Several of the pieces we’ve read this week–especially Drucker’s, Cottom’s, and Guiliano/Heitman’s–ask questions about the objectivity of “data” and its role in cultural analyses and narratives. These pieces made me think of a “golden oldie” of cultural theory, The Order of Things by the French poststructuralist thinker Michel Foucault, an enormously influential theory of how the West has constructed its own “ways of knowing” by obscuring the contingencies of certain knowledge and projecting a fantasy of a pure, objective knowledge.

The book begins with, you guessed it, a riff on Borges. Here is the first page more or less in full:

The point, of course, is not the obvious and chauvenistic one: what a zany people those Chinese are!? The point, rather, is more like “what must our Encyclopedias look like to the Other? How are our regimes that make “data” and its analysis seem so transparent and objective equally absurd and humorous and continent when looking in from the outside?

Note: Due to the storm last Thursday, I was unable to post prior to class on 9/23 so I am combining thoughts from the last two weeks of reading.

I went into the section of the curriculum about mapping very nervous about what I could produce and how I could use any available software. In short, I did not think my skillset lent itself well to this project. The article on Finding the Right Tools for Mapping really helped me narrow down my selection and I was ultimately able to download Tableau. I have not actually mapped anything yet so let’s see how that goes.

With respect to mapping, coincidentally, I had two recent experiences prior to reading the section that indicated how little thought I put into reading maps. While conversing with a friend of mine who hails from Ireland, I was surprised and confused to learn that Ireland, a nation I had viewed on maps for decades, was both smaller than the state of Indiana in both geographic square footage and population. Then, on a recent trip to St. Lucia for my friend’s wedding, my first venture into the Caribbean, I was surprised to hear a gentleman state that the population of the nation-island was about 180,000. I immediately thought I misheard, and he must have been referring to the population of the capital or something. I was wrong. Upon hearing both pieces of information, I thought, “How is this possible?” Though I cannot confirm this with 100% certainty, I always felt like the size of those two countries on maps were not appropriately proportioned to the larger countries. In fact, I didn’t even know Ireland was small country – in geographic area or population. Based on the reading, it’s clear I did not understand the concept of distortion—namely scale and projection. This begs the question for me of what purpose a map serves.

Should maps carry representations of sovereignty? Of course, I think, if that is the purpose of the map. If one is strictly looking for directions from point A to B or analyzing international scale, I doubt sovereignty is of much importance at that time.  The utility of maps as it relates to sovereignty, however, does not devalue the importance of how sovereignty can be represented on maps. The truth is, sovereignty is not one of the common reasons people look at maps. And, more often than not, folks incorrectly presume the borders and boundaries that enclose nations on maps represent some level of sovereignty.

Moving on the data visualization section, I was optimistic that the readings would resonate more with me as a mathematician. After reading all articles for this section, I felt educated, but not entertained. For me, the balance between education and entertainment is important as it relates to engagement with the subject matter. The academic space seems to take the fun out of data viz. Without question, there are important social issues to address via data viz, but exclusively doing that narrows the reach of the field and can make it less appealing to the layperson. With that said, what purpose does the value of data viz truly serve if it only appeals to those who are already thoroughly familiar with its use and function? Strictly focusing on social science or humanities matters creates and insular and exclusive data viz community of similarly minded individuals who are already aware of the powers of the visualizations. This seems to limit the potential exposure of these concepts to broader audiences.

My earliest experiences with large data sets and their representations started in high school when I was taking AP statistics and had to create several projects. At the time, I was heavily interested in sports statistics, box office grosses, and billboard sales—none of which hold any significant social capital. Through these avenues, I began to memorize, cross-reference, compare, and visualize different sets of data related to batting averages, opening weekend grosses, and first week album sales that I remember to this day. Nothing about those experiences felt academic and I knew of no data viz jargon (as it likely did not exist at the time), but the same concepts of reduction and spatial variables resonated with me then—even if I didn’t know it at the time. Reading these definitions, in many ways, erodes the experience as it takes it from something interesting and fun to something pedantic and stuffy. In my opinion, it should be clear that the applications of the digital humanities concepts that are discussed transcend the academic landscape.

