WIP: How Does Writing with Open Access Work?

Five (technical) steps to connect words and images

In January I outlined the motivation to address questions that arose from the release of Curaturae, the project that connects your writing to Smithsonian’s collection of over 3 million digitized artifacts. It has taken some time and will take more time to complete this exploration. However, I want to take this opportunity to share the progress made so far. Instead of simply answering the list of gathered questions, like typical FAQ pages you see on the internet, it feels right to explain the project through the case study format.

The case study is split up into 5 steps that make up how your writing turns into keywords and then those keywords transform into images. Above is an animated gif of the first step, “Translate text”. Below, you can read about each step in my working document. Every step has an explanation, associated questions, their corresponding responses, and an animated gif. I am still working on the animations. I am attracted to this format because it is more like a story and this story creates opportunities to interject with questions.

As you can see the process is messy and slow. Like my motivation to explain Curaturae, I hope this email gives some insight into my own creative process. As always, if you take a look and have feedback or more questions come to mind, please reach out!

—Jono