Document:Q9965

"Short Story" is the very first online artwork made by Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead back in 1995. It is an experiment in hypertext, but also uses still images, which had only recently become supported universally by web browsers. "Short Story" looked at how making optional links between things might change a narrative thread - unfix it, if you like. It offered a way of navigating between mixed-up extracts taken from an old edition of the St. John’s Ambulance first aid manual and the screenplay of Reservoir Dogs, but in a rudimentary and limited way. In effect you could simply jump between one of two parallel threads, either by clicking a text link or on the picture on any given page. You have to remember that back then the web was just beginning to be widely used having only come into the public eye a few years earlier. We were all just getting used to it.