Category: Instructor

R. Scott Smith, Villa Farnesina, Brooklyn Museum’s Ask App.

Person: R.Scott Smith

During my years as an undergraduate at the University of New Hampshire, I was unsure what I wanted to major in. I began taking courses that interested me, to see if it was something I wanted to study long term. My first two choices were art history and mythology. 

When I walked into my mythology course that semester, a class that must have been over 40 students, I was handed a quiz that was intended to give the professor a better understanding of how much you knew about myths already. Amidst may serious questions, that I can hardly remember now, there was one question that stood out: “Who was the king of all Greek gods? A: Apollo, B: Hera, C: Zeus, D: Bill Clinton.” 

It was because of Professor Smith’s mythology course that I graduated with a minor in classics, and why 2 years later I traveled abroad to Rome and Pompeii on a one week course he taught in conjunction with another Professor. He even wrote me a recommendation to get into my graduate program. 

Professor Smith is not only a professor at the University of New Hampshire, but he also has a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, and is an author with a plethora of publications. He has written many anthologies regarding myths, Ancient Rome, and translations from primary sources. At UNH he teaches classes on classical mythology, ancient Rome, hieroglyphs, Greek, Latin, and a course that reads only classical books in their original Latin. While teaching all of these courses and editing a book on Greek and Roman Mythography for Oxford University Press, he is also creating a digital platform called “Putting Greek Myth on the Map” which intends to show a relationship between mythical figures with real places. 

One of Professor Smith’s publications is Anthology of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation. In this publication he and two others translated and anthologized over 50 texts. The authors include an appendix of evidence from Papri and Linear B tablets, as well as a thematic index, a mythological dictionary, and a genealogy.

 Place: Villa Farnesina 

While on my trip abroad in Rome, I was given an afternoon off to go see one of my favorite pieces of artwork: Raphael’s Cupid and Psyche Loggia. I credit this one visit as what inspired me to go into the Museum field. 

If you research for your visit ahead of time, you will find the Villa’s website where you can learn the history of the building. Farnesina was built for Agostino Chigi by a pupil of Bramante. Inside you will find artworks by Raphael, Sebastiano del Piombo, Giulio Romano, and Il Sodoma. but it will also tell you that the Villa is located in Trastevere, a more suburban area of Rome just over the Tiber River. This location unfortunately makes it easy to miss, and I can tell you from experience that the Villa itself is very hidden. Still the Villa as a Museum is extraordinary. 

I did not do any research before going, before the trip had even started, I wasn’t sure if I would find the time to go. I was fortunate enough to be on a trip that was already scheduled for me. One day, after spending the morning in the Jewish Ghetto of Rome, my professor told me it was alright to take off the afternoon and go see it. Since I hadn’t had the chance to plan, I ended up getting there with only an hour until closing because I had gotten lost, and on the wrong bus. 

The Villa is beautiful and large, and ridiculously quiet. I’m not sure if it was because there were only a hand full of people inside, or if it was because of the state of awe everyone inside was in. The first room of the Villa is Raphael’s famous Galatea, larger than I expected, and much higher up the wall. I wish I had stayed longer, but I moved on quickly. The next room was the Psyche and Cupid Loggia. A Loggia is a ceiling, so the room was empty except for a few chairs so people could sit and look up at it. Everything you might’ve heard about it is true, the fruit looks like it is real and could fall right on you at any moment, the colors are as vibrant as if he had painted them yesterday. I spent a good half hour under the Loggia, amazed beyond believe and having trouble actually believing I was there. I was urged onto the next section of the Museum, which I passed through quickly, until I came to a section that described the restoration process on both the Galatea and the Psyche and Cupid pieces. From what I can remember the Museum show cased exactly how the restoration team took samples of the paints used in each fresco and how they recreated it. I had never before seen this side of art history that examined how painters created paint, or how it was applied. It was a scientific side I was obsessed with. 

When I returned from my trip I excitedly told my advisor about the Villa, and about the exhibition on the restoration. When I went online and tried to find information on it, I found little to nothing. The Farnesina website details the restoration process focusing on keeping the artwork looking the way it looks, for example restoring the adhesion between the plaster and artwork. They quickly mention testing the “traditional materials” with CIR and “experimenting with new approaches and materials.” I was heartbroken that I wasted so much time staring at the piece, that I ran out of time for this interesting side of the Museum, and that I could not find much information about it later. 

Being at the Villa Farnesina inspired me to want to work in restoration in museums, but on a much different side of it than taking a brush to the artwork myself. I want to study the artwork and figure out how they were made and how they can be fixed. I also want to work to make places like the Villa Farnesina more accessible to the people who can’t get there physically. Everyone should be able to experience their favorite artwork, even if they can’t fly to Rome. 

Thing: Brooklyn Museum’s Ask App

I am fortunate enough to be taking a class taught by Professor Devine, titled Museums and Digital Culture. Last week we had our class at the Brooklyn Museum, where Professor Devine is the Director of Visitor Experience and Engagement. We began the class with a presentation Professor Devine gives to investors and those interested about the app. It was created in three different phases. The first sent “Gallery Hosts” into certain exhibitions with vests telling visitors to ask them questions. The response was good, people would ask them questions about art, among other things. Phase two had “Gallery Hosts” in front of certain pieces of art, who would answer questions, but who would also hand out cards that showed visitors how to get to another piece of recommended art. This backfired, as most people wanted something more personalized than a preprinted card. Finally the last phase began, which is what inspired the Ask App. Ipods were given to members and select test groups upon entering the Museum with imessage that was sent to the Curator. With this phase the team was concerned the most with “screen suck” or that people would be too involved with their screens to actually look at art. They found that this wasn’t the case, especially when the curator could prompt visitors to look at specific pieces of the art he was describing. 

