Excellent points about some election sites!  I’m an NPR junkie, and I poke around their site quite a bit.  While I certainly read their articles, one of my favorite toys to play with is their interactive, Web 2.0-ey map here: http://www.npr.org/news/specials/election2008/2008-election-map.html#/president-nprOvM/

It provides a pretty map with different states marked red, blue, yellow or shades thereof, with access to the polls and the ability for the savvy viewer to make changes to their version of the map to determine electoral counts and potential election turnouts.  I think it’s great fun.  Clicking on the states also allows you to see recent articles focusing on the election in that state, and there are options to look at the last two presidential elections and see similar information.

Real Clear Politics (RCP) also has a similar map that gives great access to the polling numbers they use to make their predictions: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/maps/obama_vs_mccain/?map=5

One interesting thing in comparing the two maps is that NPR has Virginia as a “Toss Up” state, while RCP has Virginia as “Leaning Obama”.  Interesting to see how the same statistics are interpreted by different people.

This tool is needed to fill a gap in the means of understanding social history and the concurrent effects of multiple events throughout time.  It will allow users to visualize the passage of time and better understand the context within which a historical event or movement occurred.  This tool provides a method to search for pertinent data as determined by date and tag.  It allows for user-determined filtering of event types based on tags and/or categories, thereby allowing the researcher to narrow their search to find the most effective method of contextualizing data.  This tool can be used on a large scale, but will be most effective in building a thorough understanding of events over a shorter period of time.

The primary audience for this tool will be academic researchers, who will use this as an additional method of searching through and understanding scholarly archives.  The audience may change somewhat based on the particular archive with which the tool is used, so it may be pertinent to a high school, undergraduate, graduate or professional community.  It may also have uses as a historiography tool.

This software powering this tool will be written in a LAMP environment; Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/perl.  PHP and/or perl will be used for the structural elements, and MySQL will provide the initial test database, though the intention is for the project to be expanded to work as a plug-in for multiple databases.  It will also utilize AJAX for pulling the records from the database, and will probably rely on JSON data types rather than XML to save on space and to provide clarity and simplicity to the code.  Most of these decisions are based on utilizing open source tools, and the completed project will be licensed under the GPL, providing an open code source to allow multiple entities to use the tool and modify it to work for their needs.

Timeline users will have full control over the display they receive; they will choose the tags they are interested in seeing, note whether these tags should be displayed in one timeline or in separate timelines, and choose the range of dates in which they would like to search.  Some archives may also allow users to tag archived entries in real time, but that option would depend on the policy of the individual archives.

Via Sourceforge:

• Timeline: the link goes to the example page.  From their website: “timeline is a script that inputs a source file and transforms it in a graphic timeline in many formats (html, ps, png, etc). Only html is implemented by now.”
• Timeline Creator in Flex 2 (La Ligne du Temps): I can’t offer a description from their website, as it is in French.  Nonetheless from the look of the screenshots this is a fairly advanced program that allows a user to create sophisticated timelines in a standalone program.

These two projects are the closest I could find to my own idea, and both of them are sufficiently different.  The first is probably the closest to what I’m interested in, and with it’s fairly simple source file could easily be converted to read from a database.  It also draws the data in html, which is a good start to putting it online.  Right now, however, it’s very static.  It doesn’t have a method to pull specific information from a database; it doesn’t have a way for the user to configure which timelines to view on the fly; it doesn’t have any kind of AJAX plugin that would return the information requested by the user.

The second looks like a great program, but is a standalone program not running on the web, or with the capacity to serve as a front-end to an archive database.  Still, the designers have obviously thought through a lot of the features they offer, and it’s probably worthwhile to pay attention to their functionality.

Art related:

• Picasso timeline: Non-interactive, hard to read and, dare I say, ugly?
• About Pablo Picasso Timeline: This is a much more organized chronological timeline that is similar to what you might see in the back of a retrospective catalog.  It incorporates some pictures, and even a few links to artwork that appear in a separate window.  This is definitely the sort of idea that I want to capture and improve upon.

This is hardly an exhaustive search of timelines, timeline software, etc.  If you have any that you particularly like, please let me know so I can take a look!

So there I was in class, making notes about my project idea.  I began to think about the specific kinds of data I would want to include on my non-artist timeline, and to be concerned about the decisions I would make in regards to that.  I mean, there would obviously be a lot of stuff out there, and I would be making some methodologic choices about what to include.  Perhaps, I thought, I could have more than one “history” (as opposed to artist) timeline, each with a different sort of information: politics, local events, world events, literature, theatre, other artists… anyway, quickly I realized that I had a gazillion timelines and way too much work and data.

