Like the experimental qualities of John Dos Passos’ prose, our Manhattan Transfer project is an experiment in the digital possibilities of annotation and interpretation. The novel is a portrait of urban life in Manhattan featuring characters whose stories sometimes collide. The text is fragmented, jumping from one character’s journey to the next and then returning at any point. First published in 1925, the writing shares aspects with other forms of modern art such as cinematic techniques, narrative collage, and a fascination with urbanization and technology.

My team (Raquel, JP, Miaoling) and I have created a website devoted to the novel where we have provided the entire text (available through the public domain), historical background information and multiple layers of interpretation strategies. The digital format and use of technologies can provide new historical contexts for understanding the time period of the 1920s and Dos Passos himself and can also yield fresh interpretations of the text. The collaborative nature of this project allowed us to focus on different aspects which suited our interests.

John Dos Passos, Book cover design for Manhattan Transfer, Harper & Brothers, 1925

For my part, I chose to focus on avant-garde and modern art. Although connections can be made with many works of Cubism, Futurism, and Expressionism happening in the same time period as Manhattan Transfer, after learning that Dos Passos was also an artist, I thought it would be interesting to concentrate  on his own paintings and use them as the source of hypothes.is annotations for Chapter 1: Ferry Slip. Dos Passos never achieved major success as an artist but there are many parallels between his art and literary works. The first edition book cover uses a Dos Passos work to convey the complexity and dynamism of the city with its jagged forms. In other paintings, Dos Passos uses multiple perspectives and planes like a Cubist, similar to the multiple narratives and characters found in the novel. In the text, Dos Passos even writes like a painter at times: “skyblue and smokedsalmon and mustardyellow quilts, littered with second hand gingerbread-colored furniture”. So, although Dos Passos’ innovative writing can be traced back to other modernists like Joyce, Stein and Cendrars, we can also see influences of artists such as George Grosz, Lyonel Feininger, Fernand Léger, and F.T. Marinetti. Hypothe.is, while somewhat limited in terms of functionality, was an appropriate choice to do these annotations because the hypothes.is panel can be hidden for those not interested in art. This is something I struggle with looking at the website now – how much our interventions may be distracting and actually influence the reading vs. allowing one to read the text first and foremost and then choose to interact with our interventions.

AI-generated image of character Tony Hunter.

In contrast with the historical paintings, we also used AI technology to generate ‘new’ images based on the text. I used Midjourney to generate the character faces. Despite the novel being cinematic in nature, it was never made into a film. Therefore, we felt this was a way to help envision the characters. It was an interesting process to type in keywords and see what the AI bot came up with. For example for the character of Tony Hunter, I typed in “1920s gay man mental breakdown actor nervous photorealistic new york city”. I was surprised by the assumptions and stereotypes made by the AI bot -for all characters, I was given images of white people. It seems that is the default unless you indicate a specific race. I suppose, given the fact that the tool was created by humans, perhaps this should not be surprising.

Overall, I think the project was a great way to try out digital tools to re-invent this novel. However, I sometimes question whether our additions add to the text or if they are extraneous bits added on top to distract. Would a reader prefer our website, Project Gutenberg, or a physical copy of the book?

Thanks to Raquel for developing the WordPress site, AI images and Kumo map; Miaoling for suggesting AI and creating the character map; and JP for contributing audio and historical images.

For the purpose of this project, our group selected the second and seventh chapters of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway for annotation. Our group is made up of Hampton Dodd, Majel Peters, Sean Patrick Palmer, and Kai Prenger. At the onset, we loaded the publicly available version of the novel from Project Gutenberg into Manifold. However, Majel spearheaded a fairly advanced prototype of Miro board with one chapter, demonstrating the varied annotative approaches we could use on this platform, and we adopted it as our tool of choice, While some of our annotation followed a more orthodox pattern (highlighting text and commenting on the highlighted text with digital sticky notes providing annotation), Miro gave us flexibility to pursue other styles to gloss the text. To track events external through each character’s point of view, such as the backfiring car or mysterious skywriting in chapter 2, we used flowlines connecting disparate references to these events across pages and perspectives. In another form of marginalia, we created a color-coded legend for each character’s stream of consciousness which could be appended to a page/paragraph when the stream begins, helping the reader understand how this common Modern literary technique is applied in Mrs. Dalloway. One main difference (and indeed trade offs) between using Miro as an annotation platform in comparison to hypothes.is or Manifold is that most annotation is visible without clicking or drilling down into each individual annotation. Maps, images and the annotations themselves live on the surface of the document. The unnested nature of the marginal notes closely mimics notes on a physical page. Beyond that, this digital tool also allowed us to include instructional notes on how to use Miro, and potentially could give new annotators details on the meaning behind color choices and structure of previous annotations like flowlines used for events interleaved throughout a chapter.

Initially, our division of labor rested on having each team member specialize in the type of annotation provided. For instance, Sean Patrick Palmer highlighted philological shifts by identifying words which exist today in English, but had a different meaning or valence in the Britain of Woolf’s time. Some teammates chose to focus on intratextual and intertextual commentary, while others wanted to provide historical context. Outward bound links varied from publicly consulted sources like Wikipedia to scholarly articles found in academic journals. We created maps and appended photos of locations extensively referenced in chapter 2. Portraits of royalty and dogs were included.

