Process: Macroblogging

Working with the Web everyday, I find I spend little time on Facebook on my off hours. I resist spending more time on the computer after work. Yet, if I really wanted to limit my screen time, why did I choose to blog?

It is of course a forum to express views and tell stories, a tool to communicate, to start a dialogue… We argued the potential of the blogging medium as a new writing tool in grad school. Its underlining structure, much like the journal, depends on chronological entries, of postings in time. While the discipline and rigor of writing regularly could only help improve one’s craft, the inherent qualities of the blog, like thematic cloud tags, interlinking and multimedia, could arguably provide new ways of writing, even stirring up new ways of thinking about the creative process itself. The format of the blog has adopted Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical concept of the rhizome: multiple, in-between and non-hierarchical.

My own social networks (Facebook and LinkedIn) are indeed rhizomatic in that they are on the surface and widely spread out. The communication style is staccato-like and sporadic. Some would say concise, especially when referring to microblogging — the 140 characters that constrain the tweet. As an artist however, I am more interested in the opposite. Would it be macroblogging? The sometimes rambling but usually exploratory writing exercises that allow me to develop my ideas in depth. A tool to help me to reflect on various themes from placenames and personal mapping, to visual representations of time, memory and knowledge.

I also chose the blog for the documentation aspect, after the fact. That is, the postings can be mulled over and written anywhere and recorded later on line. I don't always subscribe to the myth of the mobile worker. I’ve found that trying to work on the train with my laptop is a trying exercise: not enough elbow room, bouncy, vibrating screen and frustratingly intermittent wireless connection. Better to jot down my notes on paper and re-transcribe later. We do not always have to be connected, working at breakneck speed and multitasking to death. I’ve become almost defiant about working offline at a slower pace. It is a delight to sit in a park with the breeze in my hair, to take the time to slow down, to reflect and write; to enjoy a coffee in a bustling café, where the murmurs and voices stir up thoughts and help shape their written form and cadence.

In this way, the blog has effectively freed me from the screen as reflective off line activity is just as much part of my process. Though I could update the blog remotely using RSS feeds and a handheld device, I chose the low-tech approach. I enjoy the messy capture of intrusive, spontaneous thoughts on whatever is at hand, collecting random scribblings on torn newspaper, napkins, VIA rail paper bags and beer coasters that I amass while on my various commutes – from the short stroll to the compost heap or grocery strore, to the long, dreamy metro rides home.

The piecemeal aspect of the blog also intrigued me in terms of my subject matter: pieced together notions of time and place, unreliable tidbits of memory, flashes of insight, parts of the whole. Responded to this description of time by Michel Serres and Bruno Latour (1995) cited in “Some new instructions for travelers: the geography of Bruno Latour and Michel Serres” by Nick Bingham and Nigel Thrift (Thinking Space, 2000):

time does not flow according to a line. … nor according to a plan but rather according to an extensive, complex mixture, as though it reflected stopping points, ruptures, deep wells, chimneys of thunderous acceleration (rendings, gaps) – all sown at random, at best in a viable disorder (284).

With Tongue Rug, the last line would read more like:

time is all sewn at random, at best in a viable disorder…

Process: Dead lake

The Turcot interchange is often on my mind these days as it is a daily topic in the news. I live only a couple of blocks away: ducking nervously under its towering structure when cycling, and passing by the yards during my Montreal-Ottawa commute. Upon entering and departing the downtown core by train, one is faced with an industrial landscape for the most part, which calls up Montreal’s industrial heritage and the South West's reputation as Canada’s “cradle of industrialization”. The Turcot yards appear like a desolate wasteland with mounds of cement scattered about, dusty barren fields and crumbling overpasses. No lake to be found.

Having grown up in Sudbury in the 70s, I have seen the results first hand of massive regreening efforts. Greater Sudbury's land reclamation project transformed what was once lauded as a moonscape, because of the exposed blackened bedrock ravaged by acid rain and unregulated logging, into an environmental success story. Near the downtown core is Ramsey lake —long considered a “dead lake’— which was part of this environmental reclamation project. On the east part of the lake is a scenic natural area with 950 hectares of protected green space. While the Lake Laurentian Conservation Area offers multi-usage trails for cyclists, skiers and snowshoers, I find the trail system lacking in that it is not fully integrated with a developed urban cycling infrastructure due in part to the rocky terrain of the Cambrian shield.

