FS 1963: Magazines, Media, Modernism

Visualization for humans has been around for at least thousands of years, since the time cave paintings were created by men, women, and children. So it is not a new process at all. The challenge now, is to marry our version of it to the computer in a kind of wedded bliss.This was a rocky road at first, as computers were inadquete to hold all but the most simple forms of data. But the techinques we have come up with, including coding and libraries of multimedia, have develped the models and modes of understanding to new heights.

Manovich contends that another great technique is to save the data in which the order it was created, which shows the change in graphs over time. He calls it a "cultural time series". I conjecture that what he is trying to say is that knowing at what points of time data is created is as important as the data itself. By chronicalling the information and visualizing the history in a condensed format of images, it is possible to come up with data that might have otherwise been hidden and come up with different conclusions. The patterns that show themselves evident have 'media elements', which are normally seperated by time. Thus such mapping is useful for showing variation in the data over time. These are ways visualization can help people come up with solutions that need variables in an ever changing world.

I enjoyed the Bornstein reading and his analysis of four different sonnets and their textual meaning based on the surrounding material and how certain editions either historicize or de-historicize the work (p.3). In particular, Bornstein's analysis of Emma Lazarus's "The New Colossus" and it's evolved meaning through both the poet's intentions and our own interpretation of the work I found to be particularly insightful. 

As Bornstein quotes earlier from Walter Benjamin, the reproductive form of a work cannot account for "its presence in time and space." This idea is complicated when the form of "The New Colossus" shifts from written to spoken to embodying a space on a physical plaque to the textbook of The Norton Anthology. The work's presence in one time and one space mean a different thing. In the textbook, the work is academic, in person, I'd imagine the work functions as emotional. The poem as the auctioned word is an artifact for few and the plaque a piece of architecture for the masses. And yet, the text itself does not change. 

Through looking at what analysis can be gained from reading the poem in different context's Bornstein points out how fallible our words are. Devoid of context, text can be separated from meaning, and still retain function. Our textual environment shapes the work, too. 

When I was about twelve, my family visited Pikes Peak, which famously inspired the song "America the Beautiful." The "purple mountain majesties" of the song is taken from the view from Pikes Peak. At the top of the peak, there's a plaque with the words to the song, and when you get there, you see it exactly as Katherine Lee Bates saw it, there's no ambiguity. The prose isn't driven by some desire to dress up the beauty of the landscape, but to explain it as was seen. While the song is intended to provide some general sense of the sprawling American landscape, it does so in the specifics. Bornstein's discussion of "The New Colossus" reminded me of how my interpretation of "America the Beautiful" shifted when I encountered the work outside of a textbook (or football field!). It now hinges on a shared experience of the natural American landscape and then the application of words. 

While looking over the three journals, I've been intrigued by the advertisements and short commentaries. 

 Imagine investing in real estate in New York City in 1918. It had to have been phenomenally difficult, even back then, and espcially for African Americans, who were in the throes of Jim Crow America. But it's fun to think about the lucky few who might have been able to make it happen. Imagine if they kept their property in the family for generations...roughly 4-5 or so by now. Teleologically speaking, we can see the value in this ad. Everyone back then knew that NYC real estate would grow in value, but I don't think anyone had any idea how much NYC real estate would grow. It also makes me wonder where we should be investing here and now and making plans to keep those investments in the family...how much will things grow in the next 102 years? What advantages will we give our descendents?

I hadn't even started reading The Little Review and this opening page caught my eye. This isn't written for tired and depressed people, so I'm clearly out. This semester has me tired, depressed, and stressed, but still in awe of the amazing things I'm getting to do right now. I don't represent their 'fit' audience, but somehow I'm here reading it anyway, and I'm plenty diverted and amused to boot.

This little gem also comes from The Little Review. As an avid Duolingo user and wannabe linguist, this was fun for me to contemplate. I like how the advertisers listed cities with branches, but not specifically the languages they offered. At first I thought it was a correspondence course and I wondered how they could promise the ability to "UNDERSTAND and to SPEAK the foreign languages, till I realized the students traveled to all those 'exotic' cities to attend in person classes. That also solves what I had thought was an interesting dilemma of "SUPERIOR NATIVE TEACHERS" as I assumed the superior natives were somehow coming to the US, and I wondered about the status of immigrants and/or refugees in 1918. Further confirmation that I am not fit to study The Egoist and The Little Review, but the effort continues.

I will add that anyone who reads these short ramblings 102 years from now (plus those in the present) is more than welcome to chuckle or roll their eyes and keep the conversation with the future going for 102 years from then. 

Bornstein gives a very detailed account of what it means to "read a page" through different examples throughout his piece. I thought it interesting to place myself in this mindset while reading through the June 1918 issue of The Crisis. What an interesting way to delve into a text that allows one to look beyond the "linguistic code" as Bornstein puts it, and instead focus on the "bibliographic codes" as well in order to develop a broader range of meaning that helps with the interpretation of the text.