Reflecting what next steps would be interesting for a project like this:

1. Allow for filtering based on the annotation styles (historical, intratextual, cultural/theoretical, etc)
2. Creating more interactivity to reveal the relationships between narrators, or narrative through lines like the car backfiring

On a personal level, I found the additive nature of annotation, particularly sped up with digital tools, slightly overwhelming. I often asked myself “how much annotation is too much?” Perhaps I prefer subtractive creative work (photography, work through editing, even interpretive essay writing) versus additive work (painting, sculpting, annotation?).

Barthes tells us that, “confronting the work–a traditional notion, long since, and still today, conceived in what we might call a Newtonian fashion–there now occurs the demand for a new object, obtained by a shift or a reversal of previous categories.” His description of the text starts to resemble that of Dark Matter—not able to be directly or immediately perceived, but is rather, evidenced by its impact. I took this to mean there are certain persuasive and influential realities that govern our human perception, experience and behavior—though we are not always aware of their impact. In art, we attempt to give shape to some these forces acting on us—charting or claiming understanding of what we feel but don’t necessarily clearly see. 

In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf drills down into very specific examples of these forces—spotlighting the causes and reactions tied to universally human themes of aging, spontaneity (freedom) versus security, conformity versus individualism—and sets them, seemingly, adrift in the minds of her characters. For all the precious behaviors of 1920s London she describes, Woolf makes her text felt through the undulating undercurrent of her key themes. Despite Woolf’s claim that there was no grand scheme in the writing of the book, an armature of precise timing, balance of character focus, and prism-like refractions of her key themes emerges. In the end, the novel itself feels quite tidy, even if her characters’ internal dialogues reveal them to be anything but.  

In working on this annotation project, I thought it important to capture some aspect of both the tidiness and the mess of Woolf’s stream of conscious-driven meditation on social British social obligation and human mortality. I feared that using a tool like Manifold, despite its many merits, would give far too much ground to an academic tidiness. I felt Miro offered a few beneficial tools that would help bring out what I felt was embedded in the text. First, it allows the text to be viewed all at once—one could theoretically zoom out and sense the body of work and the overlapping occurrence of many of the books events, and have an immediate impression of character interactions with each other and external events. Second, I felt that externalizing the annotations—making them viewable at all times (there are ways to hide them, with a slightly different set up) helped reinforce the concept of stream of consciousness—immediately sussing out Woolf’s intricately woven references to history, society, psychology, and geography. Third, Miro allows for linking between text and objects on the board, with the screen traveling across the terrain of the text to land on the final destination. This physical experience, to me, suggests the various migrations of Woolf’s characters around London, and even hints at the passage of time, a key component of the novel, as you shift to a new space on the board. And Finally, placing external links directly on the board generates a preview of the link—imagery that potentially answers the immediate needs of the viewer, keeping them engaged and focused on the text at hand. Of course, readers can jump into the rabbit hole if the wish. In addition, using the search function,  certain patterns within the work emerge. Quick context and word frequencies can be found—speaking to the rhythms Woolf baked into the narrative.  

Overall, I feel that the resulting object functions on many levels. It starts to trace some of the “Dark Matter” of the text—revealing it to the naked eye, while also answering the immediate need of sharing relevant factual information related to references contained within the “work.” Although it is perhaps not considered best practice, as a deeper expression of the multilayered of Woolf’s novel, I could imagine a thicket of stickies, links, images, and videos crowding the margins of chapters, giving an immediate impression of the depth, interconnectivity, and overarching structure of the text to shake off purely practical annotation ini favor of becoming, in its new form, a new “work” in and of itself. 

I felt an affinity for the Graham piece “Joyce and the Graveyard of Digital Empires”, because back in a dark era called the 90’s when I was in grad school in Illinois, one of my first jobs was working at The Kolb-Proust Archive for Research.

This project is still up, and I think it’s still being worked on.

So, here is my experience with this project.

Marcel Proust wrote several letters per day. He was a member of the upper class of Paris, so his letters give an excellent view of life in that society.

The downside to this is that Proust didn’t date his letters. Enter Prof. Philip Kolb. He was a Proust scholar who collected and annotated Proust’s letters, eventually publishing over 20 volumes of his work.

To do this, Kolb would look through newspapers and magazines at the time, to figure out when the letters were written. Many of the people Proust wrote to were celebrities in their day, so their lives are fairly well-documented. Because Proust would mention the weather in his letters, the chronology files contain lots of weather reports.

Kolb then took this information and put it on index cards. These cards make up the chronology files. Kolb had other files, another set is the biography files. This set was about the people Proust knew and their families.

After Kolb’s death. the library and the French department decided to put Kolb’s research online.

The work was slow for the first year or two because the project had limited institutional support, and the folks running the project had to set it up, including things like the html templates, language, and design concerns.

Then, the project was awarded a grant. The grant allowed them to hire research assistant, which is where I come in. I worked mostly on the chronology files and some on the biographical files.

