I am intending for this project to be a way of digitally archiving my research to date on the theme of the imagined destruction of cities in literature and visual culture from around the 1850s to the present. The archive is currently a spreadsheet list of the source materials I'm using, which include prose, poetry, film, video games, and paintings, but will come to also include essays and critical works on the source materials. The spreadsheet also has a list of tags for each entry that I hope to develop as the project goes on. I also hope to add in quotes and descriptions so that it goes beyond being just a list of works, and so that it will become possible to look for buzz words in the actual texts themselves as well as my interpretations of them.
At the moment the archive is quite sparsely populated as I still have a lot more research to do, but I hope that this digital version will become something that can evolve as the research continues.
What I hope to do with the spreadsheet is to input this data in certain programs to establish connections between primary materials, and between secondary and primary materials. At the moment I am not sure what types of software will be useful for doing this.
Here's one of the paintings:
José Clemente Orozco - Los Muertos (1931)
Comments
Jeff Drouin
Wed, 03/28/2012 - 18:50
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This is a really interesting
This is a really interesting multimedia project. One area for theoretical inquiry will be the relation of text to image, especially where the paintings, film clips, and video games are concerned. If you're not already versed in theories of text and image (or media, multimedia, etc.), you might want to read some of them if you expand upon this project down the road. Barthes' Image--Music--Text comes to mind, and I could help you generate a bibliography on this if you want.
First thing's first: populate that spreadsheet so we can start to see what it looks like. It might not be as sparse as you think. Also, for a first iteration of a project you want to start simple. You'll almost certainly find as you get going that the technology requires you to think over the material in ways that you're not accustomed to yet, and you might have to make some interpretational and methodological decisions. These will rapidly become very complex.
I'd appreciate it if you'd send me your spreadsheet once you're ready so we can start thinking about how to derive meaning from the data.
Jeff Drouin
Thu, 03/29/2012 - 18:57
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Also, as far as keeping track
Also, as far as keeping track of pieces in disparate media and discovering/visualizing their connections, you might want to look into Moomat: http://www.moomat.com/