So, since this corresponded roughly to what we were discussing on Monday, I began thinking about audience participation.  I initially hadn’t planned for much, but what were the roles that an audience could play?  If there really were a multiplicity of timelines they could certainly have some options for which ones they wanted displayed.  Perhaps they could suggest other timelines, but I didn’t really think this project would have a lot of value added if the users could make their own timelines.  Maybe… moderated input?

The other thing I began to realize, though, is that if I wanted to be in any way thorough (which is to say, reach out to an audience beyond the amateur enthusiasts to make this genuinely useful to academics), I was basically just describing what might be a useful front-end to an archive.  And that’s when I had a conceptual shift, of sorts… these multiple timelines could actually just be based on tags.  So, say, an archive of a newpaper article might be tagged “world”, “colonial”, “london”, “africa”, etc.  And so perhaps you could have a timeline based on every available tag category.

That’s when I realized that what I needed to be focused on was not the specific use for this tool, but the tool itself.  This is something that could be easily ported to different databases… all it would require would be a tag or category, a date and/or title, and a piece of data.  There could be an easy user interface that would allow the visitor to choose the timelines they wanted to look at, manipulate the amount of time covered, and go from there.  They could compare and contrast multiple timelines and have a greater sense of contextualization for specific time periods.

I’m not sure if I’m describing this well, but it seemed like a pretty cool idea to me.  Tune in for the next post to see if someone else has done it first…

My thoughts about my project shifted considerably sometime during the last 10 minutes of class on Monday. Prior to that, I had a plan (and one I wasn’t too excited about), to plan for a timeline project on an artist, probably Picasso, or possibly a small group of artists, maybe Picasso and Braque or Der Blaue Reiter. What I wanted was two fairly simple vertical lines on the left half of the page. One of the lines would represent the direct output of the artist(s), so it would reference letters, visits, artistic production, etc. The other line would represent more of a documentary social history of the time, so it would include things like politics, world and local events, etc. When an event/date was rolled over it would give a one-line synopsis of what it included, and when clicked on the timeline, it would use an AJAX call to bring up a document (which could include pictures or text) on the right-hand side of the page.

Essentially, I was thinking it would be sort of the online equivalent to this: Shakespeare: The Life, The Work, The Treasures, a coffee-table style book that provides history of Shakespeare and his time and includes neat little cut-out reproductions of letters written, wills and other historic documents.

I was a little uncertain about audience, though.  Would it be only for amateur enthusiasts?  Maybe, but I also thought I saw some value for social art historians, by visually contextualizing primary sources.  I was wrestling with this when I had my Better Idea For A Project.  I’ll get to that in my next post…

I was planning to post (and will, in a minute) about my project while printing out some articles for another class. When I first tried to print them, a couple of pages came out and then my printer made a sad face and said it was out of black ink. I ran to the store and bought some black ink.

After installing the new cartridge, my printer then told me it was out of cyan ink. That’s weird, because the documents that I had been printing earlier were only blank and white (and I had selected the “Black Ink Only” option) and it wasn’t out of cyan ink before I started printing. Oh well, I still only need to print in black and white. Except the printer won’t print anything while it needs ink. Any kind. So even though the black ink is now full and I have again selected the “Black Ink Only” option, the printer refuses to budge.

I would just like to note that I am used to using a laser printer, but as I have yet to receive my household goods from my recent Hawaii move, I have had to resort to using this piece of junk. I really hope my laser printer gets here soon!

In my first blog post I addressed the concern of seeing artworks online, and I still stand by that.  Although many art history scholars (especially in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century) worked from black and white photographs, and even today some scholarship is done that way, it seems counterintuitive to try and attempt a thorough study of art by looking at your computer screen.

This seems to be one material way that art history differs from conventional history in the approach of new media.  I imagine that many of the primary sources for history can be digitized (though I’m sure this depends on the source in question) without being negatively affected, but the most primary source for art history, the artwork itself, can only be reproduced in a way not all that different than photography.

I’ve been trying to think of some way to get around this, and the best I’ve come up with are super-high resolution scans and high-res monitors or even video goggles. Other primary sources relating to art history as well as secondary sources can be digitized as well, but I feel like this isn’t addressing the biggest issue in taking art history to the web.

Any thoughts? Should I be less focused on this problem and more on the other ways that art historical scholarship can be advanced through digital technology?

