Project Title: Is This a Poem? — The State, Elite Capture, and Cultural Appropriation

Audience: People who are interested in language poetry and cultural appropriation, as well as people who are critical of cultural policy. I hope that my project can be helpful to people who want to study the difference between text and literature, institution and author, or seeing and interpretation. 

Argument: By asking readers to use an interpretive tool on the “Is This a Poem?” website, I hope to catalog the features of poetry that give it meaning. Asking readers to determine whether or not they consider a text to be poetry — and then asking them to elaborate on this evaluation by qualifying their perception of themes, patterns, and symbols in the text — will constitute a database that can be used to map the shape of poetic interpretation. None of the analyzed texts will have a single author: instead, I will “write” the poems using a random arrangement of words and sentence fragments drawn from public records. The poems, as such, will be authored by the state. By having readers perform a close reading of bureaucratic language, I am asking readers, in the spirit of Proust, to determine whether or not “it really is like that”. Does the language produced by the state — in the form of laws, permits, public spokespeople, regulations, and records — corroborate how we feel about ourselves? Does the state play a generative role in our literary culture, even if indirectly? “Is This a Poem?” will identify the reader’s impulse to interpret; and then will test the possibility of turning this interpretive impulse against the immuring language of the state in order to create alternate meanings where we are typically discouraged from looking twice.

I am also interested in making the argument that “elite capture”, a concept defined by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, is a form of cultural appropriation. In relation to progressive cultural and political movements, Táíwò explains that “identity politics is the victim of elite capture—deployed by political, social, and economic elites in the service of their own interests, rather than in the service of the vulnerable people they often claim to represent.” 

Sources and Data: The project will draw on state-issued language including laws, court opinions, public records, and speeches. Once place where I can get this data from the New York City Charter (thank you for the link, Cecilia!); but I need to spend the next week locating more data that represents different registers of state speech. 

Tools Needed: A competence with basic HTML or Python, in order to create my website, including the text randomization tool, interactive affect tags, and text boxes. One website-builder that I might consider using is Bootstrap, which guides users through the process of making a simple, interactive website. 

An example of an interactive response box that might appear on my website.

An example of the affect tags that might appear on my website.

Pain Points and Decision Points: One major decision that I need to make is about the scope of the data I’m using to create my randomized text excerpts: will I focus only on local, New York City specific data? Will my database be determined by the sources I have access to and can scrape? In this sense, I think that the data collection aspect of my project is both a pain point and a decision point. Another major decision that I will need to make regards the amount of time during which I will solicit participation. How many responses will I consider to be sufficient to support my analysis? 

Final Deliverable: For the May 22 due date, my deliverable will be a white paper analyzing whether or not the project participants’ reactions to the randomly generated texts corroborate my hypothesis about how interpreting meaning in state speech is a way to re-appropriate the cultural meaning behind language. Eventually, I am interested in continuing to ask questions about cultural appropriation, interpretation, and elite capture for my final MA thesis. 

Timeline: 

For this semester’s project, I’m tackling piracy as preservation in the video gaming sphere. We’re living through a rapid and all-consuming technological shift from physical media to digital only media. In this project, I would like to analyze the commercial and pirated methods of archive for video games, what this means for consumers and developers of video games, and what alternative methods exists.

Currently, piracy in gaming has offered a means of access and preservation where corporations could not or did not feel compelled to maintain support for older games or make them available through other means. A game’s quarterly or yearly success determines whether future generations would even have the opportunity to experience it, in the process potentially erasing the historical significance of a game or the communities that developed around it.

I’d like to share the landscape for video game archives and preservation with readers and contribute to creating a more informed user base that can get behind methods that of preservation that rooted in more accessibility.

I’m leaning into showcasing this exploration as an interactive, visual essay or a website.

What tools do you think you will need – pain point and choices to make?

I’m thinking to make the visual essay in InDesign or making a website with WordPress/GitHub Pages, or a GitBook.

Tools – I’ll be using notion and google doc/word doc for drafting and writing, Adobe tools for image creation or editing.

