examining paratextual theory and its applications in digital culture

Examining Paratextual Theory and its Applications in Digital Culture

Nadine DesrochersUniversité de Montréal, Canada

Daniel ApollonUniversity of Bergen, Norway

A volume in the Advances in Human and Social Aspects of Technology (AHSAT) Book Series

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Examining paratextual theory and its applications in digital culture / Nadine Desrochers and Daniel Apollon, editors. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4666-6002-1 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-1-4666-6003-8 (ebook) -- ISBN 978-1-4666-6005-2 (print & per-petual access) 1. Content analysis (Communication) 2. Digital media. 3. Paratext. 4. Authorship. 5. Genette, Gérard, 1930---Influence. I. Desrochers, Nadine, 1971- editor of compilation. II. Apollon, Daniel, 1951- editor of compilation. P93.E93 2014 401’.4--dc23 2014007795 This book is published in the IGI Global book series Advances in Human and Social Aspects of Technology (AHSAT) (ISSN: 2328-1316; eISSN: 2328-1324)

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Chapter 4

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-6002-1.ch004

Mashup as Paratextual Practice:Beyond Digital Objects (in the

Age of Networked Media)

ABSTRACT

The main objective of this chapter is to contribute to a more dynamic understanding of the notion of paratext (Genette, 1997a). The author argues that in order to fully grasp the discourse of contemporary media objects, one has to focus on the networked, hyperconnective and fluid nature of today’s media environments (Jenkins, 2008; Varnelis, 2008), where content itself often seems secondary to the modes of its circulation. In this regard, the concept of paratext still provides a valuable framework of analysis, especially when related to the widespread programming and coding procedures of contemporary Web services. In order to enable such a dynamic understanding of the notion in the contemporary digital media environment, Genette’s proposition should be read not only (or primarily) as relating to the set of subtexts, “parasitic” texts, annotations and markers accompanying the “main” text, but first and fore-most as a semiotic-technological apparatus enabling the circulation of digital content across different media platforms. Such a re-reading also calls for an updated understanding of digital media, with more prominence given to the relational characteristics of the objects, as well as to the fluidity and dynamics of the processes of circulation, rather than to digital “objects” as such.

INTRODUCTION

My chapter is aimed at a more dynamic understand-ing of the notion of paratext developed by Gérard Genette (1997a), which I argue is necessary to fully grasp the discourse of contemporary media objects. It seems that what distinguishes them from older types of media is not only their digital nature, but first and foremost their networked,

hyperconnective and fluid nature (Jenkins, 2008; Varnelis, 2008). By “hyperconnectivity” I mean the intensified communication exchanges which define today’s society; it is, however, important to notice that such a communication frenzy is a matter of concern not only in regard to us, people (Ranadivé, 2013). The fact is, it incorporates different kinds of machinic entities (including artificial intelligence) on a much wider scale than

Anna NacherJagiellonian University, Poland

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Mashup as Paratextual Practice

ever before, which inspires attempts at develop-ing a kind of thinking that would face this new situation in a more relevant way (Gunkel, 2012). The growing role of machine-to-machine (M2M) communication contributed to a nascent phase of what came to be called the Internet-of-things (IoT) (van Kranenburg, 2008), strongly relying upon RFID technology (a wireless technology allowing for direct communication between ma-chines). Another important factor determining the formation of a hyperconnective world is the increasing automatization of communication en-vironments. Who and what communicates with whom and under which conditions depends today, to a growing extent, on the algorithms, automated responses and standards of interoperability (the idea of interoperability enables the use of different software environments, a combination of applica-tions, their mutual information exchange and the sharing of content across platforms). It is not a coincidence that Google’s exact algorithm is one of the company’s most treasured secrets and that Facebook’s EdgeRank is actually responsible for what kind of content we can see on our profile walls.

In such a media environment, content itself often becomes secondary to its circulation modes. This is why the reconfiguration of the paratextual theory seems so tempting. I argue that it is worth-while to reconsider its tenets to the effect that the full potential of Genette’s proposition in tackling the challenges of analysis of cultural texts in net-worked media can be sparingly used. Therefore, I propose a shift in focus, from the analysis of the textual (digital) objects themselves, which treats them as a set of discrete entities, to thinking about them in terms of the possibilities they offer for the circulation of the content. In a world of print media—for which and within which paratextual theory was devised—such circulation is enabled by inviting the reader to perform particular practices of movement: searching for references, browsing through text, connecting the various fragments of reading experience (in Barthesian

terms, incorporating the fragmented and dispersed phenomena which also include corporeal activ-ity while reading a book) (Barthes, 1970). I am going to demonstrate the possibilities and advan-tages of such a theoretical shift with reference to the strategies of mashup, which I understand primarily as programming and coding practices enabling an automated recombination of digital content across Internet platforms, and which, to some extent, is different from the well-known and broadly theorized concept of remix (Sonvilla-Weiss, 2010). The very basic definition offered by Wikipedia clarifies that a mashup is “a web page or web application that uses and combines data, presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create new services” (“Mashup (web application hybrid),” 2013). (However, I would argue that Wikipedia’s definition of mashup in music is just an example of a remixing procedure.) We might not really know, nor even notice, that the practices of mashup constitute the everyday of our Web presence—every time we directly share a video clip from YouTube on our Facebook wall or embed Web content on our Wordpress blog. Such environments will serve as a point of refer-ence in my theoretical endeavor. In particular, I have chosen the digital mapping environment Google Maps. It is the most “mashable” online service available, which means it is the one that most often gets recombined and appropriated by users across vast spaces of the Internet. But first, I will extensively outline some theoretical pos-sibilities for reframing the theory of paratext as a more dynamic account which would be more inclusive of processual and experiential aspects of content circulation in a networked digital media environment. In this regard, the concept of paratext still provides a valuable framework of analysis, especially when related to the widespread pro-gramming and coding procedures of contemporary Web services. In order to do this, I propose that Genette’s concept be read as a whole semiotic-technological apparatus enabling the circulation of content or inspiring readers/users to perform

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particular tasks. What I mean by apparatus here certainly bears some Foucauldian trace, in regard to mechanisms and knowledge production struc-tures capable of the execution of power within the larger social world. Yet, equally important is the inspiration that stems from the apparatus theory in cinema studies, where the materiality of technical devices and the way they work has decisive ideological effect for the media subject formation. For my purpose, however, it is enough to draw on the term’s general meaning, which boils down to the fact that the media content is imbued with the ideology already present in the technical means with which it is produced; this way of thinking diverges from the longstanding tradition of instrumentalist approach toward technicity (Gunkel, 2012). In other words, media technologies are much more than just tools in our hands, but the relationship between technology and culture is by no means purely deterministic.

