While reading this week’s texts, particularly “Old Media/ New Media” by Dr. Pressman, I started getting ideas for my final project. (Or maybe just a personal project.)

The project would be made up of two texts written by me, one physical and one digital. It would also incorporate text and images from whichever special collections text I choose. The physical text would use asterisks, numbered citations, or maybe emoji to “link” to the digital text. The digital text would be an index of hyperlinks, quotes, and other footnotes for the reader to understand the physical text better.

Themes that might be explored in this format:

• Old vs. New media: The project would question the distinction between “old” and “new,” referencing Dr. Pressman’s writing on Bolter, Grusin, and Hayles. Regarding “Remediation” and “intermediation,” I could show how the physical text and the digital index influence each other and how they’re influenced by other media, both “new” and “old.” Both texts would be influenced by the special collections text, and that text may also be influenced by my project. My interpretation of the text through “new” media might influence how that text is seen by new readers. Readers who already know that text, however, might approach my project differently.
• Detached Footnotes: Going back to our conversations about Marino’s Marginalia, this project could be about what happens when the marginalia is separated from the text. Eventually the medium I use to create the digital index will become defunct. The one copy of the physical text might be destroyed or kept somewhere inaccessible to most readers. How could someone read one without the other?
• Subconscious influences: This morning, I texted Raine some of these ideas. It turns out that he started a very similar project last year. I’m not sure if he’s told me about that project before, or if we happened to grab our ideas off the same shelf in the Library of Babel, but the idea of uncertainty as to where ideas come from is one I want to play with in the project. A lot of the digital index will be references to my influences. But what about the ones I’ve forgotten?

This isn’t a project proposal, obviously. It’s a vague creative daydream. Not to be taken too seriously, yet. I don’t even know what genre it should be. Will this be a fictional story? A collection of poetry? Non-fiction prose? All of the above? I probably won’t know until we’ve visited Special Collections. Now that I have an idea of what I want my final project to look like, though, I might be able to quickly home in on a book that could play in this space. Looking forward to this week’s classes even more, now!