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Vizicites: A New Way to See the City

One of our responsibilities as CHI fellows is to present a workshop on a digital humanities program, tool, or app to the group. I chose to present my workshop on Vizcities, a somewhat new city-based data visualization platform. I was drawn to Vizicities for a few reasons: my scholarly (and not so scholarly) interest in maps and cities, and my desire to take a break from history and discuss a platform that uses contemporary data.

What sets Vizicities apart from other DH map platforms? It combines 3D and live data in one browser-based map. Inspired by SimCity, the creators wanted to build maps which showcase the 3D reality of cities (such as building heights and river depths) and capture live data in those maps. In their development diary, Vizicities has build 3D maps of London which capture live tweets, incoming planes, and even trains in the London Underground.


The creators are particularly excited for the Vizicities’ combination of live and 3D data to assist in urban planning and disaster relief efforts, such as floods, in which it would be key for emergency professionals to have live updates of water levels.

Given my interest in transportation, public space, and urban history, I was struck by the potential of Vizicities for historians. I can easily see historians using Vizicities to study contemporary movement in their city of interest and comparing this data to the same city in their period of study. I can also see sociologists, anthropologists and other social scientists diving into Vizicities to study urban areas in a variety of ways. Perhaps as the platform grows, the creators can develop its usability in rural areas as well. Vizicities is currently still in development, and I am looking forward to seeing what scholars can do with this powerful addition to the digital humanities world.

Yes, I can fix that…

As spring semester beings, I’m happy to dust off this blog and break the hiatus silence. I’m sure that I experienced many of the same things any tech savvy reader of this blog did over the holidays: fixing family members technology. Items were fixed that were obviously broken or sadly out of date, or I HAD to impose myself upon them seeing how inefficiently programs and objects were setup.

Unfortunately, I (and a few others I know) run into this problem professionally as well. And reflecting back on winter break, because of course with the start of spring semester the most likely question a person is asked is “How was your break?”, fixing family members computers reminds me a lot of the hurdles being faced within Anthropology. Much of Anthropology is just beginning to embrace digital technology and social media.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know that change is slow, especially academically. And it’s great that professional organizations and conferences are trying to connect with blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. However, it’s also frustrating to see it done incorrectly. You know what I’m talking about, tweets so far over the 140 character limit that the hashtag isn’t visible, or incredibly long hashtags that are practicably un-functional with no thought for reuse in the future years/conferences; tweets or Facebook posts about connecting with social media at a conference, with the instructions on a webpage that doesn’t work on mobile devices.

There’s also a current discussion regarding how to count online publishing on the yearly academic review for students and faculty. As many journals transition to online only publishing, these considerations need to be made now, rather than later.

So as 2015 begins to fly by, I’m hoping by this time next year progress towards digital acceptance has been made. But I have a feeling, we’ll all still be saying, “Yes I can fix that”, or “No, that’s not how that works”. I did just field a call from my step-dad asking me for the router password, even though I haven’t lived there in 12 years. And yes, of course I knew what it was.

Double Vision

Because of my interest in Renaissance drama and visual art, I am interested in connections, relationships, and patterns between Renaissance verbal and visual media. I’m also interested in how Renaissance playwrights and visual artists might be connected culturally, artistically, and professionally. For this reason, I’ve pursued digital visualization tools to use for my CHI Fellowship project. Having just presented on Palladio (with additional references to Tableau and Voyant), I’ve become more reflective of what visualization tools are, and what they are not.

 
The first question I’ve asked myself is why I should visualize my data at all. The short answer is that visualizing data allows me to view my data in a different way and it also allows me to present it to others in a tangible, approachable manner. For example, I am interested in the way in which Shakespeare uses emerging English artistic theory in his plays. So one of the first things I look for is when, how, and to what effect Shakespeare incorporates artistic terminology in his writing. While I could complete some close readings on these key passages, relate them to relevant primary works, and then situate my argument in the field accordingly, what would happen if I added the extra step of visualization to literally view these key references in a new way? Using a different lens? Might I uncover interesting and significant connections that I could not see before?

 
Visualizing this data, I theorize, will allow me to see connections, patterns, and potential trends (I’ve already uncovered a few surprises during my preliminary research). For example, does Shakespeare make greater use of artistic terminology in comedies or drama? Does he use artistic terminology more in his later plays? Are there particular acts, scenes, or characters that use artistic terminology more often? These are the types of questions visualization might be able to address.

 
Of course digital visualization does not solve research questions for me. A graph cannot analyze itself, or the enchanting Shakespearean lines that hooked me in senior English class. But it does show me new things…it does provide me with new Ways of Seeing. From there, it is up to me; what narrative will I tell to accompany my visual? What exactly is my data story? Why does it matter that Timon of Athens includes variations of the word ‘paint’ more than a dozen times? What purpose does it serve and what is at stake by identifying the purpose of these allusions?

 
Over the next month I’ll continue to explore visualization tools in an effort to determine which platform is right for me and my project. Exciting things are to come in the next semester: solidifying my project, attending DH workshops at the SAA, and launching what I hope will be a useful tool for myself and others.

