I still plan on doing some image-mining, but I’ve decided not to include maps with the locations where he created his paintings. Mostly because the location is unknown for the majority of them, and some of the images I’ve decided to use are not 100% confirmed as authentic Caravaggios.

If anyone has any suggestions for image-mining technology, I’d appreciate it. I’d like to be able to see all the images at once  like the examples we saw in class. I’d also like to be able to tag each work with Title/Date/Patron/Location.

I refuse to abandon my swashbuckling friend Caravaggio. Now, I’ve decided to try to interpret his artwork digitally. I guess I’m planning on doing some sort of image mining with his oeuvre. The problem is, his oeuvre is very small compared to other artists. And I also haven’t figured out how to make one of those nifty zoomable pictures we looked at last week.

I plan on comparing his artwork with the events of his life (it’s very exciting) and the different patrons he had. This will involve a map with fun things attached to it. Ideally, I would be able to scroll over a location and see a pop-up of the works created there, the dates he lived there, the patrons he served, and the number of times he got arrested. But, again, I’m an idiot and don’t know how to make one.

So, here I am dejected, depressed, and feeling really, really stupid. I’m sure it will only take a couple more psychotic episodes and I’ll be finished with this assignment.

My idea for my second project is to do a digital historiography on one of my favorite artists; Caravaggio. I wrote briefly about this a few weeks ago, if you’d like to look at some of hisle,  work his entire oeuvre is on caravaggio.com. I think tools like wordle, and other text-mining tools can be very helpful in literature reviews. For instance, writing about Caravaggio became a very en vogue thing to do in the 1980s because of an increased interest in gay rights in the late 70s and early 80s. One could text mine for words like “homosexuality,” etc and probably find an increased number of these words in writing on Caravaggio from the 80s in relation to writings before and after.  (In fact, I presented a paper on Caravaggio last year and discovered at the podium that I’d perhaps overused the word)

The problem with doing work like this is that writing on Caravaggio really didn’t get going until the 1950s, so virtually all of the source material I would use is unavailable thanks to copyright. I suppose I could use articles, or I may just have to find another way of doing this project. It seems that practicing digital history often requires an increase in creativity on the historian’s part.

I plan on using some of the other tools we’ve talked about, mainly the Time magazine corpus. So far, I’ve been finding exactly what I expected. This is a good thing, as it means my instincts about the literature on Caravaggio were correct (my instincts often are ). If this project works out well, it would mean that a literature review is possible without actually reading any of the literature…

There are a few curiosities to think about on this tool. First: why are Canadians so happy on Thanksgiving? Second: Why are Indians so much happier than everyone else? Third: Why are Italians so stable on this app when we all know that our friends in Italy are…mercurial? GRN definitely aroused my curiosity, and it seems to me that this is the purpose of these types of tools. Creating graphs, maps, etc. shows us things we otherwise wouldn’t have noticed. As I mentioned before, I was confused about the level-headedness of Italian Facebook users. Maybe this graph shows that our assumption about “crazy Italians” is wrong. Or, perhaps this can be explained by a lack of Roman and Neapolitan Facebook users. (I apologize to any Italians I’ve offended)

The Feltron report is a barrage of graphs that I felt to be over-designed and therefore very confusing. I generally had no idea what I was clicking on, and therefore only got random tidbits of information about this guy’s life. I must say, I admire his dedication, but would rather die before undertaking a similar project. I think Felton would be aided by designing his annual report around some sort of theme or thesis. The 2009 report does this, but he only includes those with which he has a “meaningful encounter.” The question would then be: who decides what a meaningful encounter is? This, again, is a need for human bias in digital history.

An aside: I anyone else amazed at how few meals this guy takes at home? In 2007 he had only a 39% chance of eating dinner at his home. He also found his first gray hair on June 2oth, 2006…if you were wondering.

The overwhelming amount of information available on this site is a perfect example of the problem of abundance. There is simply TOO MUCH information. It may have something to do with me being kind of a dummy when it comes to Civil War history. (shameful since I live in Winchester, but my knowledge doesn’t extend beyond “frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”) That being said, it also may be the digital format that has caused me trouble. It seems to me that they are trying to prove that slavery wasn’t a major contributing factor to secession; but I thought everyone already knew that.The allure of so many links is very tempting, and incredibly distracting. I don’t get it, but, I do see that the authors are using GIS technology to make whatever point it is they’re trying to make.