From the third phase, the Ask App was born. Now, anyone who walks into the Brooklyn Museum can download it off of the App store, and speak to an art historian about art. During this class we were sent loose in the Museum to try it out, and I had a fantastic discussion with one of the team members about their Egyptian art exhibit. After this, we got to meet the team and see how the system worked.

While the only thing a visitor sees is a screen similar to imessage, the team sees a screen full of coded numbers asking them questions. One team member showed us how she would split her screen between the incoming conversations and the Brooklyn Museums Wiki, something she updated when no one was asking questions. 

I had never been to the Brooklyn Museum before, but I couldn’t believe how fun it was to experience it with the Ask App. It’s a really cool tool to keep visitors interested that I believe all Museums should start to use. Not only does it get you to look at art closer, it also encourages you to see more of the Museum and stay engaged with it.

Posted on by Katie Drake 0

Miss Manhattan

Across New York City, there is a woman in various states of undress, so baked into the architecture that she is barely noticed. At the intersection of 59th and 5th, she stands atop a fountain. In front of the Merchant’s gate of Central Park, she considers the pigeons perched on her arms. On 107th and Broadway, she reclines on a bed; And on top of the Manhattan Municipal Building, she stands tall, cast in gold. She was my constant companion as I explored this city, from the financial district to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This post explores three aspects of her identity- as a person, a place, and a thing.

Place

image from www.metmuseum.org

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, also known as the Met, is one of the largest art galleries in the world. If you enter from 82nd street, past the great hall, taking a right at medieval art and through European sculpture, you arrive at the American Wing. Here, she appears as one of the very first works you encounter as the Victory Mourning. A copy of the original statue present at the Melvin Memorial, a tribute to 3 brothers lost at the battlefront by the fourth survivor, she bears the weight of a hard-won triumph. The museum is a place where the sculptures are given a chance to talk, placed among their contemporaries, prefaced with a bit of context, lovingly maintained by staff, and visited by thousands upon thousands of travellers. 

Victory Mourning

A few blocks away, she stands as Pomona, the goddess of abundance. Recently in the news because of political discourse involving her refurbishment, she isn’t given the time of day by the busy citizens rushing about their day. Sometimes, a penny is dropped into the fountain for a fleeting wish. It reminded me of the enormous power over memory and identity, over the fundamental ways in which society seeks evidence of what its core values are and have been (Schwartz, 2002) that is enshrined within the profession of information. The fountain itself is known as the Pulitzer fountain, after the man who commissioned it. It is sometimes referred to as Pomona or The Abundance, after the image the artist intended to evoke. But atop the fountain, we see a woman and she had no name to offer.

Thing

In stone and bronze a humble human shape, sculpted to represent glory, power, unity, memory, peace, purity, virtue… as it was seeking form in the public architecture of an emerging metropolis.

Andrea Geyer, This Site of Memory: Audrey Munson

The statues posed by Miss Manhattan are all across the city, around 20 in number. Similar to Scott Nixon documenting the Augustas, the moment you look for her, you seem to see her everywhere. On West 106th street between Broadway and West End Avenue, she reclines on a bench. She’s meditative, relaxed, one foot dangling. Her eyes are lowered, her head is supported by one hand and the other hand holds her chin. She looks down into a pool, rather than out at the street or the pages of a book. She seems to be thinking of something or someone who isn’t present. 

She is Memory, a monument dedicated to Ida and Isidor Straus, a wealthy philanthropist couple who tragically passed away on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. It is believed that Ida refused to board the lifeboat without her husband, and Isidor refused to board the lifeboat until all the women and children were safely aboard. Survivors reported seeing the pair on deck, arms around each others’ waists, in the hours before the Titanic went down. In 1995, a park renovation effort replaced the reflecting pool with an easier-to-maintain garden, citing a lack of funds.

Person

Audrey Munson, 1915

She has gone by several aliases: Priestess of Culture, Mourning Victory, Star Maiden, and Niche Figure. Her real name is Audrey Munson, once the most famous artist’s models in the United States and the world’s first “Supermodel”. In 1909 she moved to New York City with her mother, who was recently divorced and in search of work. Young Audrey wanted to study music and dance. Walking down 5th Avenue, her desire to be seen was paired with the coincidence of “being discovered” by a photographer. Upon his invitation, Audrey, still a teenager, dared to step first in front of a camera, then in front of an artist, then in the nude. She quickly became part of a scene of influential sculptors, artists, and their financial backers. 

Her story follows an all-too-familiar path: meteoric rise, sudden fall and quiet conclusion. In 1915, she was a household name. In 1920, she was penniless. In 1930, she was forgotten. This doesn’t paint the whole picture, however. 

In the city’s directory of 1909, she lists herself as an actress. After 1915 she will call herself, in this same directory, an artist.

Andrea Geyer, This Site of Memory: Audrey Munson

She was a writer who spoke of the artist’s studio as a marketplace of vanity, a strong advocate for women of her profession, a supporter of the suffragette movement. By the time Munson turned 30, her career was blighted by a media frenzy that speculated that her ex-landlord killed his wife for love of her. She spent the last 65 years of her life in a mental hospital after a failed suicide attempt.

Munson, in many ways, was a living archive of the city. Her likeness catalogues the dominance of the Beaux-Arts movement in the early 20th century, her career spans the rise of new professions that have since developed into a global enterprise, and her life is an unpleasant mirror to the struggles of women for agency, respect, and fair compensation over the past century. In 1921, she wrote about the need for artist’s models to be seen as co-creators of the art presented to the public. In 1922, she spoke of the perils of employment when rejecting the advances of men who held power in the industry. In many ways, things have changed since Audrey Munson was launched into the spotlight, and in many ways, they haven’t. One thing is clear, however: she deserved to be remembered, not just as marble, brass, and concrete, but as a person, flesh and bone.

