Author: Torischmitt

For the past 8 months, I have been working on the Paris: Past and Present project.  Run by Professor Meredith Cohen of the Art History department the project seeks to mediate the art historical with the digital, creating 3D architectural models of 13th century Parisian structures.  As you may have seen from Raphael and Haley‘s posts, they are also involved with the project.  If this is a project you find interesting, please read Raphael and Haley’s posts and don’t hesitate to ask all of us for more info!

Reading Lisa Snyder’s Virtual Reality for Humanities Scholarship really got me thinking about notions of pedagogy behind 3D modeling and the creation of virtual realities. Over the past quarter, my main duties on the Paris: Past and Present project have been to create tutorials which explain both historical context and technical steps.  This task has made me appreciate how massive the scope of virtual reality projects are.  As Snyder explains, there is a necessity to define the scope: will the project be process or product based? As the name suggests, process-based projects are created with the intent of investigating a new type of process or creation.  They are made without the intention of longevity.  Product based projects are meant to create a resource which will continue to exist as a stand-alone resource.

Using 3D modeling in the classroom brings up questions of product and process: to what extent should both be explained?  Should students be trained to use/alter the resource to their own needs (product) or trained to create their own replica (process)?  This is perhaps more a question of what type of class is being taught, but it is, none the less, something I think about when creating tutorials.

Over the past month, I have been compiling a comprehensive guide to making 13th century Parisian arches in Vectorworks (an architectural-grade CAD program).  I am continually amazed by how long this process has taken! It seems that making a tutorial would be simple, but when it is necessary to establish “process,” things get more complicated.  In a digital humanities virtual reality project, process does not simply refer to a single discipline. Process requires the explanation of the program, project protocols (naming, document size), keyboard short cuts, sourcing of raw data, documentation of sources, and historical context. These “sub-processes” are technical, administrative, and humanities based.  It can be a lot to juggle and requires highly structured explanation! In the article, Snyder briefly mentions how level of technical proficiency (using sketch up vs a more complicated software) effects the ability to adapt software to the classroom. This thought haunts me as I look at my 40 page 2D Tri Arch tutorial, how should one judge scope of process?

I hope that in her presentation this week, we will hear more from Lisa Snyder about VSim and pedagogical applications of virtual reality. I am really excited to hear what she has to say! I am curious if anyone else has any 3D modeling/virtual reality pedagogy thoughts!

While doing the readings this week, I got stuck on the idea of attention span. What makes viewers stick with content? In Shneiderman’s “Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design,”  he describes ways to improve the usability of a site.  These eight rules have much to do with consistency and ease of navigation.  They seemed straight foreword and common sense: it would seem counter productive to not follow through with rules such as “offer simple error handling” or “reduce short term memory load.” Even though Shneiderman’s argument was centered around interface of website, it got me thinking how this interface applies to other digital mediums, such as podcasts.

In looking at The Knotted Line and Freedom’s Ring: King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech, I was struck by how these sites transcended the traditional notion of a website.  Navigation was guided in a way which provided narrative, yet was unique and engaging. Both sites were multimedia and though they provided a database of information for the viewer, it was clear that there first objective was to tell an engaging story.  Perhaps story, told through effective interface, is what produces attention span.

Serial is a new podcast produced by WEBZ Chicago and This American Life. As the name suggests, it is a “serial” and tells the story of a teen murder incrementally, one week at a time.  This podcast series has been widely successful and, of course, highly controversial.   There has been a lot of media attention to the series, specifically  as to why this podcast is so successful?  There has been much debate regarding the morality of the content, suggesting that the popularity of the podcast lies in an intrinsic human desire for voyeurism and the “unsavory.”  While I do not feel that I am educated enough to take on those arguments, I do want to say that I think a lot of Serial’s success may lie in interface.

