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(Re)Creating Space: The Information Architecture of John Gay’s Trivia

+Space

Physical contact

Why use geography?

Space in poem, space in digital environment

Information architecture

+Information Architecture

The structural design of shared information environments

The art and science of organizing and labeling digital spaces and software to support findability and usability

An emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape

+What to do with space?

Alison Stenton’s “Spatial Stories: Movement in the City and Cultural Geography”

“The London represented by Trivia is not just historical fact but also an imaginative fiction, what does a geographer do with descriptions of imagined space?” (62)

What does the process of visualizing 18th century London do for the contemporary literature researcher?

What about misrepresentation of the space?

Imagined versus real?

+Places to Spaces

“Refocus attention from places to spaces. Moving from geography to cultural geography destabilizes a binary relationship between fact and fiction to make room for something new—a geography that is neither fact nor fiction, but both: a representation of a space that is always, in part, imaginative” (62)

Narrative vital yet problematic

+Space Bias

Here to sev’n Streets sev’n Dials count the Day,

And from each other catch the circling Ray.

Here oft the Peasant, with enquiring Face,

Bewilder’d, trudges on from Place to Place;

He dwells on ev’ry Sign with stupid Gaze,

Enters the narrow Alley’s doubtful Maze,

Trys ev’ry winding Court and Street in vain,

And doubles o’er his weary Steps again (Book II).

+Space Bias

Geographical/Historical foundation persuasive

Reality relies on readers’ preconceptions and preferences

+Literature as information

Intellectual space?

Information architecture considers space and location

Organization, labeling, navigation, search, thesauri/metadata

+Digital Environments

Jerusalem’s Temple Mount Project (Urban Simulation Team)

+Mapping

Charing Cross, London. Screen capture from Allison Muiri’s digitized Horwood’s Map of London (1792-99).

+Visualization

Figure 3. Recorded incidences of pocket picking by area in the Proceedings of the Old Bailey online, 1700-1750.

+So what?

What does the process of visualizing 18th century London do for the researcher/student?

How does the idea of information architecture help us?

The possibility that the visual data, and metadata, can lead to new approaches to the study of a text

Question “information," as a sort of unassailable truth

A holistic, more complex, understanding of space

New information landscape requires new information architecture