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Concept:
Monuments decay. Memories fade. And writers are forgotten. Even the greatest practitioners of the craft are reduced over time to fragments of themselves -- half-remembered, invoked by careless readers whose possession of the work is limited to a few well-worn phrases. An honest writer can hope for no better than to instill in an individual reader a phrase that lingers, or an idea that outlasts its original context.

For my final work, I propose a simple marble podium-style monument into which a computer can be permanently mounted. The computer will hold a database containing the texts of all my writings, which will scroll past visitors on a touch-screen monitor embedded in the podium. If a visitor sees a phrase that in some way appeals to her, she will be encouraged to touch it on the screen. By doing so, she will prolong its "life" in the computer. Phrases that are not touched will appear progressively more faded and will in time disappear from both the screen and the database, even as the marble podium itself weathers and deteriorates. Phrases that attract interest will, on the other hand, continue to reappear -- until, eventually, my monument is no longer visited, the screen is no longer touched, and all my work recedes into that place where I will have already gone.