As I mentioned above, I will interpret the con-cept of paratext not so much as a set of parasitic texts but rather as an apparatus that stimulates movement, spatiality and fluidity (in relation to the technicality of mashup procedures). I will draw upon various re-readings and reconfigura-tions of the notion, especially in the context of media-specific analysis. Postulations that seem most useful in this regard come from the field of film and media studies (Böhnke, 2007; Zons, 2009; Elsaesser & Hagener, 2010; Gray, 2010; Krautkrämer, 2009) and cultural geography (Thrift, 2008), although similar theoretical themes can be found in the theory of hypertext (Landow, 2006; Ricardo, 1998). Following Johanna Drucker, who noticed similar processes while investigat-ing the historical shift concerning the material-ity of texts, one might speak of a “paratextual apparatus” in regard to digital culture, where the functions and usage of cultural texts and material components have significantly changed (although it is necessary to keep in mind the paradoxical nature of digital materiality, by which we mean not only hardware but also software consisting

of executable code which underlines the effect of the interface through which we access any digital cultural text). In other words, what counts is also the media-specific materiality because, as we will see, it influences the way paratexts are conceived, designed and organized in relation to the main text (Drucker, 2009). This means that the relation of paratexts to the main text is unstable and it can-not be determined a priori to its materialization.

PARATEXT AND ITS THEORETICAL INCARNATIONS: TOWARDS THE FLUIDITY OF MEANING BETWEEN TEXTS

Focusing on the relation of paratext to the very materiality of media seems the best entry point for any analysis oriented toward a shift in theoriz-ing on the above-mentioned concept, which, to a greater extent, would incorporate the specificity of media environments—in this endeavor I will follow quite closely in Genette’s footsteps. The next step, however, in which I investigate the issue of authorship (located right in the center of Genette’s concept), by comparing two similar practices of digital media, the remix and the mashup, requires significant reconceptualization. For now, however, suffice it to say again that exploring this subject in relation to mashup procedures calls for the incorporation of non-human agents (for example, algorithms and other automated non-human-related elements of communication processes) and for more attention to be paid to their prominent role in the circulation of digital content.

Nevertheless, it is useful to start with the open-ing of Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, where Genette (1997a) explicitly states that “the paratext is what enables a text to become a book and to be offered as such to its readers and, more gen-erally, to the public” (p. 1), with the consequence that “the sole fact of transcription—but equally, of oral transmission—brings to the ideality of the text some degree of materialization, graphic or phonic,

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which, as we will see, may induce paratextual effects” (p. 3). Clearly, paratexts are positioned here as the very procedures through which the text is materialized and included in a broader media discourse (“enables a text to become a book”). On the other hand, the “paratextual effect” is grounded in such processes of materialization and vice versa—the very materiality of paratexts is related to their functionalities; precisely speaking, these procedures particularly concern peritexts that are physically bound with the main text. Alexander Zons (formerly known as Böhnke) (2009), who investigates the possibility of employing Genette’s concept in the field of film studies, also notices a strong relation between paratext and a particular media technology. He understands it as a form of “media conditioning” (p. 115). Such a statement, however, sounds too monocausal— meaning that the kind of media technology producing the text would determine the nature of its paratexts. The relation is definitely important but “condition-ing” might be too strong a word in this case. Regardless, it seems that the meaning of the text is never complete without the accompanying paratexts. The sheer enumeration of paratextual items considered by Genette clearly demonstrates the internal and external “machinery” providing for the reading experience, yet also embracing certain aspects of wider cognitive processes. Any such enumeration would be based on the content of the book, which, according to Richard Macksey (1997), “completes the ‘transtextual’ trilogy” (p. xvi) of the author, known also from his previous attempts at outlining a more general concept of transtextuality (Genette, [1979] 1992; Genette, [1982] 1997b), or the numerous ways in which the specific textual entities are always related to some other texts, be it through direct and straightforward quotations, or through hidden signals, cues and traces that require a significant amount of inquiry. The notion of transtextuality basically means that no text appears without a rich network of connections from where its meanings are actually drawn.

Although often cited, this list of paratextual devices—which Genette divides into peritexts (internally present in the book: title page, cov-ers, page layout, indices, footnotes, dedications, inscriptions, preface, intertitles, notes) and epitexts (found on the “outside” of the text: in-terviews with the author, promotional material, advertisements, press information, etc.)—is far from complete. Before I add to this impressive account two other important features which tend to be overlooked in most of the usual ways the concept is employed, let me say that the notion of “textual” might be somewhat misleading: Genette (1997a) concludes at one point rather vaguely that paratext “is already some text” (p. 7). But he immediately adds that “we must at least bear in mind the paratextual value that may be iconic (illustrations), material (for example, everything that originates in the sometimes very significant typographical choices that go into the making of a book), or purely factual” (Genette, 1997, p. 7). Among those “factual” paratexts he recognizes, for example, the author’s gender or sexual orientation (which, by the way, allows for including in the literary analysis issues that sometimes tend to be relegated to the field of the rather nebulous and neglected “context” of reception; this inclusion might further blur the clear borders between text and its “outside”). Furthermore, it is crucial to remember that Genette (1997a) focuses on what he characterizes as “the pragmatic status of a pa-ratextual element,” which basically amounts to the “situation of communication” (p. 8). Even though the French theorist describes this situation in terms grounded in the classical theory of information (with the sender, the message and the recipient as the main elements of a communication model, and little attention paid to actual communicative practices), I argue that with regard to electronic media environments, the most productive (yet most often overlooked or neglected) definition of paratext underlines the pragmatic, processual and experiential aspects:

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The paratext, then, is empirically made up of a heterogeneous group of practices and discourses of all kinds and dating from all periods which I federate under the term “paratext” in the name of a common interest, or a convergence of effects, that seems to me more important than their diversity of aspect. (Genette, 1997, p. 2)

Paratexts, then, are not so much (or not even primarily) textual objects as they are practices, suggestions, rules and protocols—the inclusion of the last term on this list seems particularly important and will be explained in greater detail later on. For now, it is important to note that what definitely comes to the fore here is the paratext’s performative aspect: how the paratexts (and especially peritexts) “work” in the world, what they “do,” or rather, make the reader “do” (i.e., check the footnotes placed after the main text, turn the page according to the numbering or search through the text according to the index). We can also ponder on the question of what they “do” to the main text—as is the case with the features that Genette calls the publisher’s peritext (for example the format of the book) and which only on the surface seem to belong to the purely technical domain. Such technicity can be interpreted as standard and protocol not only governing the use of textual objects, but also shaping the reader’s expectations and affecting the interpretation of the main text (for example, “pocket” book suggests what type of literature is offered by the author).