My job was to enter the information into the templates, alter the template if I needed to (add or delete sections or another category, etc) and look things up if the writing wasn’t clear, or the citation wasn’t complete.

It was a fascinating project to be involved with. I’ve always been a history buff, so the close-up view of upper class Parisian society in the late 19th to early 20th century fascinated me. I learned quite a lot.

It also affected me in odd ways. Reading all these letters, or excerpts of letters from these people gave me a kind of emotional connection to them. This came into focus when I started encoding the files around the start of World War I in 1914 and several people who has been regular correspondents of Proust’s died. Even though I never met these people, I felt this odd feeling of loss.

And I know history well enough to know that this was coming.

Another highlight for me was the correspondence between Proust and his ex, Comte Robert de Montesquieu. One letter, written by Proust while they were fighting, was absolutely scathing. Montesquieu sent the letter back, having corrected all the grammar and spelling errors with the signature “from your professor”.

After two years, the funding for the project ran out and they couldn’t find alternate funding, so while work on the project continued, it was scaled back, and I ended up getting a new RA position, in the Language Learning Lab.

The article as we may think has this peculiar and interesting aura around akin the advancement of the atomic age and idea of unlimited energy which it promised to provide the average joe, atomic cars hell yea. But there was Fukushima and Chernobyl which have dashed the hopes of unlimited energy of nuclear technology and the pushback that we see in many societies against the technology is something deeper that Dr. Bush may have missed when he wrote the article in 1945, and foretelling the advancement of technology in betterment for humanity he may have missed the mark somewhat.

There this missing aspect in the subjective reality that is hard to quantify in a scientific manner and that aspect is also important in my opinion – happiness. There is not mention of happiness in the article which should serve as a basis of society and not GDP or how many nobel prize winners your country might have. Of course these measurements are good and they do tend to increase happiness but technology is a double edged sword. Dr. Bush states as such but does not delve into that more in depth for more nuanced article.  Internet made us more connected but at the same time increased Big Brother aspect of it, and Data is gathered without our input. We are bombarded with Ads and constant news, and I doubt our brain is designed for it. We may live longer lives but our bodies are maintained by copious amount of drugs and doctor visits have become a new national pastime in America. But are we happy? School shootings are rampant and lies are new norm, and every expert that your mom loves to quote from Facebook during an argument with you about everything from fluoride in water and that everything has chemicals in it (Lady everything in this world is chemistry). Happiness is the one thing that is slipping in our quest for technological progress and prowess. Technology and the mastery of it increases our GDP but makes us look at the phone each time when we wake up. I think people notice the first they do is check their phone when they wake, and at times doom scroll throughout the night about all news of the world that is fed in real time. Are we still happy? Backlash against the onslaught of technology is inevitable and we as digital humanists must balance the good and the bad that technological advances offers us and policies and ethics that we might champion in the future which may sound radical now may be needed for more equitable society.

Graham uses the example of Joyce’s Ulysses to present an early example of hypertext that serves as “a graveyard for early work in the digital humanities.” (Graham) I appreciate her analysis of the intertextuality and the potential of cyberspace in creating infinite hypertext and variants. But after reading her introduction on diverse Ulysses DH projects, I started to consider the question of bridging intertextuality and intermediality through the digital transformation of literature. By referring to Marshall McLuhan’s theories, especially his discussion on media as extensions of man, I am wondering how to explain the mechanisms between textuality and materiality in our reading/writing experiences, particularly during the current media convergence. I have questions: can we say that a hypertext work remediated via digitalization transforms the implicity of intertextuality? If we are now in a meta-medium world, is it possible that we are overly immersed in nodes in intermedial practices and lose our connections with a work, a text, or an object? How should we deal with fragmented reading/writing/playing experiences enhanced by media convergence?

Drucker’s “The Virtual Codex” argues for an architectural approach to thinking about E-book designs. What elements make a book? What features constitute a book? She lists overlapping features in traditional book and e-book designs, like the table of contents, index, bookmarks, etc. My question, again, goes with the materiality mentioned in this approach: in terms of material culture, if we talk about things that talk via books/reading, how shall we analyze books that are not read (but to be collected, to be shown, to be exhibited, etc.)? What kinds of E-book designs satisfy this aim? Or, do we need to pay attention to nonreaders associated with books and E-books collections?

In this week’s reading, Blair touches on my above questions in “Note Taking as an Art of Transmission.” I learned about the broader applicability of note-taking in our engagements with books and also in our daily interactions. The notes could also be subversive or even totally irrelevant, as examples introduced in Lerer’s article “Devotion and Defacement: Reading Children’s Marginalia.” We see images of children’s playing, education, and domestic relationships in notes and the feminization in note-taking among young women. Note-taking is serving as the lens of human activities, including but not limited to reading. I am especially interested in how scholars talk about a person’s life experiences by reading their notes and comparing them with other historical resources. Is there a fictionality in note-taking?

The two weeks’ readings encourage me to reconsider the textuality and materiality of books, archival resources, notes, and general reading/writing experiences. Is there a space between texts and textiles? Do digital tools fragment these spaces?

McLuhan Marshall and W. Terrence Gordon. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: Gingko Press, 2013.