grigar and moulthrop, 2017, traversals
written 20240113.
grigar and moulthrop write about preserving and traversing four foundational electronic texts: uncle roger by judy malloy, uncle buddy’s phantom funhouse by john mcdaid, patchwork girl by shelley jackson and we descend by bill bly.
traversals focuses on the way each work is informed by its technological medium, and the way technological changes subtly alter our experience of the works. this is a critical exercise as year-on-year, changes in software and hardware make older works inaccessible. what happens to the experience of reading uncle roger when judy malloy ports it from a serial novel posted on the well, into a database application programmed in basic, or into a series of linked hypertext pages? this is where the notion of the traversal comes in, an audiovisual demonstration of the work, performed by or otherwise involving its author, using historically appropriate hardware and software.
the traversal also forms the core of grigar and moulthrop’s companion project, pathfinders
see also
grigar, dene, and stuart moulthrop, 2017, traversals: the use of preservation for early electronic writing, mit press.