Tag Archives: Digital Humanities

Art Imitates Tech: Preserving History and Culture with QR Codes

Posted on by
5,023

QR Codes. They’re still everywhere.

A quick Google search on the technology reveals that many writers in the webosphere consider QR Codes passé. For certain, there has been a rise and then sharp decline in the use of QR Codes in consumer advertising. But the codes haven’t disappeared altogether – and they’re not exclusive to marketing.

Enter contemporary artist Guillermo Bert.

Two years ago, Bert noted a resemblance between QR Codes and Native American blanket tapestry designs. In addition to the textile similarities, the objects also shared a related function: identification. Inspired, Bert created “Encoded Textiles, ” a project that preserves stories and poems told by Chile’s Mapuche people through barcode technology.

Talking-Code-tapestry-631
Photo credit: Jeannette Paillan, a Mapuche documentary filmmaker, was the inspiration for this 2012 textile, titled Lukutuwe (Fertility). Scanning the QR code embedded in the tapestry reveals a quotation from Paillan, in Spanish, about the importance of sustaining the Mapuche language. (Ronald Dunlap)

In 2012, Bert extended his project into academia, partnering with Arizona State University to develop “Encoded Textiles Arizona.” ASU’s Project Humanities embraced the idea, and since has worked to engage university students, faculty, and Arizona’s Navajo people in the process. ASU students interview the Navajo people about their lives and their culture, encouraging them to tell their stories in their native language. The recorded interviews are translated into barcodes and QR coded. The codes can then be scanned by Smartphones, which translate the codes back into augmented realities. Bert then fuses both culture and technology together by weaving these codes into tapestries that are displayed in art exhibits.

In what ways do everyday technology observations inspire your instruction, research and/or projects?

For more information about the project, visit:
http://humanities.asu.edu/encoded-textiles-project.

For instructional QR Code activities, visit:
www.edutopia.org/blog/QR-codes-teaching-andrew-miller

View the Coded Stories trailer:

 

References:

“Encoded Textiles Project.” Encoded Textile Projects. Project Humanities, n.d. Web. <http://humanities.asu.edu/encoded-textiles-project>.

“HOME « Coded Stories.” Coded Stories. Okapi Films, 2013. Web. 15 Aug. 2013. <http://codedstories.com/>.

Sandford, Maggie Ryan. “What’s a QR Code Doing on That Blanket?” Ideas & Innovation | Smithsonian Magazine. Smithsonian Magazine, July-Aug. 2013. Web. 15 Aug. 2013. <http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ideas-innovations/Whats-a-QR-Code-Doing-on-That-Blanket-213870861.html>.

Surprising Results: A Search Engine Designed by and for Digital Humanities

Posted on by
4,607

serendipomatic
Screenshot from Serendip-o-matic’s homepage

I was a student at Smith in the early 1990s and when I reflect back on the research methods of my time, clearly remember two things: card catalogs and stacks. The card catalog allowed me to pinpoint a resource and the stacks allowed me to get lost (literally and figuratively.)

The adventure always began in the same way, locate the call number and then navigate a system of shelves. If I were lucky, a title would be shelved in the exact right location. This was most often the case. But if I were even luckier, I’d stumble upon more titles and walk out of the library with an armful of books.

It turns out; I am not the only person who remembers this feeling.

Part nostalgia, part scholarship, Serendip-o-matic is a new search tool designed to emulate the feeling of being in the stacks or archives and, by happenstance, stumbling upon an unexpected source that is connected to your research and ideas.

Conceived by a team of twelve digital humanists and using a unique algorithm, Serendip-o-matic analyzes user-inputted text—such as an article, song lyrics, or a bibliography— and then extracts key terms to deliver similar results from online collections of the Digital Public Library of America, Europeana, and Flickr Commons. (One Tool | One Week)

According to developers, the engine “is designed mostly for inspiration, search results aren’t meant to be exhaustive, but rather suggestive, pointing you to materials you might not have discovered. At the very least, the magical input-output process helps you step back and look at your work from a new perspective.”

Serendip-o-matic is a project of One Week | One Tool from the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University.
 Funding provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

For further information, visit the project website at: http://serendipomatic.org

Exceedingly collaborative, the project used an online code sharing and publishing service, a great demonstration of a shared knowledge-building technology. Visit: Github.


References
“Serendip-o-matic: Let Your Sources Surprise You.” Serendip-o-matic: Let Your Sources Surprise You. Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, n.d. Web. 06 Aug. 2013. <http://serendipomatic.org/>.

“One Week | One Tool Has Built … Serendip-o-matic!” One Week | One Tool. Center for History and New Media, n.d. Web. 06 Aug. 2013. <http://oneweekonetool.org/>.

“Serendipomatic Wiki.” GitHub. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Aug. 2013. <https://github.com/chnm/serendipomatic/wiki>.