Cannibalized Texts
When Raymond Chandler began writing his first detective novel, The Big Sleep, he relied heavily on the structure and characters of several of his previously published short stories. Chandler wrote between the lines of his existing texts — deleting, combining and expanding plot lines and characters as he saw fit. Once these texts had been reused and rewritten, Chandler excluded them from subsequent publication because they were, as he said, “cannibalized”.
This project maps his creative process by documenting the additions and deletions he made to his original texts. This project is one of my unfinished favorites. In its current state, it is a literal mapping of process. I think it could be greatly improved if it were reconfigured and adapted to an interactive or data driven environment.