The Thicket: A Possibility Space

			by Richard Maxwell













		Curator's Statement
Intimately bound up in the design of the Homestead, Richard Maxwell's hypertext The Thicket: A Possibility Space represents a tangle of lateral branches where the unwary may get lost or emerge into unexpected vistas within works by other contributors to the Homestead. Left unattended, the pages of text will load at random, seizing control from anyone who stumbles into the Thicket. Nor will following the guideposts avail---escape from the Thicket is a matter of jumping out and trusting luck. The ironic structure supports equally ironic snippets of text, with digs at both the utopian and imperial aspects of colonization. This uncontrollable path could be a metaphor for the explosive growth of information space, while the leaps in logic within the Thicket and the leaps of escape beyond it suggest a non-hierarchical information flow, a rhizome. 





	Artist's Statement
The Thicket is a place between points of departure and arrival, where the Homestead narrative breaks off into nothing . . . a space of possibility, a journey without end, a moment without direction. 




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Richard Maxwell, 5217 N. Magnolia, Chicago, IL 60604, U.S.A., rmax@nwu.edu.

Design by Chris Young, Department of Radio, Television and Film, Northwestern University, 1905 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208-2270, U.S.A., cwebbyoung@nwu.edu. 
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			    | colonial ventures |
					   | gallery entrance |

					         | past exhibitions |

			          | Leonardo On-Line |