Matthew Battles and Michael Maizels reveal that our empirical understanding of art history is a relatively recent phenomenon. They discuss the medium of photography as inseparable from this empirical transformation within the discipline. The invention of photography allowed art historians to compare objects with others and share these comparisons with readers. Since the invention of photography, there have been increasingly more technological advances that allow for increasingly in depth opportunities for comparison. Many of these tools and technologies allow art historians to work with large amounts of data and make previously impossible comparisons across objects. Battles and Maizels acknowledge that tensions arise due to “art history’s disciplinary encounter with ‘big data.’” The article discusses Lightbox, a digital humanities project associated with Harvard’s metLAB, is an interactive element within the Harvard Art Museum’s galleries. This model is similar to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s “Art lens wall” (as discussed in this post).

The project offers an interface through which museum visitors can use the screen array to navigate and interactively manipulate, on-screen, metadata associated with the collection on display in the galleries. Lightbox seeks to enact a critical turning-around, an interrogation not so much of artworks themselves but the digital means by which we so frequently know them.

​​ Digital interfaces such as this one raise many questions and concerns for art history and the art object. As Walter Benjamin has famously questioned, we must reexamine the purpose of art within the age of mechanical reproduction. Now that we can view a photo of the Mona Lisa from anywhere in the world, why should (or do) so many people still make the pilgrimage to the Louvre over and over? Do physical art objects become obsolete in the digital age? I am curious about the positive potential for projects such as the Lightbox. I am interested in the ways these technologies could be utilized within public space outside of the gallery. Imagine you are walking through Central Park in Manhattan and you come across a large free standing screen with many images displayed. You notice someone touching the screen, zooming in on a particular image and zooming out again. This screen is a version of the “lightbox” or “art lens wall” for the objects within the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection. In this scenario, you are able to explore the collection without ever entering the museum’s doors. Some might argue that this would discourage visitors from actually going to view the physical objects and supporting the museum. I argue that encouraging public pedestrians, who might not otherwise be interested in art institutions, to interact with these art objects would increase the amount of (and type of) people who visit the museum. Although my curiosity around this idea stems from a want for increased education and access to art, it can also be viewed as an advertisement for museums. I believe another positive outcome of tools that help art historians deal with big data and compare objects is the potential for more comprehensively and critically examining preexisting museum collections. With tools that can quickly sort through large sets of objects and categorize them by geography, artist, time period etc., museums might be able to more easily view the gaps in their collections. If a museum is able to see a bar graph of objects categorized by continent of origin, they might see that they have an abundance of European and South American art but much less Asian art. They might also be able to see that they have art from every European country except for Greece. These are just examples, but they demonstrate the ways in which technologies can help museums quickly make assessments about their collection as a whole.

Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich discuss the impact of transportation, communication, and financial networks in the late 19th century on the art market in England, especially London. The growth of these networks worked in parallel with the mobility of goods, which led to a bolstered international art market. The authors use data sets and visualizations to consider the geography of the London art market and the sales data of different groups like Goupil & Cie/Boussod, Valadon & Cie, and other prominent art firms. The density of the London art market and the various pathways that  artworks, artists, and buyers interacted within changed over time and Fletcher and Helmreich discuss the implications of the change, but make a strong argument for why visualizing these changes results in a greater understanding of the art scene. The art market is dynamic to say the least, and the mercurial nature of which galleries are open is clearly reflected in the mapping capability. Fletcher and Helmreich also consider the evolution of the art market in the 19th century, with a major shift from state-sponsored patronage to private dealers and galleries. It mentions previous research on the British art market and the role of factors such as industrialization, Protestantism, and social circles in shaping it. I’m not sure if I see these more nuanced changes reflected in the digital map, but I think the authors addressing why things are changing so drastically provides a deeper and more nuanced look at the map. Basically, the text supports the map, and the map supports the text. This model best illustrates the way that art history can benefit from digital humanities. I’m not sure how else you could provide an analog way to achieve a similar goal. I’m not sure it would have the same effect, particularly with the interactivity of the map. I’m very impressed by what the authors could achieve with the map and how much stronger their argument looked. I began my reading responses with a consideration on how art historians consider ourselves to be vaguely “interdisciplinary” but when push comes to shove, we are disinterested in exploring other fields. I think Beatrice Joyeux-Prunel in “Digital Humanities for a Spatial, Global, and Social History of Art”, does a really good job of capturing this dilemma once again. Geography and mapping is, simply put, not art history. Yet, in many cases art historians look at and rely on maps. Fletcher and Helmreich make a strong case for showing the capabilities of mapping within “traditional” art history. She begins by mentioning how in the past, the notion of “school” and “academy” in art was heavily influenced by national criteria and was even used to justify political theories like nationalism. Some scholars used artistic geography to support land claims. In the 1990s, when European and North American art historians moved away from nationalism and were more interested in aesthetics and forms, they neglected to understand social and geographical aspects. However, there has been a recent interest in artistic geography, where some art historians are advocating for a more thoughtful and critical approach to maps. Art geographers have emphasized the importance of rethinking traditional concepts like eurocentrism, lens, and financial capital in art history, particularly with a postcolonialist viewpoint. This shift has paralleled the “global turn” in art history and the study of artistic globalization. Art geographers definitely borrowed concepts from geographers, they didn’t initially consider themselves “mappers”. However, the introduction of digital methodologies in art history has led to a burgeoning interest in mapping, especially among art historians who are interested in sociology, economics, and trend analysis. The digital geographical approach has created new questions for art historians, and encouraged us to, once again, step outside the fence of “Art History” and engage in a meaningful way with the rest of academia. Digital mapping has enabled researchers to complete tasks that fifteen years ago would seem impossible to analyze and visualize such information clearly. https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=1cHdxOeSJT53qOPYOOJzRmAKfME-zV_0&ehbc=2E312F My map shows the movement of the objects I chose for my Omeka Exhibit, Afterlives. I hope the map provides clarity to the way objects move around. I also included some famous museums to provide landmarks so viewers can orient themselves. Some famous art works are very close to famous museums, some are very far away. This is just a sampling of the way objects move, but I hope it provides insight. In retrospect, I think I would have color coded each art work, rather than use the color coding to signify more of a temporal quality.

Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich write on their creation Local/Global: Mapping Nineteenth-Century London’s Art Market: 

Applying the innovations of the digital age has been the primary focus of the digital humanities, which can be divided into four broad categories: text analysis, spatial analysis, network analysis, and image analysis. Our project combines spatial analysis, specifically historical mapping, and network analysis, which examines relationships between entities. In using these tools, we aim not only to harness the capacities of the digital environment for innovative research, but also to expand the framework of our discipline.”

One of the largest strengths of this map (and most maps within digital humanities projects) is how intuitive it is for viewers, even on their first interaction with the tool. As smartphone apps such as Google and Apple maps have become an everyday tool, the majority of digitally literate people seem to be well-versed in navigating digital mapping tools. For this reason, interactive digital maps are a great way to immediately invite a viewer into an art historical or humanities project of which they might not have previous background knowledge. The digital map acts as a visual and knowledge-based mediator between the general public and humanities scholarship. Their project explores the possibilities of interactive mapping tools and map visualizations within digital humanities projects. Their map allows viewers to see the development of London’s art market through time. Users can manually adjust the timeline (with data available from 1851 to 1915) and see colored dots appear on the map as galleries, museums, artists, or retail locations were opened in London (each type of establishment represented by a different color).

Fig. 2, Timeline with Gallery and Exhibition Societies layers turned on. Pamela Fletcher and David Israel, London Gallery Project, 2007, revised 2012, http://learn.bowdoin.edu/fletcher/london-gallery/

The mapping tool not only eases viewer usability, but enhances academic research and the possibilities of synthesizing large amounts of historical information into meaningful truths.

“By offering a larger view than hitherto possible, our approach allows us to understand the London art market in new ways—as a set of pluralistic and elastic possibilities—rather than rigidly codified by institutional bodies such as the Royal Academy. These possibilities both opened up the market—meaning there were multiple pathways for artistic success as measured in commercial terms—and also exerted pressure on artists seeking to steer a course through this dense and rapidly changing landscape.”

Making maps not only acts as a public-to-scholarship mediator helping the public interact with scholarship in new ways, it offers a new way of looking for art and humanities scholars. As opposed to the most commonly used case-study approach, this project demonstrates the power in using larger datasets, along with digital tools to help comb through and make meaning of these datasets, within digital humanities projects. This project further highlights the need for interdisciplinary research, as data analysts, GIS specialists, and humanities scholars all play a role in creating a successful project such as this one. Mapping Tools  Interacting with online mapping tools has become an every-day practice. Now, creating these maps has become extremely accessible to the general public as well. With the use of free online tools such as Google Maps, ArcGIS Online Story Maps, and Story Maps JS, most people can make an interactive map to enhance a scholarly project (or for any other personal purpose!). The digital humanities have potential for democratizing previously exclusive information, as well as presenting previously held knowledge in new ways. As tools for digital data visualization such as commonly used mapping tools like Google Maps become more widespread, the democratization of humanities research becomes even more possible.

