islands...
Flocks of books open and close, winging their way web-ward. A reader a drift in a sea of white space veined blue by lines of longitude, of latitude, of graph, of paper. Th horizon extends far beyond the horizon of the browser window, to the north, south, east and west. Navigating this space (with mouse, track pad, or arrow keys) reveals that this sea is dotted with islands
...and by islands I mean paragraphs. These paragraphs are computer-generated. Their fluid compositions draw upon variable strings containing fragments of text harvested from a larger literary corpus. Individually, each of these textual islands is a topic - from the Greek topos, meaning place. Collectively they constitute a topographical map of a sustained practice of reading and re-reading and writing and re-writing islands. In this constantly shifting sea of variable texts one never finds the same islands twice... and by islands, I do mean paragraphs.
...and by islands I mean paragraphs launched in the Chercher le texte: Virtual Gallery at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, France, 24 September 2013, and was published in
The Island Review, 4 October 2013.
A Topographical Approach to Re-Reading Books about Islands in Digital Literary Spaces, by J. R. Carpenter. MATLIT: Materialidades Da Literatura 4, 2016
La poésie à l’horizon du numérique : l’exemple de …and by islands I mean paragraphs de J. R. Carpenter, par Sylviane Médard. Komodo 21, 2019
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Andrew et. al. (1994)
Scottish Island Hopping: A guide for the Independent Traveller. Polygon, Edinburgh
Ballard, J. G. (2011) Concrete Island. London: Fourth Estate
Bishop, E. (1984) "Crusoe in England,"
The Complete Poems: 1927-1979. NY: FSG
Coetzee, J. M. (1986)
Foe. London: Penguin
Darwin, C. (1997)
The Voyage Of The Beagle. London: Wordsworth Classics
Defoe, Daniel (2000),
Robinson Crusoe. Ware: Wordsworth Classics
Deleuze, G. (2004) "Desert Islands,"
Desert Islands and Other Texts, 1953--1974. Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents
Díaz, H., (2010) "A Topical Paradise."
Cabinet 38. Brooklyn, NY, p. 79-85.
Hakluyt, R. (1903)
The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation Made by Sea or Over-land to the Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth at any time within the compasse of these 1600 Yeeres. Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons
Shakespeare, W. (1996)
The Tempest. London: Penguin
Tacitus (1960 [97-98])
Tacitus on Britain and Germany. H. Mattingly trans., Middlesex: Penguin Classics
Thomson & Murray (1885)
Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger. London.
Return to reading islands...
...and by islands I mean paragraphs.
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