Bornstein mentions that in order to read a page effectively, it is important to "recognize that the literary text consists not only of words, but also of the semantic features of its material instantiations." With this in mind, I chose The Crisis as my guinnea pig for this unique approach that I had not used prior to reading Bornstein's work. Rather than merely focusing on the words I dove into the text to look for "clues" that would bring the text alive for me. Bornstein suggests that looking at the "cover design, page layout, or spacing...other contents of the book or periodical in which the work appears, as well as prefaces, notes, or dedications that affect the reception and interpretation of the work," these "bibliographic codes," provide an "aura" that a reader can not establish when simply looking at the "linguistic code."

Even though my first thought was to jump straight to the text, I spent my energy and focus on breaking down the different elements of the magazine edition, starting with the cover design and art to see what added meaning I could uncover. I took note of the lone soldier placed on the cover and read on to see that the cover design was influenced by a poster painted by another individual. This prompted me to look and research further into this dynamic, contributing to my sense of the historrical presence and aura.

I next looked at the page layout and when bold print came up in the text I zeroed in on the purpose behind it. Large, blue, bold text that stated "The Moorefield Storey drive for 50,000 members" placed me into context of the significance of this magazine, a venture that aims to gather a community that fights for justice. "DO IT NOW" allows for a sense of urgency, showing that this magazine means much more than the words on a page but a catalyst for change in this historical time period.

Finally, I would like to touch on the other contents of the magazine that contributes to this "aura" presented in the text. The Ads that are placed periodically throughout the magazine lend a much needed sense of honor and dignity to the overall impression of the magazine. The ads give readers a much more in depth perception of the meaning and emphasis of this work. "Prideful", "dignified", and "prominent" are terms that come to mind as the magazine becomes filled with these positive trinkets placed throughout that cast African Americans out of the lens of oppressed and into one of strength.

Although I could say more, this journey of "reading a page" was enlightening for me. It helped broaden my perspective in analyzing a text through multiple modes and opened my eyes to a different perspesctive of thought about this particular text.

When I was in high school, we read Macbeth By William Shakespeare. It was mentioned that there was a debate between scholars that possibility someone else wrote and added in the witches and the infamous Double double boil and trouble scene to the play years later make it more sensational. 

 ALL.  Double, double toil and trouble;
    Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
 WITCH.  Fillet of a fenny snake,
    In the caldron boil and bake;
    Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
    Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
    Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
    Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,—
    For a charm of powerful trouble,
    Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

I enjoyed reading the anthology/screen version of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” for all the sentimental reasons that are normally associated with print. I loved looking at the old paper of the pages, and even when turning the page via scrolling I understood McGann’s idea of a new page as an opening. Also, in terms of medium and message being intertwined, I felt that the romantic nature of reading this poem in the anthology was very much dependent on the content of the poem, on its narrator’s wanderings through “half-deserted streets” and its generally gorgeous expression of ennui. 

I have to say that as I was reading this poem I immediately thought of the National—one of my favorite bands and absolute pros at channeling urban, intellectual disillusion through gloomy, rhythmic indie rock—and their album Boxer in particular. The similarities felt so striking that I searched to see if anyone had already made the connection and found a blog post on the LA Review of Books website that beat me to the punch (for those interested, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/love-song-matthew-d-berninger/). If I’m looking at the timeline correctly, Eliot was living in Paris at the time of writing this poem, and that sort of spell of being a Midwesterner in some mystifying metropolis is common throughout the two works. The opening lines of “Prufrock,” setting up a night out marked by a strange kind of solemnity, are in lockstep with being “half-awake in a fake empire”; “Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’ / Let us go and make our visit” and the refrain of “there will be time” echoes the sweet, tired sentiment of “Turn the light out, say goodnight, no thinking for a little while / let’s not try to figure out everything at once.” The lines “My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin … Do I dare / Disturb the universe?” underscore the same kind of well-to-do self-consciousness as “Underline everything, I’m a professional in my beloved white shirt,” and “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker” is just every National kicker ever. 

McGann’s points that literature is figurative and always doing many things simultaneously and that computers can’t make the kinds of associational leaps that humans can were what I had in mind as I read. It was kind of comforting that the screen version we were provided consisted of scans of pages with their original type rather than, say, some adaptation on a webpage. The reading experience definitely took me back to listening to Boxer in the big, stately rooms of Butler Library on a summer evening in New York City.

After reading "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" illustrated and told through a comic format, and then the print publication of the poem in Catholic Anthology on The Modernist Journals Project https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr527353/ I began to research more recreations and presentations of this poem in the digital space. I found several animated versions of the poem set the the reading by T.S. Eliot himself, with this as one example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpRSmMnx1MU

I also found many celebrity readings of of the poem, but what I found particularly notable was a short artistic film that set the poem in the present day and exploring the words in the current urban city landscape. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuvE1tfjNiU

The way that the words of the poem are spoken throughout this short movie is so quietly, some are almost a whisper. Due to the fantastic sound editing, the film manages to highlight these words and make them very audible as the main character speaks and murmurs them while moving throughout the city. This creates a deeply personal, intimate feeling that complements the candid vulnerability of the poem's voice and content in a new and fresh way.