This is where the South-West of Montreal differs as the infrastructure already exists because of the Lachine canal. In fact, the Pôle des rapides area boasts 21 km of urban trails. The city has already invested 9.9 million dollars into Montreal's cycling trails and plans on creating another 50 km into the trail network this year alone for a total of 552 km (Métro, May 7). Each of the three Turcot reconstruction proposals include a network of cycling trails and for just cause. The current economic climate is leading some city planners to think in the short term and simply promulgate the car culture of the 60s with a straight-forward reconstruction of the aging interchange, when more thought needs to be given to the ecological footprint on the area and the quality of life of its citizens in the long term.

Indeed, the South West mayor, Benoit Dorais, sees the Turcot reconstruction as an opportunity to improve the economic development in the area. He affirms that there is not merely a need for assuring traffic flow through the South West with an improved road infrastructure, but a social and economic need to develop the area itself in conjunction with the modernization of its roadways. (La Voix Pop, André Desroches, May 27, 2010).

Web 2.0 has create a climate for lively exchange on this topic. The South West borough launched its own Facebook page in April, and not surprisingly the going ons of the Turcot reconstruction project appear front and centre. I can’t think of another topic that can benefit more from going viral these days. It’s not to say that this digital medium takes the place of local community papers like La Voix Pop. It is a complement to the weekly paper with its ability to provide links to related information, incorporate multimedia and leverage Web 2.0 tools to help build community.

There are two frontrunners in opposition to the Quebec Ministry of Transport’s reconstruction plan for the Turcot: Turcot 375 and the City of Montreal. Though the Turcot 375 plan to increase public transport and create a 75 hectares urban park at the foot of the Saint-Jacques escarpment seems promising, I admit to being a little underwhelmed by the video.

 

The City of Montreal’s plan won me over however with the construction of a new tramway linking downtown to Lachine and LaSalle, a new park to “preserve and enhance the Saint-Jacques escarpment” and a residential area which will “favour quality architecture, given the high visibility of both sites”. The artist rendering of Parc de la falaise presented a less abstract vision than the futuristic video. I can simply see myself living in this area: it brought it down to human scale — the pedestrian, the cyclist. Montreal 2025 successfully used the picturesque and the lure of green spaces as a strategy.

Montréal 2025

As an entry point into the city, the City of Montreal’s plan shapes that first impression of the cityscape. A major regreening effort paired with the Turcot reconstruction would invariably promote active communities by way of cycling and walking trails and encourage public transport. By its placement, it would also create a green corridor that links Atwater market to Lachine. Montreal often boasts of its green spaces in tourism brochures, but the reality is that the ratio of green spaces on the island is quite low. One just needs to look at satellite view in Google maps to see the small isolated parcels of green. Like with the Sudbury scenario, planting trees and protecting wetlands can not only help improve air and water quality it can lead to improved quality of life for its residents.

I can't speak with the authority of an urban planner or an environmentalist. I speak simply as a citizen with visions of what my neighbourhood and city could become. Knowing the history of the South West's own "dead lake"or ghost lake, could the city's proposed Parc de la falaise mean a re-appearance of the Lac aux loutres?

Progress: April 21, 2010

As part of the Metropolis Blue Student Literary Programme, I gave a presentation on literary blogs for l'antenne Communication-Jeunesse de l'école Antoine-de-Saint-Exupéry at the municipal library in Saint-Léonard. Over the course of our exploration, we talked about what sets a blog apart from a simple webpage. I emphasized the viral nature of the blog with its multitude of outward associative links. Also noted the facility in which you can classify, archive and navigate content using either intuitive key-words (tags) or the chronological ordering more akin to the journal format.

I briefly presented my Tongue Rug project and talked about how the blog/rug and posts/tongues act as a sort of memory device, a virtual archive. We discussed how the database capacities of blogging programs and other social media makes the Web the ideal tool for archiving. The City of Montreal has recently posted their archives on YouTube for instance (Les archives de Montréal plongent dans le web 2.0, Métro, April 6).

