Intimate Fields: A Kit for E-Literature
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14195/2182-8830_6-2_14Keywords:
e-literature, poetry, near field technology, craft, intimacy, Bachelard, textile, lettersAbstract
This paper discusses the development of Intimate Fields, an installation work that brings together “near field” technologies from markedly different eras to argue that secrecy, absence, and distance are constituting features of felt human intimacy. Looking back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, our project expands to digital technologies the concept of “the posy” and the practice of its creation and dissemination. Posies are short poems designed to be inscribed on gifted objects, most frequently rings. These bespoke accessories are meant to be worn on the body and to signify or transact amorous relations, act as memento mori, or even enable private and subversive modes of religious devotion. Posies and their objects were widely held to act as reminders of intimacy or as portals to memory. At the same time, the inscriptions themselves, particularly on courtship rings, are often generic and were collected and published in printed books for use and adaptation. By inter-animating today’s methods of near field communication and early modern wearables, this project explores how text and code technologies and the languages they carry can create, interrupt, or re-shape interpersonal connection.
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References
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TARTE, Segolene M. (2011). “Digital Visual Representations in Papyrology: Implications on the Nature of Digital Artefacts.” Academia.Edu. 1–16.
WOLFE, Heather (2012). “‘Neatly Sealed, with Silk, and Spanish Wax or Otherwise’: The Practice of Letter-Locking with Silk Floss in Early Modern England.” In the Prayse of Writing: Early Modern Manuscript Studies. Eds. S.P. Cerasano and Steven W. May. London: The British Library.
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BERTOLET, Anna Riehl (2015). “‘Like Two Artificial Gods’: Needlework and Female Bonding in A Midsum-mer Night’s Dream.” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 11. Eds. Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker. Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer. 159–78.
CHAUCER, Geoffrey (1926). The Book of Troilus and Criseyde. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
CRICK, Julia C., and Alexandra Walsham (2004). “Introduction: Script, Print, and History.” The Uses of Script and Print, 1300-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1-28.
DEXTER, Scott (2012). “The Esthetics of Hidden Things.” Berry, D. ed. Understanding Digital Humanities. Ed. D. Berry. London, GB: Palgrave Macmillan. 127-144.
DUGAN, Holly (2011). The Ephemeral History of Perfume: Scent and Sense in Early Modern England. Balti-more, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
FLEMING, Juliet (2001). Graffiti and The Writing Arts of Early Modern England. London: Reaktion Books.
KING, Kate (2010). “Pastpresents: Playing Cat’s Cradle with Donna Haraway.” 22 May 2017. http://playingcatscradle.blogspot.com/2010/10/katie-king-womens-studies-university-of.html.
LYLY, John (2003). John Lyly “Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit” and “Euphues and His England”: An Annotated, Modern-Spelling Edition. Ed. Leah Scragg. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
MIRABELLA, Bella (2016). “Embellishing Herself with a Cloth: The Contradictory Life of the Handker-chief,” Ornamentalism. Ed. Bella Mirabella. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press 2011. 59-82.
MUNROE, Jennifer (2005). “‘In This Strang Labourinth, How Shall I Turne?’: Needlework, Gardens, and Writing in Mary Wroth’s ‘Pamphilia to Amphilanthus.’” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 24.1: 35–55.
SAYERS, Jentery (2015). “Kits for Cultural History, or Fluxkits for Scholarly Communication.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures 13. doi: 10.20415/hyp/013.w02
SHAILOR, Barbara A. (1994). The Medieval Book. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
SMITH, Daniel Starza (2013). “Other Locking Mechanisms: Silk Floss, Ribbons, String, Slits and Holes.” 20 May 2017 https://www.bessofhardwick.org/background.jsp?id=163.
STEWART, Susan (1993). On Longing: Narrative of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham: Duke UP.
SUCHMAN, Lucy (1999). “Human/Machine Reconsidered” (draft). Published by the Department of Sociol-ogy, Lancaster University. http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/sociology/soc040ls.html.
TARTE, Segolene M. (2011). “Digital Visual Representations in Papyrology: Implications on the Nature of Digital Artefacts.” Academia.Edu. 1–16.
WOLFE, Heather (2012). “‘Neatly Sealed, with Silk, and Spanish Wax or Otherwise’: The Practice of Letter-Locking with Silk Floss in Early Modern England.” In the Prayse of Writing: Early Modern Manuscript Studies. Eds. S.P. Cerasano and Steven W. May. London: The British Library.
ZIEGLER, Giorgianna (2000). “‘’More than Feminine Boldness’’: The Gift Books of Esther Inglis.’” Women, Writing, and the Reproduction of Culture in Tudor and Stuart Britain. Eds. Mary Elizabeth Burke, Jane Donawerth, Karen Nelson, and Linda L. Dove. New York: Syracuse University Press. 19-37.
Published
2018-08-10
How to Cite
Simon, Margaret, and Helen J. Burgess. 2018. “Intimate Fields: A Kit for E-Literature”. MATLIT: Materialities of Literature 6 (2):203-16. https://doi.org/10.14195/2182-8830_6-2_14.
Issue
Section
Mediarama | Mediascape
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