In my own work I commonly use behavioural or linguistic techniques, or a mixture of the two. The Great Wall of China is primarily based on a linguistic system. The reader does not navigate the Great Wall of China. Rather, they interact with various textual elements (like individual stones in a motile rather than a fixed wall) which are "aware" of the readers behaviour. These textual elements (or, in computer terminology, objects) are able to modify themselves (or each other) in various ways, all dependent on their "senory" input; the information they gather from the reader.

The text reads the reader, then writes itself, as the reader reads it.

The writer writes not that to be read but that which will write that to be read.

It should be pointed out here that such an approach does not imply the author is abrogating their responsibility as writer. Obviously the author is unaware of all the possible texts that might emerge in such a work, but they have written the meta-text which controls the system. The author retains the right to be considered the author. The act of writing does not become an exercise in collective authorship. The reader is still just the reader.

Derrida's idea that in the act of reading the reader effectively writes the text (and thus becomes the author of the work) is not disputed here. Derrida's intention with this argument was to point out that the act of interpretation is as creative and as significant in the formation of a text as is its writing. However, if we apply the idea of instantiation to Derrida's idea we see that each reading of a text becomes an instance of a "parent" text. As such, the author is still concerned with creating that parent text from which all other texts will flow.

In the Great Wall of China this process is simply made explicit. The author has written a "parent" text, from which inumerable other texts are written through the act of reading. The reader does not write these texts, but participates in an ecology of behaviour (involving themselves, the author and the semi-autonomous text itself) out of which emerges a particular instance of the text. At this level, once the meta-writing is done, the author becomes just another reader of the work.