>> I won't be able to make class tomorrow, so I thought I would share a
>> few thoughts in lieu of leading a discussion on some of this week's
>> readings.
>>
>> It seems appropriate that I will be in Washington trying to explain
>> hypertext and the hypermedia Blake archive to a German Blake scholar,
>> who, as one of the editors of the Blake Trust volumes, has experienced
>> the same kind of frustrations with the limitations of the book format to
>> reproduce variants among copies of an illuminated book as I have. But
>> while he understands the benefits of a hypertext edition in theory, his
>> experience with accessing images from Germany makes him wonder how
>> such a slow medium (5-10 minutes per image!) can possibly compete against
>> books and cd-roms.
** that is, at the present time. but these instruments ought to be
designed (now) in the imagination of the time, not far distant, when that
"slow medium" will no longer exist. "at the present time" most
books are far more efficient textual tools than even the most
adventurous or robust hypermedia tool. but the point is that the situation
will not last, and that scholars must begin NOW to design the tools
and environments that are shortly to be so exigent.
>>
>> Both lavagnino and mcgann recognize the limitation of the book form in
>> creating critical editions of texts and trace these limitations to the very
>> materiality of the book, and they also see that critics, like writers and
>> artists, necessarily think in terms of the language of their medium. Their
>> actions and thoughts are conditioned by their medium and its traditions, and
>> their decisions regarding what to include or exclude determined by the
>> financial and technical practicalities ruling the medium. We made the
>> same argument to the Getty Foundation about why Blake needs a
>> hypermedia archive, about how the very idea of a hypermedia archive grew
>> out of our work as editors of illuminated books in books whose format
>> prevented us from including more than the one copy under examination and
>> only a few supplement illustrations and variant plates. We even
>> have a link in our home page to McGann's article and used it as its title
>> suggests, as a rational for the archive he notes in his example B. But both
>> critics leave the impression that the electronic medium, by its
>> very immateriality, is somehow mediafree,
** i protest, there is no such suggestionin my essay. if joe has that
"impression" "somehow", he should examine himself for its source.
or free from all
>> the kind of restraints suffered by books, and thus those working in
>> hypermedia are making decisions without constraints. But this is not true,
>> as the Blake editors are finding out in our dealing with curators,
>> publishers, computer hardware, scanners, servers, and the almighty dollar
>> that pays for all this stuff and the staff that make it all work. Some
>> critical projects are smaller and less demanding than others, to be sure,
>> but all have some strings attached.
** all these constraints are real and important, as (speaking for myself)
i have repeatedly lectured people all over the world about. but "the rationale
of hypertext" does not take those matters as its subject. it is a more
simply focussed essay: it deals with the question of the theoretical
difference between paper and electronic texts from the point of view
of critical editing (its title is an allusion to the most famous
essay in editorial theory in english in the early 20th century, Greg's
_rationale of copy text_).
>>
>> There are many practicalities that make the theoretical inclusivity
>> imagined by McGann impossible.
** they are current impracticalities. but even NOW one can begin to
imagine (in practical ways, ie, in designing hypermedia tools) forms
of hypermedia textuality that supervene the problems.
Theoretically, the
>> codex form could include all the variants of a text and all secondary
>> works. We already have such forms: they are called collections
>> or libraries.
** but that's just the point, isn't it. one wants the entirety of the
library, that massively dispersed "hypertext", instantly available, and
always open to connectivity with every part of itself. this is not possible
"practically" now, but it IS possible now to design the systems that
are equal imaginatively, ie PRACTICALLY, to the days when the hardware
and software issues will have been more fully mastered.
Hypertext can include a
>> great deal more stuff for less money and in less space, but it is by no
>> means a transparent medium or free of financial and technical and legal
>> restraints.
** who ever imagined that it was/is? i mean, among people who are involved
withsuch things. i've never met such a person
(though i hear they exist).
>> Jerry's point that books studying books is problematic
>> does not address sufficiently the advantages and pleasures of true facsimile
>> production and skirts the problems of studying a material form in
>> a nonmaterial form. Holding the facsimile of a rare book in ones
>> hands is to close the gap between original and reproduction.
>> We experience the original codes--or as one of my students said of
>> my MEW Blake facsimiles: Man, are these sexy.
>> Exactly right. Their handmade paper and ink and delicate washes all
>> contributed to the experience of the original. This is something only
>> printed reproductions of prints, or books on books, or paintings on
>> paintings, can convey.
