“The Cape” evoked in me wistful feelings of a lost past. The use of black and white underscores (as the writer notes) the datedness of the construction. The photo of the solitary figure on the beach contributes to this tone of wistfulness. The figure on the beach suggests also the cold, colorless world of cape living.

Irretrievable loss is symbolized by the insert in motion of the eroding shoreline. The effect of these embedded motion shots is that the reader is always on the lookout for what else might be in the frame. The drawn maps  have motion also and have the effect of adding some life to a dry presentation. I am confused about the letters that appear: Qs. The staircase down to “the black and white beach”  is haunting and leads to nowhere or everywhere else depending on interpretation.

Carpenter’s relationship with her uncle is given light treatment. She wanted him to teach her to whistle, but that never happened. She inserts a lesson from some obscure source. The recorded lesson is quite thorough and is embedded under text about her uncle.

Contour maps and satellite maps and details related to maps appear frequently in this work. Outside sources were helpful in understanding some of this. In the end, the writer suggests that the reader need not take all of this so seriously because most of the imagery is inauthentic; that is “Cape Cod is a real place, but the events and characters of THE CAPE are fictional. The photographs have been retouched. The diagrams are not to scale.“

In “And by Islands” recreates the sense of the placement of islands on a vast expanses of water. The background reminded me of the graph paper used in geometry class. The writer used repetition of “Islands are…,” “They are paragraphs,” “Isolated writing,” and “The castaway….” I learned from internet source that these lines all refer to other, well-known works (intertextuality).

The block of text which refreshes every few seconds simulates ocean waves washing ashore with a little something different caught within each time.

The visual field has markings that look like little islands. There is a piece of an unsophisticated map and a prominently placed compass along with nautical notations.

I found “In Absentia” a whimsical and fun piece. It is somehow an exercise in surveillance suggesting that even when you are not in a given place, observation is still possible. The satellite map allow readers to zoom in and out of neighborhoods and  to open ads (some in English, some in French) for housing for rent. Maps of course are central to this piece.