I think that applying Shneiderman’s “Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design” to podcasts says a lot about the success of podcasts in recent years: they follow Shniederman’s rules pretty closely.  Podcasts “strive for consistency” in the sense that they are, like television shows, produced and distributed on a weekly basis.  They “enable frequent users to shortcuts” by virtue of their interface: pause, fast-foreward, rewind.  Podcasts are available at the users desire and can be archived for later use.  They “offer informative feedback” by the virtue of their existence.  Podcasts frequently, like traditional radio, answer listener questions and clarify in later episodes.  Podcasts are adapted to how the listener dictates the experience. Podcasts are “designed for closure” in that they have only a single function: the user listens to the podcast and then the podcast is over.   Podcasts “permit easily action reversal” because they can be listened, or rewinded, as many times as an individual desires. The “support inner locus of control” in that they are simple to use and feel easy to master: anyone can essentially download and listen to a podcast. (Serial even has a webpage to guide you through the process) In conclusion, good podcasts “reduce short term memory load.”  Most podcasts do not exceed an hour in length and are filled with “information recalls,” the purpose of a podcast is not to make the listener memorize the information, but rather to entertain.

In looking at a close analysis of “podcast interface,” I am perhaps a little convinced that popular entertainment has a lot to do with easily access.  Content is obviously king, but perhaps interface has a lot more to do with it than we think?  What about interface of discussion? Would we be talking about Serial as much without twitter or other social medias? I am curious if anyone else got hung up on the idea of interface behind “on demand” entertainment.  (Also, is anyone else listening to Serial? I am a little obsessed.)

Well first off, Alan McConchie and Beth Schechter, “Anatomy of a Web Map” might be the coolest article I have ever read on the internet. Its mind blowing, plus I loved the interface they used (Big)! I thought that the way their presentation moved was super informative and loved getting to explore all of the tools they listed.  In the article, they brake down the exact definition of a web map and present ways for individuals to make their own (often through open source applications).  They distinguish that a “web map” is a type of “digital map” which is available on the internet.  The key tipping paint here would be that the map is on the internet.  Because of this, web maps are able to go in a whole other direction that was previsouly impossible for maps: they are now available to be created by anyone and data for these maps seems to be more readily available.  In Jim Detwiler’s article, “Introduction to Web Mapping” he gives a brief history of web maps, reminding us that web maps didn’t begin to exist until the mid- 1990s.  It wasn’t till even later that these applications began to become wildly available for individual adaptation.  He connects this revelation with the launch of Google Maps in 2005:

“Shortly after the launch of Google Maps, hackers figured out ways to build applications that integrated the map layers from Google with other forms of data.  The most famous of these was housingmaps.com, which took real estate data “scraped” from craigslist.org and plotted it on top of Google Maps.  Google, seeing the potential in allowing third-party developers to mix in their own content, decided to make the Application Programming Interface (API) for their Maps application public.  Yahoo! and MapQuest followed suit.  The result was an explosion of custom mapping applications and the addition of a new term to the web mapping lexicon — mashup. (The term mashup traces its roots to the music industry, where it is used to describe the mixing of tracks from two or more songs to produce a new song.) Thus, the 3^rd generation of web mapping can be thought of as the “mashup generation.”

I love the idea of thinking of current web maps as a mashup generation! I think that this term also clarifies what is meant by opens source, it is not necessarily referring to “coding from the ground up,” but rather taking from others, building and merging. From my experience (one day) playing around with Map Stack and OpenStreetMap, it seems that a lot of these interfaces are designed to be easily picked up.  This is not to say that web mapping is not highly technical (it definitely is), but that this “mashup generation” has provided a way for individuals to get in easily at an at least basic level.  This is allowing for web mapping to become more widespread and more understood.

While reading these article, I got stuck on the purpose behind being able to create your own open source map.  I played around with Map Stack which encouraged me to make a map of my hometown (so I did).  In the process of making it, I got stuck on the idea that Open Source mapping applications exist, perhaps, so that people can create their own representations of their environment.  Its a way to personalize the growing urban sprawl of “modern life.”  It also made me think about this as tradition in human history. Throughout Art History at least, the representation of the urban form, often shown through a handful of physical landmarks, is omnipresent. One can easily find a physical landmark, distinguishing the site, in almost any Renaissance, Medieval, or early Modern (western) painting. It is the tradition of connecting the individual with the city of origin, city as integral part of identity in an increasingly inter-connected world.  A more specific art analogy would be Edward Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip from 1966. (The link will take you to a Getty exhibition article about Ed Ruscha) In the series, Ruscha took a picture of each building on the Sunset Strip, stringing them together so that an individual could follow the whole street from start to end.  In the context of web mapping, I can’t stop thinking of Ruscha’s piece as a proto Google Street View.  It perhaps also confirms the long standing human interest in the personalized representation of temporal environment.