Particularly useful in this regard are some propositions on reading the paratextual theory in cinema studies. The interpretation of paratext in the context of the media-specific analysis that also focuses on some “technical” features of the media object are, for example, to be seen in Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener’s account of film openings. The researchers, who already approach film as a fluid phenomenon that offers the audience many ways of entry, point out that paratexts—such as the movie’s title—often connote many types of other content already circulating through various

platforms within converging media. Additionally, the motion picture industry’s massive advertising and promotional campaigns (with the particularly prominent role of movie trailers) “create a space of transition and transaction” (Elsaesser & Hagener, 2010, p. 43). Interestingly, for both authors, the “film opening” in cinemas constitutes an interest-ing situation and, at the same time, an important issue for analysis, as it is an important metaphor of the cinematic experience as such, opening—as it does—the whole range of expectations and interpretations. Such a transitory, liminal space enabled by paratexts is intertwined with a specific concept of cinema, beyond the purely textual/visual/audial characteristics of motion pictures, where more relevance is given to their experiential qualities (“cinema is an experience that unfolds in time and space”) (Elsaesser & Hagener, 2010, p. 41). In Elsaesser and Hagener’s media-specific approach, a significant amount of attention is devoted to the screen as such, which, however, is conceptualized somewhat differently than in the classic apparatus theory of cinema studies. Here, the screen is first and foremost “the real interface in the auditorium” (Elsaesser & Hagener, 2010, p. 38); it is also a door, one of the entrances that shape the spectator’s time-bound experience. According to Elsaesser and Hagener, even if the screen constitutes a material border separating the film from the audience (and, one might add, stabilizing the “text”), paratexts offer the poten-tial to encourage the audience to transgress such boundaries. Here, the performative aspect of pa-ratexts comes to the fore again: the boundaries get transgressed first of all by way of the audiences negotiating the limits of interpretation and modes of using the cinematic texts as envisioned by the film producers (for example, the audience might choose to create fan fiction to continue the story or the video game and to interact with the fictional world). In this sense, the paratexts “indicate the semantic instability and tectonic shifts and turbu-lence of the texts, as inside and outside are never quite stable and fixed and their boundaries become

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fuzzy or jagged” (Elsaesser & Hagener, 2010, p. 42). We might say that the “threshold” of paratext is formed in accordance with the industry’s and audience’s practices, which are basically aimed at setting the text/object in motion (from theme-centered promotional gadgets and merchandise to the previously mentioned audience-generated content). However, in the current media environ-ment, what once used to be dubbed merely as a “semantic instability,” recently has materialized either as a form of narrative complexity (for ex-ample modular narrative, the transmedia story or distributed narrative, not to forget about multiplat-form narrative games known as Alternate Reality Games, ARG) (Cameron, 2008; Dena, 2009; Jenkins, 2008; McGonigal, 2003), or as a whole array of various instances of a unique vernacular Internet culture (Internet memes, viral content, mashup), together with the procedures that enable them—a point which I will develop in more detail in the following paragraphs. A similar approach is proposed by Alexander Zons, who analyses the function of the cinematic title sequence. He also underlines the transitory function of paratext: in this case, it is situated not on the outside of the text but “inside that which is outside, a threshold” (Zons, 2009, p. 115). In his earlier book, Böhnke (2007) outlines the possibility of transferring this notion from the field of literary analysis, which was the original “site” of Genette’s idea, into the framework of film studies, where the specificity of the media needs to be taken into account.

Such performative qualities of paratexts have also been strongly underlined in the most compre-hensive analysis to date that employs the notion with regard to media culture. Jonathan Gray (2010) presents the main tenets of his endeavor as follows: “The book’s thesis is that paratexts are not simply add-ons, spin-offs, and also-rans: they create texts, they manage them, and they fill them with many of the meanings that we associate with them” (p. 6). The author also sees paratexts as a machine that sets interpretations in motion: “If we imagine the triumvirate of Text, Audience, and Industry as the

Big Three of media practice, then paratexts fill the space between them, conditioning passages and trajectories that criss-cross the mediascape, and variously negotiating or determining interactions among the three” (Gray, 2010, p. 23). Yet through-out the book, the author consistently focuses not so much on such mechanisms of circulation as on a number of paratexts and their productive work, persuasively demonstrating the extent to which it is the paratext that actually fuels the rich meanings of a film or TV series (for example, claiming that in the case of The Simpsons, “at times the show’s paratexts have done more to create the text as it is known than has the show itself”) (Gray, 2010, p. 13). This remark cannot really serve as a critique, since already in the introduction the author clearly outlines his goals and approach by writing that “the present book focuses on paratexts as textual entities” (Gray, 2010, p. 15), immediately adding: “emphasizing the relationship between paratexts, films, and television programs and audiences” (Gray, 2010, p. 15). Still, for the most part, his analysis is grounded in the rather conventional interpretation of paratext and paratextuality. Gray (2010) understands his endeavor as “the study of how meaning is created, and of how texts begin” (p. 26).