 

In this clip produced for the City of Montreal by Associated Screen News, we see a rather optimistic glimpse of the "modern city" in the late fifties: boxy cars in the streets, fruit and vegetables stands buzzing with people at the Marché Bonsecours and playgrounds teaming with energetic children on jungle bars. Woman in flouncy skirts and tramways in the streets. A window on another era.

 

CBC Digital Archives has had its own YouTube Channel since 2007. This CBC-TV clip about the ski-doo and its inventor, J. Armand Bombardier, brought back fond memories of winters at the cottage. My dad and my uncles would attach the toboggan to the back of the ski-doo, and on a few occasions, the old Ford. My cousins and I would pile on, holding on for dear life while they made sloppy donuts on the frozen expanses of Lac Panache.

 

Traditional museum displays take on another form via the web through interactive interfaces: Héritage Montréal's project — Memorable Montreal : Montréal en quartiers — features an interactive map of the Island with five off-circuits that are narrated with movie clips using archival photographs and videos: Little Italy, the Square Mile, Côte-des-Neiges, Dominion Square, La Fontaine Park and the Lachine Canal. Of particular interest to me was the section on all the bridges that span the St-Laurent, detailing the history, construction and protection actions of each structure. This site opened my eyes to the complexity of the structures that I have crossed many times on my bike: crossing the windy stretch of the Pont Champlain estacade or the Concordia Bridge, or cycling the vertiginous heights of the Jacques-Cartier will now be a richer experience knowing their varied histories.

The public can also participate in developing archival collections. La Société du Vieux-Port de Montréal is asking the general public for assistance in providing either old photographs or personal testimonials about everyday life in the Old Port of Montreal between the time period of 1930–1976 (Vieux-Port: À la recherche de son passé, Métro, April 21). On the Quais du Vieux-Port de Montréal website, you can learn more about the golden age of the Montreal port (1896–1930) by way of an interactive map with archival photos of Grain Elevator no 5, The Tugboat Daniel McAllister, the Refrigerated Warehouse and Hangar 16 among other historical points of interest.

In the past you had to book a visit in person to a library to conduct research. Though a visit is still an option, you can now access information in your own home as a free online resource. Just looking at the Bibliothèque et archives national du Québec and Library and Archives Canada web portals, it is apparent that never before has there been so much archival material at our disposal. These archives are an invaluable tool to understanding Montreal, a city in constant flux.

I wonder if this will result in renewed interest in local history and our shared heritage, especially if they are used as pedagogical tools with young people? The blog format itself has the potential to create unique collaborative projects, bringing individual and collective stories to the forefront.

An example of a successful collaborative site is Shorpy.com — the "100-year-old photo blog"— renowned for its archive made up of thousands of high-definition images spanning the 1850s to 1950s. The site's curious name is explained: Shorpy Higginbotham was a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago. Just browsing through the archive and reading the various comments from all over the world was a fascinating history course. I couldn't resist buying a reproduction of a photo of a Motor car, Canadian Government Colonization Co., Circa 1905. I particularly liked that the Shorpy archive can grow in an undetermined, open manner as members can share their own vintage photographs. It is an ongoing discussion and exchange on history, place and belonging.

Progress: April 2, 2010

Made a map with my own set of custom icons: the thirty three tongues that make up the Tongue Rug. Google Sladdakavring version II. The majority span Quebec with a few waypoints in Ontario, Alberta and Sweden. The map invites interaction, as it is only at a certain scale that you get a sense of the Tongue Rug.

View Tongues in a larger map

 

A new addition to the Google Maps application is the ability to drag a Street View icon to any street on the map to see a representation of the area in 360 degrees. There is currently a bug where the Street View Icon kills the zoom function.

Yet this new feature does not particularly help me with my project because my waypoints are more often than not in the middle of a field, a forested area or a remote trail. Also, I still prefer the patchwork, imperfect nature of my photos in the round and the room for human error: the possibility that I could be documenting the wrong body of water in my searches, the likelihood that I will get lost.

Process: Green Ribbons

Went to a photo exhibition by André Denis entitled L’échangeur Turcot – Entre ciel et terre at la Maison de la culture Marie-Uguay. In an accompanying text, Jean Décarie described how the intertwining structure of the Turcot was seen as a work of art when it was inaugurated in the 60s — in time for Expo 67. He recalled how this autoroute was once seen as a symbol of progress in the “automobile age”, but had since become a symbol of pollution by today’s environmental standards. Despite its crumbling structure, this exaustive photo series of the Turcot clearly reveals a majestic sort of beauty and grandeur; what Décarie terms the “cathedral effect”.

In the artist statement, Denis writes:

“C’est une immense sculpture en béton dont le seul but est de maintenir en hauteur, comme s’il devait enjamber un lac invisible, le point de joinction de ces grands axes routiers montréalais.”

Indeed this “invisible lake” was called Lac aux Loutres, situated at a point where the Rivière Saint-Pierre once widened into wetlands. It made me think of an interesting article by André Desroches that I had read recently in La Voix Pop (Projet de création d'une trame verte, 25 mars 2010). He interviewed Patrick Asch, the director of Héritage Laurentien. Founded in the mid-nineties, this organization works at protecting and promoting natural areas in the Saint-Laurent valley, the South-West of Montreal in particular.

The article focused on the “Trame verte” project, which would help create green corridors in the South-West. For example, a green corridor could potentially link parc Angrigon to parc des Rapides, a migrating bird sanctuary. Another corridor could link to the “falaise Saint-Jacques” or to Meadowbrook at the junction of Saint-Pierre, Lachine and Montreal-West. Not only would these green “ribbons” allow migratory birds and fauna to move freely, the public could use alternative modes of transport with cycling, walking and snowshoeing trails.

Asch promoted the numerous benefits of a green corridor: the improvement in air quality; the reduction of the effect of urban heat islands; the absorption of greenhouse gases; and the creation of recreational and tourist attractions for South-West communities.

 

View larger map of the Trame verte du Grand Sud-Ouest

 

In Facebook (Une trame verte pour le grand sud-ouest de Montréal), there is a link to an article about the Bronx River Greenway. An inspiring success story in that community: there are plans underway in the South Bronx to build a recreational trail connecting a series of parks on the East River waterfront.

Closer to home, there is the Greenbelt: a 20,000-hectare expanse of land in Ottawa-Gatineau with an extensive trail system passing through wetlands, farmlands and forests. Having worked in Ottawa off and on for the last five years, I can appreciate the benefits of this unique green corridor. One summer when living in Westboro, I cycled 40 km a day using the Greenbelt to commute to Kanata. On an almost daily basis, I would see Canada geese, deer and other small animals near the cycling paths and adjoining fields. Though that daily commute obviously increased my fitness level, it also provided me with emotional well being — the needed time and space to unwind after a long day. As an asthma sufferer, it was also a relief to breathe in clean air, as the trail system diverted me from the stress and fumes of heavy traffic.

From this first hand experience, I do not need to be sold on the importance of the “Trame verte” project for Montrealers. The ongoing plans to replace the Turcot Interchange could benefit from projects such as the one put forward by Héritage Laurentien. Instead of focusing solely on the replacement of the Turcot structure itself, which would simply promulgate the car culture of the 60s, a more holistic approach is needed to take in consideration the wider implications of this new autoroute for the people living in the area and determine the ecological footprint. With a little bit of vision, this could prove to be a success story for Montreal “down the road”.

Process: Motivated aimlessness

Since I was working in Ottawa, I was able to attend le Centre national des Arts for the unveiling of Le Théâtre français’ 2010-2011 season by artistic director Wajdi Mouawad. Winnipeg artist Diana Thorneycroft’s work was selected to accompany a new roster of programming centered around the idea of kitsch as a "normalization" process — Le kitsch nous mange. The next day I attended Rencontres du midi, a discussion between Mouawad and the Théâtre français’ previous artistic director Denis Marleau (2000-2007). Felt privileged to be able to listen in, as I only knew Marleau’s work by reputation, particularly Théâtre Ubu and Les aveugles (2002). As of yet, I still had not seen his work in representation.

