Authorship and reproduction

Nicole’s post was very intriguing.  Her post made me think about the definition of “maker” and its relationship to authorship. If someone prints a 3D model of a famous artwork, such as a smaller version of “The Thinker” by Rodin, to use a famous example, would we still attribute authorship to Rodin? How would this differ from a replica found in a gift shop? If used in an an academic study, how do we evaluate the difference? What would the role of the printers or programmers be in the making of these 3D versions? This tension reminds me of debates concerning authorship in the Renaissance, specifically regarding prints. Prints of famous artworks were often printed and circulated widely. Who was the author of the print? The woodcutter/engraver, the printer, the original artist? What is the difference between an original, reproduction, replica, and copy?

An interesting example is this print by Marcantonio Raimondi which is based on a drawing by Michelangelo. The inscription reads: “Invented (invenit) by Michelangelo the Florentine/ Marcantonio made (fecit) it.” Here a distinction is made between the engraver and the original creator of the image. The role of “invention” is also important.

Another example is an image we have seen before:

What happens to the image when it is given another medium, a different context, and a different artist?

The  questions I am asking are: what happens to the image or object when printed in 3D? How does it change and how does our experience of it change? How can we understand authorship in this context?

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Thoughts about reconstructions

Tags

3D visualization, architectural reconstruction, architecture, space, visualization

It is clear that 3D or immersion visualizations are valuable from a pedagogical stand point, particularly in contrast to 2D visualizations. However, I am still uncertain as to how they can enhance research or be used for publication, as evidence for example. A reconstruction or visualization of any kind, whether in 2D or 3D is still a form of representation. As such, it is subjective and susceptible to the to the same issues. In this sense, are 2D and 3D visualizations fundamentally that different? How would a 3D visualization improve research? Why is it better or more useful? The answers to these questions depend much on the object(s) of visualization. For an embodied experience, that is an experience which involves movement and the body, I would say that the 3D visualizations or immersion would enhance research and teaching. However, like any visualization technology, I don’t believe that 3D or immersion technologies would work for every kind of research. Again, the question is why should we use this technology? How can it answer a specific set of research questions? How would it enhance or complement these questions or the results of our research as opposed to another form of visualization?

I have included a link to a project called “Mapping Gothic France” started by art historian Stephen Murray at Columbia University. The link is to Sainte-Chapelle in Paris to give an example of a specific structure:

http://mappinggothic.org/building/1168

The site provides a map, description and bibliography. Each building has its own site that also includes 2D drawings and reconstructions in addition to 3D photo panoramas of different sections of the building. The obvious issue with the 3D reconstruction is that it represents the current architecture of the church, rather than the medieval architecture. It does help you to get a sense of the building, the general layout and organization of space, but not much more. The 2D reconstructions are also more abstract, so that details like the texture, light, cannot be captured or visualized. As Johanna Drucker points out, 3D reconstructions are still based primarily on sight. For an experience of a medieval church to be truly immersive, other senses would also need to be incorporated, such as touch, smell, and sound. A virtual access map would be interesting. A virtual reconstruction of the liturgy that included sound – prayer and speech – and smell such as incense would greatly improve how we understand medieval church rituals and practices.

Categories, Narrative, and Data in Literature

Categories and Data

The readings this week discuss the ways in which literature has been studied and categorized in the past and the ways in which these categories have been affected by digitization and other digital technologies. According to the readings, literature has been traditionally been organized according to author, genre, language, and historical period. Ed Folsom, in his article “Database as Genre,” asks what would happen if we didn’t have such categories. By what criteria would we analyze and evaluate ‘literature’ (I use literature in quotes because this term is also problematic – what constitutes literature and what doesn’t? Also, what is a text vs a literary text?)? The Stanford site mentions some other ways that scholars have analyzed literature – style and gender for example. Another approach has been material and/or paleographic, or in other words, grouping and studying texts according to material criteria, such as binding, script, size, paper, ink, and whether a book is printed or a manuscript.

However, I’m not sure to what extent digital technologies really affect these categories. In fact, I might argue that these technologies, and databases and visualization techniques in particular, actually reinforce them. Folsom mentions that when creating a database one has to create very “particular” categories in order for the computer or a program to understand the data. The degree of specificity and rigidity required for some programs actually makes matters more even more complicated and problematic. Weingart, in his article on networks, discusses how these requirements create “artificial” categories that do not account for more complex or even uncategorizable data. Folsom uses Whitman to discuss this issue, and in particular, the problem of assigning his works a singular genre. Also, the fact that data is put online does not change the fact that categories are a product of the person creating them, even if the computer might process the data differently.

