Critical Interfaces Main Menu Introduction Critical Making Vectors as interface Digital and social engagement Case Studies: Stolen Time Archive and Totality for Kids Scalar Critical Commons Critical Commons + Scalar Conclusion Works cited

Vectors

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Recent efforts to (re)introduce physical making into the sphere dominated in the 21st century by abstractions of technology and theory resonate with efforts during the same time period to incorporate media artifacts and design strategies into digital scholarship. Rather than viewing these as oppositional movements, I believe they are related, both conceptually and practically. An example from my own experience may be found in the creation of three platforms for digital scholarship at the University of Southern California during the past decade: the Vectors journal, the Critical Commons archive and the electronic authoring platform Scalar.

Tara McPherson and I launched the journal Vectors at USC in 2005 as an experiment in modeling a design-centric mode of digital scholarship, which was still a rarity in the evolution of electronic publishing at that time. The journal followed traditional conventions of (open) peer-review, but was also welcoming to innovative modes of interactivity for users/readers. The production of each project developed by Vectors emerged from pairing a contributing scholar with a designer/programmer and an editor/project producer who collaborated to develop each project over the course of 4-6 months. Each project was first conceptualized through a summer planning workshop that included the entire Vectors design and editorial team as well as scholars selected to contribute to the two themed issues being produced in a given year.
 
The result was that each issue of the journal featured a small number of exquisitely designed and researched projects across a variety of fields and themes. At its peak, the journal published 2 issues a year with at least 4 original projects in each issue. Vectors was inspired by and modeled after Marsha Kinder’s Labyrinth Project, which had been in production at USC for several years prior to the launch of Vectors. At the time of Vectors’ conception, Labyrinth had recently made the transition from producing CD ROMs to DVD ROMs, which allowed them to create richly mediated, interactive experiences using high-resolution, full motion video. Vectors, in contrast, was entirely committed to on online delivery in spite of the still daunting constraints of bandwidth and access afforded by a pre-dotcom era internet. While many online journals at the time consisted primarily of text with pictures – or, as they are today – PDFs delivered online, Vectors aimed to be more insistently interactive, taking advantage of the affordances of Adobe Flash as its primary development platform.
 

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