The Online Letter Archive

The online letter archive seems to be a popular project for humanities researchers. Such archives offer the correspondences of either a well known individual, or of people who experienced a historical event and wrote letters about it. The online archive is a model for the digital organization of of a collection and a brief survey of a few current online letter archives reveals some interesting tendencies, features and limitations to the present format.

The Darwin Correspondence Project (DCP) "exists to publish the definitive edition of letters to and from Charles Darwin". The site promises; "you can read and search the full texts of more than 7,000 of Charles Darwin’s letters, and find information on 8,000 more. Available here are complete transcripts of all known letters Darwin wrote and received up to the year 1868. More are being added all the time."With such a vast amount of material an efficient search system is essential. The basic search system on DCP is keyword motivated. As such it is an efficient but limited system. For example, in the general search window, by searching for the keyword "Galapagos" it returns 170 entries. More fine-grained search is available, with a) People, b) Places, c) Keyword (with four fields available; 1. All Content, 2. Only Summary, 3. Only Transcript, 4. Only Footnote) and finally d) Time Range. Entering "Galapagos" in the Places field only returns 59 entries; which seems odd. There is no graphical interface available (that I could find anyway) on the site for place correlation, such as a map that imposes time over place, to see some progression in the movements of Darwin, and thus connecting the letters together in another searchable field (i.e. place). There are a number of glossaries in the website for DCP, the most interesting of which is perhaps the Physical Descriptions. Here the original artefacts are coded according to genre and materiality (eg. original, handwritten, condition status etc). The coding of genre and materiality is an efficient way to present something of the objects it is representing, but it would be good to have seen at least some scans. There is however the Darwin Behind the Scenes virtual exhibition, which is linked from the site on the News section, where you can see high resolution images of some of the objects. Searching for Galapagos on the Behind the Scenes website brings 0 returns, but the images are stunning.

The Olive Schreiner Letters Online (OSLO) project "is funded by the ESRC. It will transcribe, analyse and publish the complete extant Olive Schreiner letters presently in archival locations world-wide". There are currently 4800 letters from Schreiner known to be in existence. The letters presently in the archive are organized alphabetically around the surname of the recipient. There is a general search function. Searching in it from the Index page for "Churchill" returns 10 entries, from letters not addressed to anyone by the name of Churchill, but that do contain the name within them. There seems to be an element of virtual portraiture to the OSLO, with the How to Use section stating; "Essential Schreiner' features Schreiner's 'Must Read' letters, letters concerned with transitions and turning points, and those which show the lighter side of her letter-writing practices, as well as an outline chronology of events and happenings in her life." A personality behind an archive always helps with relating to the materials within it. Interestingly, the OSLO contains "two indexes. The first is a list of all the letters in which she mentions or discusses her writing, including both particular publications and also her comments on writing as an activity, her work. The second is a sub-set of this, and it lists those letters which discuss publishers and editors and her dealings - not always very happy - with them." How these are cross-referenced is unclear. These is also an index of letters by topic, and this is an invaluable addition to the system. It is in the Letters by Topic section that we get a good overview of the possible uses for the OSLO. In the Letters by Topic we can see how rich an archive we have here, with a very broad range of possible applications.

We have chosen to include Letters from the American Civil War (LACW) as it is a good example of attention to the artefacts represented in the archive. The archive is actually a portal to a number of other archives. The letters are reproduced both visually and textually; with images of the letters and their envelopes (including addresses and stamps) alongside clear copies of the letters. These is no notation in the archive.The LACW archive is an archive at its most basic in terms of infrastructure, but the use of images of the represented artefacts adds a historical and material dimension that is lacking in many online letter archives.

The final archive in this collection is a recently created one from Sweden. Hjalmar Bergman Korrespondenser (HBK or Hjalmar Bergman Letters) contains hundreds of letters written between 1900 and 1930 by the Swedish writer. What is interesting about the archive is how the material is organized: i. from the date, ii. from the town it was sent from, iii. from the address, iv. from the people who are named in the letter, v. from works that are named in the letter, vi. from the genre of works named in the letter, vii. from where the letter is kept today and viii. from visual reproductions of the letter in the archive. In this way the HBK archive covers many of the possible search combinations in the organizing of the material. Tagging is of utmost importance to the organizing of materials in digital archives. Footnotes are included in each reproduction of text of letters. There is no general search function in the archive website that we could find. We think this is very interesting; instead of relying on a general search, the material is tagged to such a degree that users are directed towards specific themes in the archive.

