Elizabethtown College News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/15/04
Contact: Mary Dolheimer, director of marketing and media relations, 717-361-1587, dolheimerm@etown.edu
E-town College student creates hypertext sphere that depicts Philadelphia history
ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa. – An Elizabethtown College honors student has created a one-of-a-kind sculpture that depicts people, events and themes of ethnic life in mid-19th-century Philadelphia.
J. Nathan Matias of Mount Joy created the hypertext sphere, Philadelphia Fullerine, as an extension of his senior English honors project, which is a traditional narrative nonfiction on the same topic. He presented the sculpture at the National Collegiate Honors Conference in New Orleans in November.
A multidisciplinary project, the sculpture pulls together skills in art, engineering, history, writing, performance and recording. Philadelphia Fullerine’s geodesic framework is constructed of galvanized steel rods riveted together onto 12 pentagonal and 20 hexagonal connectors. Covering the framework are 60 numbered triangles -- made of balsa laced onto the structure with hemp cord -- that represent a different story or theme from mid-19th-century Philadelphia. An attached mp3 device plays a short audio clip explaining the triangle. "As much as possible, I use the words of those who were there, including figures like Charles Dickens, Edgar Allen Poe, and Frederick Douglass," Matias said.
The placement of images on the sphere is not random. Each triangle relates directly to the stories and themes adjacent to it. Many more connections exist, but these provide a basic sort of guidance for experiencing the project, according to Matias. "Life is a much richer thing than dots on a timeline or paragraphs in a chronological story," Matias said. "In a city like Philadelphia, the actions of one person were not confined to one event or sphere of influence."
Matias refers to Philadelphia Fullerine as a hypertext, a work meant to be read or experienced nonlinearly." "By presenting this work as a hypertext sphere," he said, "I hope to encourage people to read history holistically -- to explore the history and connections for themselves, in whatever order or manner they enjoy."
In September, Matias presented a paper outlining the benefits of hypertext for storytelling at the WWW@10 conference at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. He has also written an article on his use of hypertext software for nonfiction research and writing. "An Accordion for the World" is to be published in the winter 2004/5 edition of Tekka, a peer-reviewed journal of new media and software aesthetics.
At Elizabethtown College -- central Pennsylvania’s premier small, comprehensive college -- 1800 men and women enjoy personal attention, breadth of curriculum, experiential learning and a commitment to serving others. Elizabethtown has been ranked for 11 consecutive years by U.S. News and World Report as one of the top comprehensive colleges in the North.
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