This academic year (2013-14), I am the lead researcher for the Maker Lab’s “Z-Axis” project, which—in collaboration with the Modernist Versions Project (MVP)—is exploring forms of visualization that express subjective encounters with literary data through 3D modeling and prototyping. Stephen Ross (director of the MVP) describes this research as a combination of “literary analysis and desktop fabrication that allows us to ask how might our data be expressed, experienced, embodied, and felt.” As Stephen’s description suggests, our Z-Axis work is an interdisciplinary approach to literature that brings together established modes of analysis (e.g., close reading) with geospatial mapping and 3D sculpting techniques, allowing us to make arguments through new media about the intersections between text, space, time, and—to some degree—the subjective experience of reading.
