Making anew

Tags

3d print, 3D printing, authorship, elliott, hierarchy, Langer, maker, makerspace, museums, Neely, post-modernism, turkel

3-D printing certainly offers a vast amount of possibilities for teaching, learning, researching and (needless to say) for artistic practices. The usage of 3-D printers by individuals or groups operating in different fields might be obviously characterized by different scopes, but the large range of these scopes is the precious outcome. In Neely’s reading it is said that “Museums are a natural fit for these types of informal learning activities.” Karen Wilkinson, director of the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium, spoke on the panel “What’s the Point of a Museum Makerspace?” at the MCN conference in November, 2012. She argued, “The difference between ‘make-and-take’ and ‘makerspace’ is the variety in the end product, and the ownership over the full process that the maker feels” (Wilkinson, 2012).”

That made me think that 3-D printing is just another result of the consumeristic society that allows ownership over objects that we can finally make ourselves instead of buying, reinforcing the consumer’s compulsive desire of possession, which leads to overfilled basements of endless objects. Despite this aspect, I don’t think we can consider 3-D printing overall as a harmful nor useless discovery. In fact, in addition to its beneficial effects (from student engagement through hands-on experience, to the ability of making replicas of fragile objects for research purposes), 3-D printing has the possibility to foster the conversation on authorship, hierarchy and cultural production which started with post-modernism and might involve an interesting twist: given the opportunity for everyone to make things, I can’t help but asking what would they make? Is 3-D printing going to reinforce the top-to-bottom model of production or reverse it? Maybe, there is no a univocal answer to this question. The “makerspace” is currently part of cultural institutions, in one way or another, and it is used by artists to continue to make objects in a creator-to-consumer fashion which is not much different from painting and sculpture, therefore it might be too early to speak of a cultural shift, but it is also true that “with a minimal amount of preparation and training, a fully engaged 3D printing experience is a likely outcome” (Neely, Langer). And the opportunities spurring from and within that experience are countless.

What I also found interesting is what Turkel and Elliott highlight in their article which is that historians,
for the most part, have tended to ignore this problem of learning tacit knowledge, and continue
 to concentrate on the representational sources with which they are most comfortable, even
at the cost of being excluded from a crucial understanding of their subject matter (p. 6). Shifting towards a more open attitude might turn the question “How does our own engagement with fabrication change our experience of what is methodologically possible?” (p. 9) into: How does our own engagement with visualization-making change our experience of what is algorithmically possible?

Mediation, hierarchy, authorship

Tags

3-D immersive, 3-D modeling, authorship, hierarchy, Knowledge Management, mediation

I find the readings to revolve around these three main topics: Mediation, hierarchy, and authorship.

Mediation

What is currently presented in the humanities derives from reasoned evidence and argument (Bonde, Houston, p. 4), but we can not avoid the fact that the appearance of what we present will be characterized by a certain visual quality. The inability to escape a visual quality will intrinsically frame our visualization within a certain time period (our contemporary digital representation era) which seems to devalue the efforts carried out in order to make the representation itself. One way to solve this problem could be to render the visualization in a way which is as close as possible to the actual object while avoiding the digital outlook of colors, beveled surface, glossy patterns and sharp geometry.

Naturally, we must ask ourselves what does the actual object really look like? A series of accurate hypothesis might arrive at different answers (claims) to this question. In fact, Favro says “the greater the quest for realism in digital reconstructions, greater is the incorporation of hypothetical features” (Favro, ”Se non e’ vero e’ ben trovato”, p. 274). The quest for veracity in appearance, subconsciously, if not consciously, equates with newness (…) crisp quality of the image results in blurring temporal specificity and valuation of buildings and cities as living things while a painting or a photograph reflects the building with its time properties (even if mediated by the painter or by the camera) (Favro, ib., p. 273).

