User:Simon/Retention and transformation of annotations

15.06.19 interfaces for annotation

The formal qualities of annotations are defined by the tools used to make them, and also the cultural uses of these. Given a pen, most people will write, although it is also possible to draw or use it in other ways. With a keyboard it seems most appropriate to type. With a mouse, one can click on things, and select them.

What happens when these are retained, transformed and isolated from the source?

digital annotations

Retained digital annotations are rare in the wild, but I found one PDF of Jorge Luis Borges "The Garden of Forking Paths" that had underlinings and highlighted text. The interesting thing is that these change appearance slightly depending on the e-reader software used to display the text.

The first two spreads of the Borges PDF:

Digital annotations transcribed from a PDF of Jorge Luis Borges' "The Garden of Forking Paths"

analog annotations

Another text that came pre-annotated was Ursula K Le Guin's "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction". For this, I placed scans in a vector graphics program and digitised pen marks. I also included the text that was annotated with circles, underlines and lines in the margins. The first two spreads of the Le Guin PDF:

Hand-drawn annotations digitally transcribed from a PDF of Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction"