The idea of Text is changing and has been for some time. The shift to digital should influence how we study text within the humanities. It is no longer the sole focus or central node of research. Text is experienced through different interfaces and placed within these interfaces by different programs. The decisions taken during the process of displaying text digitally are essentially a curation of data, what is being displayed, how is it arranged on the page, what interpretation is offered, what interface/program is used and how do we need to manipulate our text in order to fit into it?
I think this is an interesting question; do we change our text in order to create a digital representation of it? Or do we alter the programs we use to display it? Or a mixture of both?
I found the Manuscript Average fascinating. It highlighted the arrangement of text on the page and prompted questions of how this influences the way we read. I wonder how this would look if compared to a modern study? When I think about reading fiction I realise that today all of our novels are laid out in almost exactly in the same way. However, recently a small band of authors have moved to integrated text and image more closely, and of course graphic novels are experiencing a marked rise in popularity.
What does this mean for text in these cases when it enters a direct dialogue with image. How is this transformed within a digital context? Does an interface or program view it purely as an image? Or is it more?
This week I particularly enjoyed Ben Schmidt's blog post. Two things struck me initially; the beauty of some of the visualizations (the first image on the blog entry could potentially be an artwork, in my opinion) and the type of data being visualized, ship's logs are something that I had never imagined to be datasets.
That aside, what I really appreciated in the article was his idea that we need to reinvent the way historians do history. I think he is right in some respects, we automatically use the toolkit available to us, our tried and tested ways of doing things, and in this case our tools work for print media. But there are additional requirements in digital visualizations. His first step, 'a source criticism that explains what's in the data' harks back to our discussions last week regarding the objectivity of data used to build timelines, and I think the same holds here. We, as viewers, automatically trust maps, as we do timelines. But with the proliferation of geographical visualizations (Yau mentions that the New York Times has a specific team dedicated to this, p.271) we should be thinking more deeply about the data behind them, where it comes from, how it was constructed, how (if) it has been altered, and any unintentional biases that may be embedded in its construct.
Just as Pascal Gielen used Bakhtin's theory of chronopoty to make the case for the inclusion of multiple temporal narratives in the museum exhibition, Bodenhamer highlights the individual and collective experiences in geography and history. I was attracted by his idea of layering data in order to create a 'deep map' of the cultural heritage and memory of a specific location (p.27). Our Town Stories (Edinburgh) is one of Scotland's best examples of projects like this.
It uses a map as its underlying structure, different types of marker on the map indicate the type of data attributed to that point – historic photographs, maps, or text. The photographs superimpose the old upon the new, and allow you to control how much of each you see. By adding further layers to this such as oral histories, letters or paintings, it has the potential to capture a collective memory of Edinburgh whilst drawing comparisons with the modern city.
As a museum type person I found one common theme in the readings to be of particular interest. That was that many writers recognised that the increase in popularity of visualisations in the digital humanities necessitated that scholars old and new be taught how to 'read' and 'write' them (Burdick, 10). This awareness can be seen throughout the readings with Jessop and Foster suggesting that 'reading' visualisations should be taught in classrooms as a component of the core curriculum (Jessop, 288) (Foster, 32). I think that this is of vital importance. If we are to utilise such tools successfully in museums or academia we must ensure that they are accessible and understandable.
In addition to this we might also think about how new approaches or tools in the digital humanities may be received by wider audiences. I found the idea of 'distant reading' to be intriguing but it seems from this article printed in The New York Times in June 2011 that not everyone is convinced.
I think this neatly demonstrates the need not only to teach the public how to 'read' these tools but to explain their potential in a meaningful way, perhaps through real-world examples. This could even serve to involve more people in the digital humanities, making collaborations such as those described by Sprio and the Young Researchers in Digital Humanities manifesto possible.
Reading this combination of articles made me consider the very nature of the data that we attempt to visualize. In her writings Drucker draws attention to the difference between data and information. Data is the raw product of statistical analysis whereas interpretation(more commonly used within the realm of the humanities) has inherently undergone a process of interpretation (Drucker, 10). Can we therefore use the same visualization methods used in the sciences for the humanities?
It was also made clear that we must understand exactly what we are visualizing and why we are visualizing it. By doing this from the beginning we are more equipped to present data/information to audiences in a meaningful way. And as Stafford says it is our responsibility to ensure that the public have the tools to understand our visualizations (Stafford, 462). A possible method for accomplishing this, as Yau suggests, is to approach each visualization as a story, one that must have a narrative (Yau, 35).
By looking at the forms graphical representations have taken in the past Drucker highlights the array of techniques that can and have been used ( Drucker, 21), and points towards an abundance of possibilities in the future. The availability of free open source software has increased the use of visualization in the humanities and places the responsibility of ensuring that it is correct, effective and useful firmly on the visualizers shoulders.
The Ben Jonson project is an example of a initiative that placed digital at its centre from the outset. In 2009 the journal of poet and dramatist Ben Jonson was discovered in the Cheshire Archives. It recorded his 400 mile walk from London to Edinburgh. The University of Nottingham and the University of Edinburgh collaborated in creating an interactive project to bring this insight into 17th Century life to the public. They created a WordPress blog and tweeted his journey in real time, linking to photographs of his whereabouts and typed excerpts from his journal. This is a successful endeavor, but I wonder how visualization (in addition to the interactive map) could assist in achieving their objective.