This Geographic Information Systems technology appears to be another form of digitization. I like that GIS can combine a number of primary sources (maps) together to create one comprehensive electronic source.  But, like we discussed last week, this wouldn’t be possible without humans making decisions about what maps to include. Not to mention the importance of Jed Hotchkiss’ maps. I helped install an exhibition of Jed’s maps at a museum a year or so ago and they are incredible. It would have been nice to see the original maps on the website. Perhaps they are there, I just didn’t click on the link.

As an “applied experiment in digital scholarship,” I don’t know what to think about Ayers an Thomas’ work.  They’ve used some interesting technology to make what I think is a not-so-original point. But, perhaps it’s about showing that this conclusion could have been reached in a more efficient way, had the digital resources been available sooner.

First, I’m going to jump the gun and predict what our second project is going to be. Reading this week’s material leads me to assume that we are going to have to do a piece of quantitative research. This type of research could make things like historiography much easier. Last fall, I did a lengthy literature review on Caravaggio’s secular paintings; an example of which I’ve included.

I got to review the entire spectrum of art historical methods. I came to the conclusion that Caravaggio’s secular paintings became much more interesting to scholars after lesbian/gay issues emerged as popular topic for discussion in art history.

Rather than reading book after book after book….after book, I could have searched for recurring words in all of these books (assuming that they are all digitized), and likely found the same pattern I found after reading them all. The search would have involved coming up with key words associated with each historical method and then graphing the number of occurrences of those words over time.  If out second project is to do some quantitative history I think this will be my project.

The problem with being able to mine the entire body of work on a topic is that it could potentially make any argument at all impossible. One of the great things about old-fashioned historical research is that you can just simply use the sources that fit in nicely with your argument and push aside the ones that don’t. Soon, we’ll have no excuse for structuring arguments this way! Gasp! Hopefully, using Moretti’s quantitative methods will push us to come up with more nuanced, and perhaps more radical arguments than would have been possible a few years ago.

Reading this quote from Bell’s TNR article “The Bookless Future” made me feel as if a bunch of words had been stolen out of my mouth. Then, I realized that this is not a good argument for the preservation of physical libraries (with the exception of the part about the “uncomfortable experience of reading on a screen).  The truth is that the digitization of every book ever written is well on its way to happening, and paper copies of books are likely to end up encased in glass next to the Book of Kells, with a white-gloved museum curator turning to a new page every few months.

This democratization of scholarly works is a good thing, and as Bell says: “What really matters, particularly at this early stage, is not to damn or to praise the eclipse of the paper book or the digital complication of its future, but to ensure that it happens in the right way, and to minimize the risks.”

I agree with Bell when he suggests that the true danger of reading online is that it turns you into a bad reader. I don’t know why (perhaps it will be explained in the readings I haven’t finished yet), but I always seem to absorb less when I read on an electronic device. Does anyone know why it is easier to retain information when you read something on paper rather than online?

One of the best things about online books is obviously the cost. I would imagine it’s easier to get your book published online than it is to get it printed, bound, and sent to Barnes and Noble. This is great for us as scholars, as we all stand a greater chance of being published either as an online book or in an online journal.

Even with the innumerable positive aspects of online publishing…I still think paradise will be a library– and not a computer lab.

However, I do still love the idea of open source history. Most people would never get the opportunity to have their description of a work of art “published.” The Steve Museum is a great way to get people interested in art.  The Steve method might also be good for my website. One of my biggest concerns with the study of modern architecture is the number of ways you can classify a building. Allowing people to tag architecture with their own descriptions would probably complicate things, but it would also get people thinking about each building differently. It does seem however that modern art (and modern architecture in particular) is often met with disapproval by non-art people.  An aside: whenever you hear someone say “I could’ve done THAT” in reference to a work of modern art; you should say “But you didn’t.” So maybe I don’t want everyone to have the opportunity to tag my much-loved buildings with words like “crap.”