Art and Design Commons^™

Narrative Convergence, Cross-Sited Productions And The Archival Dilemma, Marc Ruppel

David Phung

This article addresses the speculative role of digital preservation from the standpoint of convergent literatures. `Cross-sited narratives', multimodal stories told across media channels, are introduced here as a specific mode of narrative instrumentality. It is argued that contemporary models of the archive structured on organizational models such as genetic criticism and on preservational models such as emulation and migration are not equipped to handle cross-sited works, as they are premised on mono-media sensibilities. Primarily exploring Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves (2000) and Neil Young's Greendale (2003), two works that resist digitization both materially and thematically, the claim is made that …