Google Hangouts and Notre Dame Cathedral

I did my first successful Google hangout with Erica Oldroyd, Professor Burton (and friends), and briefly Sam Jenkins.  What a rush!  They helped me talk out my ideas for my paper, gave me more ideas on different approaches I could take, and gave me examples of how I could better organize and construct my final paper.  It is always so helpful to be able to talk out my ideas with others and get direct feedback.

Erica helped me break down my idea into three different categories.  There is the large scale, mass cultural phenomenon, the classroom, and the individual's experience with literary work through the digital media.  I aim to focus more on the changing phenomenon, that no one can read a piece of literature, or experience any of these mediums, in isolation, and how that is and should be influencing how we teach literature in the classroom.

Professor Burton took my analogy that when we try to read in isolation, it is like limiting ourselves to being in Paris looking at the cathedral, and expanded it to a broader idea.  If I understood his idea correctly, he suggested that in order to feel like we have really been to a place, to feel like we are taking something with us as we leave, we must document our travels by taking pictures.  Going even farther than that, we then feel obligated to post those pictures on Facebook, or other social media sites, in order to feel validation for having been somewhere.  Can you really say you've been somewhere without being able to relive the experience though digital proof?  He said when he went to the Notre Dame cathedral, he and his son took pictures from the top overlooking the Eiffel Tower in the distance, but he realized they never actually have record of them at the cathedral, only a view from the top.  Does that illegitimate his experience?

The Tree and the Planets of the Digital Age

I've been playing around with several ideas in regards to creating a visual element for my topic (what is the primary text?)  With the help of my cohort (Emily and Whitney) and my professor, I have heard a couple that I rather like.
ONE:  The Tree
Think of a tree, and the base of the tree as long as the printing press had been around, was the "primary text" in its traditional sense-->the original textual piece of literature.  Everything else stemmed from that core, that center.

With the emergence of the digital age, that base has been changed.  Well, let's say moved.  Literature has moved up and out and has become an appendage (a branch).  What is at the core you ask?  What is holding this tree together?  An idea, a truth, a piece of beauty and humanity that Hugo said was encompassed, during the Middle Ages, in architecture (see my previous post).  That architecture became an appendage when literature kicked it out of its place, and now literature is moving out of the center, too.  It resides as a branch, along with architecture, art, and all these other mediums (audiobooks, blogs, movies, drama, opera, musicals, comic books, foreign translations, you name it).  These are all branches that link back to this embodiment of humanity at the core.  The more the art work represents this idea of humanity, the closer it is to the trunk, but no one medium exemplifies and embodies all these truths any longer.

TWO:  Dynamic Solar System (contribution of Dr. Burton)
Ok, with that vision in mind, let us "boldly go" out to space next.
We have the solar system, with the sun in the middle and all the planets rotating around this center of gravity, all on the same plane.  The sun representing literature (as it once was), and the planets representing all the other mediums aforementioned).

I propose that the digital age has taken that center of gravity and has made it moveable.  Sure, at one point, everything revolves around literature, but depending on your purpose and aim, that center of gravity to change to film, and everything revolves around that medium, or music, or drama.  Different "planets" get their turn in the spotlight.  The orbital system becomes dynamic.  All these modes become a primary text in their turn.

I'm trying to come up with a way to actually make these ideas into an animation, but I will need the assistance of someone much more technologically savvy than myself.
Tell me what you think!