-dimensional screens. This article proposes an alternative vision: hypertext as an embodied, three-dimensional environment in which readers navigate information spatially and participate within the hypertextual system itself. Rather than traversing links through clicking or selecting graphical interfaces, readers move among narratives, archival objects, and media that coexist in a shared virtual space. The project developed to reflect this new approach to hypertext is the Virtual Archival Story Telling Experience (VASTE), an immersive environment that brings together born-digital narratives, physical archives, and multimedia materials in a navigable virtual space. Rather than treating hyperlinks as connections between documents, VASTE re-conceives hyperlinking as the creation of spatial relationships among readers, narratives, archival artifacts, and media that together constitute an embodied hypertextual environment.

This concept builds upon years of practice-based research into explorations of hyperlinking in three dimensions in virtual environments. Three interactive multimedia performances produced with the Gesture and Media System (GAMS) were performed at Hypertext ’08 via iChat from the MOVE Lab at Washington State University Vancouver [3]. The works included Steve Gibson's ‘Virtual DJ’ [7] and Dene Grigar and Jeannette Altman's ‘Things of Day and Dream’ and ‘Rhapsody Room.’ [9] These explorations with hyperlinking in three-dimensional space explored the conjunction of movement, performance, and hypertext by allowing performers to move through three-dimensional space and evoke spoken word, text, music, images, video, animations, robotic lights, and smoke through an infrared tracking device.

For Grigar, these performances constituted experiments in how hypertext might function beyond the two-dimensional monitor and the convention of clicking on links. Her experiments are situated at a time when born-digital artists, like Kate Pullinger [19], Erik Loyer [15], and others were experimenting with going “beyond the click.” [10] Grigar's work specifically focused on demonstrating that hyperlinks need not be silent or invisible transitions between textual nodes but can occupy space, possess sensory qualities, and produce contours of movement found along x, y, z-axes that allow media events to extend across zones and pathways. Ultimately, her work suggests that hyperlinking might be re-conceived as embodied navigation through a sensory-rich information environment. Such a concept follows a lineage of thinking about possibility of inhabiting virtual spaces rather than simply viewing them. Robert Coover explored how narrative might function within immersive virtual environments, asking “how you do narrative, which is typically linear, in a space that is non-linear.” [5] Likewise, Marcos Novak envisioned virtual environments as “without doors and hallways, where the next room is always where [he needs] it to be" [18]. Michael Benedikt conceived of virtual environments as places to be navigated [2]. Together, these ideas reimagine reading not simply as navigating documents but as inhabiting virtual spaces in which movement itself becomes meaningful.

VASTE constitutes the latest innovation to the Visualization space (or “Viz space”) of The NEXT, a virtual museum and library developed by the Electronic Literature Lab that preserves, contextualizes, and provides public access to born-digital literature, art, and games [12]. More than a repository, The NEXT functions as an experimental platform for investigating relationships among digital works, their physical artifacts, and the interpretive practices that emerge when readers encounter them together. The Viz space specifically makes physical artifacts accessible as interactable three-dimensional objects via the Web browser. VASTE makes the models accessible in a Virtual Reality environment, connecting them directly with the hypertext narratives to which they pertain and contextualizing media where visitors to The NEXT can immerse themselves in the environment. As such, this article argues that immersive virtual environments, like VASTE, make possible a form of meta-hypertextual experience in which readers are not merely traversing links but become participants within the network of relationships constituted by those links.

2 Hypertext and Spacial Computing

The concept of three-dimensional hyperlinking can be contextualized within the history of hypertext theory. In his 1965 paper for the Proceedings of the 20th National Conference ACM, Ted Nelson defined hypertext as ‘a body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex way that it could not conveniently be presented or represented on paper.’ Nelson's definition establishes the core notions of linkage among heterogeneous objects and the possibility of nonlinear pathways through them [17]. Jeff Conklin later described hypertext as windows associated with database objects and connected by links represented both graphically and computationally [4]. George Landow extended these ideas into literary studies, describing hypertext as an information medium linking verbal and non-verbal information and emphasizing its dynamic, multilinear, and de-centered qualities [14].