PARATEXTUAL PRACTICES OF NETWORKED MEDIA: TOWARD PERITEXTS AS PROTOCOLS AND “WRITING MACHINES”

The concept of a decentralized, fluid and ne-gotiated text is by no means new within media studies; in particular, the rich mixture of British cultural studies, deconstruction and poststruc-turalism (with its most radical version inspired by Stanley Fish’s (1982) critique of textualism) has contributed to a shift in theorizing and in reception studies toward more emphasis on the wider contexts of reception in the process of con-structing the meaning of the basic text. This was

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demonstrated in Fiske’s (1987) triadic concept of vertical intertextuality, where he outlines rela-tionships between the primary television text and additional content referring to it. Apart from this very basic main text, Fiske points out the secondary texts (produced by the television industry itself or the professional critique) and tertiary texts (pro-duced by the audience in the form of fan fiction but also taking shape from any discussion and commenting on television programs in the unof-ficial channels of communication, including oral transmission between spectators). So when Gray (2010) writes about The Simpsons and notices that “at the paratextual level, or, rather, between the level of the show and the level of the paratext, the text is deeply conflicted, complex, and contradic-tory when it comes to advertising, consumerism, and capitalism” (p. 15), in a way, he follows in the footsteps of Fiske, who claimed in his 1987 book on television culture: “Texts are the site of conflict between their forces of production and modes of reception” (p. 13). However, even more important is the fact that when the networked, Web-centered media is discussed, any study of paratexts and paratextuality, which is concerned mostly with the problems of meaning and with the numerous ways of decentering or dispersing the text across avail-able media platforms, or even with the temporal aspects of audience’s experience, remains far from sufficient. It is probably not without reason that Gray deliberately limits his analysis to paratext in film and television, although one may wonder how he draws the dividing line in today’s environ-ment of closely convergent media. Here, we shall take a somewhat closer look at what is really at stake in “federating,” under the term of paratext, all the “heterogeneous practices and discourses” (Genette, 1997, p. 2)—especially if one insists that peritexts, as I have already proposed above, are first of all media-specific (and, with regard to mashup procedures, also media-reflexive) and materially bound with the “main” text. Although Florian Krautkrämer (2009) argues that the origi-nal dual concept of peritexts and epitexts does

not make much sense today, due to the variety of ways in which the audience encounters the film (be it a cinema projection, a DVD copy or VOD), I maintain that such a division is still valid, if we consider the media-specificity of peritexts as well as their functional, operational and performative meaning, which I will demonstrate below.

Perhaps it is no surprise that a particularly inspiring cue in this regard comes from Nigel Thrift’s (2008) aptly titled Non-Representational Theory; as we will see, the fact that Thrift declares his task as “an outline of the art of producing a permanent supplement to the ordinary, a sacrament for the everyday, a hymn to the superfluous” (p. 2) is also worthy of attention. Therefore, the remark-able idea of capturing the “onflow of everyday life” (Thrift, 2008, p. 5) signals a general focus on movement, flow and processuality of becoming, which, according to Thrift, cannot be captured in the form of a series of frozen objects—this is the basic meaning of what he understands as non-representational theory. Consequently, where the author draws upon the theory of paratext, he sees paratexts as a productive epistemic background that operates in an obvious, explicit manner, yet is hidden from view. The comparison with simple, but crucial, computational processes and their algorithms working in the background while the user focuses on the graphic interface is almost too obvious when Thrift (2008) explains how to describe the necessary framework for any human activity and compares it to paratexts that constitute “‘invisible’ forms which structure how we write the world but which generally no longer receive attention because of their utter familiarity” (p. 91). Despite their prominent role in shaping the representations of the outside world, those “‘invis-ible’ forms” rarely come to the surface, creating, as Thrift (2008) calls it, an “epistemic wallpaper” (p. 91) that vanishes from view because of its obvious familiarity.

One might also liken those invisible forms to protocols governing any media technology, any intentional mediated communication between

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humans, or any communication exchange between humans and non-humans (like, for example, a TCP/IP protocol governing every act of com-munication between machines, constituting the network we perceive as Internet). I use the notion of protocol, drawing upon the rich understanding of the term proposed by Lisa Gitelman (2006), who believes that protocols “express a huge va-riety of social, economic and material relation-ships” (p. 7). They are not only purely technical standards, norms and instructions governing the use of artefacts. According to Gitelman (2006), they also consist of historically developed social norms and conventions of technology use, as well as proprioceptive skills and activities. In other words, “protocols express a huge variety of social, economic, and material relationships” and form “a nebulous clutter around a technology” (p. 8). To be more precise, every such standardization includes negotiations with all the actors involved and is a part of an unfolding historical process. Gitelman also underlines the fact that successful communication through or with media requires some kind of blindness to the protocols governing their functioning, although one has to take into account their development in time: The newer a medium, the less stable (hence, more “visible”) its protocols. Alexander Galloway highlights a shift in the meaning of the term introduced by the com-puting technology where the protocol regulates how a specific technology is implemented across different social worlds. His analysis is concerned first with the materiality of media, which is highly related to the manifold regimes of power. Since, according to Galloway (2004), “protocols are highly formal; that is, they encapsulate informa-tion inside a technically defined wrapper, while remaining relatively indifferent to the content of information” (p. 7), they constitute very potent means of regulation that are rarely taken into consideration, since research tends to focus on the more visible aspects of networked media and is interested primarily in the content and shape of information.

At their extreme, the software-centered, ma-terialist approaches within media studies, repre-sented, among others, by Galloway, follow the Kittlerian stance, where any media content is just a deceptive effect on the surface of algorithmic procedures running deep into the entanglements of the networked computing technology (Kittler, 1999). A somewhat less deterministic, though still noteworthy, concept is offered by N. Katherine Hayles (2002), who devotes much attention to electronic literature, reframing the subject of inquiry as inscription technology, closing the radical dichotomy of print and digital media, yet maintaining the tenets of the media-specific ap-proach. Nevertheless, Hayles (2002) takes into consideration substantial differences between the two technologies, which are possible because she proposes a very broad definition of inscription technology: “To count as an inscription technol-ogy, a device must initiate material changes that can be read as marks” (p. 24). Following Hayles (2002) (despite the fact that she does not refer on this occasion to either Genette or his seminal concept), paratext can also be read as a specific in-stance of a mechanism of the type referred to in her book as a “writing machine,” which—apart from multimodality and multimediality of digital text—also takes into account “software functionalities” (p. 20) that are embedded into it. This is exactly where paratext theory becomes useful— we can read those “software functionalities” in terms of paratexts interpreted as “technical” standards and protocols of use. In the field of print media, this would mean any reader’s practices following the cultural standards of what counts as reading the book: reading according to page numbering (or against it), using the references or index system. In the field of networked digital media, it means following the rules and protocols chosen by the software: for example, how we can share the con-tent across media platforms or multiply the content by performing a cut/copy/paste of the fragments of code while embedding anything on our blog or website). In this regard, the material shape

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of a textual work forms a “material metaphor” (Hayles, 2002, p. 21) that establishes itself as a site of transfer between the symbolic order and the material world. Therefore, any feature affect-ing the physical form of the book (as is the case with the publisher’s peritexts, for example) will have much wider consequences, as it transforms “profoundly...the metaphoric network structuring the relation of word to world” (Hayles, 2002, p. 23). In the case of digital text, we confront its ambivalent materiality: it exists as an executable code, but any interaction with it requires an in-terface that is a specific type of metaphor. That is why Hayles (2002) aptly writes that, in the case of digital literary text,

materiality cannot be specified in advance, as if it pre-existed the specificity of the work. An emergent property, materiality depends on how the work mobilizes its resources as a physical artefact as well as on the user’s interactions with the work and the interpretive strategies she develops—strate-gies that include physical manipulations as well as conceptual frameworks. (p. 33)

We will see that this is also a crucial feature of mashup practices that require a significant shift in how the figure of the author is understood.