References

Posted on by Archana Ravi 0

Design is Storytelling

Person: Ellen Lupton

The person for this post is Ellen Lupton. She is a graphic designer, author and curator and is currently working as the curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City. Her book Design Is Storytelling truly inspired me. Through this book Lupton uses real world examples inspired by fictional characters to depict how designers can harness the power of storytelling to create memorable experiences. I never really thought of designing as a way of telling stories. Even as a User Experience Designer, I believed that my job was to design interfaces that are intuitive and easy. “Good design is invisible”— was a motto I lived by until I came across Design is Storytelling. 

The first thing that caught my eye in the book was the phenomenology of paths. Lupton mentions various examples about how our eyes keep searching for a path (A google search for a forest will give you various results of  forests with some kind of path leading to somewhere). Another concept she talks about in her book is a Hero Story. A Hero Story is a tale about a protagonist (could be a person or a thing) that gets a call to adventure from the ordinary world to enter a new world, experiences hurdles, learns something new and then returns to the ordinary world.  Even rudimentary tasks like buying groceries or going for a jog involves a hero story and everyone desires it . A hero story creates delight. The way we design an interface or a space like organising the home page for a website or curating an exhibition can invoke a hero story for people who interact with it. Combining the two concepts here, as designers who create paths for people to navigate, to what degree do we provide infinite paths or to what degree do we limit them? Finding the right balance based on context such that it doesn’t affect the user’s hero story is how we become good designers. 

The third and most intriguing concept she talks about is that products can also have character. A product’s character could be centered around gender or age or profession and designers should use it to their advantage. For example when we think of Amazon, we associate it with quick delivery or Spirit airlines with cheap but awful flight experience. Similarly all products have some adjective associated with it and these adjectives make up their character. My favorite  aspect of reading this book was its pictorial nature. Even though the book is filled with illustrations, they are not random and meaningless. Each illustration relates to a theme Lupton tries to highlight. They all tell a story. Lupton through her book Design Is Storytelling taught me that good design is not invisible. As designers we must create products that take the user on a journey, provide them with a hero story such that their experience is memorable. Even a bad design is better than an ambiguous design. Therefore we should strive to create good experiences that are memorable.

Place : New York City Subway

Lupton’s Hero Story inspired me to select a place that resonated with this idea. That is why I chose  the NYC subway. Since I’m new to the city, traversing the subway system has been ,for the most part, a memorable experience. Even with the release of the MTA app to help you create your schedule based on the train timings, the subway has never ceased to surprise me and take me on an emotional journey. 

Atlantic Avenue Barclays Center
Atlantic Avenue Barclays Center Station

Last week my brother invited me to cook some traditional malayali food since I’ve been craving home food for a really long time. So I agreed to meet him at 11:00 am so that we’d finish cooking right on time for lunch. I checked the MTA app to see how long my commute would be and what transfers I would have to take and prepared myself to leave. As soon as I reached the station, I realised I did not have balance on my metrocard. When I tried to recharge, the metrocard recharge machine was only accepting cash in denominations of $20 or less and I had a $50 on me. I ran to a Deli store nearby to get change and finally managed to refill my metrocard but by the time I reached the platform, the train I wanted to take had left and the next one was scheduled to come in 12 minutes. This frustrated me. My next hurdle was transferring at Atlantic Avenue Barclays Center Station. I had not realised how extensive the station was and anticipated navigating through it would be difficult. On the contrary the signboards were very clear and I found my platform in less than a minute. My train immediately arrived and I was delighted by how easy that experience was. In a way I felt like a hero. Another aspect of the NYC subway that always catches my eye is the artwork at various stations. It’s also something that people keep talking about. As a matter of fact, I know people who use it to navigate. When my brother was giving me directions to his apartment, he told me to take the exit close to the mosaic of a woman in a saree. 

2nd Avenue Subway, 72nd Street Station
Exit close to the woman in a saree

The NYC subway is a great example for a good design system. Just as Lupton mentions in her book, the NYC subway system enables its commuters to create memorable experiences by taking them on an emotional journey. It helps them navigate to the path of their desire as well as provide them with a hero story. 

Thing: Nintendo Switch

For my Thing, I chose the Nintendo Switch. The Switch is both a handheld and a home console with exceptional graphics for its size and motion controls to elevate your gaming experience. The reason I love the Switch is because of how simple and interactive it is. The Switch was the first gaming console I used and even as a novice, it was extremely easy to navigate. My favourite part of the Switch are the Joy-Cons. Everytime I attach the Joy-Cons to the grip it produces a click sound which is very satisfying. As a matter of fact, the animation for the Nintendo Switch logo includes the click. In Lupton’s book, Design is Storytelling she talks about how products have character. The click sound is the character for the Nintendo Switch. Every action you perform on the Switch includes the click. 

Another thing I love about the Switch is how easily navigable the homepage is. The first thing you see are the games you have on your system below which are the menu items. The icons designed for the Switch, according to me, are well researched because even without reading the labels you can still understand what they try to convey. 

Switch homepage

The Switch includes a touch-screen interface and Joy-Cons with inbuilt gyroscopes, IR sensors and motors which create a rumble effect while playing games. The first few games I played on the Switch were Super Mario Odyssey and Okami HD, both of which used the motion detection and the rumble features. I love the rumble effect because it never ceases to amuse me. It was designed to induce delight. 