In his essay “The World on a Flat Surface: Maps from the Archeology of Greece and Beyond“ Christopher L. Witmore affirms that “we are so accustomed to a system of representation where accuracy rests upon a faithful and detailed relationship to the things shown”. But then he warns: “Accuracy can only be assessed in the light of the purposes for which the representation is intended” (in Bonde, Houston, p. 132-133). Therefore, it is better to think of archeological work as a fundamentally transforming mediation or translation, work done in the spaces between past and present (Shanks, Webmoor in Bonde, Houston, p. 96). A representation is simply a claim (Houston, p. 35). In conclusion, can we consider the claim as “the view from nowhere” and study the representation consciously based on a bias?

Here is a link to another example of 3-D technology used on an archeological site in Rome: Palazzo Valentini. Remains of two Roman domus are in the basement of a building built in the sixteenth century, which has been in use ever since. The integration between ruins and 3-D projections with sound makes the visitor’s experience quite unique for a place that is several feet underground with no natural light. The status of conservation of certain mosaics and floors also helps! The difference between what is there (as original artifact) and the augmented reality is made very clear. Nonetheless it doesn’t diminish the importance of the original, but it certainly re-activates the history.

Hierarchy

The question of who can give voice, where and for whom, and who can listen and reply is still in place (Shanks, Webmoor in Bonde, Houston, p. 107). The “view from nowhere” remains the goal, but is it applicable? Shanks and Webmoor affirm that such a conception of knowledge is very difficult to get to work (p. 95), but getting it to work might not be the goal. The idea that truth is a passive-copy of what is “really” (mind-independently, discourse-independently) “there” has collapsed under the critic of Kant, Wittgenstein, and other philosophers, even if it continues to have a deep hold on our thinking (Hilary Putnam cited by Shanks and Webmoor, ib., . p. 95) and methodology.

For instance, to doubt that representation is a valid form of research and teaching, it means ignoring the effectiveness of its benefits in terms of immediacy, interactions, active response and sensorial cognition, and furthermore it means avoiding the potential of analyzing a subject via a non-linear narrative. As Janet Murray and Tom Taylor have noted, virtual reality offers the possibility to generate narratives with tactile, olfactory and auditory information (Bonnet); it becomes possible to consider the fourth dimension. Trained to document hard evidence, archeologists (but also other humanists) do not have a scholarly apparatus with which to evaluate smells, sounds, or haptic responses, nor to access ancient moods and memories (Favro, in Bonde, Houston, p. 154). Popular technology (whose use some archeologists as well as some humanists seem to be reluctant) came to be valued for their capacity to augment the human senses and inscribe what they registered at the boundaries of human perception (Shanks, Webmoor in Bonde, Houston, p. 96). Bonnet also speaks of documents that are visual, as opposed to textual. I found this crucial. The visual aspect of these representations, not only for teaching purposes, but for research purposes, must be given attention. Images as well as other forms of knowledge can spur non-linear narratives more effectively than text. From his experiment, Bonnett says that his students learned four main lessons:

1) Evidence is subject to misinterpretation (which goes back to mediation, but it is also important for non-linear narrative). The initial interpretation of a document may not always match the intent of the original author, Bonnet continues.

2) Evidence is incomplete (which again links back to the “hypothetical features” Favro talks about).

3) Scenarios in which there is an absence of evidence gains importance. Bonnet further emphasizes that they nevertheless go on to produce fully-formed representations of the past. They do so by applying an accepted solution, namely informing their audience of the problem, and making an informed guess as to the probable content of the gap, based on a reading of the historical context of the time.

4) More information can be garnered when an item of evidence is interpolated with other source material. The final product is then never really “final” (which implies a discussion over authorship and a debate over hierarchy: who implements the work?)

The aim is to help students realize an important concept about historical representations, namely that they are models, models that are imperfect representations of the objects they purport to represent. (Bonnet)

I think 3-D immersive representation or simply 3-D modeling are great teaching tools. Teachers should have the opportunity to use them and engage the students through them. At the same time, students should also have the opportunity to interact (actively) with this tool. I think a possible dangerous consequence of students using the 3-D technology passively (by re-enacting the same looping video over and over, for example) will devaluate the tool itself which will be perceived as just gaming. On this regard Bonnet says VectorWorks, a complex CAD (computer aided drawing) modeling package, takes two to four weeks of sustained effort to master prior to beginning an independent project. For many of his students, it was not a price they were willing to pay, since they desired a more immediate return for their effort. For participating history instructors, the software was also a source of concern, the cost in time learning the software outweighed the value gained from the exercise. For the present they have an instruction program that is better suited for a fourth year university seminar than a high school class.