Pain Points

• Narrowing down an audience. On one hand, it’s to the DH community, but I think this is also valuable to folks who enjoy games and preservation, so a greater movement can emerge to support sustainable methods for preserving video games.
• How to make this a visually interesting project. I don’t love the idea of a full website since long term hosting ect. In the spirit of making this more publicly engaging, it needs good visual intrigue. On the fence on how well I can do this with a visual essay when the more public audience is probably easier to reach through video, audio, and yeah, an actual game.

What is the final deliverable?

An engaging visual essay that blends analysis and narrative storytelling with multimedia (photos, videos, etc). Also taking inspiration from publications like The Pudding, or other digital magazine/ zine-like creations.

Timeline

A primer on the subject of my project

I’m interested in exploring the aesthetic and political evolution of jazz music through the lens of its album cover art. 

I’m working with the entire collection of album covers from Prestige Records, one of the most popular and wide-ranging jazz labels whose run of recordings from ~1950-70 represent a snapshot of post-war jazz during a transformational period, as it exploded in popularity and expanded into new sounds. The album covers from this era reflect this exploratory spirit while also at times revealing the prejudices of the majority-white record label owners and cover art designers.

Prestige had a remarkable cast of characters designing their album covers, from painter Prophet Jennings to Esmond Edwards (one of the very few Black recording executives of the era) to a then-mostly-unknown artist named Andy Warhol.

My digital project will tell the story of Prestige’s album art and its artists while exploring what the label’s aesthetic decisions tell us about the contemporary understanding of jazz musicians and music in America. The digital format will allow me to simultaneously explore large-scale aesthetic choices (color palettes, typography, subject matter, etc.) and small-scale stories of the (often-invisible) individual artists behind these covers. 

To achieve this, the project will incorporate a range of media — from album art to photographs to the music itself — as well as digital tools like an interactive timeline.

Below, I’ll cover my expected project timeline; the tools I’ll need, the decisions I need to make, and any pain points; and what my final deliverable will be in May.

Timeline

Here’s what I’m envisioning for the week-over-week progress of my project through presenting an MVP (minimum viable product) during our final class session.

What tools I think I’ll need and/or decisions to make / pain points

I’m currently struggling with a few issues relating to selecting tools and other decisions:

• Which platform to use for hosting? I’d like some level of flexibility / customization (including the ability to inject my own code), as well as the option to display different types of media. I at first considered building the project from scratch, but that’s not reasonable (given our timeline) and isn’t really in the spirit of building on top of existing DH tools or in concert with communities of researcher-builders. So, I’m leaning toward using Omeka, Scalar, or Drupal. Would love advice/recommendations if anyone has experience with these platforms.
• Copyright — How concerned should I be about using images of album covers sourced from online archives that don’t contain any statement of copyright or any attribution requirement?

In terms of other tools and data sources:

• To track down album art from the Prestige Records archive, my best options thus far are Birka Jazz (a repository of album covers and metadata gathered by a record store owner) or maybe Spotify (via its API). JazzDisco also has a comprehensive list of Prestige Records’ albums but without the cover art.
• In addition to the content management systems / site hosts mentioned above, I’ll likely use TimelineJS to build the interactive timeline, Tropy to catalogue images and keep track of metadata, and potentially Google Vision API for analyzing images at scale.

What will be my final deliverable (what can I realistically deliver by May)

I’m going to focus on telling a digital story (or multiple stories) built on my own analysis interspersed with reflections/writings from others and non-textual media like artwork/photographs and music. The goal would be to allow readers to move easily from a bird’s-eye view of this period in time (e.g., the timeline showing all 250+ album covers) all the way down to the personal (the lives of specific graphic designers). Something along the lines of a linear digital story (see The Pudding’s recent exploration of romance book covers) or a looser collection of media and words that play off each other (see Newest Americans).

