The Proposed Project

Posted by: dkoupf on: March 1, 2009

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This project will investigate the production, representation, and distribution of what I am calling “scrap writing” in the digital age.  “Scrap writing” refers here to small bits of usually ephemeral writing-handwritten or typed-that appears in “scraps” such as personal notes and letters, receipts, homemade signs and notices, and public signs on restaurants and stores, for example.  In our digital age, scrap writing can be scanned or photographed and then transferred to the web, where it is archived and distributed to a wider audience.  Scrap writing, in its various forms, is currently featured on such popular websites as Found, Passive Aggressive Notes, Post Secret, Apostrophe Abuse, and The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.

I will examine these websites while creating my own archive of scrap materials to address issues related to:  the materiality and visuality of writing, audience and voyeurism, place and space, and writing media.  I am interested in the differences among and affordances of the various writing media used here:  i.e., handwriting, typed writing, and computerized images of writing.  Why do people seem specifically interested in preserving or archiving and disseminating handwritten materials, especially ephemera (notes from roommates and parents, office signs and post-its-materials that are commonly thrown away)?  Handwriting seems highly personal-closely tied to a writer’s identity.  Thanks to the web, in our digital age personal writing can easily be made public; viewers indulge their voyeuristic tendencies, even commenting on and attempting to interpret once-private but now-public writing.  Personal, individual writing is fetishized.

Rather than attempt a close reading of the great assortment of scrap writing available on the web, I intend to address larger questions, particularly in relation to the network of writing media at work here.  Print materials, sometimes found and sometimes created, are scanned or photographed, uploaded to the web, submitted to websites, and distributed to Internet users.  Especially popular scrap writing websites, such as Found, Passive Aggressive Notes, and Post Secret, have published books of their collections as well, suggesting that the book medium offers something that the web does not.  Perhaps a book reaches a wider audience-or simply a different audience; perhaps it generates greater profit.  But a book also suggests longevity and materiality; it is an object, unlike a website; it is static.  I will examine the different affordances of the book and the web, particularly in relation to archiving scrap writing, as well as the possibilities that these book/web projects hold for the future of the book-a pressing concern for many book-lovers and publishers today.

Because I am exploring issues of media and materiality here, practical research should prove helpful as I attempt to think through the questions I have raised.  I will be participating in my project by creating my own scrap writing, some of which will record my observations for this project, while searching for others’ scrap writing as well.  The Flickr widget on this blog directs viewers to my Flickr photos, which will include scans and photos of my scrap writing.  One “final” product of this project will be a hypertext that will attempt to mimic the distribution network of media at work here.