The Pathfinders Methodology
That was the question driving Dene Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop's research with their Pathfinders project. The answer they arrived at was detailed documentation of the work along with videotaping author-reader performances of a single path into the work using time-appropriate hardware and software. They called their methodology, Pathfinders, and the videotaped performance, a Traversal. They used this method for documenting four early works of electronic literature: Judy Malloy's Uncle Roger, Version 3.3 (1986-88), John McDaid's Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse (1992), Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl (1995) and Bill Bly's We Descend (1997). The compiled all of their data into an open-source, multimedia book, entitled Pathfinders: Documenting the Experience of Early Digital Literature, and published it on June 1, 2015. To date, the book has had over 25,ooo views from readers from 58 countries representing 275 universities, centers, libraries, and schools. They followed this project up with a book of critical essays about the four works, a book entitled Traversals: The Use of Preservation for Early Digital Writing (The MIT Press, 2017).
Our method of documentation is unique in that we videotaped each artist and two additional readers interacting with a work on its original computer platform––a methodology we call “traversal.” When watching the traversal for Uncle Roger, for example, scholars can hear the crackle of the Apple IIe as it boots up and see the words “Bad Information” appear a few seconds later on the screen. Neither of these two elements is part of the story, but they are important cultural and artistic features lost in the migration to the web version that came later. Traversal recordings also capture the musings of authors about intentions, circumstances of writing, and on some occasions, effects that no longer work as intended.
We see our work with documentation as a form of digital preservation, one that builds on the method of “collection,” as opposed to the other two more common methods, “migration” and “emulation,” by providing scholars wanting to experience the work in its original format access to video documentation of the works in performance on a computer with which the work would have been originally experienced.
Besides videos of traversals, Pathfinders also includes videos of interviews with the artists and readers of the four main works; photos of physical artifacts such as floppies, folio covers or boxes containing floppies and other media; sound files from traversals and interviews; and commentary about the works and media. For example, John McDaid’s Funhouse consisted of five floppy disks packaged in a black box. Nowhere is it documented that the box also contains two music cassettes, a paper copy of a short story marked up by an editor, and a letter from the editor. All of these additional materials also make up the Funhouse and, so, are crucial to one’s understanding of the work. Pathfinders provides a video of McDaid opening the box and discussing each item found inside; certainly, an experience that scholars will see as helpful for understanding the breadth of McDaid’s vision. In total, Pathfinders features 173 screens of content, including 53,857 words, 104 video clips, 204 color photos, and three audio files.
History of the Work
Author information
Traversals
Interviews
Images of the work
Sound files
Critical essays
Resources
This page has paths:
- Rebooting Electronic Literature Dene Grigar