When Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d'Alembert began compiling a universal dictionary of the fine and mechanical arts in their encyclopedia project on the eve of the French Revolution, this undertaking could only be realized as a cooperative writing project, for which the most various experts were gathered. The individual blocks of knowledge - alphabetically ordered - were networked through the representation of a knowledge tree[7], representing a survey of the 'world map of knowledge' and thus highlighting hierarchies, branches and contexts.

Unlike linear reading, one works their way through the encyclopedia using pertinent, structural and linguistic references. With the help of the map and alphabetical register, readers are able to navigate their own unique paths of knowledge. In its prohibition of the encyclopedia in 1759, the Parisian parliament explicitly cites the subversive function of the cross references: "(...) all the poison distributed throughout this dictionary may be found in the references."[8] Yet in literature there have always been experiments with text structures and multi-dimensional visualizations of writing space in the most diverse formations apart from the linear western book form: rotatable disks for combinatory word games (Raimundus Lullus), unfolding marginal notes (Marcel Proust's ) or index card file boxes as text databases (Arno Schmidt, Niklas Luhman). Concepts, devices and apparatuses have also had to be found for a productive reception of modern, open art works...

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[7]A section from the old printing of the Knowledge Tree may be found in the Imaginären Bibliothek (see footnote 3). A transcription of the schema in: Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, Denis Diderot et al.: Enzyklopädie. Eine Auswahl, Frankfurt a.M. 1989, p. 28-29. See also: Darnton, Robert: The Business of Enlightenment. A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie 1775-1800, Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London 1979 [8] Censorship was cleverly eluded with references from one volume to another (published somewhat later), for instance with the famous reference from "man-eater" (anthropophagus) in the first volume to the terms "communion" and "Eucharist", or from the relatively orthodox article on "Jesus Christ" to the more heretical entry under "eclecticism" (cf. Enzyklopädie, p. 20 ff - as in footnote 7) http://www.hyperdis.de/txt/alte/gb/archi005.htm