I found that with each new version that I explored, from wide spacing that lent new meaning and a different appearance to certain lines in Catholic Antholgy that hadn't translated over to more recent collections of the poem, to the different vocal performances and readings, and what lines were included in productions and which were cut, left me with very different impressions and experiences of the same poem. Now that I have all these versions in my mind, I picture them all mentally and experience bits of them whenever I think of Prufrock.

This demonstrated something to me that I hadn't ever really thought of before; that versioning and different interpretations and experiences surrounding reading a piece of work can not only influence the experience of the original poem itself, but that these experiences layer upon one another, build upon one another, and mingle together. Though there will inevitably be parts of these interpreptations that I forget, there will be aspects of them that stick with me and inform my memories whenever I think of the poem itself or T.S. Eliot's works in general.

This layering or mixing of different presentations of a single work seems liek it would be especially prevelant in the digital age, with access to so many different publications and animations and readings of a single famous poem. If I had lived during Eliot's time, I likely would have experienced the poem through reading it an anthology or a publication, and even if each publication was formatted differently in small ways, the styles, publishing technology, and conventions for that time would have informed them and kept them fairly similar. I could have heard T.S. Eliot read the poem, or another read it aloud, but this once again would have likely been a source coming from a similar time, place, and culture. With works that have transcended cultures and time in the digital age, however, there has been time for so many myriad interpretations, readings, publications, and art forms to blossom and mingle with the poem. Nowadays, it is often not just reading a work from a single presentation many times in order to engage with it, but rather, engaging with that work in many different mediums and forms, which completely changes and informs the experience of that work.

One statement that Zuern states in his text about Reading Screens really stands out to me and helps place his ideas in context while reading through the digital archives slave narratives. The connection between the past works of the slave narratives and the present format of the digital reading screen that I am reading off of is prevalent. Zuern states that "screen-bound texts...will be digitally reproduced editions of texts from other media" that will become a "great migration of past and present writing" (274). This imagery of the great migration is significant to the power that past texts have in withstanding history in the digital space. It reminds me of a journey through time, much like the journey of the Great Migration.

I have been perusing the William Blake Archive that I was linked to in this class: http://www.blakearchive.org, and I find this archive particularly interesting in the context of the McGann reading's assertions of the value of physical artifact of a book for the dissemmination of textual information. The archive seems to in every way strive not only to provide the physical feel of the book, along with the notes it allows users to take in the margins on various sections that can then be viewed by other users. However, it also makes the experience of reading the various poems and works by Blake inherently different. Because sthe notes in the margins are not merely added by a single user or those users who touched the book before, the notes being viewed are often from students, scholars, and interested people from all over the world and provide in-depth discussions and even small essays on each line and stanza. This inherently changes the experience of receiving a book and reading it unmediated by other users thoughts and ideas, as these comments can be easily seen and accessed while the poem itself is being read. This has its benefits and possible drawbacks, as it could potentally interrupt the process of users who are perusing the text for the first time while they are formulating their own opinions, emotions and thoughts, and in doing so, inject the ideas of outside sources that may override those early impressions and questions. This is especially interesting and important to consider when it comes to Blake, who believed that Error was equally as important as creation, and was even a synonym of it. In allowing readers to access the writings of scholars and students while reading, it may take away from this process of error in reading, in which readers misunderstand or misconstrue the text itself, something that Blake thought was of the utmost importance.

John David Zuern's long-winded appreciation of the uniqueness of the electronic literature My Name is Captain, Captain seems to mirror the intentions behind Vectors magazine's Stolen Time Archive. Zuern notes that "Captain, Captain exhibits many of the characteristics that most distinguish the computer screen from other textual interfaces" (265), noting its use of animated textual elements that evoke Jerome McGann's concept of critical deformation that reveals the expansive content of a textual object (which, McGann argues, are inherently "n-dimensional"). Captain, Captain "requires the reader to follow links to explore the text and make meaningful connections... In Wardrip-Fruin's (2005) terms, it is an 'instrumental text' that 'packages together logics of graphical play and methods of response with textual and graphic material'"( 265). Zuern notes that "the poem presents itself to me precisely as an exercise" (266). 

Similarly, the Stolen Time Archive is a collection of material culture as well as an insistently experiential and explorative piece that responds to a form of patient play. In her author's statement, Alice Gambrell notes that the archive houses both didactic texts (like workers' handbooks) and more resistant texts (i.e., cut and pasted magazines made by the workers themselves), and that "since elements in the first category provide much of the subject matter and motivation for elements in the second, the relationship between the two turns out to be intimate and combative in equal measures." The process of unearthing the texts and their relationships involves "[participating] in a series of uncanny improvisations" and users are ultimately challenged to contemplate "the futility of efforts to draw clear distinctions between so-called 'creative/intellectual' and 'technical' contributions to the making of any text." This not only demonstrates the polyvalent possibilities of an online interactive text (which Zuern predicts and appreciates) but also recalls McGann's image of necessary collaboration between analog and digital humanities studies, and his insistence that while "we thrive in a world of analogues and fuzzy logic, computers exploit a different type of precision. How to engage a fruitful intercourse between these two forms of thinking defines the very heart of humanities computing" (189).