It was a very generous exchange and at one point, keeping to the idea which underlines the 2009-2010 season (Nous sommes en manque), Wajdi asked Marleau « qu'est-ce qui lui manque? »

Loosely paraphrased:

Marleau a répondu qu’il y a un manque d’intercesseurs. Il y a un sentiment dans le monde occidental que nous sommes isolés, laissés à soi-même. Il y a un manque de rencontre, de dialogue sur la création. Nous sommes dans un monde axé sur la performance, hypermédiatisé et qui valorise la communication, mais qui révèle en même temps un manque de véritable dialogue.

Il lamente la primauté des gestes productifs (en ce qui concerne la rentabilité) aux dépens de la liberté du geste créatif. Il déplore le manque de la valorisation de la recherche en ce moment.

Marleau cherche à vivre une expérience à travers les répétitions, il n’est déjà plus là lors de la représentation. L’œuvre théâtrale ne lui appartient plus. Il valorise le travail de fabrication avec les acteurs.

I took notes during the discussion; his thoughts aligned with my interest in the creative process. That state of not necessarily knowing where you are going, that initial exploratory stage. In a capitalist society, this could indeed be seen as "unproductive time" as you cannot easily make a profit with aimlessness.

It came to me in a flash why I was not satisfied with the Tongue Rug mock-up that I had created in a previous post, as it was too illustrative, more like a theatrical object in a scenic decor. It will serve a specific purpose in the overall project, but if I want to track time, I need more abstract symbols like the Path Map. Lev Manovich’s words in The Anti-Sublime Ideal in Data Art (2002) came to mind.

“For me, the real challenge of data art is not about how to map some abstract and impersonal data into something meaningful and beautiful – economists, graphic designers, and scientists are already doing this quite well. The more interesting and at the end maybe more important challenge is how to represent the personal subjective experience of a person living in a data society. If daily interaction with volumes of data and numerous messages is part of our new “data-subjectivity,” how can we represent the experience in new ways?” (13)

I realized that two previous documentation attempts were more suited to animating the sladdakavring: Tongue Rug I (Google Map) and Tongue Rug I (Blog Posts Table). Though I could easily automate this tracking process, doing the animations by hand is more in tune with the project. I want a slower, more ritualized process as repetitive tasks offers time to reflect. Si je suis en train de documenter mon emploi du temps, il est nécessaire que le rituel lui-même prenne du temps pour aboutir à quelque chose.

Tongue Rug I (Google Map) While this map would track waypoints (tongues) in time, it would also represent the tension between two states (control/lost) — what Manovich termed « arbitrary versus motivated choices in mapping ». (10) My motivated choices include the selection of placenames and my efforts to reach their physical locations; the arbitrary quotient is the haphazard reunification of these names through the process of adoption (Lapalme/Legault/Angerbauer), their random sampling in the landscape and my mishaps in trying to reach their physical locations. And of course, this map is upside down.

Tongue Rug II (Blog Posts Table) While this table would track the posts (tongues) in time, it would also represent the tension between between two states (control/unknown). The rhythm and subject matter of my blog postings reveal my motivated choices, but I have no control over the arbitrary nature of commenting. Potential public interaction becomes the unknown factor.

Is this blogging exercise indicative of Manovich's "data society" or just my feeble attempts to reach some beautiful ideal, to make meaningful representations of my emploi du temps? Or is my aim with Tongue Rug closer to what Marleau talked about in regards to his creative process? An excuse to live an experience. The disquieting but necessary process of not knowing — to tentatively feel my way around through the process of exploration and let the project shape itself. Un processus de découverte au fil de l’eau, en parcourant fleuves, rivières, lacs et ruisseaux.

Process: Filling in the spaces

Blogger's Labels feature sorts the Tongue Rug dynamically: the tongues with the most postings feature at the top of the list. Based on this ordering, I created a table that documents the posts in time. I then created a second table where I omitted the tongues with only one posting — all undocumented waypoints. Though some of the tongues that have not been documented have many postings, it is because they surface through fictional accounts, they exist only in the imaginary. For instance, as I most likely will not travel to the Swedish bodies of water, these tongues become somewhat mythic.