Visualizing Cemeteries

I’ve had to shift the focus of my CHI project, from creating an open access database of the onsite collected data. The project is still something I would like to tackle, but it is simply not scalable enough to complete fully next semester. Therefore, my plan is to create a interactive visualization of specific portions of data (age, sex, ancestry, grave goods) by utilizing the geographic spatial data that was collected during the excavation process. This has led me to ponder how others have visualized the data from individual cemeteries.

But first, a little more background on the project. The Santa Clara Valley Medical Center Historic Cemetery (hereafter referred to as VMC) was rediscovered in the spring of 2012 during construction of a hospital expansion. Sometime in the late 1930’s, the cemetery was removed from county maps, and in the 1950’s a parking lot was placed on top. Because there was no way to alter the construction plans to not impact the cemetery, the individuals in the new buildings foot print needed to be removed. I worked as part of a team to excavate a total of 1,004 individuals.

Source – Reminiscences of Santa Clara Valley and San Jose by Amaury Mars 1901

The cemetery was directly connected to the county hospital, which opened in 1871. The cemetery includes individuals that were interred directly from the hospital, individuals buried at the counties expense, as well as community members that could not afford burial at one of the other cemeteries. Historical records show that the cemetery was in use from approximately 1876-1925. Records also indicate that there were, at the time of its closing, nearly 1,500 individuals buried there.

Cemeteries are places where people tend to focus on specific individuals interred there, rather than the demography of the cemetery as a whole.   Cemeteries, in general, are memorials not only to the people buried there, but also reflect the time they were buried. But how do you recreate the visual aspects of a cemetery that lacked grave markers, was removed from the visual landscape by being covered over, and in fact no longer exists in its entirety because of the rescue salvation excavation?   Reconstructing the individual markers of the cemetery by coding individual graves age, sex, etc. can reestablish the original feel of the cemetery.

A geographic information system (GIS) is a computer program that creates spatial maps based on spatial data that allows users to visualize and analyze data in order to reveal patterns. At the VMC cemetery, multiple points were taken per burial that will allow the geographical distribution of each internment to be visualized on a map. Because the individuals in this cemetery are currently nameless, visualizing the biological and cultural trends across the cemetery should allow myself, and other researchers, to better understand placement within the cemetery. My hope is that at the end of this project, the combination of osteological, archaeological, and GIS data will give the VMC cemetery a cleared picture of the individuals buried there.

Mute Poem, Speaking Picture…And Web-Based Visualization Tools

For November’s post, I’m going to write a bit about my own specific research interest. As a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of English, I study Renaissance literature and visual culture. Specifically, I look at the connection between Renaissance drama and portraiture. This research interest has developed since I spent a year working on an MA in ‘Shakespeare in History’ at University College London. While living in London the city became my classroom—the theaters, museums, and original texts I encountered first-hand inspired me, and I wrote my MA thesis on Shakespeare’s literary use of portraiture.

 
Building upon that initial interest, my current project explores how Renaissance playwrights dramatize paintings and painters in order to examine their own artistic significance and value within Renaissance artistic society. Dramatists I argue, participated in the paragone (discourse and debates supporting or refuting the supposed superiority of one artistic medium over all others) and yet transformed these debates by subverting the traditional binary purported between verbal and visual. Drama, after all, is both a textual and visual medium. And so my dissertation is built upon the fundamental recognition that Renaissance playwrights often dramatize:

 
1. Artistic language—using key artistic terms and theories to illuminate their own rhetoric
2. The painter as a surreptitious character, who is akin to the dramatist through the representation of his struggle for social and artistic mobility
3. Artistic stage properties—which are used to examine the potential dangers of fictional representation
4. The intellectual and physical labor of creating visual art, which is closely linked to the textual; and in turn, creates a reciprocal, inter-media effect

 
In all, I suggest that Renaissance dramatists understood their undeniable connection to painters and when painters and paintings are staged, they function as mirrors used to reflect drama’s own socially-imposed concerns about its artistic significance given its visual nature.

 
This project builds upon metadramatic scholarship but also makes use of the more recent interest in Renaissance visual culture. My project consists of four chapters, each exploring a different play and author: Arden of Faversham, Campaspe, Timon of Athens, and Jonson’s masques. I will be presenting my work on Campaspe at the Shakespeare Association of America conference this April.

 
So how does all this relate to the CHI fellowship and my digital project? I’m still working on that…I am intrigued by the prospect of connecting Renaissance playwrights to paragone authors and concepts visually. It is my view that scholars have overlooked or undervalued the connection between Renaissance textual (printed drama, poetry, prose, artistic theory that connects verbal to visual, etc.) to Renaissance visual (performed drama, ekphrastic poetry [Admittedly this element has probably been covered the most out of the bunch], Renaissance paintings used as stage properties, etc.).

 
Because I’d like to make a case for the strong relationship between Renaissance verbal and visual (and extend my analysis to also examine the professional relationship between dramatists and painters) I imagine that presenting this information visually will allow me to organize these networks effectively as I progress through the dissertation. It is also my hope that by making this project public, scholars with similar interests will be able to see the link between Renaissance textual and visual in new ways.

 
Next month I plan to discuss web-based visualization tools and I will hopefully be one step closer to finding a platform that suits my research and tech needs.