MASHUP AND REMIX: FAMILY RESEMBLANCE?

Now that some attention has been paid to the rein-terpretation of paratext in terms of performativity and the very mechanism enabling the materializa-tion of the text (as well as its fluid, open, emergent and transitory nature), one can take a closer look at specific instances of digital culture that illustrate the necessity of emphasizing more strongly the meaning of the concept beyond the “text” seen primarily as an autonomous “object,” especially if networked media are concerned. It is necessary, though, to clarify in more detail how I understand

the term “mashup”; it has been widely accepted in digital culture but its sense often tends to get conflated with that of the remix (which is indeed similar in meaning). I argue that the crucial dif-ference between the two concepts boils down to the issue of authorship, which in the case of the former gets extremely complicated, due to the role of non-human actors and semi- or fully-automated algorithmic procedures of contemporary Web environments.

Both remix and mashup are based on the prac-tices of reconfiguration of the already existing content through sampling, collaging and montage, based on the logics of cut/copy/paste procedures; yet when one needs to distinguish between the two concepts, the details and technical parameters do matter. The practice of remix—grounded mostly in the field of musical experiment—has already quite a long tradition which, depending on the scope of analysis, could be traced back either to the first experiments with tape music in the San Francisco Tape Music Center, established in 1962 by Morton Subotnick and Ramon Sender (one of the prominent early examples of such practice would be the 1966 composition Come Out by Steve Reich, who was loosely connected with the center at the time); or to Jamaican sound systems and dub culture transferred from the Caribbean to British popular culture in the 1960s (Hebdige, 1987). Other rather obvious starting points would include DJs’ first attempts at producing notice-ably longer tracks (with the exemplary 17-minute long version of Donna Summer’s hit song Love to Love You Baby, as well as other compositions by Giorgio Moroder), not to mention the practices of dissent embedded in the practice of sound col-laging termed “plunderphonics” by John Oswald in 1985. By performing “plunderphonics” (appar-ently a word game that plays with the meaning of “plunder” and the semantic root suggesting audi-tory experience), the artist took advantage of the extensive sampling, altering and reappropriating of the base soundtrack, often illegally (Oswald, 1985). The less obvious genealogies could start

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with avant-garde experiments conducted in the first decades of the 20th century; for example, sampling practices typical for musique concrète and field recording. The root meaning of mashup, however, is grounded in the procedures and in-stances of computing technology. Nowadays, the term “mashup” may be applied to a wide range of cultural artefacts based on remix practices as well as Internet users’ everyday activities. We do it every time we upload an image to any photo-sharing service, simultaneously localizing it on Google Maps, or when we share our favorite songs or video clips on Facebook, or embed them on our own website (which, incidentally, is quite often run on wordpress.com or blogspot.com, a significant fact in this context). Accord-ing to Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss (2010), “remix and mashup practices in combination can be consid-ered as a coevolving, oscillating membrane of user-generated content (conversational media) and mass media” (p. 9) which is one of the factors differentiating contemporary media environments from avant-garde practices of the past. However, as I mentioned above, at least one significant dif-ference between remix and mashup needs to be highlighted. This difference has a lot to do with the previously-outlined theoretical shift in the understanding of the concept of paratext: from the set of parasitic, fragmentary and dispersed additional texts/contents, to the very mechanism framing the act of interpretation and the semiotic-material machinery enabling the performance of a text through even the most mundane user activity (be it browsing a book in search of annotations and references, activating the lexias of hypertext following the choices given by the digital text’s designer, or sharing the content across social media platforms).

Whereas remixing practices in music, to a significant extent, preserve the modernist power of an autonomous author (the reconfigured track not only keeps the name of the author of the remix, but it often becomes an added value in itself, even if it consists of a “selection from the

menu” (Manovich, 2002)), in mashup procedures, however, claiming an autonomous authorship becomes extremely complex, if not altogether impossible. Several factors are responsible: the logics of “choosing from the menu” typical for most of the mashup practices of users who usu-ally work in predesigned programming interfaces that offer quite sophisticated customization (for example, knowledge of CSS allows for a more individualized presentation of graphic themes provided by Wordpress) or the copy/paste of suit-able fragments of code; the cooperative character of software development; licensing policies of the actors involved; and, last but not least, the fact that any mashup requires a heavily complex en-vironment of communication exchanges between machines, protocols and standards. Any mashup practice is driven by the possibilities offered by the extensible markup language (XML) and the open application programming interface (API), which enable mixing Web applications and platforms in the first place—this is a prerequisite for any further recombinations (also on the part of actors in third-party software development).

In this regard, Google Maps became a pio-neer of fluid Web mapping environments when it developed a programming language standard for digital mapping that allows for geographic annotations as well as representations of 2D and 3D objects. KML, or Keyhole Markup Language, named after a company that Google bought in 2004 (the acquisition resulted in the development of Google Maps the following year), corresponds in a sense to what XML has become for the devel-opment of general Web applications, as it allows document structures to be transferred to other services that use the same standard (de Souza e Silva & Gordon, 2011). Even more flexibility was implemented when Google Maps opened its API in June 2005, shortly after the launch of the mapping service (the very first Google Maps beta version premiered in February that year; for a few months, it was functioning as Google Places). But even before the API was opened, the first

