{"id":1629,"date":"2016-11-05T17:34:16","date_gmt":"2016-11-06T00:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/?p=1629"},"modified":"2016-11-05T17:34:16","modified_gmt":"2016-11-06T00:34:16","slug":"digital-harlem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/2016\/11\/05\/digital-harlem\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Harlem"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Digital Harlem<\/i> project is used to display the \u201ceveryday life in New York City\u2019s Harlem neighborhood in the years 1915-1930\u201d (Digital Harlem<\/i> \u201cWelcome\u201d.\u00a0 <\/span>The creators chose to source information primarily from legal records – District Attorney files, Probation Department files, investigation reports – newspapers, and W.P.A. Writers Program Collection.\u00a0 <\/span>They present the data as a map.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"screen-shot-2016-11-05-at-5-31-59-pm\"Although maps are often viewed as universally understood, factual, and objective, this is not the case.\u00a0 <\/span>As discussed in the Drucker reading, humanities visualization is not without interpretation and bias – even in a map.\u00a0 <\/span>The subjective perspective of Digital Harlem<\/i> stems from its limited and very specific sources.\u00a0 <\/span>This map focuses on crimes (police and investigation sources) and events deemed newsworthy (newspaper sources), clearly reflecting the perspectives of the police and reporters of the time.\u00a0 <\/span>Though the subtitle of this project is \u201cEveryday Life 1915-1930\u201d, it really can not be an objective depiction of everyday life if the focus of its data centers on sensational events.\u00a0 <\/span>How can an holistic depiction of \u201ceveryday life\u201d consist only of criminals that broke the law and events that were reported in the paper?\u00a0 <\/span>David Turnball asserts that \u201cmaps are selective<\/i>: they do not, and cannot,\u00a0display all there is to know about any given piece of the environment\u201d (Maps are Territories exhibit 1, page 3).\"screen-shot-2016-11-05-at-5-31-27-pm\"\u00a0 <\/span>Digital Harlem<\/i> exemplifies exactly what Turnball says.\u00a0 <\/span>It is not inaccurate per se, it merely leaves out important information that should have been considered.\u00a0 <\/span>This map reveals the noteworthy events that shaped life in Harlem, but obscures the ordinary happenings that also played a large role.\u00a0 <\/span>While life events like \u201cWedding\u201d, \u201cBowling\u201d, and \u201cParty\u201d are included, it leaves out the common school, work, and home life that makes up the majority of \u201ceveryday life\u201d.\u00a0 <\/span>Digital Harlem makes the assumption that the most<\/i> influential happenings in everyday Harlem are those 72 that it lists and maps.\u00a0 <\/span>This is, of course, a subjective decision.<\/span><\/p>\n

An alternate map could be one that did include more daily events, such as school, work, birthdays, cooking, laundry, etc – events that are more frequent in everyday life.\u00a0 <\/span>However, these can not necessarily be pinpointed on a map, so perhaps a written section on the side could describe characteristics of daily happenings and include pictures.\u00a0 <\/span>This would give a more well-rounded, comprehensive illustration of what daily life for \u201cAfrican New Yorkers\u201d looked like.\u00a0 <\/span>I also imagine that the map could include a photo or newspaper clipping of the events, when a viewer clicks on a map datapoint.\u00a0 <\/span>By providing this, the viewer may be able to further visualize, empathize, and understand the history of life in Harlem.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Digital Harlem project is used to display the \u201ceveryday life in New York City\u2019s Harlem neighborhood in the years 1915-1930\u201d (Digital Harlem \u201cWelcome\u201d.\u00a0 The creators chose to source information … Continue reading “Digital Harlem”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}