{"id":324,"date":"2014-04-02T16:15:53","date_gmt":"2014-04-02T20:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dh.prattsils.org\/?p=324"},"modified":"2014-04-02T16:15:53","modified_gmt":"2014-04-02T20:15:53","slug":"how-did-they-make-that-reverse-engineering-digital-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/dh\/2014\/04\/02\/how-did-they-make-that-reverse-engineering-digital-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"“How Did They Make That? Reverse-Engineering Digital Projects” with Miriam Posner (CUNY Graduate Center, March 27, 2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Starting with an image of a decidedly non-digital monkey wrench, Miriam Posner recently gave the presentation, \u201cHow Did They Make That: Reverse-Engineering Digital Projects.\u201d\u00a0 Her talk was part of a series sponsored by CUNY\u2019s Digital Humanities Initiative and built upon her August 29, 2013 blog post<\/a>, \u201cHow did they make that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Posner introduced her CUNY presentation as a way to enable digital novices to \u201cpick apart\u201d and begin to understand a variety of digital humanities projects.\u00a0 She provided a framework through which practitioners of all experience levels might engage and query the work of other digital humanists.\u00a0 The newcomer to digital humanities often does not know how to approach a project, what tools helped build it, what terms to use in describing it, or even how long its creation took.\u00a0 More knowledgeable digital humanities scholars sometimes become captivated by technological tools and neglect to speculate on decisions behind the tools.<\/p>\n

Drawing from the Taxonomy of Digital Research Activities in the Humanities<\/a>,\u00a0Posner listed several tools and techniques used by DH scholars:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Exhibit building<\/li>\n
  2. Data visualization<\/li>\n
  3. Digital editions<\/li>\n
  4. Text analysis<\/li>\n
  5. Multimedia narratives<\/li>\n
  6. Timelines<\/li>\n
  7. Maps<\/li>\n
  8. 3-D imaging<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    She also invoked Johanna Drucker\u2019s Introduction to Digital Humanities<\/i> course at UCLA when Posner explained that to design one\u2019s own and understand others\u2019 DH projects, the scholar must \u201cbreak things down, start with the data, and work up from there.\u201d The user\/viewer can then examine how the material is manipulated into a human-viewable form.\u00a0 As Burdick, Drucker, et al write,<\/p>\n

    \u201cDigital Humanities is a production-based endeavor in which theoretical issues get tested in the design of implementations, and implementations are loci of theoretical reflection and elaboration.\u201d (Burdick, 13) <\/em><\/p>\n

    Posner offered three steps, or \u201clevels,\u201d for discovering a digital exhibit.\u00a0 First, the user identifies the sources<\/em>: the files, data, primary records containing information on which the exhibit is based.\u00a0 Second, the user determines how that material was processed<\/em>. For example, was a manuscript enhanced and edited with text encoding? Were sources digitized?\u00a0 Third, how is the material presented<\/em>?\u00a0 Has it been mapped using a geographic information system?\u00a0 Has it been made interactive? Has a search function been added?<\/p>\n

    Posner used her levels first to examine Benjamin M. Schmidt\u2019s project, A Year of Ships<\/i><\/a>, in which he reworks datasets of shipping routes to create a set of movies that graphically depict those routes in motion.\u00a0 She posed the question, how does a DH novice confront terms they do not understand?\u00a0\u00a0 Agreeing with those gathered that many simply \u201cGoogle it,\u201d she said, \u201cnow they have a slot for that term in one of the three levels.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \u201cWhen you start to pick apart a project, you notice how good, and how bad, the project documentation is.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Posner then looked at the University of South Carolina Digital Libraries, Negro Travelers’ Green Book Map<\/a>. \u00a0Level one, the source, in this example would be the 1956 Negro Travelers\u2019 Green Book<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/em>Level two, the process, consists of transcribing and geocoding.\u00a0 Level three, the presentation, is an interactive map developed with Google Maps, Fusion Tables, and Visualization JavaScript APIs.<\/p>\n

    By walking through the levels, Posner explained, users will be able to query the project, to ask why the creator chose that information, those tools, that presentation, and not others. Rieder and R\u00f6hle write of \u201cblack-boxing,\u201d in which software and its code are unreadable and inaccessible for users unskilled in certain technological tools. (Rieder, 75)<\/p>\n