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map hacking acts (and hence the first mashup) had already been performed. For example, Paul Rademacher’s reverse-engineering programming tricks combined house listings available through craigslist with a map from Google’s then-new service (Crampton, 2010). Another well-known example is Adrian Holovaty’s idea to overlay Google’s Chicago map with the local police crime statistics and which gained extreme popularity (de Souza e Silva & Gordon, 2011). The whole procedure then requires a constant process of negotiating formats, metadata, protocols and programming languages, where a certain amount of standardization is necessary (Galloway, 2004), with the emergent, open-ended outcome often resulting from end-user contributions (the process brings to mind the main tenets of the paradigm shift in design theory and practice, described as a metadesign framework, with the growing role of end users and their contribution) (see Giaccardi & Fischer, 2008). However, the deci-sion to “go open source” often seems to serve vested company interests: As Adriana de Souza e Silva and Eric Gordon notice, Google’s deci-sion to donate the Keyhole Markup Language to the Open Geospatial Consortium can be seen as a move aimed at setting a ubiquitous standard of communication exchange—the backbone of Google’s success in the networked media environ-ment, also in commercial terms. In other words, the paratexts (protocols, formats, programming procedures and languages) remain more or less stable, while the main “text”—in this case, the content—becomes changeable, fluid, dispersed, open for customization and appropriation. How-ever, the degree of fragmentation and complexity of the networked communication environment, according to Sonvilla-Weiss (2010), calls for a cultural strategy of defragmentation which would help “to re-establish alienated modes of common understanding through aggregation, augmentation, reconfiguration and combination of information, quite similarly to what the hard disk does when physically organizing the contents

of the disk to store the pieces of each file close together and contiguously” (p. 9). Reconfiguring the concept of paratext could be one of the steps toward the goal.

MASHUP AS A PARATEXTUAL PRACTICE: GOOGLE MAPS

The example I have chosen—Google Maps—might not be seen as the most obvious case of mashup culture, yet apparently it is the most ubiquitous one. Even the simple quantitative data on the extent of implementation of Google Maps across the Web is very persuasive in this regard, and it illustrates the extent to which Google Maps has become the standard for online digital mapping. According to online API and mashup directory (which is to some extent a search engine combined with a catalogue and statistics for any mashup on the Web) ProgrammableWeb.com, in 2013, there were 2,477 mashups based on Google Maps Appli-cation Programming Interface, which equals 38% of the total number (9,621) of API implementation cases investigated by this service (other popular examples of mashups used in various services and on private user websites include Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Facebook but they rank significantly lower, with 12%, 10%, 9% and 6%, respectively). So, considering all the hype concerning the social media phenomenon, it seems that the real online revolution is occurring somewhere else: in the field of mapping tools and localization. This is why the attempt at testing the theory of paratext in relation to Google Maps seems so important. Moreover, with its 2,477 mashups, Google Maps is also the most prevalent among all the mapping services, leaving its strongest competitors—Microsoft’s Bing (174 mashups), Yahoo Maps (136 mashups), and Foursquare (102 mashups)—far behind, thus supporting the conclusion that Google Maps set up a new standard for all online mapping tools. Mapping is also the most popular mashup tagging category (26%) (ProgrammableWeb.com, 2013).

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Google Maps’ ubiquity looks even more interest-ing if one considers the fact that it is likely the only platform that does not offer a simple button to share its content on Facebook, considered the rival to Google’s own G+ social network.

Therefore, the reason I chose Google Maps as an illustration for mashup as paratextual prac-tice (deliberately leaving aside its other popular offshoots like Google Earth and Street View) has everything to do with the not-so-obvious, often hidden from the average user’s view (yet very material and tangible) work of paratext understood in terms of “standard,” “protocol,” “inscription technology” and “writing machine.” Basically, these terms all mean that paratext—as specific code commands and procedures (for example, the specific HTML syntax elements constituting the way the information is viewed and used or particular elements of Web 2.0 architecture based on AJAX and JAVA) —is ingrained in the basic text and governs the way it is performed as cultural text. In short, it determines the overwhelmingly prominent and ubiquitous Internet practices based on sharing and forms “epistemic wallpaper” to which we rarely pay attention. Additionally, we are also confronted with the intrinsic “machinery” of popular services and applications, including open application programming interface (API) and language (KML and JavaScript) enabling the circulation of content (both maps and ac-companying localized and locatable information in different formats) across the Web. My example, however, will be investigated following first the basic structure behind the content (mapping interface), which in this case is paratextual, then briefly introducing its two incarnations, where the map itself has been used to serve explicitly artistic purposes—as a structure of a novel and as a sound art directory. This fact alone can serve as an interesting starting point—to what extent digital mashups constitute a different cultural text, given their strong connection to the “basic” text, which is not only the particular content but also the code reality of online services or applications?

Considering the fact that any mashup preserves the functionality and look of its base application, maintaining such clear boundaries is particularly tricky. Therefore, my example is not so much two different “texts” as it is the illustration of what has been clearly underlined at the beginning: Paratexts in digital culture and networked media should not be read as separate text entities but as certain “technical” rules and protocols as well as cues providing readers/users with a direct impulse to perform actions.

Naturally, the explosion of Google Maps mash-up popularity is part of a wider cultural current signaled by the prevalence of open, participatory mapping and the various procedures of cybercar-tography in general (including geolocation and GIS-based information visualization processes). Grassroots activists often employ it as a tool of preference, helpful and effective in solving local problems and crises, as demonstrated by a num-ber of services, such as the Grassroots Mapping (http://grassrootsmapping.org) platform and community of knowledge exchange, or, most notably, the Ushahidi platform de-signed and implemented in 2008 in Kenya (http://www.ushahidi.com), with its flagship service, the Crowdmap (http://crowdmap.com), implemented during the Fukushima crisis in Ja-pan and in post-Sandy New York, among others. Usually such services present themselves as an alternative to the ubiquitous standard of Google Maps, which, although free of charge and open to users, is inevitably based on a proprietary model (with satellite imaging licensed to Google by Digital Globe, the company that has pioneered the commercial use of satellite technology in ge-oservices, as well as local map data licensed from a number of providers; for example, in Poland it is MGGP Aero, a company specializing in aerial photography; Tele Atlas also features as one of the main providers) and is perceived as a key actor involved in and supportive of contemporary dat-aveillance activities across the Web. Increasingly, mapping is also chosen by artists as a means of

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creative expression combined with social critique (Nold, 2009; see also Harmon & Clemans, 2010; Mogel & Bhagat, 2008; Thompson, 2009). An average Internet user shares his or her geolocation not only via mobile locative media but through every act of Web browsing; since 2009 Google has incorporated geolocation into any operation car-ried out with its search engine (Prahladka, 2009). The trend has been recognized as geolocation Web, neogeography or mapping 2.0 (Crampton, 2010; de Souza e Silva & Gordon, 2011; Dodge, Kitchin, & Perkins, 2009; Hudson-Smith, Crooks, Gibin, Milton, & Batty, 2009), the latter being a variation of the phenomenon of Web 2.0, which, according to some scholars, has a strong com-mercial bias (see Scholz, 2008).