	2001	2002	2003	2005	2009	2010	#
PA-1		(4)			(3)		(7)
A-10		(1)	(2)		(2)		(5)
A-3	(1)	(1)	(2)		(1)		(5)
LA-5		(1)			(4)		(5)
LE-4		(1)			(4)		(5)
A-11		(1)	(2)		(1)		(4)
A-13		(1)	(2)		(1)		(4)
A-2		(1)	(2)		(1)		(4)
A-9		(3)			(1)		(4)
LA-3		(1)			(3)		(4)
LA-4		(1)	(2)		(1)		(4)
LA-6		(3)			(1)		(4)
LE-1		(1)		(2)	(1)		(4)
LE-10		(1)		(2)	(1)		(4)
LE-3		(3)			(1)		(4)
LE-6		(1)		(2)	(1)		(4)
LE-8		(1)		(2)	(1)		(4)
LE-9		(3)			(1)		(4)
MO-1		(1)			(2)	(1)	(4)
S-1		(1)			(2)	(1)	(4)
S-2		(1)			(2)	(1)	(4)
S-3		(1)			(2)	(1)	(4)
LA-1		(1)	(1)				(2)

As I have not yet posted my map tracings (threads), there is a block of time with undocumented activity. The painstaking tracing of my passage. Yet this is precisely what I like about the blog structure — that you can post back in time. Filling in the spaces.

I'll need to update this table through time. Though there is certainly an automatic way of doing this by tracking the feeds, it is more à propos to adopt a more manual process of tracking data. Central to the craftmanship of creating an object — an patchwork rug in this case — is human error and fancy; the unpredictability of the choices one makes throughout the creative process that can alter the final form.

I am surprised at how regulated these tongues are once isolated from the table, though of course they are constrained by a grid of rows and columns. The diagram also indicates that I work in spurts. This Tongue Rug Table is quite the opposite of the traditional sladdakavring whose essence is slightly chaotic with its overlapping tongues.

Process: Barthes and the Tongue Box

Remember studying Barthes' Le Plaisir du texte (1973) in grad school. The professor asked the class which section of the book was their favourite. I answered that the table of contents at the end of the book was the section that pleased me the most, consisting of a mere list of words: Affirmation, Babel, Babil, Bords, Brio, Clivage, Communauté, Corps... Each of his fragmented texts seemed almost self-sustaining yet linked by overarching themes.

This index could serve in a sort as a hypertext with the reader making the relational links through her choices: the fragments that she selects, and the order in which she reads them. Like the web, one could enter and leave at any node in the book, and the reader is not obligated to start at the beginning but could very well choose to start at the end. Choose a word in the index, and "navigate" to the associated page.

Eve Tavor Bannet has described this open-ended and uncentered text succinctly:

“Each fragment thus becomes in effect a poem in prose: each fragment yields a plurality of significations and a number of possible relations between its diverse parts.” ("Barthes' Fictional Politics: Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes” Postscript 6, 1989, p. 23)

Tavor Bannet also emphasizes the active and performative aspect of reading. She points out how Barthes urges the reader to “imagine a discourse which could link [word fragments]” in Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (25); how he saw fragments and indexing as “a new cut out (a new mapping) of the real” (Le Grain 168) (24).

In terms of a writing project, I do see the Tongue Rug as an index, a table of contents that structures multiples tongues (texts) situated in time (blog) and in space — a map with geographic/genealogical markers. The web as my medium of choice rather than the printed page means that I can track the writing progress, animate the Tongue Rug. The sladdakavring as a work in progress.

Process: Pehr Kalm

Reading a book by Yvon Desloges (À table en Nouvelle-France, Les éditions du Septentrion, 2009) on the diet and culinary traditions of First Nations people and French and English colonists in the Laurentian valley from 1608-1791. It is a fascinating read: with ties to religion, social mores, economic circumstances and geography, food can tell us much about the métissage of cultures. I was at first surprised to come across the name of the Swedish-Finnish botanist and explorer, Pehr Kalm in several texts.