To summarize, we thought it was interesting that none of the archives offered downloadable content. The result is materials cannot be extracted from the archives and worked with 'off site'. In this sense the archives as they appear online function more as interfaces than spaces to work in. However, as they are online and accessible, they do allow controlled access to materials and the opportunity to work from outside institutions for anyone interested in the subjects they cover. We would have liked to have seen more Creative Commons or Open Access statements attached to these archives. A design that allows linking and uploading to research that reference the archives, and feedback from users would have also been useful. The organization of digital artefacts is an important element in the management of events and the archives discussed here provide inspiration for the possibilities for storage, access (include searchability) and distribution for any materials stored online. In our discussions in the workshops next week the concept of 'The Archive' will feature, and we hope this short post inspires some consideration of the role of the archive in event management and the dissemination of research.

(This was originally posted on the SMKE Website).

'Run with the Heart of the Blind' by Gabriel Bohm Calles (2013) A Critical Reading

On a large screen projected onto a wall, a body assumes postures surrounded by sharp lines and hard edges, sheer right angles create the effect of broad cross-hatching or boxes. To the right and left large wall screen projections drags the viewer down abandoned corridors, by doorways that open to empty classrooms, past deserted desks and ancient specimen cases. The school is closed, but the cleaner remains. The sound of footsteps fills the space, footsteps and the grind of trolley wheels. The relentless head-height corridor and classroom scans unwind to the left and right. Straight ahead is the Butoh stillness of a body trapped by the architecture that surrounds it. The sound of footsteps sets a hypnotic rhythm, which after a time begins to be mirrored in the breathing of the viewer.



Gabriel Bohm Calles’ Run With The Heart of the Blind at Umeå School of Art is a room size, triptych video installation that explores and questions important concepts of movement and space, the body and architecture, along with the themes of discipline and control.

 

The School is an architecturally constructed space that performs a defining role in the lives of millions of people. In Run With The Heart Of The Blind school corridors, the long rectangular prisms that do not bend (literally and metaphorically) are blistered by dozens of glass panes that allow visual access to other rooms. These rooms are empty classrooms, closed in by low ceilings, small doors and beige flooring. In these spaces Bohm Calles performs exaggerated maneuvers in slow motion, often with cleaning utensils; mops, dusters, brooms. In each sequence the body of Bohm Calles occupies a foreground position in the inflexible extended rectangle of the corridor, time flows away into the distant background of the space. We the visitor/viewer share the same space visually with the body, as we are at equal head height with Bohm Calles, we see the intimate contrast between the soft form of the body and the building-sized box in which it and we are packed.

 

The tasks performed by people in architectural spaces are most often regulated by the space itself. The classroom is the perfect example of the regulated space in form and purpose, and one that we have all experienced. The classroom is utilitarian in form and function, divided by desks, chairs, and tables for working, with the relatively large teacher’s desk as a monumental point. In Run With The Heart Of The Blind the human body defies the structures of the space. This defiance is accomplished by the sense of time generated by the movement of the body, and the visual field in the side images down the corridors.

Bohm Calles' movement is a slow paced progress, not unlike what one would imagine is the final walk of the condemned prisoner. Bohm Calles caresses a mop head for minutes with a vacant stare into the middle distance, rubs his head along the frame of a window in a sensual act of body dusting, he follows the reflections in the glass of windows with a mop handle (or is his reflection following him?), then sits in the posture of a child, as he straddles a javelin-like broom, with a cocked head, seeming to listen to the thin line in the eternal corridor, waiting for some signal from far away. Finally the desk is violated, as Bohm Calles lies half-fetal upon it, a soft non-geometrical form dressed in black and collapsed upon the shiny cold surface.

 

The floor, the wall, and the utensil are mixed with the body in Run With The Heart Of The Blind. From the actions of Bohm Calles we can ask, What can this be other than a mop? But I think the answer to the question is more complicated than the choreography offered by the artist. The mop remains a mop even with the re-purposing by Bohm Calles. The mop does take on a broader visual range of possibilities in the manipulations of the performance. But it is not altered in itself. What is more dramatic in the performance are the visual and spatial juxtapositions between the body, the utensils and the architecture.

