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Pathfinders

Judy Malloy during Her Traversal

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About Pathfinders
[A portion of this essay by Moulthrop and Grigar has been developed into an article entitled, "Traversals: A Method of Preservation for Born-Digital Texts" to be published in The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital Humanities, edited by Jentery Sayers.]

Pathfinders can be interrogated from two perspectives: as a material object and as an idea.

As a material object, Pathfinders raises challenging questions of nomenclature: What do you call a publication that contains a central idea comprised of many discrete sections of information contributing to that central idea? What if that publication entails the use of words, images, sound, and videos for expressing the ideas? What if it is produced on the web but exported for one's own personal computing device? Certainly, we cannot call such a material object a book––at least, not in the traditional sense of the word because, well, it's not a printed, self-contained artifact one would archive on a bookshelf. In fact, the tablet on which it resides may contain other items, like a digital level or a calculator, that have absolutely nothing to do with bookish activities. It's also not an eBook because the content is dynamic, alive with movement and sound. It doesn't feel like a traditional website (though certainly its production took place on the web and the work now reside there) because it is laid out in a way that evokes the features of books (e.g. chapters, sections). The best way to think about the artifact that is Pathfinders, in its current iteration, is as a hybrid publication: a web-book––a new form of knowledge environment that experiments with web-based multimedia for providing criticism and scholarly content to a wide audience interested in experimental writing and literature of the late 20th century. But for simplicity sake and the fact that there is really no elegant name for what we have produced, we refer to it as our open-source, multimedia book.

As an idea, Pathfinders raises questions of purpose: What does one call an initiative to keep a work alive by documenting its existence, dynamism, and experience? While Pathfinders is intended as a kind of digital preservation project, is it actually preserving work when it does not migrate or emulate, for example, one single node or path of Bill Bly's novel We Descend? Even as Pathfinders features Bly's performance of the work, one collected along with vintage computers needed to read it, does Pathfinders even constitute preservation by collection? The answer is, on the one hand, not exactly. At its core, Pathfinders' purpose is to make it possible for scholars and the reading public to experience a work of digital literature as close to its original cultural context as possible by showing videos of people––the artist, readers––experiencing works in original formats and on original computers used for their production and/or presentation. A vicarious pleasure, indeed, but libraries and other venues that house early digital literature but can't or do not want to collect computers for showing it are able to supplement the experience of merely holding, for example, Judy Malloy's hand-made box of Uncle Roger in one's hands and wondering what the work is like with a video of Malloy performing it––on the computer it was intended for at the time she produced it. In this way, those studying the work can see and hear the way it functioned in 1987 on the Apple IIe, thereby able to tease out unique characteristics lost in the migrated web version or the DOSBox emulator. So, the answer is, on the other hand, in a way. The works and vintage computers make up a collection at Grigar's Electronic Literature Lab (ELL) where two of the four traversals and interviews were conducted. People can, indeed, travel to Vancouver, WA, visit ELL, and experience the collection. But for those who cannot, Pathfinders may be a helpful alternative because it does document the collection as a way of disseminating information about the work and, thereby, preserving the cultural and historical context about and providing access to early digital literature in danger of becoming obsolete and forgotten. As we have said elsewhere, we wish we had a video of Sappho performing one of the many poems she is credited for writing but are, today, lost to us. So much richer would our culture be for it.

Documenting four works of early digital literature has been a huge undertaking. Videos taken during traversals, interviews, and public readings and already edited for flow and continuity were reedited into 102 smaller clips. Photos––hundreds of them of the artists and readers––were optimized for the Scalar environment. Images of folios, CDs, and flash drive were created by scanning or photographing them. Sound files were derived from video footage and, so, reedited to make sense as aural content. Someone had to keep tabs of equipment, media, and computers. Someone had to design Pathfinders so that it is compelling and engages readers. These are tasks beyond conceptualizing the project, conducting the scholarship comprising its contents, and authoring it. However, the Pathfinders book production team was not a large one––counting Moulthrop and Grigar, only five people. Madeleine Brookman, a student in the Creative Media & Digital Culture program and a video specialist, handled all of the video editing, did a large part of the scanning and photography work, and assisted with uploading and documenting the media content for the Scalar environment. She also prepared the Pathfinders trailer that introduces the project and has served as media librarian during much of the project. Will Luers, faculty in the program, was our designer and the consultant for the Scalar platform. Greg Philbrook, the program's tech guru, made sure everything in the lab worked, and when something did not, he moved fast to fix it.