I would then propose to divide the class in two parts: history methodology where the 3-D technology is taught; and history where the 3-D product is used as a learning device. Regardless, I would not use the 3-D technology without allowing students an opportunity for active engagement, otherwise the tool will just reinforce hierarchy and diminish the research purposes and learning potential.

Authorship

In his conclusion, Bonnet reads: “historians should appropriate conventions derived from popular culture, like François Rabelais, and specifically the convention that distributes authorship of a virtual space”. In fact, “the presentation and evaluation of findings are likewise becoming more mobile as the fixed, individually-authored reconstruction and accompanying monograph is replaced by an evolving, collaboratively-created digital knowledge platform.” (Favro, in Bonde, Houston, p. 166) Even when the work is final and we visualize a map, a timeline, or a 3-D immersive video, our product can still be improved by enriching content, layers and options and brought to another level of research. It remains open.

Overall, I think using 3-D technology for teaching or more importantly, for research purposes, can provide fodder for new methodology. Only by using it, by exploiting its potential and by cooperating with technicians, graphic designers and software programmers will a product be developed that will serve and foster our research and maybe discover new paradigm(s).

Objective truth

Tags

aesthetics, moral, objective truth, philosophy, rule of science

I found this video and it raises interesting questions…

Visual narratives: text as image

Tags

Digital, flow, Installation art, Narrative, screen profile, visual narrative

This week’s reading along with the post from Prof. Riva made me think again of narratives as discussed in class last week. In particular, the video of Screen Profile reminded me of a project presented a couple of years ago at DownStreet Art by artists Erin Ko and Alex Chouls called Flow. I go back to that project because I think it is an interesting example of alternative narratives and by comparing it with Screen Profile it can shed an interesting light over the debate on words and text in the digital era.

While in Screen Profile there is a set of pre-determined words, in Flow words are a direct contribution of the viewer who sends a text to the installation. The text is read by a software and projected on vertical screens. Flow was installed in a window and the result of the texting was only visible from outside at night. It has been installed in different settings where people could walk through it and share a similar immersive experience as the viewer in Screen Profile.

The difference is mainly that the viewer in Screen Profile de-construct the text while the viewer in Flow “puts” text into it, but they both contribute to create its patterns. Why am I comparing the two? There are several reasons:
1- the way the viewer deals with text which I think it is here (and I would argue always) perceived as image: it is granted that text is image, but the way these two installations deal with the text here reiterate that specific aspect of it by emptying the words of their meaning and favoring a visual result over a textual narrative.
2- the construction of alternative narratives: by undoing or assembling the text in alternative ways which might not apparently follow a logical discourse, the two installations contribute to a new narrative. The latter could again be textual, but could also be simply visual. That being said, the two installations overcome the label-oriented culture of text.
3- the intimate dimension of interaction of the viewer with the installation: both installations establish a private dialogue with the viewer, although in Flow a collective interaction could be possible. On the intimate relationship with the text, both from a cognitive and a more intuitive way of reacting to the text, I see similarities with the “old” book.
4- the playful approach of the viewer to the installations: I believe this is strictly related to the digital format. Somehow, I think the approach to digital forms implies a recreational aspect. I might be mistaken, but I think the icon-based visual aspect of most of the interfaces we deal with, it encourages to look at the digital opportunities in a more playful (game-like) way.
That being said, I think these two installations favor a new approach to narratives while intrinsically pulling from the traditional ones.

Collectible Knowledge

Tags

digital humanities, Marino Auriti, Metadata, Michel Foucault, Palazzo Enciclopedico, Venice Biennale, Visualizations

According to the 55th Venice Biennale’s catalogue, “on November 16, 1955, self-taught Italian-American artist Marino Auriti filed a design with the U.S. Patent office depicting his Palazzo Enciclopedico (The Encyclopedia Palace), an imaginary museum that was meant to house all worldly knowledge, bringing together the greatest discoveries of the human races, from the wheel to the satellite.
Holed up in his garage out in the middle of the Pennsylvania countryside, Auriti worked on his brainchild for years, constructing a model of a 136-story building that would stand seven hundred meters tall and take up over sixteen blocks in Washington, D.C.”
Auriti’s plan was never carried out, but I am curious to know which categories he would have chosen to label the classes of universal knowledge and how he would have organized the palace’s floors: by subject? By time? By region?