We’ll talk about the theory and practice of mapping extensively today, and we’ll look at some really compelling examples to guide us. I thought, however, that focusing exclusively on “industrial-grade” projects undertaken by teams of seasoned researchers (and sometimes teams of programmers and cartographers) might produce anxiety and give a false sense of our goals for this project.

So I’m linking to a few prior projects (from 2020). What’s valuable here is that each post includes a link or image of a finished map as well as a reflection on the process/product. This combination has several benefits for us:

• we can see what we’re aiming at in terms of ambition and scale in the actual object we’re buildling
• through the reflections, we can grasp why the student chose the platform and approach they worked with
• likewise, we learn what kinds of work/expertise were involved (some refer to prior knowledge of JavaScript, for example, whereas others state plainly that they wanted a simple tool)
• perhaps most important, we learn about false starts, dead ends, detours, and failures
• finally, we have some good models of how to write the blog post itself, which is part of the assignment.

With no further ado, here are a few examples:

• Allison Daugila’s map of yoga studios pre-covid: very simple and effective mapping in the wake of the economic impact of the pandemic.
• Brianna Caszatt’s map of cemeteries in Brooklyn and Queens: plays with some of the “grammar” of maps explored in the “How to Lie” piece.
• Patricia Belen’s map of the nationalities of non-American artists at MoMA: interesting example of mapping something that’s often not obviously geographical in nature.
• Freddy Castro’s map (related to Daugila’s above) of the pre-Covid restaurant landscape of NYC
• Elena Abou Mrad’s visualization of the topography of Langston Hughes’s depiction of Sugar Hill in the poem “Harlem Sweeties.” This interplay between the territorial and the fictive/poetic is a rich vein to explore!
• Phil Agee’s “timeline experiment”: especially valuable for his thinking about process.
• Maggi Delgado’s memoirish map of her family’s migration from the Dominican Republic to the US. Great example of how static maps and mobile itineraries might come together.

Reading for class this week, I kept thinking of the wonderful story fragment “On Exactitude in Science” by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. In that story, Borges creates a made-up “discovered” text written by a made-up author from the 17th century reviewing the goings-on of a fictional and unnamed Empire. With me so far? The text describes the cartographic mania of that society that culminates in a map of the Empire at a scale of 1:1. We’ll talk about this at the beginning of class, but here’s the short story/fragment in full:

On Exactitude in Science
… In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
Suárez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lérida, 1658

Borges, J. L. 1998. On exactitude in science. P. 325, In, Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions (Trans. Hurley, H.) Penguin Books.

DH seems like a young discipline. Not in that it hasn’t existed for decades but in that it is now being interrogated and institutionalized in ways it hasn’t before. What interests me most about DH is that for such a young discipline, it is grappling with centuries of criticism while it produces materials and scholarship. DH feel like a very self-conscious discipline. As a new(ish) field still carving out its values and purpose, it is inheriting centuries of criticism and self-reflection done by all other disciplines throughout history. This is good! Being self-conscious, or conscious of its self, does not mean that it is filled with insecure and anxious scholars but rather with people who are forced to interrogate themselves and their world-views, their perspectives, their creations, intentions and their impact in ways that haven’t been done so early before. As Spiro, in “This is Why We Fight:’ Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities,” tell us, DH occupies a place where it is “publicly visible in ways to which we are generally unaccustomed, a scholarship and pedagogy that are bound up with infrastructure in ways that are deeper and more explicit than we are generally accustomed to, a scholarship and pedagogy that are collaborative and depend on networks of people and that live an active, 24-7 life online” (Spiro, 2012).

Another interesting avenue to explore are the flaws in DH: a lack of attention to issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality; a preference for research-driven projects over pedagogical ones; an absence of political commitment; an inadequate level of diversity among its practitioners; an inability to address texts under copyright; and an institutional concentration in well-funded research universities (Gold, 2012). The issues in DH scholarship are not new. These are seemingly ancient problems that any and all scholarship have and will have to deal with. The fact that Digital Humanist are making conscious efforts to interrogate these so early in their development and institutionalization means that, though it will take longer to get to a place where DH will be taken by all academies as also a purely academic discipline, and thus guaranteeing a seat at the tenue table of security and freedom for scholars and builders in institutions, it will no doubt be a richer discipline.

