the unrecorded 2016

digital poetry HTML webpage

LEFT: screenshot of home page (click on image to open the work)

This digital poetry work is part of a prototype for an interactive website designed as a creative response to Dietrich’s heavily contested biography and scientific legacy. It is a non-linear non-fiction digital narrative that also acts as an online archive and virtual museum. There is no one ‘Dietrich collection’ as such in a real museum. Her specimens are distributed widely in museums across the world. In this work nineteenth century naturalist collecting practices are called into question as I lament the loss of indigenous botanical knowledge, regarded then as unimportant, and sadly still largely ignored today. Dietrich’s problematic legacy in literature and science is re-examined, dismantled and rebound into a new digital form.