Il Palazzo Enciclopedico – Marino Auriti – Photo @ The double negative

I find the Cooper-Hewitt collection wall extremely interesting as it denies any classification by displaying a picture of the object in order to prioritize the visual information over text. If additional information is desired one must click the icon and then the call number. I was amused by the visual impact of the wall itself and by the playful way to browse the collection. But in case of me looking for a specific object, and supposing that I have a date and maybe a location or a name, would I still go to the collection-wall or rather opting for a different kind of research? I think I would not search for my object on the wall. Why? Because it doesn’t tell me what it is, only what it looks like, which responds to only one of the two aspects Foucault mentions in “The Order of Things”, i.e. it only gives a new place to see things, but it does not offer a new space to describe them (p.143). That being said, I would indeed spend hours browsing the wall with pleasure.

One of the examples from the syllabus of what could be called “collectible knowledge” is MACE – Metadata for Architectural Contents in Europe. The website offers the possibility to search its content by repository, language, resource type, classification and competency. That reminds me of the classification process I am going through while building the database I wish to use for my final project. Would that be comprehensive enough? Will my categories be understood by another user? Why am I choosing to divide the information under certain labels while excluding others?

Uncertainty is certain

Tags

data visualization, gephi, mapping, network, relationship, zotero

In Weingart’s words “humanistic data are almost by definition uncertain, open to interpretation, flexible, and not easily definable.” On the other hand “node types [processed data] are by definition concrete; your object either is or is not” (…). According to this definition, by reducing data to fit the available tools, digital humanists’ work is limited in possibilities and therefore in outcomes. In addition, there are perspectives: who looks at what and in which way. Ad exemplum, Weingart tells us the story of a non-corresponding friendship, he writes: “According to Alex, his friends Betty and Carl are best friends. According to Carl, he can’t actually stand Betty”. At this point, do I still want to use tools such as Gephi to find out if a relationship, of any kind, did in fact occur between Alex, Betty and Carl? After I find out about that or any relationship, how do I know what kind of relationship I am looking at? Can Gephi or any other tool assist me in that? According to Weingart, “The structure and nature of a network might change depending on the perspective of a particular node, and I know of no model that captures this complexity.”

The LinkedJazz project put together an incredible amount of information on Jazz musicians via crowd sourcing. They listed several musicians and, in order to record which relationship occurred among them, they gave people a certain number of variables from which to choose. Each variable represents one type of relationship. The result is a graph that doesn’t only tell you that two given jazz musicians were somehow in relation but of which nature their link was. That proves Weingart wrong, or does it?
I think the great work done by LinkedJazz in mapping the relationship between the musician has been primarily to establish which relationships could have occurred. In that sense, LinkedJazz anticipated the unknown factor that Weingart couldn’t capture. By analyzing a certain number of variables (and only those) they narrowed down the possibilities and paved the road to a near successful outcome. Although brilliantly done, LinkedJazz did not overcome uncertainty. Why do I say that? From the website I could not understand how the relationship was verified. Second, the relationship chosen by an individual is still under the influence of one’s perspective. How was the information confirmed? Third, what if two or more musicians had multiple types of relationships?

I guess the next question is, how sure can we be about our data? If by using Gephi or Zotero or any other tools that can map out relationships between our files (I am speaking of files as we are all dealing with them, being books, artworks, people or digital surrogates), we must reduce our spectrum of possibilities, is this usage of any benefit? By narrowing down information do I make my data more accurate? If yes, then restrictions mean that I am able to only focus on a very specific number of possibilities which can unveil only some stories. Someone else might take the work from there and add another tile to the puzzle, and so on and so forth, till we can get as close as possible to a complete image which will embed a sophisticated level of accuracy.