I am curious to hear about others interpretations of the “humanistic” value in web and digital mapping! I would love to learn more about digital humanities specific web mapping projects (How do maps illuminate humanistic inquiry? Why do humans make maps? Are web maps becoming more than just maps, as a result of their interactive features? Is the way that web maps make arguments different than regular maps?)

In the Scott Weingart article “Demystifying Networks,” he breaks down the the origins and uses of Networks, specifically illuminating them in a digital humanities setting.  In the introduction, he starts basic stating that networks are things which show connections between “stuff.”  This stuff is given the more formal term of “node” to denote that it is a spot between relationships.  These nodes can be “bi-modal” or “mulit-modal” meaning that there are more than one type of node in a system.  The relationships which connect the nodes are referred to in this article as “edges.”  These edges can be “directed edges” or “un-directed edges.” Directed edges mean that the relationship can only go in one direction, the order of the nodes is causal and cannot be reversed.

With this basic understanding of network relationships, I started thinking about examples of networks in daily life.  Initially, I got stuck on the idea of the internet, perhaps the ultimate network.  At work last week, I heard two of my colleges go over an analogy for the inner workings of internet that I had not heard before, or perhaps it just didn’t stick with me.  They were discussing the analogy of the internet as a highway: the cars moving being the data communicated and the physical infrastructure being the “metaphorical highway.” This concept really stuck with me: why is it easier to understand a network through an analogy rather than its actually process? Why transportation networks?

A quick google brought me to an image of the London subway which with its stops and lines, looked very much like the network examples given in the Weingart article.  The circles represent nodes and the lines each represent an “undirected edge.” This example made me realize that networks are things which are encountered constantly in modern daily life: much of infrastructure (invisible or invisible) is organized through the system of  network.  This familiarity is perhaps what makes it such a good model for understanding more complex or conceptual networks.

In thinking about digital networks, I am still stuck on the idea of visualization.  As made clear in the Weingart article, networks are held, in common conception, as complicated entities especially in the context of large data sets. Weingart explains the need to often cut down on the data visualization, to make a graph “sparse” instead of “dense.”  This perhaps answers my earlier question, maybe we need to simplify our understanding of networks such as the internet, in order to actually conceive the basics of the network.  Maybe the purpose of the network is to not understand it in “full” so to speak, but to understand the system to the point where it can be used? What is the purpose of a network visualization? To what point “should” one trim data to make a point?

Reading Johanna Drucker’s “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display,” made me appreciate the highly nuanced application of information visualization in the humanities.  This article serves as a “call to action,” in a way, asking the reader to reconsider the ideological ramifications of un-modified graphical display in humanities research.  Drucker explains throughout how “data” can be altered, from the traditional method of statistical presentation, so that it responsibly represents the humanities scholarship behind it.  One of conceptual shifts brought up is the notion that all data must be “reconceived” as capta (2).  Drucker goes on to explain that “capta is ‘taken’ actively while data is assumed to be a ‘given’ able to be recorded and observed” (2).  The two verbs “taken” and “given” bring up notions of how the information perceived.  For me, it brought up the notion of is this information a product of reading “in-between the lines” (taken) or simply reading the “lines” (given). The difference between the two terms broadens when considering the purpose of “humanistic inquiry,” which Drucker explains to be deeply rooted in the “(acknowledgment of)  the situated, partial, and constitutive character of knowledge production” (2).  In thinking of humanities “data” as something which is a product of careful “construction,” it raises the stakes of how to construct and present this data.  While graphics seem to err on a side of design simplicity, simplicity is a main culprit in giving out a reductive or misleading message.

I was intrigued by the example presented in the Figure 2 bar chart and this got me thinking about how data visualizations are used to guide the viewer through information.  This particular bar chart is highly unconventional because its points spill out of the bars in a gradient-like fashion. This display is used to convey a departure from the binary in graph and thus allows for a depiction of flow, cultural difference, and personal interpretation of the question asked.  As Drucker explains that this allows the information to “(shift) from self-evident ‘fact’ to constructed interpretation motivated by a human agenda” (6).