Oral History allows historians to bring people’s memories back to life. History is not only a group of events that must be documented or preserved. It is imperative to know more about the impact of those events on people. In this essay, I want to argue how digital history allowed people to share their sadness and happiness regarding special events. Oral history allowed historians to better understand history by analyzing people’s stories. These stories enable historians to understand these historical events from different perspectives. Oral History Definition Many scholars and organizations have defined oral history. For instance, The Oral History Association described oral history as “A field of study and a method of gathering, preserving, and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities, and participants in past events. Oral history is the oldest type of historical inquiry, predating the written word, and one of the most modern, initiated with tape recorders in the 1940s and now using 21st-century digital technologies.”[1]  This is one of the most straightforward definitions of the oral history field as it introduces the reader to the role of Oral History in preserving people’s memory of events like war, revolution, etc. On the other hand, Linda Shopes defined oral history as “ a maddeningly imprecise term: it is used to refer to formal, rehearsed accounts of the past presented by culturally sanctioned tradition-bearers; to informal conversations about “the old days” among family members, neighbors, or coworkers; to printed compilations of stories told about past times and present experiences; and to recorded interviews with individuals deemed to have an important story to tell.”[2] Her definition of oral history is more complicated than the Oral History Association’s definition. However, her definition is accurate. I agree that oral history can be formal or informal stories introducing people to recent events. Of course, we don’t need to document every person’s story, but some story that can lead us to understand how people. Suffer in the past, for example. The Virginia Holocaust Museum began recording oral histories in 1997 to preserve the firsthand accounts of people who had witnessed genocide. This story allowed us to feel those people’s pain and value the part of history: https://www.vaholocaust.org/oral-histories/ Public History and Oral History Now, oral history plays a substantial role in most of the public history research. Public historians use oral history to reveal information about the past that does not exist in books or newspapers. Oral history significantly allowed public historians to deeply understand the study of memories, one of the most critical subjects in public history. Each oral history interview shows people’s memories regarding events. Moreover, public historians are most likely interested in digital history, and electronic technologies allow them to share their interviews online to make them available to the public. I have included oral history in my research better to understand the relationship between Egyptians and their cultural heritage. Then, I was able to provide the community with a program that met their needs and interests.

Conclusion This week’s reading explained in detail the field of oral history. The article clarifies how to conduct an interview effectively. Also describes the best questions to be asked. She shared some examples of her oral history interviews. This article is beneficial for anyone who wants to learn about oral history. This article allowed those who do not have a background in oral history to learn more about how to conduct oral history projects. However, it was a very long article, and she added many examples, which made me lose my attention to the article’s main point.

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[1] “Oral History Association.” n.d. Oral History Association. https://oralhistory.org/. [2] Linda Shopes, “Making Sense of Oral History,” Oral History in the Digital Age. Making Sense of Oral History – Oral History in the Digital Age (msu.edu).

In many ways, the term “oral history” is as vague as it sounds. It can be many things, like rehearsed stories by tradition-bearers, informal conversations with family, print collections of stories, and recorded interviews with individuals seen as having important stories to share. People have learned about the past through spoken word accounts and many have worked to preserve firsthand accounts, especially when historical actors were about to pass away. For example, shortly after Abraham Lincoln’s death in 1865, John G. Nicolay and William Herndon gathered recollections and interviews about the sixteenth president. The author didn’t mention this, but the person whose job it was to record Lincoln’s last words had his pencil break. In the scramble to find a new pencil, the recorder missed his last words (source: my sixth grade social studies teacher). It makes sense that Nicolay and Herndon sought verbal accounts of the late president, especially since his death was so unexpected. One significant early effort to collect oral accounts was the Federal Writers Project (FWP) in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Although valuable, early attempts at recording firsthand accounts faced challenges due to the absence of modern recording technology, reliance on human note-takers, and idiosyncratic methods. From this, it’s interesting to think how advanced our technology has gotten since handwritten transcriptions. Historians generally trace the formal practice of oral history to Allan Nevins at Columbia University in the 1940s. Nevins initiated a systematic effort to record, preserve, and make available historically significant recollections. His work began as a supplement to written records, as he found limited personal records for his biography of President Grover Cleveland. This marked the start of contemporary oral history, leading to the creation of the Columbia Oral History Research Office and the broader oral history movement. The interviews that Linda Shnopes provides were really interesting and I would be curious to know more about transcription standards. Although I understand that recording things as they’re said is important, including mispronunciations like “Sabior” instead of “Savior”. I’m not sure what I would do in this scenario, but I appreciate the transcriber’s commitment to accuracy. If I was interviewing a British person, writing statements like, “Margaret Thatcha wahs a terrible leadah, guvnah” seems like it would lead the reader to make certain assumptions or confuse people. However, I understand that including euphemisms, idioms, or phrases are part of the interview and contribute to the overall accuracy. This seems like really a gray area, and I’m not sure if there is a correct answer. I think that having an open dialogue with your interviewer so they understand how you plan to record them is a good place to start. Doug Boyd’s article, “Informed Accessioning: Questions to Ask After the Interview”, discusses good practices for interviewing subjects. Asking questions after the interview like, “is any of this confidential” or “would you like to remain anonymous” are ways to practice ethical interviewing strategies. My digital project includes a picture from my master’s research. Click on the links and learn more about cassoni, a rich tradition that was extremely popular in Florence during the 15th century. https://www.thinglink.com/scene/1761412143644672868