Mapping relationships

Tags

Bodenhamer, Cartography, Geographic information system, Map, tweetscape

As our understanding of the world itself is socially constructed (Bodenhamer, p. 16) we are asked to think maps differently and adhere to the concept following which space is the platform for multiplicity (Bodenhamer, p. 13). I think here lays the challenge of continuing to use maps to display historical facts in a geographically accurate fashion while adding experiential cartography which allows observers to see these maps at their own speed, revealing different relationships between entities. This map can be synthesized as a map that relies on geographical accuracy (which conventionally applies to everyone) where we can add layers of relational and experiential cartography so as to create a realm where all the perspectives are particular and dependent upon experiences unique to an individual, a community, or a period of time (Bodenhamer, p. 16).

What if we try to create a map similar to the one just conceptualized that will not include actual cartographical visualizations of space? Or what if the space can be a variable so to reflect social and political constructions of places? I guess my questions are just reformulating Bodenhamer’s question: how do we as humanists make GIS do what it was not intended to do, namely, represent the world as culture and not simply locations? (p. 23) I think TheGulf/2000Project website is a good start to initially respond to these questions.

But, let’s imagine a map where geographical elements can be chosen by the observer so that each visualization is personal and entities (objects or facts represented on the map) adjust each time to the observer’s selection or to the observer’s interaction. Is it possible or will the curation of the items selected only result in a map that just displays an even more controlled series of content? I think it would be interesting to find a way to open maps to customization (for past events) or real time input (for current events). New technology can help with that. At the same time, I think it would be crucial to record observer’s interactions to be able to organize our argument afterwards. Maybe this is a different map altogether as it will not serve to display something we already know, but it will collect possible narratives we don’t know.

Time as space

Tags

digital humanities, timeline, visualization

How can we liberate visualization from chronology? Should we?
Time is a metric convention and as such it can or cannot be considered a valid approach to organize data, there could be many other ways to explore an apparently time sensitive subject. What if we group items by the questions they suggest rather than by the time they were produced in? Let’s think of the invention of the light bulb. How different were people’s lives before and after this invention? Is the answer more relevant than knowing the date it was invented? At what point does the time distance make the notion of the date irrelevant or too abstract to understand and to contextualize? As we have been debating about humanities and science, maybe timelines are the missing link: is it the closest we can get to the precision of math? Does it matter?

The open source tool called TimeFlow (more info here) is just an example of a timeline that allows one to zoom in and out of its contents so as to visualize info by the year/month/day selected. I think this is a good way to use a timeline because of the opportunity to consider single events in relation to a longer period of time. Although timeline remains a genre of historical writing that employs rhetorical figures (Zuern, p. 3), the third dimension added by the computer screen -which not only lets us play with zooming, but can send us to relative links- can improve the use of timeline drastically. By implementing and diversifying information and offering an interactive component through which each user can create an independent path, timeline could make significant steps towards that objectivity which has been the focus of the debate around this tool (Zuern, p.4).

Speaking of bar charts, according to Nathan Yau, temporal data can be categorized as discrete or continuous. Discrete are values that are from specific points or blocks of time; continuous are values that can be measured at anytime, during any interval and it is constantly changing (p. 93). What if our timeline would show both, discrete and continuous values? Here is an example.

Macro and micro

I found many possible topics for this post in the various readings, and decided to focus on three in particular: fruition, macro vs micro and DH as a revolutionary upheaval.

Fruition
Among the various questions on whether or not we should be theorizing around DH, it could be useful to ask ourselves “who is DH for?”, “who is going to make use of it?”, “how can we make it usable for all?”. As internet brought with it a wave of knowledge democratization -more idealistically than realistically- it has been possible to imagine a world where everyone from everywhere could contribute to it. Similarly, DH use data from everywhere and wish to give back to the websphere the research results. Digital, polyvocal expression can support a genuine multiverse in which no single point of view can claim the center (Digital Humanities, p. 24). Are we revisiting the internet utopia or is DH making it happen?

