Working against the current
Along with the theme of erasure in in absentia, Carpenter's use of the Google Maps API to generate an experience of discoverability is striking. I sought to emulate these qualities when constructing my own response to this prompt. Two of the pages in the response ("Neighbourhood Anxieties and Animosities" and "An English 'Home'") are intentionally digressive in that they interrupt my analysis and take the reader off the course of an intuitive reading experience.
Such digressions serve to undermine conventional linearity of text—something that Scalar lends itself to—while challenging the reader to hierarchize the body of discourse. In other words, the reader must ask herself how reading "front to back" can be accomplished when there are tangents to consider. In this sense, the finished prompt, while centring on text, works against a traditional readerly instinct.
Such digressions serve to undermine conventional linearity of text—something that Scalar lends itself to—while challenging the reader to hierarchize the body of discourse. In other words, the reader must ask herself how reading "front to back" can be accomplished when there are tangents to consider. In this sense, the finished prompt, while centring on text, works against a traditional readerly instinct.
This page comments on:
APIs and the Refusal of Erasure in absentia (26 August 2012)
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