If you made it this far…here are some album covers 🙂

Prophet Jennings’ cover for “Out There” (1961)

Andy Warhol’s cover for “Trombone By Three” (1956)

<Wittgenstein’s Journey: Life & Philosophy>

Michael Lee (The Graduate Center, CUNY)

<Ludwig Wittgenstein, 26 April 1889 ~ 29 April 1951>

Audience:

• The public, especially high school and undergraduate students, who are interested in philosophy and the philosophers behind stories!

Purpose:

• This project is for the DH: Methods and Practices class, and I would like to expand the project into my DH Capstone project.
• Sharing interesting philosophical arguments and clashes related to Wittgenstein’s life and philosophical journey.

Technologies:

• WordPress-CUNY Commons site / Google Maps-OpenStreetMap-Carto-Leaflet JS / Timeline JS

Project Timeline

• 2/14: Simple Idea to be developed.
• 3/1 – Collecting & organizing contents (Wittgenstein’s life, map, stories, events, and his philosophical development)
• 3/15 – Done with all the contents and information.
• 4/1 – Start developing & visualizing the contents on the website at the CUNY Commons site or WordPress.
• 4/15 – Timeline, Mapping, Philosophy arguments!
• 5/1 – Technical Things….
• 5/15 – Fully developed project w/ contents, design, and structure.
• 5/22 – Final Day!

Why Wittgenstein?

First and foremost, Wittgenstein is a great philosopher in the landscape of philosophy from the 20th century to the present. He made significant contributions to various fields of philosophy and those outside philosophy, including logic, the philosophy of language, mind, mathematics, linguistics, cognitive science, and even today’s large language models.

Next, Wittgenstein is an iconic figure in terms of his insightful and admirable philosophical journey, which involves some dramatic adversities, war experiences, close friendships with renowned scholars, harsh debates and clashes, and funny stories.

Usually, we look at Wittgenstein’s philosophical journey as two opposing parts: Early Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) & Late Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations and Later Works). However, we can also recognize that these two parts have in common as they are closely related to his personal experience and reflections. Even though Wittgenstein’s philosophical turn from logical analysis of language to everyday use of language produced opposing interpretations and conflicts, such as skeptical and therapeutic approaches to philosophy, no one can deny that this philosophical shift bears abundant fruits in philosophy and other fields.

Through this project, I want to focus on Wittgenstein’s philosophical response to his personal experiences, including his reflections on war, his search for certainty in language, and his engagement with the complexities of everyday language, and share his enthusiastic search for philosophy with the general public (especially high school and undergraduate students, who are interested in philosophy and the philosopher’s life) for their intellectual and philosophical curiosity.

Few DH projects are related to Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Still, they mainly focus on archiving his philosophical works (The Ludwig Wittgenstein Project: https://www.wittgensteinproject.org) or function as a mere academic community for conferences and lectures in philosophy majors. (British Wittgenstein Society: https://www.britishwittgensteinsociety.org/) Unlike existing projects, this project, Wittgenstein’s Journey: Life & Philosophy, offers a philosophical playground for the public by collecting and archiving unique stories, images, pictures, and philosophical remarks about Wittgenstein and building an interactive map concerning his life timeline.

Ex) Wittgenstein had undergone surgery without anesthesia in 1914 when serving as a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army during WW1. He volunteered to have surgery on a hernia (no use of anesthesia) since Wittgenstein believed that enduring the pain of surgery would help him understand the nature of pain (sensory feeling) and its philosophical relationship to language and consciousness. These were central themes in his philosophical work.

(Kraków Military Command, Field Post Number 186, Poland 1914 from “Frege-Wittgenstein correspondence.”)

Project:

Colored Conventions Project (https://coloredconventions.org/)

Project Directors & Members:

P.Gabrielle Foreman (https://www.pgabrielleforeman.com/), Penn State University

Jim Casey, (https://jim-casey.com/), Penn State Universiy

Other Project Members (https://coloredconventions.org/about/team/)

Keywords:

American History, Political Events(1830~1890s), Black Movement, Open Education, Record Archiving

Project Reviewer:

Michael C. Lee (The Graduate Center, CUNY)

Project Overview

The Colored Conventions Project (CCP) rediscovers relatively underrepresented political events in American history.  The CCP shows the long journey of American Black communities fighting for educational, labor, and legal justice for seven decades (1830~1890s) through which the project revives the Black political movement and its political implications regarding civil and human rights.