VASTE builds upon these concepts while introducing a further dimension: embodied participation. The project does not claim that Virtual Reality uniquely produces immersion. Literary works have long demonstrated the immersive capacities of narrative [20]. Rather, VASTE proposes a form of embodied immersion in which readers navigate information spatially and interact simultaneously with narratives, archival artifacts, and associated media. Additionally, once readers enter the virtual environment, they become represented computationally alongside texts, images, video, sound, and three-dimensional models. Readers, therefore, participate within the information system they are exploring. This reflexive relationship lies at the heart of VASTE's central proposition: a meta-hypertextual experience in which readers are themselves components of the hypertextual system, an experience that fosters a better understanding of these elements through an embodied connection with them. It is precisely this integration of readers, narratives, archival artifacts, and media within a shared computational environment that distinguishes VASTE from previous hypertext systems and suggests an additional paradigm for experiencing hypertext.

This approach also extends earlier visions of immersive literary environments by treating archives and media objects as integral components of the hypertext itself. Movement through virtual space becomes a form of reading. Selection, manipulation, and examination of artifacts become acts of navigation. Hyperlinks are not merely transitions between documents but relationships among narratives, media objects, and readers situated within the same environment.

2.1 2.1 Viz 1.0: The Interactive Space

VASTE constitutes the third iteration of the Viz space of The NEXT, a virtual museum and library created and maintained by members of the Electronic Literature Lab (ELL) at Washington State University Vancouver [11]. The NEXT was conceived not simply as a repository for born-digital literature, art, and games but as an experimental research platform for investigating relationships among digital works, their material artifacts, and the interpretive practices that emerge when they are encountered together.

The Viz space was originally created to explore how three-dimensional representations of physical archives can enrich the understanding of born-digital media by making their material contexts accessible to and interactable for remote visitors. Packaging, such as folios and jewel cases of early hypertext literature; props used in performances; and ephemera, including conference badges and artists’ materials, have been modeled as interactive three-dimensional objects that visitors can examine through the Web browser. Currently, forty-eight physical artifacts from The NEXT's archive are freely available to the public.

The research questions driving the Viz space's production were straightforward: How does access to material artifacts shape the interpretation of born-digital works? How might immersive environments alter relationships among narratives, archives, and readers?

Figure 1: An image of the Wireframe for the VASTE Environment.

An image of the Wireframe for the VASTE Environment.

2.2 2.2 Viz 2.0: The Immersive Space

But interaction alone was not enough. An immersive experience was needed to reduce visitors’ sense of remoteness when engaging with the physical artifacts through the browser and foster a more visceral understanding of their significance. To achieve these goals, the ELL team created a Virtual Reality environment that incorporated haptic feedback and sound and allowed visitors to move among artifacts, read hypertext literary works, and access video clips and images associated with the archives and the works.

A grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation awarded to Grigar and Frode Hegland in 2024 [13] provided the training needed to learn WebXR and the JavaScript library three.js for expanding the interactive experience with physical media in The NEXT's Viz space into an immersive one. Visitors in this new environment can, for example, hold the folio containing Stuart Moulthrop's hypertext narrative, Victory Garden, in their hand, open it, pull out the floppy disk, closely examine the writing on both the folio and disk, and hear the sound of the folio opening and closing. Likewise, in the VR space Deena Larsen's pinwheel used for educating the public about interactive poetry in the late 1990s allows visitors to hold the pinwheel, turn its blades, and read the lines of poetry on their front and back.

In terms of hyperlinking in 3D space, the Viz space 2.0 has functioned well technically. Without the need for controllers required in previous iterations of VR technology, visitors using an Apple Vision Pro or a Quest 2 or 3 can touch an object in the environment and interact with it. The difference between this experience in the Viz space's VR environment and Grigar's previous work with in GAMS environment is that visitors see the physical objects in the space in the Viz space while performers in GAMS had to remember where the objects were programmed in order to evoke them. A performance of Gibson and Grigar's “When Ghosts Will Die” required the memorization of eight different kinds of multimedia media objects populated across a three-dimensional space that also entailed five levels of play [8].