The element of human interpretation is perhaps what guides the individual through information visualization.  This made me think of the project, Mapping Gothic France.  Based out of Columbia and Vasser, the project is a multimedia database which seeks to guide the user through 12th and 13th century France, particularly its ecclesiastical architecture, through space, time, and narrative.  Although data visualization, through form of charts and interactive maps, is only part of the project, what captured my attention the most when re-examining the site was thinking of each “pathway” (space, time and narrative) as a greater information visualization with bias. For example, most of the energy put into the site is focused on the interoperation of space, rather than time and narrative.  This perhaps alines the function of the site with its title, “Mapping Gothic France,” as it is much easier to access the presentation of spatial information on the site than any other kind of information.  The definition of scope is perhaps also a key to success when presenting humanities data.

Reading this article left me with even more questions about how data visualizations are made, used, and read.  As my post is running over in length, I am curious to know what other people think of the graphical displays on Mapping Gothic France through the lens of Drucker’s article!

Reading Stephen Ramsay’s article Databases and also the Data + Design book really got me thinking about the way that data is visualized.  In both readings, the database, or specifically the computerized database, is described to be a complex system in which to store and sort information. Specifically, Ramsay describes the digital humanities database as a series of relationships.  He describes these relationships as being able to “hold out the possibility not merely of an increased ability to store and retrieve information, but of an increased critical and methodological self-awareness.”  This got me thinking about different origins for non-digital databases, what kind of relationships were they created to represent?

The quipu (alternate spelling Khipu) is an artifact of the Incan empire (1400-1532 AD).  Quipus were used by the Incas to record information. As the Incas did not utilize a written language or numerical system, quipus were used both to document numerical information, historic myths, and imperial decrees.  Quipus consisted of several long strings.  Each string would hold its own pattern, spacing, and style of knots representing the recorded information.  Although, full knowledge of the Quipu system is lost on the modern western world, it is known from contemporary accounts that Quipus were used for highly complex tasks, not unlike modern databases.

This got me thinking about different, or perhaps non-western, ideas for organizing the database.  In the Incan context, the quipu relied heavily on the knowledge of the “reader” and also heavily on the notion of relationships.  From what little is known about the Quipu, it is clear that information is not recorded in a direct manner.  A specific kind of knot does not correspond directly to a letter or a word, it is highly contextual and is perhaps intended as a type of nemonic device for the reader.  This to me, seemed exactly what Ramsay was referring to when he said that, for the digital humanist, the real purpose of the database lies in the relations produced.  Moreover, the physical structure of the quipu brings up questions of data presentation.

Moreover, I thought that it was an interesting aside that Harvard is now creating its own database about Quipus.  The database will function to record all of the data presented on existing Quipus today.  Even cooler is the fact that this data base has mirrored its data scheme on the Quipu calling it the “khipu data scheme.”  The website for the project explains the data structuring as a “branching network in which the number of branching levels is highly variable, but in which components at every level share certain characteristics.” Moreover, the computer database will look at interpreting the physical nature of the Quipu focusing on: “the interlocking relationships between khipu components, the branching or tree-like structure of khipu, the similarity of certain components, and the multi-dimensionality of khipu variables.”  I thought this was a fascinating instance of mediation and also of episteme! The quipu uses its own unique system to address how it structures and presents information.  The fact that this system, while seemingly foreign, so easy coordinates into a computer database is fascinating to me.  Perhaps this speaks to a universality of databases?  I am intrigued and curious if anyone else has instances of early databases!

Reading Alexis Madrigal’s article “How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood,” really blew my mind.  The amount of metadata which is created for every program on Netflix is simply astounding.  Looking at the graphs provided, for most common “adjective” ect, brought me to think about the “new” direction of Netflix: Netflix not only a server/stream for content, but also as a platform for producing new content.  Since 2012 with the release of the TV series Lillyhammer, Netflix has presented itself as a platform for releasing previously unseen content.  Recently, there has been a lot of publicity about Netflix expanding to releasing first run movies as well.

The amount of news attention brought to Netflix’s original releases, as alluded to by the links above, is massive.  A Google search for “Netflix Original Series,” produces articles from every major news publication.  Almost all of these articles report with a sense of skepticism on Netflix’s expansion practice.  All of this commotion and my newfound understanding of Netflix’s use of metadata, brought me to question how does Netflix decide what original content it will seek to produce.  Netflix recently made a deal with Adam Sandler to produce 4 straight to Netflix movies.  The article makes a simple assumption that the deal is based on the high traffic that Adam Sandler movies receive on Netflix.  However, with knowledge of Netflix’s use of categorization, it seems that these deals are deeply rooted in Netflix’s highly complex classification system.

