At the start of the semester, I introduced the book Voidopolis as one of the DH projects that piqued my interest. Last Saturday night, I had the opportunity to attend Kat Mustatea’s Voidopolis talk at the Brooklyn Public Library as part of the annual Night In the Library festival. For those intrigued by the creative process behind her first book, she has embarked on a new project, reminiscent of Voidopolis, inspired by Dante’s Purgatory, which she is sharing through her Instagram page. You can stay updated by following her @kmustatea.

Although this project has been a solo endeavor, I’ve collaborated with friends and digital fellows for consultations, a collaboration that has proven to be immensely valuable. As I proceed with the project in the latter half of the semester, I’m pleased to report that I feel confident in maintaining the timeline I’ve established for its completion.

Tentative Work Plan 3_16

Proposal: 
For my final project, I want to begin developing my capstone project—a website featuring an interactive map, multimedia essay, and virtual exhibit exploring the history and legacy of the Limelight, a short lived Greenwich Village Cafe and Photo Gallery open from 1954 to 1961. 

The Limelight was the first gallery in the US dedicated exclusively to photography. It opened when photography was at a crossroads between documentary and fine art and showed an incredibly diverse mix of work from Bauhaus, proto-surrealism, landscape, and humanism. Along with featuring the work of pioneers like Ansel Adams, Robert Frank, and Imogen Cunningham, the gallery also showed work by lesser-known artists at the time, such as Jack Smith (who would become a founding figure in underground cinema), Weimar era photographer Ellen Auerbach whose photos at the Limelight documented her exile in Central America, and Claudia Andujar, Romanian born Swiss-Brazilian photojournalist who also escaped Europe during the war. 

I want to make visible the diverse paths that photographers took to Greenwich Village (and to the Limelight), and explore the cultural and political lineages that shaped their sometimes competing versions of modernism. 

Deliverables:
I anticipate three components of this project. The third component is out of scope for this semester.

1. An interactive global map tracing the path of photographers to Greenwich Village and the Limelight. Site visitors will be able to select the cities and key locations in the artist’s journey to New York. Each map item will have a written component as well. 
2. A multimedia essay telling the story of the Limelight Cafe’s founding, including audio clips from taped interviews with recollections from artist Lelan, daughter of Limelight Curator Helen Gee. and photographs from Arthur Levine and Charles Berland (my late grandfather). 
3. A virtual Limelight exhibit featuring the photographs of lesser known artists who showed their work at the Gallery and who influenced post-modern and contemporary photography.  

Sources:

• The Limelight / Helen Gee Archive at the University of Arizona Center for Creative Photography contains correspondence between Limelight Curator Helen Gee and photographers, photographs of the space, and ownership/financial records. 
• My Grandfather Charles’ collections of negatives and writings.
• Interviews with surviving members of the scene 

Platform and Hosting: 
I anticipate using WordPress for this project, as I think it will provide me with the best customization options and plugins. I am still determining which map application to use (Google Maps, Leaflet, or OpenStreetMap).

Pain Points: 

• I have basic HTML and CSS competencies but am not very confident in my ability to customize the look of my WordPress site. This piece could take a significant amount of my time this semester. 
• The Limelight held sixty-one exhibitions. I will need to decide whether the purpose of my project is cohesiveness (to map as many names as possible) or a more curated approach that enables me to write more in-depth on each photographer. 
• Rights will be an issue. I can imagine that reaching out and asking permission for various photographs may be time-consuming. 

Timeline:

And finally, here’s a picture taken of a dog patron of the Limelight by Weegee in 1956:

What your final deliverable will be

My final project will be a visual essay. I want to feature direct language from the listings, written analysis of the language used, and charts to illustrate trends.

Your (tentative) timeline

What tools you need (things you need to learn, open questions to be resolved, critical decisions you need to make).

The project will require a few tools. The final essay will be developed using simple web development technologies such as HTML, CSS, and Javascript. I intend to build the site myself as a continuation of my coding practice from the Creative Coding class last semester. I’ll use Python to gather the text from eBay listings. I’m still considering options for textual analysis. Python has several tools for textual analysis, including the NLTK library. There are also a number of no code solutions, including Voyant.