{"id":219,"date":"2017-01-18T11:49:36","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T11:49:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/?p=219"},"modified":"2017-01-18T11:49:36","modified_gmt":"2017-01-18T11:49:36","slug":"blog-post-1-reflecting-on-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/2017\/01\/18\/blog-post-1-reflecting-on-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog Post 1: Reflecting on Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

As demonstrated in the material\/materiality article by JeeHee Hong, the concept of materiality has been hotly debated for centuries. But amidst\u00a0the continued dispute between physicality and\u00a0spirituality, materiality can most modernly be defined as “that which constitutes the ‘matter’ of something”. Something has materiality when there is value in its material form– whether it is of physical value or of symbolic value. So then, as museums have begun implementing technological adaptations of such pieces as substitutions for the material\u00a0form in this day and age, we must ask: is materiality compromised by the digitalization of museum content?<\/p>\n

To examine this question, I think back to when my peers and I were delicately scavenging through George P. Johnson’s Negro Film Collection at the Young Research Library. Having known how active Johnson was in the African American film industry from the online archive, we were all filled with a sense of awe and curiosity about what we would discover in his memorabilia. The file we opened contained several newspaper clippings relaying information about the movement to desegregate public schools in Los Angeles. As our eyes scoured the page to digest as much information as we possibly could, we kept wondering: what must Johnson have thought and felt at that time?<\/p>\n

In this way, my experience of looking through these tangible objects and analyzing its content was meaningful in that it felt utterly and unabashedly real. In other words, being able to physically see the uniquely discolored paper\u00a0and tattered edges of each piece brought its unphysical substance to life. Consequently, in experiencing the reality of the piece itself, I came to realize the reality of the content as a true part of history and therefore the reality of Johnson’s passions and motivations as he collected these pieces. I immersed myself into George P. Johnson’s perspective, if only for a while, and what was once a distant and foreign thing\u00a0of the past became authentic in that moment. However, the Smithsonian’s X3D Exhibit did not incite\u00a0the same kind of empathy. I\u00a0consumed more information at a faster rate online\u00a0than in the library, but I was also left more distracted by the technology and disinterested in the piece itself. Thus, while\u00a0digitalization does provide a means of relaying more thorough and detailed\u00a0explanations of pieces for educational purposes, it can never be substituted for the empathetic\u00a0feeling that physical materiality provokes. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As demonstrated in the material\/materiality article by JeeHee Hong, the concept of materiality has been hotly debated for centuries. But<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}