Blog Post # 1- Beyond Two Cultures

I’m not sure how much I buy in to the idea of two cultures. On the one hand it feels like a limiting stereotype that gets manifested, (like girls are better at English than Math) but on the other hand I do know that certain fields are definitely more comfortable for me as a learner and practitioner- I love using drawing & photo apps, but have no deep desire to make them!

I guess the areas where I cross over are in some of the methods I use in my art practice- where my main area of focus has been visual representation of narrative. The work has taken the forms of paintings, installations and books, which are based on various methods of text/data visualization. Much of my work is based on mapping – using the visual symbol language of cartography to house narrative. Time, experience and other ephemera get situated in maps, charts, lists- forms we read as “true” or “scientific”- adapting a quantitative schema to track the qualitative. I’m also interested in narrative beyond a purely text-based, linear form, and how different visualizations of text can suggest different readings.

I teach mostly studio painting and drawing classes, and I would say that the art students sometimes do see a distance between art making and Science/Math. We use mathematical concepts in drawing- scale, perspective and of course in color mixing in painting, but I often hear groans when we use a simple grid method for enlargement. I think the connection to digital humanities can be introduced as a more conceptual strategy-what methods of DH tools, like analysis and visualization, can be brought in as ideas for art works? How can we use the existing DH tools for research and information to make a painting- like using photo archives? How are artists manipulating technology for their work? How can we use the devices that are using us?

It feels more difficult to think about incorporating DH into studio-based classes, but I think assignments can be built around students using them as research tools, which would at the very least expose them to existing resources and how they can be used.

Visualization of 21 Emotions For Which There Are No English Equivalent

I loved this. I think it would be really useful with our students, who might have words of their own to add.

"Pei-Ying Lin solicited the list of "unspeakable" words from colleagues at London's Royal College of Art, and found that their definitions in English usually came down to something like, 'it is a kind of (emotion A), close to (emotion B), and somehow between (emotion C) and (emotion D).'"

The full article and map here

Brainstorming a DH project

Of the techniques/sites we looked at today, the ones that seem most interesting to me are the ones that deal with textual analysis and the ones that use mapping technology.

I think using Ngram or voyant to analyze student artifacts could be something very useful and engaging, and then they can maybe take some of the words and apply them to a studio drawing/painting. Last semester we talked about self portraits and I had students do surveillance of themselves- track one aspect of their daily activity- and then they used that data for a data visualized self portrait.

The other one I would be interested in playing around with would be using annotations on Google Earth. I think in a class like Intro to Art or Art & Society we could used it to crowdsource public art that we encounter during our days and then maybe do a walking trip towards the end of the semester after the map has filled up.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog for the Provost Learning Seminar!