2.2.1 2.3 Viz 3.0: To a Virtual Storytelling Space. But the three.js pipeline into WebXR has limitations in what can ultimately be achieved for hyperlinking. When the ELL Team decided to unite hypertext literature with 3D objects associated with them in VR offered by the Viz space in the production of VASTE, they found that the system had already been pushed to its limits. Facing the prospect of designing a new environment for VASTE from the ground up, the ELL Team began exploring potential alternative ways of interfacing with WebXR. Ultimately, they landed on Unity, a powerful development tool that could already create stand-alone VR experiences and had a built-in WebGL exporter-––but came with a glaring flaw: Unity's VR and WebGL systems did not work together. The solution, as so often the case, came from the open-source development community in the form of a WebXR exporter for Unity, providing a way to integrate Unity's engine with the versatility of WebXR and, then, embed the resulting experience in the Web browser for anyone to experience.

Visitors to the Viz space will still encounter the current presentation of physical artifacts as 3D models via the browser or in the VR space. However, they will also see the new VASTE section that presents four virtual archival storytelling experiences: 1) Richard Holeton's Figurski at Findhorn on Acid, 2) John McDaid's Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse, 3) Sarah Smith's King of Space, and 4) Christy Sheffield Sanford's “Red Mona.” While all are hypertext narratives, the first three were originally published between 1991 to 2001 with proprietary software that, with permission from the author and/or publisher, have been reconstructed by the lab into open Web languages. Because they are now all built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, they are accessible via the Web browser. The fourth is a work of Web-based narrative that required minor restoration of its sound files. As previously mentioned, VASTE makes it possible for all four works to be accompanied with physical archives currently produced as 3D models and featured in the Viz space via the browser and as discrete artifacts in the VR space. Thus, each will include the born-digital narrative, the 3D modelled artifacts, and other media associated with it.

Figure 2: The VASTE Environment for Figurski at Findhorn on Acid.

An image of the VASTE Environment for Figurski at Findhorn on Acid.

A resulting environment would be best understood through the example of Figurski at Findhorn on Acid. Visitors to this VASTE space will be welcomed by the title of Holeton's hypertext novel and an animation of the mechanical pig that figures largely in the novel. Visitors will also see, arranged on a minimalistic dashboard, three items: 1) to the left, the artifacts, 2) in the middle, the hypertext novel, and 3) to the right, the media.

Selecting the beach ball from the artifacts, for example (see Figure 2), will allow visitors to interact with it. When visitors are finished interacting with the beach ball, it snaps back to its place in the area. Likewise, if visitors decide to read the novel, they do so by reaching out and touching it. When accessing the novel, they will encounter the Web-based version of Figurski the lab reconstructed in 2021 whose hyperlinks are fully functional. At any time during the reading experience, visitors can access any of the artifacts and media in the VASTE space by clicking on words and passages. For example, clicking on “Spam” in the Navigator activates the 3D models of the Spam cans gifted by Holeton for his collection at The NEXT, allowing for visitors to interact with them.

3 Towards An Embodied Paradigm of Hypertext

In “When Is a Webtext?,” Mats Dahlström argues that text is any form of information by which we communicate an idea, feeling, or concept [6]. This view of textuality has been well-theorized by scholars such as Fernando Poyatos working in nonverbal communication [16]. Likewise, it can be extended to the digital environment where communication is expressed in code. As such, words, images, video, animations, 3D models, and other multimedia elements used in communication can all be viewed as text. Because visitors themselves are computationally represented within the same symbolic environment as the narratives, media, and artifacts, they become part of the system of signs through which meaning is produced. This visceral connection between human and hypertext lies at the heart of what VASTE seeks to achieve: a meta-hypertextual experience where readers are not just accessing a work of hypertext fiction connected hypertextually to its physical archives but, through code, are themselves part of that hypertextual system. VASTE holds to the idea that hypertext works deserve to be experienced hypertextually.

Rather than replacing conventional hypertext, VASTE demonstrates that immersive spatial computing offers an additional paradigm for experiencing hypertext, one in which readers become embodied participants within the network of relationships that constitutes the text itself. It also suggests that immersive environments can expand our understanding of hypertext, offering new ways to connect narratives, archives, media––-and readers-––within shared computational spaces.

Source

ACM full-text HTML

ACM Digital Library

Imported from ACM’s structured HTML source. ACM Reference Format: Dene Grigar, Andrew Thompson, and Holly Slocum. 2026. Hyperlinking in VASTE Space. In 37th ACM Conference on Hypertext (HT '26), September 14--18, 2026, London, United Kingdom. ACM, New York, NY, USA 5 Pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3800935.3830858

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