Nintendo Switch

Design is about creating memorable experiences and the design for the Nintendo Switch is exactly that. It caters to both seasoned gamers as well as amateurs like me. I tried using other gaming consoles like the PS4 but the interface was overwhelming. Nintendo’s user base is vast and to create something that accommodates them all is an exceptional feat. The Switch’s interface does not look extraordinary nor is it overloaded with features. What makes the Switch beautiful is that even though its design is intuitive and simple it’s not invisible and that’s the reason I chose the Nintendo Switch as my Thing. 

References

Ellen Lupton, (2017) Design is Storytelling published by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; 1 edition.

Ellen Lupton, <http://elupton.com/>

The Nintendo Switch Is the Future of Gadget Design,<https://www.wired.com/story/nintendo-switch-review/>

Nintendo Switch Technical Specifications, <https://www.nintendo.com/switch/tech-specs/>

Posted on by Tinu Thomas 0

The information of cryptography in people, places, and things

Place: Spyscape Museum

This summer, I visited the Spyscape Museum in Manhattan. It’s at once a museum and an activity: while it has exhibits about counterintelligence operations, cryptography, and other “spy”-related topics from across history, it also comes with a significant interactive component, leading visitors through quizzes and games.

Photo: Spyscape

The whole museum is centered around a challenge of sorts, geared towards discovering what sorts of skills you have that could be relevant to various professions related to spying, including field operators, handlers, researchers, and codebreakers, among other roles.

Beyond being a fun way to spend a few hours away from the summer heat, the Spyscape Museum actually made me curious about many of the things I learned there, such as the Anonymous movement, cryptography’s legacy in the digital age, and the role of covert operators across history.

As a museum, Spyscape is an institute of information, cataloguing and preserving different histories of covert operations. Spyscape, like many museums, teaches by a method called interpretation.

“Interpretation relies heavily on sensory perception—sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and the kinetic muscle sense—to enable the museum-goer emotionally to experience objects.”

(Alexander, 2008)

With visual and audio components to its exhibits, plus touch screens that allow visitors to play games and answer questions, Spyscape certainly makes use of the full sensory experience.

The subjects of the museum, cryptography and covert operations, also deal heavily in information: protecting it, freeing it, and controlling who has access to it.

“Nations go to great lengths to gain [information] by using the time-honored tools of espionage and codebreaking to gather information secretly. … Codebreaking evolved from the ancient art of pencil-and-paper puzzle solving to the science of cryptanalysis.”

(Gannon, 2001)

This evolution in cryptography mirrors the journey of the information field, from the simplest of roots to the complex webs of information we have today in the digital age. It’s this evolution that the Spyscape Museum catalogues, interprets, and shares for its visitors.

Person: Alan Turing

One of the most important people in the history of cryptography, whose story was given great focus in one of Spyscape’s exhibits, was Alan Turing. He’s famous for leading the World War II-era British counterintelligence team that beat the German Enigma machine, which encrypted messages according to regularly-changing ciphers that were difficult to crack. But he had a hand in many other information-related operations during and after World War II, and his life itself is a study in how information can have an impact on a personal level.

Turing’s claim to fame was his work for British counterintelligence on the Enigma problem.

“The science of numbers and symbols was in Turing’s genes … [He] ignored the intimidating numbers and put his trust in what he knew—mathematical logic.”

(Gannon, 2001)

Having an eccentric manner but an undeniably genius brain, he gained respect from his colleagues and managed to find a solution that reliably broke the codes created by Enigma machines.

Even after the war, Turing continued to work in information-related fields, going on to lay “the foundations for computer technology and artificial intelligence” (Spencer, 2009). His work, in large part, has been the starting point from which much of the digital age has sprung: computers, machine learning, and data analysis, in their modern iterations, have all been influenced by Turing’s work.

Of course, the sensitivity of Turing’s projects during World War II meant that he wasn’t publicly recognized for his contributions to ending the war; he had to keep his work a secret from even his family.

“Turing’s oldest niece, Inagh Payne … recalls sitting on his knee asking him repeatedly what he did at the office. Turing remained quiet about his work for the war effort.”

(Spencer, 2009)

And this wasn’t the only part of his life he had to keep a secret: his homosexuality, for which he was eventually criminally prosecuted, was another large piece of information about him that could not see the light of day.

It is this juxtaposition between his work and his life that strikes me most about Alan Turing. His life’s work, the achievement for which he is most recognized, is that of freeing information, revealing secrets, and saving lives by being able to break codes and open lines of communication. But in his personal life, neither recognition for his incredible deeds in the service of his country, nor the simple liberty of being able to love freely, were granted to him. Exposing and withholding information are two sides of the same coin; perhaps no one knew that coin as well as Alan Turing.

Thing: Cryptex

While I was at the Spyscape Museum, I couldn’t help but reflect back on one of the first books that ignited my interest in cryptography: The Da Vinci Code. Though I haven’t read it in a long time, a few of the concepts from the book have really stuck with me. One of the things that has always intrigued me is an object called a cryptex.

“A portable container that could safeguard letters, maps, diagrams, anything at all. Once information was sealed inside the cryptex, only the individual with the proper password could access it.”

(Brown, 2003)

This device struck me as a genius invention when I first encountered it — appropriately, it was credited to Leonardo Da Vinci in the story. For a while, I believed that was its origin, but actually, it was invented by Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code’s author.

The cryptex itself is obviously linked with information: namely, it’s designed to protect information from everyone but its intended recipient. But the real-life story of this fictional object also has a lot to do with the way we interact with information, especially when it can be used for profit.

A year after the publication of The Da Vinci Code in 2003, a fan of the book named Justin Nevins created the first physical replica of the cryptex. Shortly thereafter, he trademarked it — which led to a dispute between Nevins and Columbia Pictures when The Da Vinci Code was adapted into a movie. Nevins wrote out his side of the story many years later on a forum website (Nevins, 2017).

