The digital humanities project I chose to reverse engineer for this blog is The Shape of History: Re-imagining Elizabeth Palmer Peabody’s Historical Visualization Work which was developed by Lauren Klein, Caroline Foster, Erica Palmer, Adam Hayward, and Shivani Negi as a part of Georgia Tech Digital Humanities Lab. The purpose of this project is to visualize and organize data the way Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, a nineteenth century writer, did. Peabody’s method of data visualisation concentrated on deconstructing text information, such as historical events, into shapes and colors, so each individual could interpret the image for himself/herself. The project is able to accomplish this through the use of grid charts. The purpose of the grid charts is to convert the timeline of history into grid shapes. Peabody wanted to restructure the way one would view and understand history through appealing to the mind’s eye of imagery. Each square in the grid charts symbolize different events and locations where they have occurred.
Navigating through this project emphasizes on scrolling, clicking on arrows, or just clicking on the top left corner of the project to use the main map to navigate to main squares.
Navigation through this interactive project is straightforward and is aided by a simple tutorial of “how it works” if you choose a particular square.
Portions of this interactive project also allow you to create your own grid chart. This gives the viewer of this project the ability to visualize data in a similar way that Elizabeth Peabody envisioned.
The “About the Site” and “Credits” segments act as the bibliography portions of the project. The works they cite include primary sources such as the American Antiquarian Society and the Library Company of Philadelphia for research in Peabody’s work. Other secondary sources came from open source libraries such as D3.js, jQuery, and two.js. The project is also constructed with the use of HTML5, CSS, and Javascript.
I also found this project particularly interesting. I wasn’t aware of it until seeing your post as well so a thank you for bringing my attention to it. I’m curious to know a bit of why this project resonated with you personally and if you have a particular history that you yourself would like to present in a grid style or rearrange for a viewing with fresh eyes so to speak. The use of screenshots was well done and complemented the writing. I definitely am a fan of this style of re-viewing history.
Interesting! What do you mean when you say “deconstructing text information, such as historical events, into shapes and colors”? Is it as simple as associating say the word apple with a red circle or is it more abstract?
I loved your explanation on how the purpose of this chart was to change one’s conceptual view of history. This was a nice and comprehensive breakdown of the grid chart and a good explanation of how to navigate and visualize it. From this, I am motivated to create my own. Keep up the good work!
I really liked that you used a lot of pictures in your blog post as it really made the explanation much easier to follow and understand. I am curious to know what sort of historical visualization have you created using the grid chart. Did you feel like while the grid chart make visualization more appealing and understandable, some historical facts/ details would have to be omitted.
I decided to also analyze this website. Your analysis was concise and explained very well. I especially like your utilization of multiple screenshots from the website to better display your thoughts and words. The whole idea of making a grid to display a timeline is a very interesting concept. Great analysis on the subject!
I thought the way you analyzed this project was very concise. You broke down each aspect of the site and made it very clear as to what this project is trying to achieve. I also liked how you placed and incorporated the photos in your analysis.