** of course books are sexy, and of course they involve a knowledge-
structure that is different (and untranslatable) into any other
medium. once again, no one i know ever imagined otherwise. BUT joe
sails past the key point, which involves the difference between
critical/analytic v. experiential knowledge. _the rationale of
hypertext_ deals with the difference between books and hypertexts
as critical machines used for analyzing paper documents. that is ALL
it deals with. when joe speaks of the pleasures of the booktext he
is talking about aesthetics, the most sophisticated form/system
for engaging with knowledge in an experiential way. (electronic texts can
make elementary efforts to expose the aesthetic of the book, but they
will remain for ever elementary. the forms are incommensurable.)
for those of you who may be interested, there are other things i have
written about aesthetic knowledge: a book caled _toward a literature
of knowledge_ and its companion _the textual condition_, as well as
some related essays and dialogues -- available on request.
Tagging watermarks or giving paper size is
>> to engage in abstracting information from material, to separate the
>> quantitative from the qualitative. It is to translate one set of codes
>> into another and to remove the viewer from the object studied.
** by definition. that's wahat "critical knowledge" means.
>>
>> As a critical tool, though, facsimiles are limited in the ways both
>> authors suggest: there is no place physically for a scholarly apparatus.
>> With the Blake Trust volumes we tried creating a hybred. The images are
>> to size and true color and in that sense are facsimiles, but they face a
>> typographic transcript and are on paper not the size of the original. The
>> artifact itself, then, is not recreated in facsmile.
>> The scholarly apparatus, though, is deliberatly and unobtrusively buried
>> within the book. We did not even indicate which words or lines of
>> text have been annotated, so that the reading experience
>> would not be distrupted visually by editorial symbols. If
>> you want to read just the images as Blake printed them, you can; if you
>> want to read the poetry in an easier to read typographic translation, you
>> can do that too. You can ignore the editors all together, as you can
>> the links in a hypertext, but the information is there if you want it.
>>
>> This format is not the best solution, but it is what we could afford to
>> do in the number of pages and with the budget we were given. As it was, I
>> had to exclude one of Blake's small books, because to have included it
>> would have meant needing over 60 more illustrations and at least 25 pages
>> of commentary. That translates as a lot of money (about $100 per
>> transparency) for both the Blake Trust and its publisher. So I appreciate
>> the arguments that hypermedia has fewer restrictions, but I know that
>> they do not disappear, especially when you are working with images and
>> are trying to scan them archivally, which means purchasing from museums
>> and libraries new 35mm slides or, preferably, 4x5 or 8x10 color
>> transparencies, top level scanners, workstations, monitors, and
>> software. All of these things cost money and sometimes take
>> so much of ones budget or so much time to do that compromises in
>> quality and quantity have to be made.
**all this is well said. and it implicitly argues, in my opinion, for the
imperative that current scholars working in these innovative media
imagine their work in the longest scale possible. i do not think we should be
designing and building these works so much for the present (except
as present models and stimuli) as for the coming days. it is a difficult
matter balancing the two demands (present commercial concerns v. future
design realities/possibilities). the difficulty is probably the
greatest we face.
>>
>> I also appreciate the potential of the computer to reproduce texts orally
>> as well as visually, and most of all, as Lavagnino recognizes, the
>> ability to create parallel texts. This feature gives students
>> the opportunity to edit the archive's raw materials themselves,
>> to engage in the critical comparisons that underlie all scholarly activity.
>> I think the future of critical hypertext editions will rely heavily
>> on this feature and will need to combine
>> documentary editing (i.e., a facsimile reproduction of the original, or
>> to-size and color reproduction of the page as originally printed) with
>> critical editing (with its scholarly apparatus noting variants or providing
>> critical commentary or background information)--and to combine them
>> unobtusively.
** well that's an interesting conclusion. as i recall, it was/is
one of the main points of _the rationale of hypertext_, _the rossetti
archive and image-based electronic editing_, and _radiant textuality_.
>> One last point. The Mark Reed that McGann uses as an example of the
>> material restrictions faced by editors and publishers is a friend and
>> colleague at UNC. An excellent Wordsworthian scholar, he worked on his
>> two volume 13 book Prelude for over ten years. I was in the room when the
>> first copies arrived from the publisher. He opened vol. 1 randomly and
>> immediately noticed a typo. He closed the book and walked away in
>> silence. I thought: if only he could correct the error--that is, if only
>> he could retain control over his text after it is published. The beauty
>> of critical hypertexts is that you can continually update and correct
>> and add--but that will make citing information from the web a complicated
>> matter, because what you cite in your article may no longer exist as
>> cited.
** a splendid thought to conclude with.
>> Joe Viscomi
>>
>>
>>
>>