As Nevins tells it, Dan Brown didn’t have a problem with him holding the trademark for the cryptex at first. But when The Da Vinci Code‘s movie was in production, Columbia Pictures wanted to make their own replicas for the movie, and wanted Nevins to drop the trademark. Nevins and Columbia Pictures eventually settled out of court: the movie was allowed to use the word “cryptex,” but Nevins was allowed to keep his trademark. He still sells cryptices online.

This part of the story is, understandably, not as well known as the cryptex itself; but it brings this device from a fictional object to a technology of the real world. Copyrights and trademarks are a big part of regulating how information can be used and received in the world, which echoes the original purpose of the cryptex itself: keeping information from certain parties, and revealing it to others.

The cryptex’s journey from fiction to reality illustrates the importance of information: the creativity that can happen when it’s shared with the world, and the monopolization that might ensue when it’s kept safeguarded in just a few, powerful hands.

References

Alexander, E. P., & Alexander, M. (2008). Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums. Lanham, MD: Rowman et Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Brown, D. (2003). The Da Vinci Code. New York: Doubleday.

Gannon, J. (2001). Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies: How Spies and Codebreakers Helped Shape the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Brasseys.

Nevins, J. (2017). The history of the Cryptex. Retrieved from https://forum.thecodex.ca/t/the-history-of-the-cryptex-r/70.

Spencer, C. (2009). Profile: Alan Turing. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8250592.stm.

Spyscape Museum. Retrieved from https://spyscape.com/.

Posted on by Shivani Ishwar 0

It’s Prof. Cooley, in the Art Library, with the Useless Box

Person: Heidi Cooley

My person is Heidi Cooley, author of Finding Augusta: Habits of Mobility and Governance in the Digital Era. I was at the 4th floor library at PMC looking at the new books display, and this book caught my attention. The title and the cover image conveyed the perfect combination of artsy, academic, and applying theory to practice. A brief skim of the chapters revealed that this book encapsulates perfectly the four degrees taught at the School of Information.

So what is Augusta? Scott Nixon, a traveling insurance agent from Augusta, Georgia, used a 16mm camera to document places in the U.S. called Augusta, filming from about 1930 to 1950. These are towns and streets and villages and storefronts and some other surprising Augustas. The result is an 18-minute movie, available on YouTube and archived, along with Nixon’s home movies, at the University of South Carolina (USC).

Cooley was a professor of technology and media arts at USC, and during a visit to the archive, the archivist showed her The Augustas and these 18 minutes triggered this book. The book is interesting, clever, and well written, but the main appeal to me is how Cooley extrapolated meanings and applications of information in ways that are both deep and broad and directly connect to our school. The Augustas relate to technology, mobility, mobile devices, bodies in motion, managing the movement of “stuff,” the application of surveillance, tracking, indexing information, metadata creation, digital and physical preservation, archiving, display, and the implication on governance.

Cooley’s departure point is the traveling salesman problem, which asks, “Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible route that visits each city and returns to the origin city?” It’s a question that is relevant to information storage, retrieval, design, display, usability, findability, and more. Books and articles that reflect the intellectual landscape in an interdisciplinary way are few and far between, and Cooley’s study is an “example of digital humanities scholarship and critical readings of the political stakes of new media technologies” (Archibald, 2016). It can provide new appreciation for a broad and deep understanding of information.

Place: Brooklyn Art Library – The Sketchbook Project

I’m not sure what possessed me to make my way across town on one of the coldest days of last winter to visit The Brooklyn Art Library. I must have read about it someplace, but I can’t recall where.

Nestled in some abandoned (or maybe it was the cold) side street in Williamsburg, the library is one large rectangular room lined with bookshelves, and on them are uniform sketchbooks. People buy a sketchbook from the library, then draw, paint, write, collage to their hearts’ delight, and bring or mail it back to the library. The library digitizes the books, adds metadata, and places them on the shelves where they are arranged chronologically. To look at a book, you register on your phone or using one of their iPads, and request up to three sketchbooks. You can search by artists, by title, by region, by topic, and more. You receive the book within a few minutes and as a special bonus receive the book immediately preceding the one you requested. This aspect of the arrangement particularly appealed to my knowledge organization sensibility. It somehow reminded my of Aby Warburg’s library in London and its cross-disciplinary references between adjacent sections.

Photo: The Sketchbook Project

The books themselves are, as one might expect, very wide ranging. Every imaginable kind and color of ink and pencil and paint and every style of drawing. There are journals and landscapes and manga and books in all languages and from many countries. Some are magnificent, some are puzzling, but the effect is quite strong, and even the duller ones are lifted up by being part of a beautiful and surprising collection.

Toward the back of the library there is a community-style conference table where visitors can look at the books. There were few people during my visit (temperatures were in their 20s, after all) but there were some, two adults and a child, some other adults of all ages. The people who work there are conversational without being pushy and will take their cues from the visitor.

The library embodies some of the ideas expressed in Finding Augusta, particularly those about arrangement of information as mobile objects; as Cooley notes, “mobility, its organization and potentiality, is the defining problem of this present” (Cooley, 2014). To that end, the Brooklyn Art Library provides its Bookmobile, which brings the collection to locations around the country in a mobile library.

Thing: The Useless Box

For my Thing, I chose a useless box. How do I know it’s a useless box? Well, it says so in bold black lettering on top of a flimsy looking plywood box: Useless Box.

Photo: Debbie Rabina, Ph.D. 

Right under the lettering there is a slit in the cover, and below it, a simple mechanical switch. Push the switch and half cover lift open from the hinge to the center, only to immediately close again. Open close, open close—that’s all it does. Useless.

Measuring about six inches, I can hold it my hand, turn it around and examine it. Peeking inside I can see a small mechanical device operated by battery. Pushing the outside switch makes the top open and immediately close. The only use that comes to mind, or at least to my mind, it that this is some executive stress toy.

