Author: sarahkady

For this weeks assignment, I selected the short story He had his Reasons by Colin Barrett from Granta Magazine, edition 136 – Legacies of Love, published October 31, 2016.

The story revolves around the murder suicide of a family and particularly zooms in on the life of the father, Alan who murdered his three sons and wife. The authors main theme concerns the question as to why people question the motives of a murder-suicide and associate it generally with mental illness as opposed to just being evil.

To create a model of the social network, I created an edge list to include every character named, addressed and described by the author. I ended up having around 10 characters which I created appropriate links for. I gave these characters a weight regarding whether they were murdered (1), if they were linked to the murderer but were not murdered (2) and if they published anything about the story (3).

For example, Alan murders Clodagh (his wife) so I gave this a weight of 1. I also included Alan murdering Alan as he committed suicide with a weight of 1.

The network graph highlights the importance of Alan and how this whole case revolves around him. It is interesting to also see how news coverage of stories mainly revolve around the murderer rather than recognizing the victims of the situation. This is evident by the links reaching Alan rather than his children and wife.

The limitations of the graph is that it does not directly show the association between the links and also does not have much of a narrative.

 

I used Professor Posner’s tutorial in order to create a Social Network and this is my table.

 

Select a DH mapping project from the following list and think about the way it uses maps. Think also about Turnbull’s contention that all maps are perspectival and subjective. What kinds of assumptions, and whose point of view, does the map you’ve selected reflect? What does the map reveal and what does it obscure? Imagine and describe an alternate map.

I chose to explore Digital Harlem for this week’s blog post. The Digital Harlem website showcases information from newspapers, legal records, and other published sources in order to present a dataset concerning everyday life in Harlem during 1915 to 1930.Unique to this project is the idea that it on the lives of ordinary African New Yorkers which is a rarity as generally only african american artists or the middle class have been publicly documented.

When first arriving to the page, an interactive map of Harlem and a search tool are displayed. The map makes the assumption that the location and expansion of the african community is an integral part of this story. As Turnball said “A map is always selective. In other words, the mapmaker determines what is, and equally importantly, what is not included in the representation”. However I have issues with this map as I feel like it defies Turnball’s notion and in doing so, leads astray from the goal of the project.

The map clearly focuses on the boundaries of where African Americans lived in New York City, however, I don’t think this is very effective in trying to showcase the lives of the ordinary person of this time. The map displays the boundaries of where these communities resided, the types of material the houses were built with and other misc. floor plan information. I think this map is a great piece of supplemental evidence to the story, however, I don’t think it should be the focus.

I think a map showcasing where the arrests occur and what specific arrests were made would be helpful to this narrative. One could label different colors if the arrest was due to peaceful circumstances or was a first-time occurrence. Also I think the map would be more useful if it highlighted the annual incomes of each household as it would show the range of demographics within these boundaries.

Heres my blog post!

http://momacollections.com/sarah/index-4.html

I choose to create a data visualization pertaining to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) dataset which I was assigned to in my group. The MOMA dataset contains numerous files regarding artists and their artworks. I specifically chose to review the artist dataset and these files contain information that include where the artist was born, their nationality, what artworks are in the museum, their birth and death.

For my data visualization I chose to represent the artist nationalities. I created this bubble chart in order to clearly show the various nationalities and their representative sizes in the MOMA collection. I used the tableau application and selected all of the nationalities of the artists to create this chart. I thought this would be useful as the research question I proposed to my group was “Over the past 50 years, in what was has the museum expanded and incorporated non-western artworks into is collection in order to broaden the scope on a global perspective?”. Supporting the assumed nature of my question, it is clear that American artists overpower all other nationalities. Furthermore, the bubbles that are larger than others encompass countries of the Western world such as Germany, France and Great Britain.

As one scrolls directly on to each individual bubble, a pop up appears showing the name of the nationality as well as the number of records. It is interesting to note that the second largest bubble with 2446 records has no name for nationality. This aids me in my research as it shows that there are many artists in the dataset who do not have a nationality recorded. This suggests that I need to take out these artists out of my dataset or manually enter their nationalities in order to get a more representative graph.

Through this graph, one can clearly see nationalities that have been barely represented through the museums collection. This is evidenced by the majority as exemplified by countries such as Malaysia, Costa Rica, and Cameroon only having 1-2 artworks displayed in the museum. It is also interesting to see the integration of non western artworks as countries such as Japan, Brazil and Argentina that have a larger concentration of artworks compared to other non western nationalities.

Another issue that shows within this graph is the idea that only the larger represented nationalities have their names on display while the less represented do not. However, overall this bubble chart is helpful in determining data that needs to be cleaned as well as helping the narrative of my research question.

From the L.A. Controller’s Office, I chose to explore the dataset regarding funds relating to Health, Environment and Sanitation. I choose this set because I thought it would be interesting to find out how much our city really spends on the environment.

The data types of this set include the categories of Fund name, cash, department name, fund purpose, sources of funds, eligible uses, and many other categories regarding the specific logistics regarding cost and efficiency. The records are all based on general categories that have been funded for the purpose of making the city more environmentally friendly or sustainable.