For instance, look at Netflix’s most recent Original Series release, Bojack Horseman.  The cartoon series, which follows the adventures of an anthropomorphic washed-up 90s sitcom star, has been meet with mixed reviews.  The reviews seem to  fall into two camps: those who praise its undeniable influence by shows such as Bob’s Burgers, 30 Rock, and Archer to name a few and those who condemn the show for not inciting the viewer with anything particularly new.  The resemblance of Bojack Horseman to other shows, which are very popular on Netflix, made me question the motives of producing this show.  Bojack Horseman was renewed for a second season shortly after the first season was released, even with this noted mixed reviews.  This is highly unusual in terms of show being renewed for another season, production is costly. Does this suggest viewing habits? Are people more inclined to watch something that falls into the same specific genre or are they repelled by this?  I am curious as to how well Netflix can produce content to fit into its “viewer recommendations.”  Whereas other shows, such as House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, have been highly successful, it feels like the jury is still out on if “Bojack” is able to establish itself as both a similar and a unique show.

For this post I desperately wanted to get a screen shot, showing Bojack Horseman under a highly specified category with other similar shows.  Of course, Murphy’s law hindered my search and the best I could get was without a specified classification. Thinking about Netflix after this article, makes me question when categorization gets too narrow.  In the article, it is mentioned that often only a few films will exist in a highly specified classification.  As humans seeking entertainment, do we want to stay exactly  in the classification of the predessor or is the key to move a slightly different classification? (dark dramas about pigs as opposed to dark dramas about house pets for an obtuse example) Moreover, it brought up the question of what happens when the classifier (Netflix) produces its own content for the classification system? Can this be done without bias?  Does bias of the information provider even matter? Does it jeopardize the efficiency of the system or does it make things easier to find? I guess in the case of Netflix, time will only tell.

Reading “Preservation Matters” by Chon A. Noriega,  immediately brought to mind  James Clifford’s The Predicament of Culture.  Clifford is an art historian and professor at UC Santa Cruz who is known for his discussion of the preservation and presentation of non-Western art.  In the chapter “On Collecting Art and Culture,” he explains how the dominant Western paradigm categorizes and thus archives art for posterity.  According to Clifford, non-Western art is sorted according to the standards of the West: craft and fine art.  This imposition of non-native categorization often separates bodies of  work and fails to preserve the art in a way which honors its original attention.

In reading Noriega’s article, I got stuck on the notion of what creates an accurate archive.  As an archive needs to be collected by a person, or group of people, it will, without a doubt, bear the viewpoint of those who created the archive.  I loved that Noriega included his interactions with the artist, Harry Gamboa Jr, especially the conclusion that  it was impossible for the artist to have an “accurate account of (his) personal history” because he had always been in the process of keeping an archive (5).  Even though it logically seems that the artist should be the objective authority of his own work, it is impossible to deny that the creator every archive holds a bias.

Noriega’s account of building up the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) into an archive which provided real use and value for both the scholarly community and Chicano/a heritage community is what brought me to think of Clifford’s discussion of categorization.  Noriega explains that in order to put information into an archive or resource, that information must be extracted from the community of its origin.  In his position as the director of CSRC, his aim was to not “extract” information, thus removing it from the community, but to create a resource where the material could serve its community in a new way, a constructive rather than destructive force.  This made me think of how Clifford argues that by placing non-Western heritage artworks in a museum setting, they can often loose their original meaning as they are often misinterpreted and can no longer carry out their intended function.  (example: by removing a funeral mask from its indigenous community, one is not only taking away a ceremonial object, but also placing it in a setting for which is was not intended to be interacted with)

While Noriega’s account is more related to creating accessible information, rather than an argument regarding the placement of artifacts, both articles brought up questions for me about how data is sorted.  Improper categorization can result in lost information and searching for information through a lens different from the one used to organize is often a fruitless search. (example: searching by tags or keywords which were not applied to the object in database, though they may be valid descriptions of said object) The construction of the archive is itself, in many ways, the construction of a specific argument.  If anything, Noriega’s article sheds light on the misconception that an archive is inherently whole, rather archives should be viewed as a continual development based on the viewpoint of the collector(s).

The Predicament of Culture on the Harvard Press Website