So what makes The Useless Box a worthy choice for my information-Thing? Well, it’s the legacy of the Useless Box that ties in to our information universe. Developed in the 1950s in Bell Labs, it is the brainchild of Claude Shannon, a pioneering information theorist:

“The first working model was constructed by his mentor, Claude Shannon, who later became known as the father of information theory. This context, the fact that the creators of this aggressively pointless gadget are emblematic figures in the ascendancy of machines over our contemporary world, lends a frisson of historical oddity to what is essentially an executive toy.”

(O’Connell, 2016)

Contemplating the box as an expression of meaning is an act of mediation that can take you in many directions, from the meaning of labor and mechanical objects to questioning usefulness itself. And finally I admit, one appealing thing about this Thing is that is reminds me of Thing. Picking up on some lines of thought from Cooley, this can take us to the latest in creating life out of dead brain tissue to Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life,” in which a woman learns how to see the future:

“From the beginning I knew my destination, and I chose my route accordingly. But am I working toward an extreme of joy, or of pain? Will I achieve a minimum, or a maximum?”

(Chiang, 2002)

In other words, even when everything is known (like a device that you know will close itself immediately after you open it), isn’t it still possible for wonder to exist?

by Debbie Rabina, Ph.D. 

References

Archibald, R. (2016). Review of Cooley, Heidi Rae, Finding Augusta: Habits of mobility and governance in the digital era. H-War, H-Net Reviews. Retrieved from http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=43095

Chiang, T. (2002). Stories of your life and others. New York: Vintage.

Cooley, H. R. (2014). Finding Augusta: Habits of mobility and governance in the digital era. Hanover: Dartmouth College Press.

O’Connell, M. (2016) Letter of recommendation: The useless machine. The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-the-useless-machine.html

Shaer, M. (2019). Scientists are giving dead brains new life. What could go wrong? The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/magazine/dead-pig-brains-reanimation.htm

Posted on by Mary Bakija 0

Event Review: Braiding Strands of Wellbeing: Reclaiming, Healing, and Sending Knowledge into the Future

In her talk, Braiding Strands of Wellbeing: Reclaiming, Healing, and Sending Knowledge into the Future, Dr. Sonya Atalay discussed anthropologists and archaeologists can and incorporate the local and indigenous populations’ cultural practices of sharing and preserving knowledge into their studies of these cultures. An anthropologist and Ojibwe (the Native American tribe also known as the Chippewa) keeper of knowledge, Dr. Atalay has conducted anthropology and archaeology research within indigenous populations in North America as well as the Middle East. Her work, including her books Community-Based Archaeology: Research With, By, and for Indigenous and Local Communities and Transforming Archaeology: Activist Practices and Prospects, has been focused on the development and implementation of participatory research, seeking to decolonize the language and practices used by non-indigenous researchers as well as justice for communities through the collection of indigenous artifacts. Dr. Atalay is currently working on her book, Braiding Knowledge, an ethnographic review of these projects and other engaged scholarship of indigenous communities to how collaborative knowledge production are transforming research practices and outcomes. Many of her concepts are similar to practices found in the Ethics of Fieldwork by the Program for Ethnographic Research & Community Studies, expanded and adapted to the fields of Anthropology and Archaeology.

The main example used in her talk was the ezhibiigaadek asin, which translates to “the place where knowledge is written on stone”, a Saginaw Chippewa heritage site archaeologists refer to as the Sanilac Petroglyphs.The carvings on the rock face represent history of the tribe as well as instruction on how to send its knowledge into the future. A sacred site, with important physical and cultural links to the surrounding area, cultural practices involve water art ceremonies where tribal elders bring river water to wet the carvings and share the histories and practices represented. The researchers working on the site, to protect the site for their own purposes, had covered the rock face with a pavilion and installed a fence to prevent erosion and vandalism of the carvings. Gated and only available to the public upon request of a scheduled visit the indigenous community could not access the site or conduct the water art ceremonies.

A place of knowledge for both tribe members and anthropologists, the difference in approach to accessibility and use of the physical site indicates the divide in perspective each group holds about the information the site contains and how to it should be studied. Not only did researchers not take into account the indigenous people’s desires for how the site is utilized but also the outcome and application of the research. A source of contention was the misinterpretation of one petroglyph archaeologists dubbed the hunter. The carving actually depicts shkabewis, a spiritual teacher sending information and knowledge into the future. Not only had the researchers misinterpreted its meaning, fitting the colonial narrative of Native Americans as hunters rather than purveyors of knowledge and information, the University of Michigan had copyrighted the image of the carving and used it in branding. they  as well as the the physical site, the information and knowledge it contains

An image of the shkabewis carving taken from Dr. Atay’s Braiding Strands of Wellbeing: Reclaiming, Healing, and Sending Knowledge into the Future.

When the researchers began consulting the Ojibwe leaders, it resulted in a shift in practices, results and use of their work. By addressing some of the concerns PERC in the such as establishing a rapport with the participating group, learning indigenous knowledge needs and desires of application of the research and the representing the participants in a recognizable and respectful way. The Saginaw Chippewa gained more consistent access to the ezhibiigaadek asin as well as influence over the conduction and results of the fieldwork. The archaeologists gained a more accurate representation of the petroglyphs and people that created them.   

Dr. Atalay presented the ethnographic comic “Journeys to Complete the Work: Stories about Repatriations and Changing the Way We Bring Native American Ancestors Home (NAGPRA Comics: A Graphic Narrative)” she co-authored with John G. Swogger, and Jen Shannon, in collaboration with Shannon Martin and William Johnson of the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture & Lifeways, and Tribal elders Sydney Martin & George Martin. The comic details the effort of anthropologists and tribal leaders to have the remains of Native American peoples, held by several museums, returned to their ancestors for proper burial on the basis of the Native American Graves Protection and Reparations Act. This comic, along with others Dr. Atalay has produced on similar topics, is a novel way for Ethnographers to share their research practices and results with the populations they study and the general public.