 

Born in Ångermanland, Sweden (1716 –1779), Pehr Kalm was a student of Carl Linnaeus (1707 – 1778), the Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist who invented a new system for naming species — binomial nomenclature. 

“He could not believe his good fortune in becoming one of Linnaeus’s disciples. He had lost his father [the pastor Gabriel Kalm] before he was born, but God has given him Linnaeus and Bielke instead.” Pehr Kalm to Carl Linnaeus, 24 January 1744, The Linnaean correspondence, linnaeus.c18.net, letter L0528 (consulted 13 February 2010).

Sten Carl Bielke (1709-1753) was a Swedish Baron and one of the founders of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He financially supported Kalm’s voyage to America. While it was Bielke who first had the idea of collecting specimens from other northern climates like Iceland and Siberia, it was Linnaeus who suggested an expedition to North America, as the continent was little known at the time. Nancy Pick writes of their hope to start a silk industry in Scandinavia, describing how Linnaeus urged Kalm to expedite plant and seed specimens from the New World so they could be classified into his Species Plantarum, a plant encyclopedia. Of particular interest was the red mulberry, Morus rubra, a plant that was speculated to be able to survive harsh winters. (“Linnaeus Canadensis”, The Walrus Magazine, 2007). There is presently a move to preserve what remains of Kalm’s experimental botanical garden in Sipsalo, near Turku (Åbo), Finland.

Kalm is also remembered today for his journal, En Resa til Norra America. His daily writings reveal a richly detailed account of fauna and flora, colonial life, religion, politics, and architecture. Voyage de Pehr Kalm au Canada en 1749 is also of interest for the sociological accounts of settlers during the final years of the French Regime. I wasn’t able to find the French translation online, as it is out of print. Decided to take a walk to the Maison Saint-Gabriel in Pointe-Saint Charles to visit their boutique. The woman in charge informed me that they were sold out. She had received two calls that very week about the same book. She was kind enough to let me leave my contact info in case they found second hand copies. I had found a PDF version online, but it’s not the same. I wanted the object. In fact, she told me it was the perfect “livre de chevet”, as one could read his daily logs more than two hundred and fifty years after his passage.

I did find two amazing on-line resources. The Linnaean Correspondence by The centre international d’étude du XVIIIe siècle is a database with all the surviving letters written to and by Linnaeus. An avid letter writer, there were 40 letters from Kalm to Linnaeus alone. Thankfully, some of them have summaries for those who do not read Swedish. The Linnean Society of London’s Linnean Collections also has an extensive database with a zoomable image of the actual letter written to Linnaeus by Kalm in 1749 from Quebec.

I transcribed the letter and tried to translate it from the Swedish using GoogleTranslate and my Engelsk-Svensk dictionary. I could only surmise it was about plants, with a curious line about wanting to “order and plant my trees, herbs and children [!]”. An amusing exercise until I find the French translation.

P.S. I have been 12 Swedish miles N. of Quebec (…) Thuya, together with several spruce, pine and Larix vulgar. I find it nor needful, at becoming a year more in America, for PEHR KALM could well be more an observer, but on several relatively new tree for answers, and useful herbs, know PEHR KALM; new and curious PEHR KALM could well be.

In the preface to the English translation by John Reinhold Forster (Travels into North America, 1773), Forster describes Kalm's writing style:

“He gives you his observations as they occurred day after day, which makes him a faithful relater, notwithstanding it takes away all elegance of style, and often occasions him to make very sudden transitions from subjects very foreign to one another.”

It will be interesting to think of the blog structure and how it affects how one writes when reading Kalm's journal. In fact, if I think of the Tongue Rug as a writing project, the blog structures itself does accentuate "very sudden transitions from subjects very foreign to one another" by way of hyperlinks and cloud tags. Each tongue has a narrative (lake, placename) in a larger narrative (tongue rug).

Progress: January 24, 2010

I think I prefer the Tongue Rug sketch to this mock up. The sladdakavring looks lifeless. Perhaps it needs to be animated slightly? Or are the labels too stiff? I'll have to keep playing at it. J'aime la façon dont les langues se chevauchent, le tracé de mon parcours qui ressemble à des bouts de fils éparpillés.