Narrative vs. Database

Folsom also discusses the supposed opposition between narrative and database. A database, he argues, does not inherently construct a narrative because its form allows for a non-sequential way of ordering information. An archive or a book must use narrative or some ordering mechanism to organize data for the reader. However, while data does not always or necessarily construct a narrative, data does often tell a story. One reason for this is that we decide what data to put into a database, which is not random; that is, the data is curated to some degree. Also, narrative is an important and useful way to make sense of data, especially if the data is presented to an audience. In addition, narrative is a very effective way to communicate the information that the database provides.

Advantages of Databases

Databases, particularly those with large amounts of data, allow scholars to collect diverse data and put it in one place and to find connections that might have been hidden. Another advantage of databases is that they permit people to create their own narratives and categories, whereas genre or other forms of categorization frame readership prior to the encounter with a text or texts.

Side note: I also think there is a difference between narrative(s) and a grand narrative. I look forward to discussing this in class!

Thinking about classification

“Under these different theoretical regimens, questions were asked that were almost always the same but were given each time a different solution: the possibility of classifying living beings – some like, Linnaeus, holding that all of nature can be accommodated within a taxonomy, others like Buffon, holding that it is too rich and various to be fitted within so rigid a framework” (Foucault 137). This quote seemed particularly relevant to visualization and the use of digital tools in that when using different programs we are often asked to create categories and classification systems in order for the program to function properly. Even creating the CSV file for my project, I found myself creating somewhat artificial categories for the data. What happens to the data when we create systems of classification? Is there a sense in which the categories do not always fit? Foucault summarizes the tension between what can be classified and the unclassifiable rather well. I also wonder what is the meaning behind choosing specific categories? Another work that forms an interesting counterpoint to Foucault, is “Naming and Knowing: The Global Politics of 18th-century Botanical Nomenclature” by Londa Scheibinger. Scheibinger asks not only what is at stake when one classifies something, but also when one names something. She also argues that the act of naming and classification is meaningful and highly political. For example, one issue I am dealing with in my project is when to call someone an author or a publisher. In the sixteenth century this division was not always so clear. What are ways that we can classify our data and still stay true to the material?

Thinking critically about maps – Zoe

Is mapping technology just a tool? This was a central question in many of the readings this week. Are mapping technologies, or indeed any other type of visualization technology, just tools? If they are how can we or how should we use them for our research? This question goes back to our initial debate about the role of intuition, and if these technologies are merely tools used by humanists to evaluate their research and whether they can ever replace human intuition or interpretation. As Bodenhamer usefully summarizes, “humanities GIS is a powerful tool…It aids but does not replace expert narrative: it finds patterns, facilitates comparisons, enhances perspective, and illustrates data…In this view, GIS provides geographical context and depth to an expert interpretation of the past” (Bodenhamer 28).

Benjamin discuss the ways in which history can become totalizing and mask individual experience. Similarly, Bodenhamer highlights the ways in which GIS is particularly suited for large data sets and the ways in which it is useful for recognizing patterns and creating overarching narratives. In this way, mapping technologies do not yet account for the role of the individual in history, and particularly individual experience. What are some ways that we can use maps or other tools to better capture or represent both individual and collective experience? Will there always be a tension between the general and particular or ‘total’ histories/narratives and individual histories/narratives?

Bodenhamer’s critique of GIS on page 23 identifies the core issues for humanists in using mapping technologies: how can humanists use these technologies to “represent the world as culture and not simply mapped locations?” (Bodenhamer 23). Below is an image of the thirteenth-century “Psalter World Map.” I believe the questions that we ask of this map are not and should not be any different than those we ask of modern maps or visualizations, namely how is this map a social construction and how does this map represent a particular perspective (social, political, economic, religious, ect..)? How does this map represent both individual and collective experiences of the world? Also, how can we think critically about this map, not just as a physical or objective space, or in Bodenhamer’s words “a physical environment stripped of its cultural assumptions” (16-17)? Perhaps we have become accustomed to think critically about a map from the past – why are we not as critical when we see a medieval history or world view plotted on a google map? Are there ways to portray the experiences and histories of the past accurately using modern technologies?

Zoe’s Post Week 3

This week I’m posting two examples of timelines:

British Library: http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/index.html

Metropolitan Museum of Art: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/?period=07&region=euwb#/Overview

These timelines use works of art, manuscripts, and objects to represent British medieval history. They are also examples of museums or libraries using their own collections for this purpose. On the museum/library side, how does the timeline make a collection ‘come to life?’ Is the timeline an effective tool for the museum or library? How do these work similarly or differently when taken into the physical space of the museum or library (see Lubar)?