Macro vs micro
Once again, I go back to the big picture -but just for a moment- and I wonder: “should DH try to create a universal platform for knowledge?”. It has been largely discussed how to standardize data, but it seems undoable because of the enormous amount of information produced every minute. Maybe the past can be digitized in a standard fashion, but what about the present? What about the trillions of gigabyte of information, artifacts, text, images uploaded on the web on a weekly basis? Is there a timing problem along with a procedure problem? Are the “intelligent agents” of Bernes-Lee and Fischetti the solution? Again, is this doable?
It seems then easier to focus on micro research, to find a methodology for DH that scholars can use to deal with information, visualization, and transmission of knowledge assuming that to translate into digital all the knowledge we own is simply impossible (Google put on the web 14 millions of book out of the 130 millions available, not to mention prints, flyers and pre-digital era media file -Digital Humanities, p. 34-. And this is what one day of Flickr uploads looks like in the real world).

DH as a revolutionary upheaval
At this point, it looks like DH can only support, maybe with new methodology, the old methods inherited from cloisters and seminar rooms. I disagree. DH is the discipline of digital humans. Looking at this discipline with the eyes of pre-digital scholarship will not take us very far. For instance, distinguish digital visualization from printed illustration only for its interactivity and possibility of manipulation of the graphical representation and the data (Jessop, p. 3) it means to approach the discipline within the perspective of a pre-digital era knowledge. The limit is the comparison with a form of visualization that implies a different cognitive approach. While reading Digital Humanities, I also thought if we, as digital humanists, standardize visualizations, do we damage and limit the potential of this discipline? At the same time, how can we avoid to be tool driven and stress the opportunity of this multi-faceted method? One answer can be in allowing failure (Digital Humanities, p. 29) which is a new approach to the discipline all together.

The big picture (reading week 1)

Hi! I am Valeria, I am a first year PhD student in the Italian Studies department. My academic background is in art history although I worked for several years as freelance journalist which is how I first came to approach information technology. My research interests lie somewhere in between art, technology and media in contemporary italian culture.

Last year, I visited Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria and the theme of the festival was “The Big Picture”. There, I saw many examples of information visualization, and most of them are still visible on visualizing.org website. Being there and realizing how many data are processed, stored and available through Telecommunication Data Retention (TDR) gave me the impression that a big picture was indeed achievable at this time. In his dissertation “Computational Information Design”, Ben Fry affirms: “the quantity of such data makes it extremely difficult to gain a big picture”… of course, in his introduction, he was referring to billions of letters representing tens of thousands of genes, but it is easy to get overwhelmed by replacing the word genes with historical facts, books, paintings, artifacts, images, videos and so forth.

Yet, I couldn’t help but liking the big picture where lots of data are displayed showing relationships in a fluid, endless movement. It feels real, like the movement of people on a buzzing sidewalk, although I am not able to capture each of them individually, I perceive their presence as a moving multitude and I know they are moving through time and space. At this point, you might be thinking of a moving image, but I am thinking of this.

Now, there’s an old map (first published on 1977) that masterfully makes the invisible visible, it shows relationships and it is visually striking (this last part, although less scientific, is one of my favorite). I know this image is referenced in Tufte’s book titled Visual Explanations, not in the reading assigned to this week, but I think it is a good example of some of the principles Tufte talks about in Envisioning Information such as serving the purpose of allowing to reason an array data at one’s pace and manner (Tufte, p. 31); highlighting the differences that make the difference (Tufte, p. 65); or simply, not using words which can be a deterrent to international communication (Tufte, p. 27). It is a little bit confusing at first, where the presence and beauty of the design overwrites the content, but as soon as your brain zooms in and starts to get the big picture, you appreciate it even more for the ability to combine content and design.

In her essay “Presuming images and consuming words: the visualization of knowledge from the Enlightenment to post-modernism” Stafford says: “(…) perception (aisthesis) is a significant form of knowledge (episteme)” (Stafford, p. 473). I am not a musicologist nor a music historian, therefore I might be overestimating Reebee Garofalo’s Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music, but it is a powerful image from which it is a pleasure to learn about music history. Does it serve its purpose, then? Later on, during this course, I might get to know whether or not this chart seems so valuable to me for the information it conveys or simply for its visual properties. For now, I enjoy sharing it with you all and thinking about the possibilities to improve it with current technology.