Dr. Atalay’s talk was an enlightening look at how ethical fieldwork in ethnographic studies, including the concerns outlined in the PERC document, can be practically applied to a variety of fields of study.

References:

PERCS: The Program for Ethnographic Research & Community Studies, The Ethics of Fieldwork

Atalay, S., Shannon, J., Swogger, J., (2017) Journeys to Complete the Work: Stories about Repatriations and Changing the Way We Bring Native American Ancestors Home (NAGPRA Comics: A Graphic Narrative) 

Posted on by Brett Bishop-Pullan 0

Event: Why No One is Looking at Your data

“Department heads painstakingly compile reports and analyses filled with data which are sent to executives every week. The pages are barely skimmed, if read at all. Network and security operation centers line the walls with giant screens, displaying dashboards powered by expensive big data analytics. No one ever takes more than a passing glance on the way to lunch. If data is so essential, why is it so easily ignored? Many data initiatives fail to make a real impact.”

On April 10, 2019 I attended “Why No One is Looking at Your Data”, an event hosted by Meetup featuring Clare Gollnick, the Director of Data Science at NS1. Clare Gollnick started her career as a Neuroscientist and holds a PhD from Georgia Tech and a BS from UC Berkeley. As an expert on statistical inference and machine learning, she writes and speaks often on the intersection of data, philosophy, and entrepreneurship. She was previously Chief Technology Officer of Terbium Labs, where she led a diverse team of engineers and researchers. The team released novel data intelligence solutions which prevents credit card fraud while still protecting consumer privacy. Clare has published a number of academic papers on information processing within neural networks, validation of new statistical methods and the philosophy of science.

The presentation was focused on the difference between data and information, designing data dashboards and data products and “Why No One is Looking at your Data”.

Clare starts off her presentation with the scene from Douglas Adams’ novel series, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to demonstrate how difficult it is to understand data without any context. In short, a race of hyper-intelligent, pan-dimensional beings had built an enormous supercomputer named Deep Thought, which calculated over a period of 7.5 million years to answer the meaning of: life, the universe, and everything. After 7.5 million years of calculation, the pan-dimensional people gathered eagerly to watch Deep Thought finally announce the answer they have been waiting for.

Scene from Douglas Adams’ novel series, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

The answer was “42”. But what does “42” mean? Data can mean absolutely nothing if you do not provide it with context.  

Practical suggestions were provided from the presentation such as choosing initiatives for investments, and providing valuable data to deliver useful and interpretable information. To understand the personal mental logic process while looking at data, Clare provided a demonstration and suggestions on how to make inferences.

The first and most obvious suggestion was to add units to the data. Using “42” as a random piece of data, adding kilogram (kg) to 42 would make 42 into 42kg. A kilogram is a SI unit of mass, an international standard, which scientists have based their definition of the fundamental unit of mass on a a shining platinum iridium cylinder stored in a locked vault in France. However, most people have not seen this cylinder, and they would be considered non- experts. Yet they are able to develop a concept of what a kilogram means by having shared experiences with other items labeled kilogram throughout their life. For example, people at the gym might have a concept of a kilogram based on the weights they would use for a specific workout done in the past. This method can be applied with any form of information, and can be built upon as well. “Cat” was then added to 42kg, further explaining the mental logic in understanding the context of 42 kg while visualizing a 42 kg cat. Claire further explains that a person with knowledge about cats (an expert) might visualize a larger cat, such as a leopard.

Segmenting the market or the audience into experts and non-experts may be the result of a single piece of data. An expert would be someone who has a solid understanding of the given information, whereas an non-expert would have considerably less knowledge.

Summary Statistics Inform Only Experts
Summary Statistics Inform Only Experts

Data results from the mental model might be different given the knowledge gap between the expert and non-expert. Experts use data more effectively, and therefore reach a “threshold” in which something is actionable. Given a single piece of data, the expert crosses that threshold and catapults into another stratosphere of other questions and other types of issues they might want to know about the data. Meanwhile, non-experts are unable to obtain the minimum knowledge required to alter their action. An expert with more familiarity of the subject might ask for the raw data because they know what to do with it, whereas the non-expert would be clueless. Clare emphasized that this dynamic creates challenges for those trying to design a product. The goal of a product should deliver repeatable and scalable value with consistent outcomes across the entire target market. When you end up in this middle ground, you are stuck with a wall of data which is not viewed or seen. Experts find data at the source while others attempt to interpret information on the dashboard.

Data Does Not Speak For Itself

The presentation take away was the difficulty in making sense of data when it does not speak for itself. This belief is addressed in Boyd and Crawford’s article, Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a Cultural, Technological, and Scholarly Phenomenon”. Where Big Data provides ‘destabilizing amounts of knowledge and information that lack the regulating force of philosophy’ (Berry 2011). To understand data, there needs to be context. As mentioned in the the article Critical Data Studies: An Introduction by Andrew Iliadis and Federica Russo, data is apprehended through various levels of informational abstraction (Floridi, 2011). Big data is framed within levels of informational abstraction, where the product of positionalities constrain and afford a gateway into multiple data roles including abstraction which may be adopted, manipulated, or repurposed for any number of aims. This is a crucial part of giving sense to data. Choosing a level of abstraction from which to view Big Data alters the types of conversations that can be had about data, its aims, and functions (Iliadis, Russo 2016).

