Hermeneuti.ca – The Rhetoric of Text Analysis

Reading Smith and Parunak I find myself wondering if we shouldn't try recreating some of their tools. Is there a role for the historical rearticulation (recreation, reanimation, remediation?) of particular tools that were significant. What would it mean to try to reperform things like ARRAS or the distribution graphs that Parunak discusses?

Geoffrey R.

Trying to read Smith's essay on "Image and Imagery" in Joyce's Portrait I realized today that there is lovely circularity to Smith and Joyce:

• Smith finds in Joyce an esthetic theory that is based on the affective image; and in turn he is fascinated by the effect of visualization images in interpretation
• Smith plots the intensity of imagery in the Portrait; and presents an image (the graph) at the moment of demonstrative intensity in his essay.
• Smith is interested in imagery and using computer generated imagery - see "Computer Criticism"
• Stephen Daedalus sees himself, by the end of the Portrait as an "artificer" or smith of experience. I wonder if John B. Smith does too?

Now I need to look closely at the esthetical theory of Stephen Daedalus - I think that is, for Smith, a proto hermeneutic that shows the place of computational interpretation.

I need to float this by Stéfan - I wonder if we can recreate his algorithm.

In the phone conference today we discussed help systems now that we are pointing people to Voyeur.

• We need better documentation.
• We need links from Voyeur to hel: When you click "?" at the top of Voyeur (in the collapsed bar) and you get the panel with the link to the documentation, that link should open in a new window/tab.
• If you expand the Voyeur Tools: Reveal You Texts bar it should show a button that says "? Help" (which would open the panel). It might also have a button "About", "Tutorial" - in other words we can have more verbose stuff up there.
• The help panels you get when you click should be more verbose. They should have at the end (where appropriate) something which says, "For more help see the documentation for this at <link to hermeneuti.ca page>". Ideally this could be a consistent button. It could just say "More" or "More: Go to Documentation".

I've been fascinated by the Canadian zombie movie Pontypool. I went through and transcribed the parts about the infection of language.

---

Dr. Mendez (about the infection of another character): "That's it, he is gone. He is just a crude radio signal, seeking.

... dialogue

Mendez: No ... it can't be, it can't be. It's viral, that much is clear. But not of the blood, not of the air, not on or even in our bodies. It is here.

Grant: Where?

Mendez: It is in words. Not all words, not all speaking, but in some. Some words are infected. And it spreads out when the contaminated word is spoken. Ohhhh. We are witnessing the emergence of a new arrangement for life ... and our language is its host. It could have sprung spontaneously out of a perception. If it found its way into language it could leap into reality itself, changing everything. It may be boundless. It may be a God bug.

Grant: OK, Dr. Mendez. Look, I don't even believe in UFOs, so I ... I've got to stop you there with that God bug thing.

Mendez: Well that is very sensible because UFOs don't exist. But I assure you, there is a monster loose and it is bouncing through our language, frantically trying to keep its host alive.

Grant: Is this transmission itself ... um ...

Mendez: No, no, no, no. If the bug enters us, it does not enter by making contact with our eardrum. It enters us when we hear the word and we understand it. Understand?

It is when the word is understood that the virus takes hold. And it copies itself in our understanding.

Grant: Should we be ... talking about this?

Sydney: What are we talking about?

Grant: Should we be talking at all?

Mendez: Well, to be safe, no, probably not. Talking is risky, and well, talk radio is high risk. And so ... we should stop.

Grant: But, we need to tell people about this. People need to know. We have to get this out.

Mendez: Well it's your call Mr Mazzy. But let's just hope that your getting out there doesn't destroy your world.



======================
Grant: "He (Dr. Mendes) said that understanding copies the virus.

...

How do you not understand something? How do you take a word and make it strange?

...

If not understanding a word disinfects it? ..."

Sydney: "You kill the word that's killing you."



=================
Grant Mazzy on air: "you have to stop understanding what you are saying. Stop understanding what you are saying."

Sydney Briar to Grant: "you're making sense. If you say 'don't understand it' it defeats the purpose"

(Announcement from outside in French which is subtitled in English), "Sydney Briar! Stop the broadcast! Stop the broadcast! The man who is speaking is sick."

Grant Mazzy: "The sky is a person. Laughter is walking ..."

...

(Sound of gunfire outside)

Sydney: "Shit ... they're killing people ..."

Grant on air: "Stop killing people ... Just listen to me. Listen to me."

(Silence)

Sydney: "Everyone's dead."

Grant on air: "You're just killing scared people. It's what you always do. You are killing scared people. You are like dogs. You smell fear and you pounce. Well, what the fuck happened today folks? Someone took a buzzsaw to your middle and they pulled out a wheeling devil and they spilled it right across your anthill. But you know what folks? We were never making sense. We were never making sense.

And today, today, when armageddon leaches out into your good, good mornings, you know what? It's just another day. Another day in Pontypool. The sun came up; you did what you did yesterday, and its exactly what you will do tomorrow.

Today's news folks ... Today's late-breaking, developing, just-across-my-desk news story is this. It's not the end of the world folks. It's just the end of the day. This is Grant Mazzy for CLSY Radio Nowhere. And I'm still here you cock-suckers.

(Announcement from outside in French with English subtitles), "10 ... 9 ... 8 ... "

(Screen goes black then to titles.)

We had a conversation as we were reviewing the Introduction about why this is a hybrid work that includes (as imagined) a printed book of the text. Some of the answers we came up with are:

• Print is easier to read and this would be especially true for the more theoretical chapters.
• Print would let us involve a print designer and take advantage of the medium to do some things that are more difficult on line.
• Print would let us show how text analysis tools can be used to take something through to a print outcome, which is, afterall, one of the theses of the work.
• Print archives better. Who knows what will happen to the site over the long term. It is useful to have an accessible print record. Print is stable and has its own coherence.
• Print can be a way in for some people. It is easy to skim and read away from the screen - it thus can serve as an introduction to the field.
• In print we can gather the reflections that are drawn from the analysis, but don't depend on it to render. The print version should be what is of interest beyond our implementation.

Right now the book title is "The Rhetoric of Text Analysis" - is that the right title? Do we want to emphasize Agile Interpretation?

What do we do with the original Experiments page? http://tada.mcmaster.ca/Main/ExperimentsInTextAnalysis

Do we bring them over to Hermeneuti.ca so that everything is together? I recommend:

• We want to be open about the background notes and so on
• We don't want to overburden the reader with too much stuff
• We should therefore have the notes on Hermeneuti.ca organized with the experiments
• Each note should have an Editorial Note at the beginning
• Possibly we should include editorial notes in the text. We could use italics for these.

 

 

I think the introduction is done, at least until the rest is written and we have to rewrite it. It should do a better job now of describing what is in hermeneuti.ca and how to use/read it. You will note I committ us to various things like:

• A section on How to Contribute Comments or Responses - the idea is that people could write academic comments/responses for review.
• A section on How to Contribute Recipes or Development - the idea is that people could contribute recipes or work on the code.
• A section on How to Contribute Essays - so people could point us to, or contribute interactive essays.

What do you think abou that?

Time for a second read.

I'm wondering about the title of the book as I don't like "The Rhetoric of Text Analysis". I do like starting with "Hermeneuti.ca", but what should the best subtitle be?

I cleaned up most of the embedded tools in Now Analyze That, including a call to the distribution chart in Voyeur. The last step will be to see if the new Voyeur Links tool can be inserted in the place of the visual collocator, though we may want to keep a static image there to show a certain layout of the words tha couldn't be achieved with a single call.

There's now a stub page for the Recipes – now I have to start filling them in...