-Marcella

The Honolulu Academy of Arts is probably the premier art museum in Hawaii. Which is to say it is the only general art museum, with a varied collection that ranges from prehistorical through modern art. There website, in the most complimentary of ways, reflects this wide range of subject matter through a very busy front page. The central panel is dedicated to information on a current exhibit, but both the left and right side panels hold a variety of ad-like boxes describing different things. In addition, the the navigation bar at the top holds drop-down menus that lead to an amazing array of different areas. Navigation is not simplistic, and while a variety of audiences may be targeted with this approach, it is discomforting to a casual visitor looking for basic information about the museum.

I might further posit that the website does not give a good sense of what the museum is about, or convey the actual experience of visiting in any way. In fact, the actual museum is beautiful and peaceful, with a non-linear path through the exhibits in large high-ceilinged galleries and courtyards filled with fountains. The color scheme may be an attempt at simplicity, but it ends up being a little boring with few other visual elements to add context or visual stimulation.

The second website is for another museum in Hawaii, but one that is smaller and much more of a niche art museum: The Contemporary Museum of Hawaii. I find this website to be much more visually approachable, with a panoramic picture of the museum at the top of the page, a small navigation bar and a good contrast of white space and a darker gray background. The boxes in the picture at the top provide both a neat visual effect as well as additional navigation when rolled over, though the latter is less obvious than it could be. One of my main critiques is that on my laptop, I have to scroll down to get access to most of the links on the right-hand side, including directions, information about the cafe, etc. On a positive note, however, the museum has a good introductory blurb which provides just the right level of information to a casual visitor.

Both of these websites fall under the organizational genre, and neither of them seem to cross that boundary much, which is a little disappointing. Although the Academy has digitized some of the work in their collection, it is in very small, un-helpful digital forms that are really unappealing. I can’t imagine that it would be of any interest to any audience I can conceive of in it’s present state. The Contemporary Museum also has a small online collection that is not at all representative of the number of incredible artworks in its permanent collection, but is slightly more visually pleasing.

Manovich certainly has his own sense of drama.  For example, on p. 22 he suggests that computers and photography have both been necessary to the evolution of modern mass culture as a means of “assuring the same ideological beliefs.”  This idea seems like a possibility to me in some ways.  After all, I think a convincing argument can be made for visual media as a catalyst for public opinion in a multitude of situations.  Manovich goes on, though, to say that movie theaters during the early twentieth century were necessary as “routine survival technique[s]” as people of the day were overwhelmed by the “dense information environment outside the theatre.”  (p. 23)  I have to ask, was life really just too much to handle without movies?

I think my favorite example thus far of Manovich’s tendency toward drama was his description and the conclusions he drew from the use of discarded 35mm film as an early computer punchcard on p. 25.  His description of this event as an “Oedipal complex” seemed thorough hyperbole.

This being said, I found that even in the seven years since this text was published several of Manovich’s ideas have played out in a way similar to that which he envisioned.  The non-hierarchical architecture of the web has been reinforced by the current best practice techniques of separating content and markup (html) from style (CSS) and function (ajax, javascript, etc.).  The current proliferation of Google-styled advertisements that target the user based on search queries again reinforces the ideas Manovich suggests on p. 42.  There are other technologies that I’m less certain about the current state of, though.  Do lossy forms of file compression still dominate?

On p. 42 Manovich suggests that new media which allows for multiple approaches and an experience designed by the user is “trying to convince us that we are all unique.”  I wonder, though, if the new media is pushing this drive toward unique experiences, or if our own desire to be unique is the driving force behind the development of this type of media experience.

There were two other parts to this first chapter that I found compelling and interesting to consider.  On p. 49 and then pp. 52-54 Manovich discusses the common discomfort with the transition from analog to digital technologies and the loss of data this entails.  Manovich concludes that “in reality this difference does not matter” due to the inability of humans to perceive the difference.  Although probably true, I am still left with a feeling of unease that we will, in this process, lose something important.  Perhaps the problem is more of a philosophical one–no matter how small the units are, the overall technique still involves sampling and reinterpreting rather than a holistic assessment.

Finally, I found Manovich’s conclusion to chapter 1 to be a fascinating idea that I had never previously considered.  As he says on p. 61, “Interactive media asks us to identify with someone else’s mental structure.”  As a previous designer of interactive systems, I can testify that the goal is to try and make the system as intuitive to others as possible, so maybe a more accurate description would be that it asks us to identify with someone else’s mental structure tempered by the attempt to understand the mental process of others.  Some food for thought.

Well, I doubt that anyone will actually read this much babbling, and if you do please leave a comment and let me know what you think about some of these ideas!  For now, I’m off to chapter 2.