Virtual Places

From Marteau

“Virtual Places” and “Real Travellers” – are two projects to be seen in context.

Real Travellers is in this context a collection of travelogues written in the century between 1650 and 1750. “Virtual Places” a collection of sites on different places of this world. We should connect them both.

Imagine we would offer the travelogues of several travellers getting to one and the same place. Traveller A visits London in 1695, traveller B does the same and yet no longer the same more than a decade later in 1709. One could offer their texts with commentary as individual texts but one could also begin to link these texts. How do their views relate to each other? How did they experience one and the same place? One should offer links between both accounts and one would at the same time see the place from two perspectives – a time lapse and perhaps the cultural background would colour the experiences. The e-text edition is one thing. The commentary we should add another. The urban space both accounts would cover would be the third: Imagine a site under the title Virtual London would offer you the maps and images for both accounts. Imagine you could follow your travellers through the town reading their 17th- and 18th-century tourist guides.

This is the aim of the project. Contact the editors at mailto:verlagshaus@pierre-marteau if you want to join us and if you have texts you could share and you had always dreamed of bringing into a wider context. We should create this context.