Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 15, No. 620.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 07:19:49 +0100
From: Matt Kirschenbaum <mgk3k@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU>
Subject: Re: 15.614 advice for an online edition, plus another query
> Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2002 09:08:20 +0100
> From: Willard McCarty <w.mccarty@btinternet.com>
> >
> Robert Knapp's query leads me to another: in electronic editions these
> days, what role is imaging tending to play, and how are images integrated
> into the overall design? My question is in part provoked by a remark Jerry
> McGann makes at the end of Chapter 2 in Radiant Textuality: that the actual
> implementations of the theoretical designs in our current online archives
> are anything but decentred. He says that "a major part of our future work
> with these new electronic environments will be to search for ways to
> implement, at the interface level, the full dynamic -- and decentering --
> capabilities of these new tools" (p. 74). How are images being used toward
> this end?
>
> Yours,
> WM
Of course there's no essential link between images and
"decentralization." The Blake Archive (www.blakearchive.org), which we
like to call "image-based" (because images are at the functional center
of both the interface and the project's editorial method) is _very_
hierachical. That hierarchy is a function of the DynaWeb software we
currently use to deliver the Archive online, but also of Blake's own
publishing technologies (multiple impressions printed from a master
plate, multiple copies of a single "book").
The real question is, "Decentralization, to what end?" I think the place
we'll begin seeing this is not in documentary settings such as the Blake
Archive, but rather in the realm of visualization. See, for example,
www.textarc.org, which debuted a week or two ago. There decentering the
text has heuristic value. There is also much relevant work in the
digital arts community; the Artbase at rhizome.org is a good place to
start, and I've long believed that computing humanists have much to
learn from the kinds of explorations gathered there. Matt
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