Beginning with learning about, unlearning from and transforming (or decolonizing) the harsh systems in place that limit the lives of people and rob the potential genius of people systematically trapped in under-resourced, marginalized and actively oppressed and disenfranchised communities, addressing these specific communities and focusing on justice, equity and access to DH will inevitably benefit the field like is hasn’t any other before. DH is an experiment in what intentionality can look like in our current world, exactly as it is. DH has much work ahead of itself and much more benefits to deserve.

• To what extent do these sites/projects reflect issues discussed in our readings?

An example of the intentionality of digital humanist to be self-reflective and dedicated to transparency is present in The Early Caribbean Digital Archive site’s description of itself and the materials within. “The materials in the archive are primarily authored and published by Europeans, but the ECDA aims to use digital tools to “remix” the archive and foreground the centrality and creativity of enslaved and free African, Afro-creole, and Indigenous peoples in the Caribbean world.” The “about” section clearly outlines the goals, which are not only to make more accessible the literary history of the Caribbean, but also to implore users–“both scholars of the Caribbean as well as students–to understand the colonial nature of the archive and to use the digital archive as a site of revision and remix for exploring ways to decolonize the archive” (ECDA). This collaborative, transparent and experimental aspect of the digital archives reflects the intentionality of inclusion and openness value of exchange.

(Apologies for the super tardy first blog post. I am still handling the post-storm issues. I shall be fully back on track by next week.)

The multidisciplinary submissions including reviews on audio projects
found in Reviews in DH demonstrates a form of this expanded field
that is based off of art historian, Rosalind Krauss’ comparison
to “expanded sculpture”. It is a collection of reviews assembled like sculpture. Similar to the “big tent” metaphor,
the Digital Humanities refers to an expanded definition of academia and
scholarship. In contributing reviews to the arts and niches such
as sound/audio art, the review already appears to be successful in
broadening the public’s understanding of both
the arts and the cultural contexts in which they are placed.

While this periodical centers its content around various projects in DH, it
retains the format of a scholastic journal of reviews and is tied by
a quarterly theme — the theme of the latest publication being sound and audio art and/or work.
This seems to me to fall in line with some sort of model that DH critics are asking for.
Meanwhile, the publication offers a home to a wealth of digital humanity projects out there,
and the reviews themselves, like the one reviewing the DH project, “.break.dance”, is a
beautifully poetic, (although somewhat dense in references) piece describing a very
electric, ever-transforming art.

The first sentence of the review was in a way defining in itself for me of art and the humanities. —
“Form is content in .break.dance, and that form is intentionally errant,
to use Edouard Glissant’s term for intentional acts of wandering that are
retrospectively revelatory of the self and its relations” (Proctor, Brittnay L. Review: .break.dance).

Together with this act of wandering and transforming into varying art forms
that question conventional forms of communication and translation, so too the author’s “meditation on the distance between sound and image. The group of projects reviewed by Reviews in DH exemplifies the growing relationship of the humanities towards and with the digital.

Lauren F. Klein and Matthew K. Gold point out that the expanded field of DH includes several project types, methods, and practices. Their description stands true when centering the project/site “Torn Apart/Separados” to define DH, wherein several methods and practices are applied. The project also embraces Stephan Ramsay’s definition of DH, which he argues, must entail “building things.” While Ramsay strays from his original description that specifically called for the use of coding as a critical element in DH work, ultimately choosing the more general term, “building,” “Torn Apart/Separados” is heavily coding based, fitting either of Ramsey’s descriptions. Using “Torn Apart/Separados” as the primary descriptor of DH implies that DH is characterized by interactive and visual elements that are bound to data, information design, tool-building, collaboration, and other methods with an overarching theme of scholarly activism.