There is much to be said about the future of the book and what constitutes reading in rich media environments, like Pathfinders, especially in light of what we have witnessed in the evolution of digital platforms in the last 25 years. Floppies, CDs, flash drives and cloud technology all speak to great innovations in digital technologies taking place in a very short period of history. Works like Sarah Smith's King of Space cannot be read on today's Macs because it's published on a 3 1/2" floppy disk. We are concerned about a great many works like Smith's disappearing from our collective knowledge. Therefore, documenting four of the many that need to be preserved is the first step in a grand gesture. The irony of producing our research (about works in danger of obsolescence due to evolving digital technologies) in digital format should not be lost on anyone. However, we have observed through our 60 years of combined experience with electronic media that the two most stable formats, heretofore, remain the web and video. For that reason, we have opted to trust them enough in order to begin this project. No longer can we afford the luxury of waiting to preserve this precious treasure that is early digital literature. We hope to inspire others to do the same.
Judy Malloy's Traversal of Uncle Roger
This traversal of Judy Malloy, conducted by Dene Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop, took place on Friday, September 6, 2013 at Malloy's office at Princeton University, where she has served as Visiting Faculty. We originally planned only to use Version 2 of the work––that is, the one sold commercially on floppy disk and requiring a vintage computer. However, taking Grigar's Apple IIe from her lab in Vancouver to Malloy's office was not possible due to cost of shipping. Malloy, however, had a colleague who gladly let us borrow his own. Unfortunately, halfway through the traversal, it broke, and we were relegated to using web version and the DOSBox emulation of Uncle Roger on Malloy's office Dell computer. The experience turned out to be a fortuitous because traversing the work in both formats allowed us to experience many of the deviations between the second and third versions and strengthened our argument for the "collection" method of digital preservation.
Assisting with the traversal and interview was Aaron Wintersong, Pathfinders' videographer, whom we flew with us to New Jersey.
Malloy Traversal, Part 1, "Unpacking and Loading Uncle Roger"
This video clip shows Malloy opening the packaging for Uncle Roger and discussing each element within it. She explains that the work was originally sold in 1987 as one file, "A Party in Woodside," but was expanded to include all three parts in 1988. We can see that the version of the documentation she displays differs from the one included in the packaging used in Pathfinders. She boots up "A Party in Woodside" on the Apple IIe and explains how one would read it. She quickly moves to "The Blue Notebook" and reads from it. The computer's aberrant flickering is noticeable; the computer later quit working.
Malloy Traversal, Part 2, "Examining Uncle Roger Through Emulation"
Malloy reads from her Dell PC because the flickering of the Apple IIe borrowed for the traversal proved to be bothersome. This shift in computer platforms provides the opportunity for her to point out some of the differences between the Apple and PC versions. She continues reading from "The Blue Notebook," explaining that it entails five different stories. Of note is the information Malloy provides that contextualizes the story within her personal experience with the early computer and chip industries, a time when producing the fastest chip was the prime goal and piracy was typical. At the end of the clip, Malloy begins a reading of "Terminals."
Malloy Traversal, Part 3, "Analyzing Terminals"
Malloy continues to read from the final file of Uncle Roger, "Terminals." This story sees Uncle Roger's main character Jenny move from the chip industry to a job in word processing. Malloy also explains the way in which Uncle Roger was programmed––as a series of files, numbered from 1 to 100, for which the user could evoke and combine on the command line. This narrative strategy is what leads Malloy to refer to the work as a database narrative. She also explains the way in which her next work, its name was Penelope, came about and the way it differs from Uncle Roger.
Schedule of Traversals, Interviews, and Public Lectures Pathfinders' traversals and interviews took place from summer 2013 to winter 2014. We began with Victory Garden because it necessary to fine tune our methodology on a member of the team before applying it to the other works. After Moulthrop, we moved confidently on to John McDaid's Funhouse, Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl, and Judy Malloy's Uncle Roger, in that order. At the invitation of Matthew Kirschenbaum at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, which houses The Bly Collection, we included Bill Bly's We Descend. Thus, Bly's traversals and interviews constitute the last of this phase of project.

Here is the list of Traversals, Interviews, and Public Lectures associated with the project.

Stuart Moulthrop, Victory Garden, July 8-11, 2013, Electronic Literature Lab (ELL), Washington State University Vancouver (WSUV). Public Lecture: Tuesday, July 9; 7-8:00 p.m., Nouspace Gallery.

John McDaid, Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse, August 7-10, 2013, Electronic Literature Lab (ELL), Washington State University Vancouver (WSUV). Public Lecture: Thursday, August 8; 7-8:00 p.m., Vancouver Community Library.

Judy Malloy, Uncle Roger, September 6-8, 2013, Faculty Office, Princeton University.

Shelley Jackson, Patchwork Girl, October 17-20, 2013, Electronic Literature Lab (ELL), Washington State University Vancouver (WSUV). Public Lecture: Friday, October 18; 7-8:00 p.m., Angst Gallery.

Bill Bly, We Descend, January 30-February 2, 2014, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), Hornbake Library, University of Maryland (UMD). Reading: Thursday, January 30; 4-5 p.m.