In order to demonstrate some features of Google Maps mashups as a paratextual prac-tice, I will focus on two important previously mentioned aspects: the mechanism of content circulation and the issue of authorship, which I will illustrate, referring to two interesting ex-amples of Google Maps mashup, Radio Aporee (http://aporee.org) and Charles Cumming’s novel 21 Steps, a novel narrated entirely in this environment, as the first instalment of a series within Penguin’s 2008 project, We Tell Stories (http://www.wetellstories.co.uk/stories/week1/). I have chosen these particular examples because they reappropriate Google Maps, tapping its potential for artistic practices, which illustrates the flexibility and fluidity of presenting conven-tions enabled by the stability of protocol (in this regard, the Google Maps API and KML format but also the graphic conventions, which allow, in one case, the reading experience to follow the protagonist through the familiar lines and textual fields of Google mapping service, and in the other, to choose the track of interest to be played). It seems that a massive circulation of content defines the current phase of digital media development, which, as I have already noted, requires a stable but flexible environment of software operations. The conjunction of stability and flexibility encourages

a mixed bag of implementations. Map mashups are largely diversified and vary as to the extent of skills required from end users, who constitute a divergent group of actors with different levels of digital literacy. Map mashups may be very simple, like personal maps created with the tools provided by Google in the “My Places” tab which allows for adding lines, objects and annotations to maps. It also makes it possible to embed such an enhanced map on other platforms (and custom-izing it for that purpose) with the most typical acts involved in application mashup on the Web: the copy/paste of respective code sections, as well as the download of the map as a .kml file. Every Google map can be edited in Google Map Maker, a service launched by the company in 2008 with the aim of encouraging communal efforts to fill up the existing gaps on Google Maps. However, unlike OpenStreetMap, Google does not offer this data as open licensed. The map mashups may be slightly more complicated, as when implementing an applet localizing a subject on a Google Map in the content management system, or mixing one’s own spreadsheet with a map, a process enabled by Google’s Fusion Tables (launched in 2009 and, since 2011, available from Google Drive service under Tables) which leads to more advanced forms of data visualization (of course, generating a .kml file is possible for every operation, which allows for entirely different uses outside the Google system while employing the company’s standard).

But, as mentioned before, in the case of Google, subscribing to open standards has at least two goals: it helps to create a flexible environment that encourages extensive cooperation between parties, and it contributes to setting a standard underlining communication exchange. However, the flexibility allows for a significant amount of reverse-engineering programming, as dem-onstrated by the case of Radio Aporee (Radio Aporee, n.d.), a platform run since 2006 by German artist and programmer Udo Noll. A Google map serves in this case as a canvas for a huge database of sound recordings updated daily, forming part

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of a unique sound map of the world. According to the platform’s creators, the aim is to create “a cartography which focuses solely on sound, and open it to the public as a collaborative project” (http://aporee.org/aporee.html) (Figure 1). As of December 30, 2013, the service included “21531 sounds with a total length of 44d, 00h, 33min, 51sec at 18490 places” (Radio Aporee’s daily e-mail newsletter, 2013).

One interesting feature of the map—in the context of the critique of Google ubiquity and its corporate strategies—is that it combines both Google Maps and the OpenStreetMap standard on one site. The way sound clips can be uploaded is yet another noteworthy function of the service: An e-mail address is enough to collaborate on the map, with no requirement of creating a personal user profile. In other words, a Google Map is implemented in the Radio Aporee service, but the way it operates has been modified slightly by the simple act of providing users with an option to

remain anonymous, and by incorporating an ad-ditional, non-proprietary mapping standard (that is, the OpenStreetMap interface). As a result, the sound clips can be localized in both standards. From the perspective of Google Maps’ domina-tion, which apparently works toward setting up the geographical standards of mapping 2.0, it can be seen as a manifestation of the tradition of reverse engineering (Figure 2).

It also contributes to the reconfiguration of the dominant discourse of modern cartography, which historically has been formed as a part of the culture of occulocentrism. Fluidity of the content in this case also incorporates the audi-tory experience of sound files placed on a map, which binds the listener/viewer to a particular place in the world. Just recently a mobile app was launched (both for iOS and Android) that changes “smart GPS-phone into a location-sensitive radio receiver” (Radio Aporee, n.d.). It allows for interaction with place-specific sounds

Figure 1. The interface of the aporee.org sound map © 2013, Udo Noll (Google, NASA, TerraMetrics). Used with permission.

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and narratives, recorded by other users (among others, the well-known media performance group RIMINI PROTOKOLL has contributed the piece Rimini Protokoll: 50 Aktenkilometer). In this way, the creators of Radio Aporee proposed the interesting concept of augmented aur(e)ality, which is an obvious play on words with the term augmented reality, describing the technology which allows for overlaying physical space with graphical data.

We can see that Google Maps is much more than just a familiar interface, with a plethora of other map-centered services offered by Google; it establishes a complex milieu of tools, services, knowledge exchange, experiments and product development, including Google Maps Mania, a non-official blog devoted specifically to Google Maps mashups (at this point, I will simply signal the subject which I have deliberately left aside: the issue of epitexts, or paratexts “outside” of the main text, their nature and function in the environment

of digital media). Likewise, we should not forget about Google Labs, or a number of discussion forums and blogs devoted to sharing informa-tion and experience between the company and more advanced users who often contribute to the software end product. This environment (includ-ing Google Maps itself and millions of mundane everyday operations performed by average users) seems to provide “the infrastructure for different granularities of participation” (Fuller & Haque, 2008, p. 22), bringing to mind the principles and practices promoted by the Free, Libre and Open Source Systems (FLOSS); all of these further complicate the issue of authorship. Granted, a communal and collaborative form of authorship is not entirely revolutionary either: Alexander Böhnke has noticed that, in the case of film, the concept of autonomous authorship does not apply due to the character of film production, bearing all the traces of mass media, where the “author” is communal and often negotiated (leveraging

Figure 2. The interface of the aporee.org sound map – contributor’s panel © 2013, Udo Noll [Google, Digital Globe, MGGP Aero]. Used with permission.