From reading Wallack’s and Srinivasan’s article titled “Local-GLobal: Reconciling Mismatched Ontologies in Development Information Systems”, we see that there is often a major discrepancy between communities and ontologies. By applying the knowledge I gained from that article, I can see that even this dataset  represents this lack in connection. The data has a category for fund purpose, however, we never see how these purposes went into effect. For example, under the department name of transportation, there is a category named Mobile Source Air Pollution Reduction with a spending report of  $4,923,189.09. This category states that there is a fund purpose “For Air Pollution Reduction Projects”. There are many issues with this data regarding how its being perceived. First being that the purpose is incredibly broad. I have no idea what specific projects are being aided, how many projects exist and if these projects are even effective. Wallace and Srinivasan mentioned that Ontologies represent reality, however it is the representation of these ontologies that actually shape reality. In this case the reality is almost nonexistent as I have yet to learn much from this dataset other than a few simple menial facts.

I think the officials who create budgets for LA County would find this the most useful as they could use this information as a reference in creating more budget proposals. I also think that environmental activists who believe that the city is not doing a good job at reducing air pollution would find this information useful as it shows the contrasts of budget vs. efficiency.

This data set shows that the city spends an incredible amount of money regarding waste funds compared to recycling and renewable energy funds. Also, the effects of these funds are left out and no data regarding the total conservation reductions are shown.

From someone else’s point of view, I would see that this data set shows how much the City of Los Angeles has improved its funding on environmental and sanitation services. I would say that the city of LA has taken great steps into funding recycling activities and preservations services.

I chose to explore the finding aid concerning Bonnie Cashin and her collection of fashion, theater, and film costume design during the time period of 1913-2000. The collection is held at the UCLA Library Special Collections and consists of over 400 articles. The compilation consists of Cashin’s fashion illustrations, press materials, paperwork and photographs of her successful design career. Personal items of Cashin are also included such as letters and photographs.

Right off the bat, we are able to learn about the historical biography of Ms. Cashin due to the arrangement of the finding aid. The biography includes an extensive list of the different productions and designers that she worked for. Furthermore, it also includes the series of awards and achievements she received up until her death in 2000.

When looking at the collection at a broad view, we can simply see the arise of Cashin’s career over the years. The container first involves contents of the designers high school illustrations which shows that she has always had an early interest in fashion. Later we see there is an arise in the amount of content during the years after 1943, so one could hypothesize that this was the around the time when Cashin’s career flourished. We are also able to see the transition of her type of media through this archive. It seems that she worked on more films and costume wear during the 40s due to the more theatrical components in the collection. While during the 1950s and forward we see the content more situated amongst ready to wear and evening collections.

An interesting component of this collection is that it highlights the work that Cashin put in to her designs. One can see the hundreds of illustrations that were thought of before putting the clothing into production. We are also able to see the basis of her art by comparing the illustration to the actual clothing as many of them are photographed in editorials or advertisements. This finding aid links to

By looking at the essay component of the archive, we also see the heavy influence of Ms. Cashin on the American woman as she has written numerous articles on her opinions on how to dress. There is a separate section for Ms. Cashins fur designs which suggests that her customer is of a certain class.

It is notable to see that Cashin recorded a trip to India where she researched different textile and manufacturing industries. This is important as it shows the amount of detail and experience the designer thought about when making her work.

Missing from this narrative is specific details about the sales of her clothing. We can see that she is successful due to the amount of work she reached over her career but we do not know who is her customer. We could contact the Bonne Cashin estate and ask for documents regarding sales and customer identifications. By receiving this information, we could look at the trends in sales in order to further support the hypothesis of when her career arose as well as seeing the class and income of her customers.

I chose to deconstruct the project concerning “Early African American Film“. This project focuses on the history of silent race films from the period of 1909 to 1930 that were primarily intended for African American audiences.

The website starts with a slideshow and a link that says “click to explore” which sets the tone early on as there are snapshots of major components of the website. The user is then able to explore the website through the table of contents and quickly gain an overview of the website’s intent and purpose by selecting on “What is Race Film?”. This option is interesting as it allows the reader to choose whether to explore the history first or just learn the definition of race film. The options are heavily aided by a variety of rich sources that are hyperlinked into their descriptions. This is helpful as it makes their presentation more interactive as one can quickly watch “Birth Of A Nation” or further read up on a concept that they are interested in, as exemplified by them hyperlinking phrases or vocabulary. We soon learn that the purpose of the project is to not only enrich people with knowledge of early African American films but to also create a database that consists of a variety of primary and secondary sources.

The database they created contains specific information regarding the people and production companies for these early race films such as titles, dates, genres, etc. They relayed this information through a display called Airtable that is easy to navigate and allows one to make specific detailed search options. Furthermore, they even included a data dictionary that further breaks down the specifics by people, films, and sources and allows one to feasibly cite the data. This is important as it further develops the user-friendliness of the website while also allowing for accurate credibility.

The website also provides an abundant amount of background on how they sorted and researched the data regarding films, people, and production companies. These data entries consists of bar graphs, network diagrams, and interactive maps. Specifically, the “explore the people” option allows the reader to be informed on how to create their own network diagram which is helpful as it explains the displays that are less well-known. The “explore the production companies” option also includes a geographical map that shows the location of the companies displaying the idea that most of these films are centered around the eastern and southern regions.

Lastly, the website does a thorough job of listing all the sources they used by not only citing the source but by also providing a description. The user-friendliness of the website is further exemplified by the tutorial link that shows how to make maps and interact with the data.