Conclusion

When you fail to recognize that data is difficult to understand, you can wind up with mismatched expectations between what is promised and delivered within a data project. Overall, the main suggestion was the need for inferences, or making a comparison to existing knowledge. Data can only inform once you already know something. You need knowledge to gain knowledge.

References:

Berry, D. (2011) ‘The computational turn: thinking about the digital humanities’, Culture Machine, vol. 12, [Online] Available at: http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/view/440/470 (11 July 2011).

Danah Boyd & Kate Crawford (2012): Critical Questions For Big Data, Information, Communication & Society, 15:5, 662-679 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878

Floridi, L (2011) The Philosophy of Information, Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9973.00221

Gollnick, C. (2019, April 10). Why No One is Looking at Your Data. Lecture presented at Meetup: UX+Data, New York.

Iliadis, A., & Russo, F. (2016). Critical data studies: An introduction. Big Data & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951716674238 

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Observation: The Bronx Museum of the Art’s Useless Machines Exhibition

Recently, I went to the Bronx Museum’s “Useless: Machines for Dreaming, Thinking, and Seeing” exhibition. The exhibition was created to highlight the opposite purpose of machines. Rather than creating machines to produce labor or fulfill a practical duty, the exhibition featured artists all over the world who constructed or depicted useless machines “to praise inutility.” The exhibition was a direct “reaction to the materialistic values promoted by capitalist society.” The artists created a collection of machines to stir dreams, feelings, critical thinking, and ironies. I thought this exhibition was interesting because of its purpose to create something useless and meaningless out of machinery. In class, we talked a lot about machine learning, artificial intelligence and how we currently live in a machine culture. And according to Sengers, machines are embedded into every aspect of our lives:

“We are no longer…simply supplied by machines; we live in and through them. From our workplaces to our errands about town to our leisure time at home, human experience is to an unprecedented extent the experience of being interfaced with the machine, of imbibing its logic, of being surrounded by it and seeking it out…” (Sengers, 2000, p.5).

Fernando Sanchez Castillo, Method on the Discourse, 2011, video screen shot

I thought that the exhibits at the museum highlighted what Sengers explained as the “shortcomings in technology.” The collection was a mixture of video, digital photographs, interactive sculptures and robotic machines behaving in curious ways. One exhibit by an artist named Fernando Sanchez Castillo displayed a video (pictured above) of a military robot that was originally designed to disarm explosives creating a painting in a slow, sarcastic manner. It was interesting how the artist inverted the function of the military robot by turning it into an artistic device. Technology is what we create it to be and as we rely on technology and machines to carry out dangerous or important tasks for us, the magnitude of its presence is felt even more when machines fail to (or are reprogrammed) complete the tasks we program it to do or they become useless. Transforming a machine so crucial as a bomb deactivating robot into a mere painting device changed the value of it as it was stripped of its former programmed task. This showed how machines can be used and recreated for other things than what it is originally meant for.

Unlike the artists, computer scientists are trained to identify these shortcomings and make solutions to those problems (Sengers, 2000, p.5). However, they are also blinded-sided by their myopic focus on improving machinery and not on the cultural context the machine is being made in (Sengers 2000). Thus, there can be unintended consequences of designing or creating a machine without discussing the need for it, the context it is being made in, and how it can be used in other ways if placed in a different environment.

I went to this particular exhibition with the intention to observe how visitors interact with the pieces within the space/ environment of the museum. But when I got to the museum, I found that visitors were not allowed to touch any of the art displays even though some of it incorporated interactive features for people to try out. I wanted to see if people were more inclined to go to the interactive exhibits which included displays of machines, video and robotic devices rather than the “non-hardware”/non-machinic ones such as photographs or drawings. Unsurprisingly, I found that people were more drawn towards the machine and robot displays. This brought to mind Norman’s Being Analog chapter, in which he explained why humans are inherently analog beings while technology and machines are created to be digital (2008).

According to Norman, “the world is not neat and tidy.” The world is naturally analog but with the advancement of technology and machines, people are forced to fit the world into digital models. Computers are logical and strict. Humans are unreliable and dramatic beings who are susceptible to making errors even if they are forced to behave in a machine-like way. Norman has described a world where technology destroys the mercurial essence of humans, but does not take into an account a world where both technology and humans are seamlessly integrated. Technology is no longer a separate entity of our world. AI and robots are becoming more human-like while humans are using advanced technology to enhance physical bodies and improve their health. In addition, AR devices are being created to integrate the real and the digital.

Algis Griškevičius, Toned photograph

We are constantly interacting with machines and technology that someday maybe we will become as one–a concept that artist Algis Griškevičius depicted in his photographs at the museum. The photograph showed a nude man with numerous tools stuck and screwed into his body as if he was a living magnet or a hybrid. Within the scope of the exhibition’s theme of depicting useless machines, I found this photograph very telling of the future we may live in. The tools on the man’s body seemed useless, placed in a illogical or unhelpful way. It’s there because it can be; they are tools without purpose. Soon, perhaps we will live in a future world where technology is not only all around us, but just another extension of our bodies.

The exhibition’s concept of “praising inutility” reminded me of how technology cannot be studied separate from its cultural context in which it is made in. Even though the exhibition wanted to depict the uselessness of technology and machines, I realized by doing just that they created meaning out of the displays by making it art. Thus, the machines and collection of pieces were useful in an artistic setting of a museum but they, of course, will not be useful in a non-artistic setting.

References:

Sengers, Phoebe. “Practices for a machine culture: A case study of integrating cultural theory and artificial intelligence”. Surfaces, vol. 1,  2000, p. 2-58. www.pum.umontreal.ca/revues/surfaces

Norman, Don. “Being Analog”. The Invisible Computer, 2008. https://jnd.org/being_analog/

Posted on by Olaide Ajomagberin 0