Unsurprisingly, the spatial arrangement of curiosity cabinets in centuries past aligned with a peripatetic mode of inquiry. I would contend that wandering as a form of cognitive activity continues today (my mom can spend hours on Facebook, if you call that neuronally stimulating). But, as Katherine Hayles notes, our engagement with new media seems to require “hyper” – rather than close – reading. Here, Hayles is not exclusively concerned with the immediacy in digital scholarship, but rather the vast array of challenges digital technologies pose to the humanities. I think this is something Chun points to when she says “we need to think beyond speed.”
As an artist (who no longer makes anything!), I can completely sympathize with the will to singularity. There is something about occupying a physical space that requires what Stewart calls “gestures of care which maintain the integrity of the body.” I think Google attempted to emulate something like the immersive experience of a museum in their Cultural Institute exhibition, but it’s difficult to realize this when all that’s required are one’s visual and finger mechanics.
Thanks, Allie! Your comments echo last week’s discussion about the pedagogical value of serendipitous discovery — and whether or not such experiences require physical exploration of analog materials. Can we capture such experiences in the virtual realm — in a collection catalog or a Google Cultural Institute exhibition? And what new furnishings and equipment can best support our contemporary practices of ever-“refreshing” hyper-reading?