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the interests of the film studio, the producer, the director and the distribution company); such a claim is also valid for any television program. In the case of a digital media platform, there is yet another crucial agent: non-human factors. This is best illustrated by the—not so rare—case of misappropriation and/or programming glitches.

A spectacular example of this was provided by the Penguin publishing house, which special-izes in popular literature and pocket editions of classics, in February 2008, when it initiated an intriguing project of interactive fiction, We Tell Stories—six novels conceived and produced with the highly connective and interactive media environment in mind. The series’ first instalment attracted much media attention: 21 Steps by Charles Cumming was narrated in the environ-ment of Google Maps, with the adventures of a protagonist named Rick presented in balloons characteristic of this service’s interface; this also allowed for the simultaneous presentation of their spatial trajectories. The We Tell Stories project is particularly interesting from the point of view of a broader concept of metatextuality, since it was aimed at refreshing some of Penguin’s classic novels, and each of these interactive pieces of fiction used a different model of hypertextuality. The project includes one more story: Alice in Sto-ryland, designed by Naomi Alderman. The reader has to “discover” and reconstruct it with the help of hints included in the other texts. Metatextual linkages are also clear: For example, 21 Steps was inspired by the classic novel by John Buchanan, The 39 Steps, published by Penguin, which also inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the same title. The project was developed by the Six to Start de-velopment company, whose creators had gained experience in interactive fiction while designing (as Mind Candy) one of the most successful (also in commercial terms) Alternate Reality Games, the Perplex City (also narrated by the above-mentioned Naomi Alderman). Adrian and Don Hon, who run the company, used to be members of Cloudmakers, a community formed around one of

the first games of this kind, The Beast, launched in 2000 and based on Steven Spielberg’s movie A.I. (McGonigal, 2003).

In the case of 21 Steps, we might speak of a structure of “layered authorship,” akin to the structure of new media objects once described by Lev Manovich (2001). The most visible layer is composed of instances figuring as the author (Cumming), the designer (Six to Start) and the publisher (Penguin). Yet, at the same time, an-other auctorial instance forms a collective subject composed of the lead designer (Adrian Hon), interaction developer (Andrew Hayward), system developer (Ben Burry), photographer and editor (Minnette) and graphic designer (Richard Jones). This therefore resembles the familiar structure of production of any mass media content. There is, however, a hidden layer, which I described above: the Google Maps interface (a combination of satellite photos provided by DigitalGlobe and GeoEye with visualizations and system function-alities developed by Google), plus operational functionalities enabling mashups. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, this layer was fully revealed during a disturbance (this is when paratexts, understood as communicational protocols, usu-ally gain more visibility). Over a few months in late 2009 and early 2010, Cumming’s novel was unavailable: the text did not load and could not be navigated or read. When describing 21 Steps, Adrian Hon explained that one of the reasons why they decided to inscribe the story into Google Maps was the fact that this characteristic interface was obvious for anybody who had ever used the service. It functioned as a set of rules, suggesting, and at the same time defining, the parameters of reading. However, in April 2010, I learned from my e-mail correspondence with Jeremy Etting-hausen from Penguin (J. Ettinghausen, personal communication, April 2010) that the breakdown was caused by changes in Google’s API and that the programmers were working on restoring the functionality (this finally happened in mid-2010, but at the moment of writing, in July 2013, the novel

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is still not fully operational). This was the moment when the mobilization of material resources N. Katherine Hayles (2002) wrote about came to the surface in the most significant way—through the disturbance and invasion of the obvious familiar-ity of the “epistemic wallpaper” (Thrift, 2008, p. 91) constituted by Google Maps interface and its “software functionalities” (Hayles, 2002, p. 20).

CONCLUSION

The last example illustrates the unique nature of digital networked media that govern much of the background activity of today’s media environment. David M. Berry (2011) writes that, to some extent, the structures, which I, following Nigel Thrift’s formula, term here “epistemic wallpapers,” have always managed technically organized everyday activities (for example, bureaucratic processes) and, at the same time, points out that digital media offer some novelty; for example, the fact that the “networked software, in particular, encourages a communicative environment of rapidly changing feedback mechanisms that tie humans and non-humans together into new aggregates” (p. 2). Such a posthumanist approach not only allows for a fuller account of networked media author-ship, participation and user activities (updated in comparison with their modernist or mass media meaning), but it also provides fresh interpreta-tions that focus on the content, object, text and, primarily, on the mechanisms of their performance and circulation. From that perspective, a paratext is also an aggregate, which, to some extent, “is a tangle, a knot, which ties together the physical and the ephemeral, the material and the ethereal, into a multi-linear ensemble that can be controlled and directed” (Berry, 2011, p. 3). This happens when we look for references or ignore them deliberately while reading a book, when we follow the order marked by page numbers, or when we push the “share” button, eager to let our Facebook friends know that we have just found something impor-

tant or funny. Contrary to popular belief and to some sophisticated theories, this is not so much an example of mysterious cultural memetics as of our activities entangled in diverse ways in the complex materialities of the medium.

As we see, even finding the clear boundaries between “texts” and “paratexts”—if we are to understand them as separate entities—is difficult when it comes to the analysis of mapping mashups. Do the particular instances of the use of Google Maps (such as a novel narrated entirely within its structure and an auditory map, combined with the field recordings directory using Google Maps as a canvas and a catalogue) belong to the platform or do they constitute the cultural texts in their own right? The answer is not easy because of the paradoxical nature of paratexts in networked media, which—as I have demonstrated—are not only the particular types of texts themselves but also the programming language’s syntax and cod-ing determining the way the content is used across the Internet. Therefore, the core of the problem lies beneath the representations we see on the screen: flexibility and ubiquity of appropriation are enabled by the very programming devices implemented to allow for reappropriation and sharing, and which are usually hidden from the average user’s view. All we can see is “Google Maps everywhere” but the reason for this becomes less obvious. In fact, the ease with which the user can reappropriate Google Maps for his or her own purpose is grounded in the company’s deci-sion to subscribe to an open API model, which allows any user to implement the map and imbue it with any content he or she wishes, provided the company’s logo appears on the site. As a result, even the implementations that change the original function of Google Maps in a radical way— from purely pragmatic, representational and factual to artistic and fictional (or, rather, as in the case of Cumming’s novel, contributing to blurring the clear distinction between facts and fiction)—are possible.

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examining paratextual theory and its applications in digital culture

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