Ismael, Mellville’s narrator, carries with him a single continuous surface on all of his journeys, his skin. Unlike other surfaces—paper, objects, clothing—the surface of his skin will travel with him where ever he goes. Cleverly, he uses this as the surface on which to document his journeys. It is a repository of all the information and experiences that he wishes to catalog and it is always accessible. The skeleton of a massive whale has been translated into a set of “admeasurements” on his right arm, leaving aside the “odd inches”. This translation of the whale into a set of organized marks on his arm is a translation and a distillation of massive amounts of information. Shape, fractions, color, texture and odor have all been omitted from this documentation. He has reduced the representation of the whale into what he deems to be the most important—its size—and forever embossed it upon his body. This is an act of recording and it is also an act of analysis through reduction and translation. Similarly, this semester we will focus on documenting and analyzing a set of inquiries—capturing and distilling information onto our version of Ismael’s skin—a catalog.