Upon entering the site, users are greeted with a brief project description, clearly outlining the “mission” of the project — to expand awareness on “culpability behind the humanitarian crisis of 2018.” The project reveals politicians and the various sectors that help sustain ICE, thus contributing to the humanitarian crisis. Additionally, the “Allies” page, strategically placed after the interactive, informational, and reflection pages of the site, establishes a sense of influence to take action against this humanitarian issue (activism). In doing so, the project touches on the theme of scholarly activism — an important characterization of DH if we are using this project to define the field.

The context of the “Allies” page and the information revealed in the interactive and descriptive pages of the project serve as a tool to users. The design of the site suggests users should explore the pages in the order presented at the top menu: Visualizations, Textures, Reflections, then Allies. This order first presents data and informs users of the project’s topic (Visualizations and Textures), then appeals to their emotions (Reflections), and finally alludes to some form of action in presenting contact details of organizations working to aid victims of the humanitarian crisis (Allies), where the users can use the information presented in previous pages of the project to take action. The tool-building component becomes an important element of DH work when centering this project to define DH.

The project’s interactive elements are the focal point, consuming most of the webpage space and revealing data on user actions such as hover or click. While most, if not all, digital projects – DH or other field – have elements of interactivity, this project reveals structured data and information that follows the scholarly activism theme to expand awareness on the project topic. Binding information and data to these interactive elements and applying design choices to make these interactive elements the focal point of the interface suggests that they too become a definitive factor of the project (and DH).

The project, as outlined in the “credits” page, was a collaborative effort of several team members and contributors. Additionally, the team behind the project called for reflections on the project from other scholars. These reflections are linked in the “credits” page, allowing users to review them – establishing a sense of transparency and applying, again, collaborative approaches to the project. The obvious and subtle efforts of collaboration throughout the project indicate that collaboration is a significant element of DH work.

One of the most prominent aspects of Digital Humanities is its connectedness and fluidity in multiple social science and humanities-based disciplines. The fusion of digital tools and humanities research optimizes the approach and availability of graduate and scholarly-level projects for the public. It expands the accessibility of knowledge by being available as an open resource in a digital space. Many digital humanities projects invite collaboration which further the conversations that often related to projects connected to activism, awareness, decolonization, and so on.

One such example of a digital humanities project is the Colored Conventions Project (CCP). This project is based on the history of colored conventions that occurred throughout the early to mid 1800s as political organizations that strategized for racial justice. The project acts as not only an archive of digital records but provides exhibits and teaching materials to learn about this history, as well as collaborative projects with artists and other educational institutions to further their outreach of educating the masses of the underrepresented history.

Based on the readings, digital humanists often have conflicting theories and understandings of what it means to be a digital humanist. In “The Digital Humanities Moment by Matthew K Gold, Gold quotes Stephan Ramsay who posits that digital humanists must know how to code and that “if you are not making anything, you are not… a digital humanist.” Gold argues that other digital humanists disagree in that one doesn’t need to build the tools but utilize the tools to share humanities research on a digital plane. CCP is an example of a digital humanities sites that takes advantage of those tools, such as Omeka, Piktochart and Google Maps.

The CCP offers a site for educators by providing resources for professors and exhibits they can share with their class that are created using the previously stated digital tools. What is unique about this project is how they not only tell this history, but also strongly use the movement’s social justice beliefs within their team and formation of the CCP. Not only are they expanding the American history dialogue of underrepresented populations, but being a source of predominantly Black woman who have for so long not had the access to a proliferate organization focused on advocacy for Black lives.

Again, digital humanists can argue over whether the CCP is a digital humanities project on the notion that the aim of this is heavily geared towards educators. Some digital humanists as Gold pointed out, expect accessibility to be public facing. Due to the specificity of the topic of CCP, this site would not be stumbled upon by the average public-facing person, but is specifically designed to be provided to educational professors and academics. It also comes across as a history or virtual museum, which some digital humanists might point out that it is too focused or not welcoming of utilizing various fields. This come from the Big Tent theory, where DH should have non-central relations, whereas I feel CCP starts with a central field and has been influenced by digital tools that portray digital humanities. What this does offer to the evolution of digital humanities is the fight against the diversity issues that were once “ills” amongst DH, by supporting Black voices by Black voices.