Individual Work
Egypt: The Book of Going Forth by Day

*Egypt: The Book of Going Forth by Day* is a contemporary/ancient narrative of death and rebirth on the Nile. It is an account of Egypt that draws upon history, geography, hieroglyphics, legend and myth to tell a contemporary story of a woman searching for her brother that mirrors the eternal story of the ancient Egyptian spiritual journey. It explores the interface between image and text - the ways, in hypermedia, that narrative information is not only contained in the text, but also coded into graphics, sound, structure, and navigational elements. Egypt celebrates the natural materiality of both hieroglyphic writing and electronic literature. Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is inherently hypertextual and hypermedial. In ancient times, the surfaces of temples, coffins, and tombs were covered with a narrative writing/art that was a complex linkage of the literal, metaphorical, and schematic aspects of the central spiritual ideas of the culture.

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Author statement: 
*Egypt: The Book of Going Forth by Dat* continued my experiments with hypermedia narrative that combined multi-voiced narration, historical and personal events, layered time frames, and topographical navigation. The piece is a construct of multilinear that represented the three states of the Egyptian death/soul - the Ba, the Ka, and the Akh. The stories they tell, both contemporary, ancient, and eternal use the visual language of hieroglyphics as an integral part of the plot and also as the navigation scheme. *Egypt* was created in three different versions: 1997: Toolbook Version, Toolbook 4 1999: DHTML Web Version, Java and Flash 2002: Director Version 2006: Published as Artist's Book - Individualized CD-ROM and Thumb drives. The final version, completed in 2006 was published as an Artist’s Book. The First editions of Egypt (164 CD-ROMS and Thumb Drives) were individualized for each recipient with the reader’s own name written into a selected “spell” of the Book of the Dead for that artifact. Egypt: The Book of Going Forth by Day is available in individualized versions through 2006. Each copy of the first edition is hand recorded and is unique: your copy will have your own “Spell” to protect you in the Underworld/Tuat. In ancient Egyptian practice, copies of the Book of the Dead were individualized for each recipient. A person could order the exact spells he or she wanted, and the name [such as “the Osiris So-and-So”] was filled in accordingly. Your “Spell” will appear on the verso of one of the Papyrus sections of the story.
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