Introduction
Choose how to read this catalog
Piece by piece, section by section, settle into a stream and ride the current, or jump around.
No right or wrong. See where intuition takes you, dear reader.
“In this ideal text, the networks are many and interact, without any of them being able to surpass the rest; this text is a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can reach, they are indeterminable…the system of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language.” — Roland Barthes, SZ, 1970
The act of reading can become an act of writing. As the reader draws meaning from passages, they can infer possibilities potentially unknown to the authors. When French theorist Roland Barthes differentiated between a readerly text and a writerly text, he was explaining how narratives can lend themselves to interpretation.
In that open space for exploration, we may find our words offering ideas beyond the scope of our own imagination. In writing this catalog, our desire is that each reader will help bring forth new discoveries and understandings to the topics under consideration.