Digital Humanities has greatly advanced the humanities fields, making it accessible to a larger range of people with visualizations such as mapping, graphs, and interactive mediums. It allows scholars to reach a new dimension, and does not restrict them to simple text fields. But sometimes, I feel, simplicity is best.
While Evan Bissell and Eric Loyer’s project “The Knotted Line” offers a great interactive timeline with paintings and informational links, to me, it was very confusing. At first I was not sure if it was chronological, but as I explored more I realized it was. The squiggly lines and the act of having to expose the paintings yourself was very difficult for me. At times the small informational red dots were hard to find and it made for a very confusing tool. Since it is set up in a timeline form, I think it would have been more efficient to at least display the years throughout, so the viewer can easily land on a certain year that they are interested in.
When telling history, especially if you are trying to reach an audience who is not familiar with the digital age very well, it can be easier to simplify. I personally think that digital humanities can make certain studies more accessible to the public with visualizations, but if the digitization is done in a simplistic way. “The Knotted Line” would be a tool that would have to be used by a group more advanced with digital tools.
I found a website, http://www.pbs.org/kpbs/theborder/history/interactive-timeline.html, that timelines border history in a concrete and simplistic way. Each pinpoint is clickable and sends you to a different page where it informs you of that certain event. It is easy to use and provides information in an efficient way. The years are clearly displayed, there are photos attached, and one can easily scroll throughout the timeline.
Timelines are a great way of displaying information to an audience in an visualized way. With every type of digital tool, there is a certain audience in mind. Not every tool will resonate with everyone. While I think that The Knotted Line is a very cool tool, it can only be used by a certain, digitally savvy, audience.