    For this and other demonstrations of her methodology, Posner fashioned a virtual 3-D black box that became a repository for the three levels.\u00a0 With sources and processes acting as foundational layers, the presentation layer rests on top and is represented by the digital exhibit itself.\u00a0 Through this imagery, Posner took the alienating black box and transformed it into a means of access and learning.<\/p>\n

    Hockey writes,<\/p>\n

    \u201c<\/i>By its very nature, humanities computing has had to embrace \u2018the two cultures\u2019, to bring the rigor and systematic unambiguous procedural methodologies characteristic of the sciences to address problems within the humanities that had hitherto been most often treated in a serendipitous fashion.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

    One audience member congratulated Posner, saying she had demonstrated a humanist means to query the methodology, breaking down and rendering the processes more transparent and replicable, as in scientific research.\u00a0 \u201cHumanists usually want to present their work as being \u2018seamless,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

    With each project, Posner had invited its creator to participate in the discussion via Skype.\u00a0 Through the informal dialogue, Posner, exhibit creators, and audience became collaborators that took each project to a next phase of discovery.\u00a0 Discussing her Memories\/Motifs exhibit<\/a>, Rachel Deblinger explained how she used Google Analytics to see what paths users follow in the project, often contrary to what she expected.<\/p>\n

    The question was asked, how does the creator deal with ambiguous data?\u00a0 How is it processed?\u00a0 Posner suggested that her three levels enable the user to understand better the time and effort of designing projects, and the effect design decisions have on projects.\u00a0 She recalled Drucker\u2019s term, \u201ccapta.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cData is captured from reality; it is not reality.\u201d Human beings produce data.<\/p>\n

    After taking apart the three layers of the exhibit Kindred Britain<\/a>, several attendees criticized it for what they saw as exclusionary data and an inaccessible presentation.\u00a0 Said one person, \u201cThat\u2019s not my kindred Britain.\u201d\u00a0 The brief discussion of British class structure brought to mind Alan Liu\u2019s words:<\/p>\n

    \u201cTo be an equal partner\u2014rather than, again, just a servant\u2014at the table, digital humanists will need to show that thinking critically about metadata, for instance, scales into thinking critically about the power, finance, and other governance protocols of the world.\u201d (Liu, 6\/20) <\/em><\/p>\n

    As a relative digital novice, I found Miriam Posner\u2019s presentation to be helpful and engaging.\u00a0 She introduced terms and concepts that digital humanists of all skill levels could understand and use.\u00a0 She brought in exhibit creators to reflect on their work from a critical distance and demonstrated that a collaborative \u201ctaking apart\u201d of an exhibit can be educational as it enhances the work in unpredictable ways.<\/p>\n

    Sources<\/span><\/p>\n

    Burdick, Anne, et al. (2012). \u201cDigital Humanities Fundamentals\u201d in Digital_Humanities<\/i>, 122\u201323<\/p>\n

    Davidson, Cathy N. (2008). \u201cHumanities 2.0: Promise, Perils, Predictions\u201d PMLA 123(3): 707-17<\/p>\n

    Hockey, Susan (2004) \u201cThe History of Humanities Computing in Blackwell Companion to Digital <\/i>Humanities. http:\/\/www.digitalhumanities.org\/companion\/ion\/<\/a><\/p>\n

    Kirschenbaum, Matthew (2011). \u201cDigital Humanities As\/Is a Tactical Term\u201d in <\/i>Matthew Gold, Debates in the Digital Humanities<\/i> (University of Minnesota Press, 2012)<\/p>\n

    Liu, Alan (2011). \u201cWhere Is the Cultural Criticism in Digital Humanities\u201d in <\/i>Matthew Gold, Debates in the Digital Humanities<\/i> (University of Minnesota Press, 2012)<\/p>\n

    Rieder, Bernhard and Theo R\u00f6hle (2012). \u201cDigital Methods: Five Challenges\u201d in Understanding Digital Humanities<\/i>, ed. David M. Berry. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 67\u201384<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Starting with an image of a decidedly non-digital monkey wrench, Miriam Posner recently gave the presentation, \u201cHow Did They Make That: Reverse-Engineering Digital Projects.\u201d\u00a0 Her talk was part of a series sponsored by CUNY\u2019s Digital Humanities Initiative and built upon her August 29, 2013 blog post, \u201cHow did they make that?\u201d Posner introduced her CUNY presentation as a way to…<\/p>\n

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