Augmented Editions and Fluid Textuality

In the book Fluid Textuality is defined as “the mutability of texts in variants and versions whether these are produced through authorial changes, editing, transcription, translation, or print production”. Even though it has existed for a long time, the recent rising of digital tools such as NPL provide people the increasingly ability to analysis different versions of a single work, and produce various verbal and nonverbal versions of a single text. The increasing fluid textuality leads to corresponding changes in authorial identity from individual to collaborative, collective, and aggregative. Under such context, augmented editions become especially important since they allow critical analysis of records of human thought and culture when they are in digital format, as well as understanding of works within larger cultural-production field.

Visualization and Data Design

Recent years there has been a shift referred as “visual turn” or “spatial turn” in humanity scholarship due to the prevalence of digital tools. However, the existing data visualizations mostly limits themselves to technicals from social science, business application, and natural science, while they fail to look into visual languages of art, architecture, and design, which may be more relevant to their intentions. Different from illustrations, visualizations are arguments themselves, and they can be produced computationally. Mapping, as an distinguished type of visualization, can be used to visualize various objects and concepts. Experiential visualization, as an investigation of a state of knowledge, uses movement through the time and space to create immersive experience. To conclude, the new basic of digital literacy requires not only understanding on what to read and visualize, but also knowledge on how to read and visualize.