These timelines seek to contextualize objects by showing relationships between objects, events, and people throughout time and in one visual schema. One major difference between the MET and BL timelines is the ability of the user to manipulate and create his or her own timeline(s). What affect does this have on the representation of history and the “spatial rhetoric” involved in the creation of multiple and individual histories?

The BL timeline, for example, allows the viewer to overlap different timelines according to his or her own interests. I overlapped politics with art and literature. What do you think of “overlapping” as a tool? Is there a “spacial rhetoric” to overlapping? What are the advantages/disadvantages of this type of spatial organization? The BL also privileges images in its timeline. How does this contrast with the MET timeline and what affect does it have on the viewer?

 

Week 3 Readings

The readings this week attempt to define what the “digital humanities” are and how they relate to the practice of humanistic scholarship. Are the digital humanities a discipline or a tool, or some combination of the two?  If the digital humanities constitute an academic discipline, then what are its sources – what “data” does it examine? Trevor Owens, in his article “Defining Data for Humanists” explores these issues, defining “data” according to three main categories “text, artifact, and information.” I found the idea of data being an “artifact” particularly useful, as it allows for a more fluid definition and interpretation of data and particularly data in the humanities. This approach to data also reflects the variety of data that is currently being studied in the humanities and they ways that data can be represented and visualized digitally. In my field for example, data has gone beyond the ‘text’ and has expanded to include many other facets of literary studies; for example: the material, commercial, and collaborative aspects of book production, text and image studies, geography and history (timelines and maps), and in depth paleographical and codicological of manuscripts. However, in this regard the digital humanities seem to be a set of tools more than a discipline.

Many of the authors discussed the collaborative nature of the digital humanities. The emphasis on collaboration made me think about the parallel ways in which printed books were produced in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (and indeed before that).  In this sense, I found the views presented in Digital_Humanities very generative and thought provoking. The readings also raised the question: who can practice the digital humanities? An author of a early printed book almost never physically printed, illustrated, or bound the book himself. This process is similar to the ways in which programmers or website designers ‘translate’ our texts or information to an audience using new technologies. How does the role of the intermediary affect the way we approach our data and how it is represented?

Some additional thoughts: The readings discuss the importance of curation – curating information, ideas, objects, and knowledge digitally. For my own research, I am particularly interested in layout (a part of curation and design) in terms of the commentary tradition and the relationship between text and image. One of the authors argues that in the past text was largely limited to the layout of page or to being bound in a book (although one might consider oral performance as not being bound by the page). On the web, text is not limited to any particular layout – or is it? Does a computer, a screen, an open internet window, a tablet, or a phone not work similarly to the book? Another interesting aspect of commentary is the aggregation, or the literal piling-up, of authors, texts, and ideas that gives knowledge the potential to constantly be transformed and given new life. Is the facebook wall or the comment section of the NY Times not part of the same practice? I post an image of a French commentary on Gratian’s Decretals (ca. 1280-1300) for your consideration:

French commentary on Gratian’s Decretals (ca.1280-1300) Paris. Metropolitan Museum of Art (accessed via artstor). 

Note the commentary surrounding the text, the image, and the color, size, and script of the text.

Readings Week 1

I found the articles useful for my thinking about the relationship between text and image, visual representation and information, and the display and production of knowledge in the medieval and Renaissance periods (my area of study). I also found them helpful for thinking about my project, particularly as I attempt to create and present knowledge from the past to a modern audience. I included an image of a page from a sixteenth-century printed edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy as a point of reference for some of my questions about the relationships stated above. Here are some of my questions: How does this visualization of Hell work as a “mode of knowledge production?” (Drucker 1). Is it the primary mode, and if so, in what ways do the secondary or tertiary modes help to visualize Dante’s text? What can these modes tell us about Renaissance views on about the function of images and visualization? How does “visual consumption” or perception differ from the process of reading a text – what can an image achieve that a text cannot?

Barbara Stafford discusses the idea that images require a certain visual literacy or “proficiency.” This raises questions about not only what an image conveys, but also how and why it conveys information in the way it does. Looking at the images of Hell, I would like to know why the artist chose to depict Hell in this way, why the birds-eye view? These questions could be helpful for thinking about how we choose to visualize our own information, and what information we choose to privilege.

One last thought: Drucker brings up the idea of the status of images and their “authority,” and particularly the authority of images in relation to text. The images of Hell, for example, are accompanied by text stating the precise measurements of each circle. Does the text or this “scientific information” help to give the images authority? More generally, how do the images/texts “mediate scientific knowledge?” (Drucker 1-2).

Hi, I’m Zoe!

Hi! I’m Zoe and I am a second year PhD student in the Italian Studies Department here at Brown. I am interested in medieval and Renaissance Italian literature and early vernacular texts in particular. My research combines literary studies with art history and linguistics.