The project I decided to reverse engineer is the Robots reading Vogue project. This project came to be when Yale’s Librarian Peter Leonard was looking for digitized, substantial sets of text and images that might spark digital humanities projects. Along with the help of Peter Leonard, Lindsay King an arts librarian interested in fashion suggested looking at the Vogue Archive. This led to the exploration of raw files already digitized and marked up as both text and images and how digital humanities tools could be used to make sense of data using topic modeling, n-grams, and color analyses. I found this project to be interesting because it examines and analyzes different aspects of Vogue magazine such as the cover magazine, ads, and the colors used.
Sources
The sources used in this project are the Vogue magazines found through the vogue archive launched by Proquest and Conde Nast in 2011. While this was the main source used in the project Leonard and King also incorporated the use of memos, books, and articles. All of these sources are the basis of the analyses made by Leonard and King.
Processing
The project implemented over 2700 covers and 400000 images which helped Leonard and King identify trends in Fashion such as the magazine covers, circulation, advertising, as well as topic content of the magazine. They also used Histograms, topic modelling, colormetric analysis, and n-gram searches to help break down those trends. I found the Advertisement statistics to be the most interesting because the number of ads each year have divided by the total number of issues that year. The slice Histograms was another trend that I found interesting to be explored. Vogue is known for having iconic pictures in their magazine which includes vibrant, colorful images that make this magazine so widely known. Each trend that was explored gave more insight into the details that make the magazine so popular.
Presentation
The presentation of this project included several tables, charts, graphs, histograms, and images, which makes it easier for the reader to engage with the data and understand the trends. The overall layout of the project makes it simple for users to explore the data trends that were found and is displayed in a very visual appealing manner. The about page makes it clear what this project will explore and the clearly states the purposes. I specifically like how home page displays the different data trends found. Overall the presentation of this project is visually appealing making it easier for readers to go through the graphs and histograms.
I think it’s really interesting that this project came to be because an individual was looking for material that “might spark digital humanities projects”; it makes me wonder how DH projects are conceptualized and created. Does someone decide upon a topic, and then set out to find content, or does an existing collection of material inspire a project? And what are the implications of these two different approaches for the value of a DH project–the value of a project that comes together because the data happened top be available, versus one that becomes research and preservation project, like the Merchant’s Chicana Diasporic. I don’t think I ca make such a judgement myself, but it’s interesting to see how the availability of material drives Digital Humanities work.
This was a very interesting project and I like how it took something that was very qualitative and made it a quantitative variable. You’re post was very concise and it gave me a clear idea on what the source, process, and presentation was in this project. You’re was also helpful in understanding what the post would be about.