CCP is a website that aims to document and bring the collective organizing efforts of 19th-century Black communities to digital life. The site has been created and operated by diverse researchers – scholars, graduate students, librarians, and undergraduates -, and functions as a research hub for “a new generation of researchers, students, and community scholars.” Plus, CCP provides the public with opportunities to engage with the invaluable resource for understanding the history of Black collective organizing. In this sense, the project is also a cultural hub for the public.

CCP was launched and cultivated at the University of Delaware from 2012 to 2020. The project has received funding from several grantors – Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Wallace Posner Family Foundation, Delaware Humanities Forum, and the University of Delaware grants. Also, the project maintains its fruitful contributions to scholarly publications, conference presentations, workshops, and community presentations. Moreover, by providing teaching materials and collecting records from the public, CCP has actively expanded its audience scope.

 Project Review

The CCP site features general information, digital exhibits of scholarship research using Colored Convention records, teaching materials for educators, and CCP newsletters. In addition, their Digital Records site (https://coloredconventions.org/about-records/) provides audiences with many primary sources from the convention movement, including minutes, articles, speeches, letters, pictures, and images.

The website is built on the WordPress platform and uses digital archives technologies to collect, organize, and store historical documents. On the <Exhibits> page, the archives include digitized documents, pictures, images, and graphs explaining the influence of various factors on the Colored Conventions movement. Each exhibit thoroughly explains the events, contexts, people, and its meaning to the whole movement. Also, each page links the related digital records and other relevant exhibit pages; thanks to this, the audience can easily navigate the site and follow their interests through the links.

CCP is a good example of a DH project, as it has certain features:

1. Epistemic Justice & Sovereignty:

The CCP clarifies the principles and goals of its work, that is, rediscovering and understanding devalued and underrepresented Black history and voices. The project highlights the diverse leaders and places involved in the convention movement. This includes well-known figures such as writers, church leaders, editors, and entrepreneurs, as well as those whose contributions to this collective action have been overlooked even by their American Black communities. Especially by affirming “Black women’s centrality to nineteenth-century Black organizing,” the project reshapes epistemic sovereignty: (a) what we need to know, (b) who must be included, and (c) how it should be done.

2. Open online access & Interplay:

All the materials, information, and digital records they use for the project are open to the audience on the website. Plus, CCP encourages users to actively interact with and participate in the project by accepting newly found records that have not yet been featured. (The website specifies the records needed: https://coloredconventions.org/about-conventions/submit-records/)  In addition, each section on the website is closely related, and users can find the contents they need easily as they navigate the site.

3. Pedagogical approaches:

The project offers teaching guides through which users can freely use and teach the materials in K-12/AP/College classes. Each chapter has a separate curriculum for K-12 and AP/College classes using diverse approaches to audiences – 1) Resources, Methods, Questions, and Standards for K-12, and 2) Questions, Class Activity, and Example for AP/College Classes. With this attempt to offer educational support, the CCP links its ongoing work to the present.

One of the great accomplishments of this project is the wealth of data collected through the project website and the possibility of active utilization in various ways, including academic research, educational resources, cultural-digital projects, and even social movements.

What I also noticed from CCP is its localness, narrowing down its research interests and subject. When embracing the localness of a certain community, there could be the danger of sacrificing its interconnectivity with others. However, through the open inquiry, research, and interaction structure, CCP allows users to engage with the project and other participants through the website and the curriculum. By bringing the hidden historical events to today and contributing to an increased understanding of Black communities’ political movements in American history, CCP speaks for everyone regarding ongoing issues, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, discriminatory policing, and structural racism in America’s political landscape.

Here is a PDF of the poem I referenced in class!