The results of the interaction between the audio of the heavy footsteps and trolley wheels in a loop, the two moving images of the corridor on opposite walls and the third screen of the body of Bohn Calles in contortions (often with utensils), gives an enclosed claustrophobic feeling for the viewer, accompanied by the sensation of being drawn apart in ones own body. The footstep is the point the body touches the world, the continuous monotonous rhythm of the heady thud-thud-thud of the fall is symbolic of the transfer point between the body and the world. With Run With The Heart Of The Blind the tools we are given have failed. There is no work going on, only a slow agonizing struggle with the space around the body.

 

Michel Foucault wrote famously of the school, “Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” (Discipline and Punish 1977 Alan Sheridan trans. p. 228). The controlled space of the school encases the body in a finite range of possibilities for movement, posture and visual appearance. Within this constricted space Bohm Calles extracts a limited range of movement, postures and actions, which do not make sense when framed by the structures of the school and its utensils. In achieving the range of postures and actions the structures of the space are not disturbed permanently. Elements of the space are remixed for as long as Bohm Calles occupies the space, and then the vacant classrooms and empty corridors return to silence and immobility. These structures await the next group of students they will train.

Amidst the tensions of movement within the space and how it forms behavior, are the actions of Bohn Calles as signs, or indicators of the history of formalized space designed to provide training. A specimen case of glass, filled with preserved birds, stands at the end of a corridor. The glacial-cleaner slides past the case and continues to struggle with the asphyxiating lines of corridor and ceiling around him. The stock-still birds in the glass case watch through the dusty glass. They are stacked and packed. They are arranged and disciplined in their display. The birds are totally visible, totally controlled, totally perfect and totally dead. The apparatus of the classroom is a machine that produces similar perfect specimens.

Run With The Heart Of The Blind is the anti-panopticon. But its tragedy is how small the actions are, how little space there is to move within the boxes we build to educate our children in. Between the rows of desks and sharp lines of the corridors, there are small possibilities to find new ways to stand. The heavy footsteps and trolley dragging through the center of my brain after two hours of sitting with Run With The Heart Of The Blind convince me I am in a machine of infernal intention; but on the other side of the room I see a friend, who seems to be fashioning a statue from his own body and the tools he was loaned to work with. From between the straight lines around us emerges a single shaking curve, trailing away into an uncertain distance. It is very difficult to see, but possible.

 -------------------*--------------------- 

James Barrett 

Umeå March 21 2013

The Textual Internet

The Textual Internet on Prezi

Key quotations used in a lesson for Language Consultancy Program in HUMlab yesterday. The full notes for the class are here.

Presentation at Amsterdam University Symposium

Frankenstein’s Monster Comes Home: Digital Remix and the Ends of Origin on Prezi

Remix in Retrospect: Looking Back to See the Future of Authorship
Invited Symposium at Amsterdam University
21 October 2011 

Frankenstein’s Monster Comes Home: Digital Remix and the Ends of Origin

“The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind. ”

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.

“One text that shows the disaster of the divorce between science and poetry would be the one by Mary Shelley whose name is Frankenstein.”

          Avital Ronell, Body/No Body (in conversation with Werner Herzog)

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (published 1818) represents a historical and literary divergence between the poetic and the technical, and is a significant reaction against this split as part of English Romanticism. It is the contention of my presentation that in contemporary digital works of art and narrative we are witnessing a re-marriage of science and poetry. However, this union should be no automatic cause for romantic joy, as the present situation in the education sector of most Western democracies indicates. Today, the natural sciences are separated from and weighted favorably in relation to the production and analysis of culture.  There is little to indicate that this is an effective strategy in light of present global ‘network culture’ initiatives. Today, the union of science and poetry in digital media is felt most acutely in reading, or the performative interpretation of imaginative works. Computer games, websites, digital works of literature, apps, virtual worlds, interactive art, and spatial media (GIS, Kinnect, GPS, Wii) are interpreted as they are performed and often require some knowledge of the medium by the user in order for the work to function. This situation represents a form of reading that has not been practiced widely in Western academic and literate circles for several centuries. We are not witnessing a return to what Walter J. Ong famously terms a “secondary orality” (10-11), but rather we are seeing a form of inscription rapidly emerge that is spatial, multi-temporal, performed, place-bound, visual, sonic, and navigated. Two central concepts are important for understanding how digital works are generally interpreted, and these are simulation and remix. Representation has become the domain of mediating objects, both virtual and physical, while reading is as much about arranging and appropriating as it is about reference, symbolism, iconography and interpretation. Based on a relatively small selection of digital works this presentation examines reception practices involving digital media, which suggest an expanded concept of reading where the material technology of a work determines meaning as much as its representative elements do. In this examination I demonstrate how performance, participation, co-authoring, and remix make the reading of the digital works.  These works are

Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson (1995)

Last Meal Requested by Sachiko Hayashi (2004)

Façade By Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern (2006)

Second Life http://youtu.be/9g-kYvK3P-Q

CONSTRUCT by salevy_oh (2011)

The Celebration by Iris Piers (2011)

Patchwork Girl is a work of electronic literature by American author Shelley Jackson. It was written in Storyspace and published by Eastgate Systems in 1995. It is often discussed along with Michael Joyce's 'Afternoon, a story' as an important work of hypertext fiction. "Shelley Jackson's brilliantly realized hypertext Patchwork Girl is an electronic fiction that manages to be at once highly original and intensely parasitic on its print predecessors."



The actions of the avatar, which is the identity of its operator in SL, conform to the traditions of Varjrayana Buddhism. The combination of the actions of the avatar and the audio is a two fold signifying structure, with the operator of the avatar at the center. In a simulative sense the operator of the avatar is enacting a practice that is firmly contextualized in religious and social contexts.



Last Meal Requested is an interactive net art work by Japanese/Swedish artist Sachiko Hayashi. It deals with themes of gender, state power, violence and the rhetoric of the image. The original work can be accessed at http://www.e-garde.net/lmr/lmr2.html

 

Selavy: What happens when you write in a diary? Of course, some people write down “got up at 7am, drank a coffee, had lunch with Jim, went to bed early”, but that’s not the type of diary I’m referring to. It is rather the idea of keeping a record of selected thoughts, feelings, moods, ideas, etc. The important part is, of course, that you do that regularly. And that is exactly what I did in CONSTRUCT: I added one room each day. Every one of the 75 days of the residency has its own room, often relating to the topic of the residency itself, a time capsule of ideas, artifacts, or reference to other work. If you read a diary, you may get an idea about the writer and her life. If you visit CONSTRUCT, you may get an idea about Selavy Oh and her residency.



The Celebration "combines a circular display of flatscreens, reminiscent of a giant zoetrope, containing amateur film footage from the 1910's-1940's with different soundscapes that can be manipulated by the audience" (Piers). How the audience manipulates the various audio and images, and how they combine to create an interactive and immersive space, makes The Celebration an engaging work of interactive digital art. The visitor enters a darkened space, where the only available light comes from the 10 screens showing the films of The Celebration. By moving around the space and judging their own distance, speed of movement, posture and height in relation to the (largely invisible) Arduino trackers, a dance begins with the audio and the cracked black and white images from almost a century ago. Each of the screens that make up The Celebration has an Arduino tracking sensor attached, which maps the movements of the body of a visitor, and implements pre-programmed changes in the presentation of images and sound. Unknown faces stare out from the screens, mostly laughing, talking (unheard) and often looking straight at the camera, and at the audience. As these faces watch, the visitor dodges and weaves, hops and slides, while the images and sounds change. At the same time the visitor is watching the faces, along with their bodies, their families and friends, competitors at sports events and classmates, neighbors and colleagues. It is according to this arrangement that a circuit of movement and gaze is achieved by the programming of The Celebration.




Façade is a prototype of interactive drama, a new genre of character and story-intensive interactive entertainment. Façade is freely downloadable at interactivestory.net. In Façade, you, the player, using your own name and gender, play the character of a longtime friend of Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their early thirties. During an evening get-together at their apartment that quickly turns ugly, you become entangled in the high-conflict dissolution of Grace and Trip’s marriage. No one is safe as the accusations fly, sides are taken and irreversible decisions are forced to be made. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have changed the course of Grace and Trip’s lives – motivating you to re-play the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out differently the next time. In this video Facade is used to promote an abstinence program.

Writing Wreading and Working

Busy as....well, very busy. I'm within spitting distance of finishing a rewrite of the chapter on the digital preface and response (Twenty seven pages done and just needs a conclusion). Plus we in HUMlab now own an island...And finally some articles on writing technologies:

Vol. 1.1 May 07

Contents

Introductions I and II: Writing and Technologies by Daniel Cordle and Philip Leonard
On Being Written by Technology by Tim Armstrong
Declaration of Ink Dependence by Neil Badmington
In Search of a Technological Criticism by James Brown
Against Textual Idealism by Rob Latham
Postphonetic Writing and New Media by Lydia H. Liu
Not Coding, But Writing by Simon Mills
Écrire - La Technologie: A View from France by Douglas Morrey
Hard Drives…? by Julian Murphet
The Digital Glocalized by Pramod Nayar
The Conceptions and Misconceptions of Writing Technologies by Tatiani G. Rapatzikou
Technology and the Cultural Location of Japan by Kumiko Sato
Writing Technologies in the Renaissance by Jonathan Sawday
The Pixels are on the Interface, But What Do They Mean? by Will Slocombe

Network Politics 2008

I just did a quick comparison of Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's campaign websites along side the defending champion George W Bush's web presence. What a difference:



First Obama's whole index page fits on a singe screen, no scrolling needed. Then we have the dynamic network stuff; Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube all linked (no MySpace....is it a Murdoch bias??). There is also log in at MyBarackObama.com where profile, network, forums and blog server are available. There is also barackTV, packed with vids of Barack, his family and supporters. The code for videos is copyable so streams can be embedded in blogs and so forth. There is also the Obama blog linked from the campaign website, which is a group blog run by the "New Media team at Obama for America". The blog has links to much of the online content for media coverage the Obama campaign is getting.

Now to George:



Its an odd shape isn't it. The gold swirls, braid and stars mark it as very official (which I suppose it is), plus a third of it falls under the width of my browser window (bad design). Then there is a lot of links on the history of the White House, government policy and actions, 'A Video Tour of the White House by President Bush' ("The first thing I see in the morning is the sun shinning through these big windows. These windows are magnificent. They let in the sun light...") which is not possible to link to from outside of the web page, and links to media reports on Bush provide us with our content. The "Interact" possibilities are only two; Ask the White House: "online interactive forum, the first of its kind in politics, allows you to interact with Bush administration officials and friends of the White House." Well it seems like only selected people can ask the White House with nothing more controversial than; "I believe many Americans are still paying a lot of income tax". The other choice to "Interact" is "White House Interactive" which links to the same page as "Ask the White House". there is an RSS feed on the page, which is kinda progressive. Bush's website is the only site that is bilingual, with a Spanish version linked. I suspect this is more to do with government policy than anything else.

Finally Hillary:



It is the middle of the road style of the three I would say. It does fit on the screen in its entirety. It has some of the monologue staid functionality of the Bush site but it also leans towards some of the interactivity and social networking of the Obama site. This is typified by the Hillary Blog First Post Competition:

Soon we'll launch the official blog of HillaryClinton.com, a crucial part of our exciting national conversation about the direction of our country and the place to go to learn more about Hillary.

We know our readers are going to have a lot to say, so we want to give you the first word.

We're looking for your ideas on how we can work together for change. If you'd like to write the very first guest post on the HillaryClinton.com blog, submit your entry in the form below.

This is sort of halfway between what blogs are supposed to be and the rough realities of public opinion and politics. Clinton's site has no YouTube, Facebook or Flickr links. The blue frame is powdered, whereas it was solid and darker on the Obama site. Here we can "Join Team Hillary", become a "Hillraiser" by resgistering for an account and joining the community of supporters. Clinton's videos are mostly public speaking events with no code or blog embedding posssiblities.

It is interesting to look at the privacy policy from both Obama and Clinton as they are quite different. Clinton's states that:

On occasion, we may also use the information that you provide online to contact you for other purposes or to solicit you for contributions. When you register or sign-up online, we may share your contact information with successor organizations and other like-minded Democratic candidates and organizations, and they may contact you. When you make a contribution to us, we may also exchange your contributor information with successor organizations and other like-minded Democratic candidates and organizations, and they may solicit you (see below for additional information regarding your contributor information). However, we will not sell or exchange your credit card information to any other third party under any circumstances.

Obama's states:

It is our general policy not to make Personal Information available to anyone other than our employees, staff, and agents. We may also make personal information available to organizations with similar political viewpoints and objectives, in furtherance of our own political objectives.

While on first reading I got a more negative feeling from the Clinton site, the Obama statement seems to leave it all wide open to what may be done with any personal information. The Bush Privacy and Security Statement is not surprising; they gather information and if it is necessary they will disclose it.

I am reading Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (a review by Ravi Purushotma) which I think is an excellent book. In it Jenkins describes the 2004 presidential elections in the USA as a break through for media convergence in the contexts of politics and popular culture. I wonder how the lessons learnt from 2004 will be adapted in 2008. With each website already so different just between these three candidates, how public opinion comes to be built around each will be interesting indeed.