And here is a description of the text from Google books:

“In November, 1781, the captain of the slave ship Zong ordered that some 150 Africans be murdered by drowning so that the ship’s owners could collect insurance monies. Relying entirely on the words of the legal decision Gregson v. Gilbert—the only extant public document related to the massacre of these African slaves—Zong! tells the story that cannot be told yet must be told. Equal parts song, moan, shout, oath, ululation, curse, and chant, Zong! excavates the legal text. Memory, history, and law collide and metamorphose into the poetics of the fragment. Through the innovative use of fugal and counterpointed repetition, Zong! becomes an anti-narrative lament that stretches the boundaries of the poetic form, haunting the spaces of forgetting and mourning the forgotten. “

The Shakespeare and Company Project, platformed by Princeton University, analyzes the development of modernism. This digitized collection of records from the Shakespeare and Company lending library lets us examine how scholars in the Lost Generation read, interacted, and shaped their contemporary intellectual moment. Analyses of geospatial relations, gender identity, and popular books at the library inform the work on this site.

https://momentsofinnovation.mit.edu

Overview

This is a website that documents the intersections of representation and technology as An interactive installation and online research project. It chronicles innovative technologies or creative applications of technologies used in documentary work through the years. The project’s goal is to link the technological past to the present. It is a joint project from MIT’s Open Documentary Lab and IDFA DocLab.

Based on the credits page it was created by a mid-size team of under 20 folks. They worked with a France-based media studio that works with orgs and companies to develop websites, interfaces, and films. They did have outside funding from several foundations.

Works for me:

• that it scales well for multiple sizes across desktop and is optimized for mobile viewing
• the typeface and font are easily readable. san-serif typefaces for reading on the web is better
• landing page is visually interesting, not overwhelming. I like the use of mouse hover effects to give the website the feeling of movement. It’s clear what users can do on the site.
• Most links led somewhere.
• The design is simple, but solid (kind of standard internet site, but feels more modern that many DH projects I’ve seen)
• The innovations documented were fascinating and engaging. I watch documentaries and encounter documentation practices everyday but had not really taken a more conscious moment to think about the evolution of this practice over time. (one of those you know on a high level but don’t investigate more thoroughly often)
• I like that each section starts at the point furthest from the present. Each section is a visual timeline of documenting practices and you can slide show through each one without going back to the main page. This feature is only possible at the top of a given sections and I wonder why they chose not to include a button or arrow a prompt for the next section at the end of a section too since it is less intuitive to scroll back up to the top.
• The description for each project is not super text heavy and give you enough information to do your own deeper dive.
• The site also doesn’t have the text spanning the entire page, which will fatigue readers, so column sizes are good.
• This feature is only possible at the top of a given sections and I think I may have tried to see if a prompt for the next section could be added to the end of a section since it is less intuitive to scroll back up to the top.

Some Issues:

• There’s a favoring of projects from MIT of IDFA works, or other orgs in these networks which makes sense as they could more easily get information about these works. But regardless there seems to be an overrepresentation or bias in that way
• There’s a gap in years represented. This could give the wrong impression to a user that innovation isn’t happening during these times.
• Overall the content is Western centric and also the projects included are overwhelming male led projects
• I don’t know as much about web accessibility features, but there don’t seem to be any options as far as I could tell.
• A huge issue is that this type of project includes links to other projects. While not every innovation links to a project somewhere else on the web, many of them do. As long as the moments in innovation team is updating and maintaining the site it’s fine, but they can’t account for how well or not other sites they have linked to keep up their web presence. A few links I clinked into had expired domains, domains taken over by AI sites, outdated flash reliance, broken video links etc.
• They do make clear they are not exhaustive list and I’m not sure if it’s still being updated, but most documentation stops around 2015/6

Overall I do find this to be a successful DH project, but bias and typical web age issue are issues here.

Linked Jazz — a network visualization of jazz defined by the relationships between musicians. Here is the project documentation.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/22/dining/restaurant-menu-trends.html