In this week’s reading, Domink Bonisch discusses how digital practices can be incorporated into a museum setting. The development of a prototype within the context of the “AI school” of the Foundation of Lower Saxony. This early model uses pre-trained networks that were originally designed for image classification to group and sort digitized artworks. By extracting features from image data based on visual and technical characteristics, it can sort images based on colors, structures, textures, shapes, and objects. The goal with the project is to bridge the “semantic gap” between the representation of art as a digital image and their actual content. This gap often requires prior knowledge to interpret. The “Training the Archive” project wants to narrow the gap by investigating if machine learning, specifically artificial neural networks (ANNs), can expand clusters of artworks to include hidden connection patterns, personal intuition, and potentially override the subjective expertise of curators. The process involves supervised learning, where human expertise guides the machine’s suggestions, especially in cases that require historical, stylistic, and object-based contextual knowledge. This facet was interesting, in a way, it would seem cruel to teach your replacement to do your job better than you can, but with AI. The text mentions an experiment, considered a Proof of Concept (PoC), to determine if unsupervised clusters of artworks can be altered through supervised training with human-made annotations about relationships between artworks. The success of the concept is considered successful if it can accurately and subjectively make changes in cluster sorting. To develop this prototype, data from the Danish National Gallery Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK), publicly accessible since 2019, was used. The museum’s digital collection offers a wide range of classical and contemporary artworks in various media, including painting, prints, sculpture, installation, and applied arts. The museum provides access to its data through an Application Programming Interface (API), containing meta-information for over 70,000 digitized items. Tim Sherrat and Kate Bagnet provide an example of the way that digitization can be applied to large scale projects. They are using a database of records related to people. Their project, “The Real Faces of White Australia” seeks to provide a new way of understanding these records, by shifting the focus from bureaucratic processes to the lives of individuals. The interface features photographs linked to original certificates and serves as a finding aid. The article also highlights the importance of the interface in the context of archival work. It suggests that the interface can challenge the existing power dynamics within archives and allow users to engage with records in meaningful ways. In this case, the interface was created independently, privileging the online availability of the collection database. Sherrat emphasizes the transformative potential of technology in archives. Digitization and keyword searching enable users to access records in new ways, moving beyond traditional institutional structures and hierarchies. This shift can provide fresh insights into society and individual lives. The passage mentions the “Unknown No Longer” project, which aims to extract names and biographical details of slaves from historical documents held by the Virginia Historical Society. This project exemplifies the use of technology to reveal hidden histories and empower individuals to reclaim their heritage and history. https://www.friendsofnotredamedeparis.org/virtual-tour-notre-dame/ I chose to link the Friends of Notre Dame digital project which provides a digital, 3D tour of Notre Dame of Paris. I like that the “tour” starts outside, so the viewer can walk through the portals. Digital architecture allows people to understand  the architecture as a physical building, rather than a singular object on a projector in a classroom. The project allows visitors to explore through areas that most people would not typically be able to visit. They also have a video model showing the construction history of the cathedral. Since the exterior has changed so frequently throughout history. These are both useful tools for scholars to utilize as they consider the cathedral as a living object. However, the easily accessible layout would make it easy for people who are just curious about Notre Dame to learn from and enjoy the site.

This week, our readings focused on the possibilities of digital art history. Howard Besser, Sally Hubbard, and Deborah Lenert in Introduction to Imaging discuss the rapid advancements of digital technology and its potential, including holographic storage, and automated management algorithms for art. The authors emphasize the need for handling heterogeneity in archives and the changing digital environment via the applications of open standards practices. They also address the importance of refining documentation standards for images, strategies for preservation repositories, issues of Web accessibility, intellectual property concerns, and the potential for digital imaging to provide wider access to cultural heritage. Emma Sanford’s article “A Field Guide to Digital Surrogates: Evaluating and Contextualizing a Rapidly Changing Resource,” describes the historical example of Adolf Neubauer, who had to choose which Hebrew manuscript fragments to acquire, and how some scholars initially rejected fragments that became valuable for research. Digitization complicates this selection process, as institutions have to consider factors like the object’s condition, cataloging status, and potential impact. Her article highlights how digitization is often funded, with disparities due to geographic and political factors, as well as how external funding  influences priorities in archival and art historical projects. She also emphasizes the need for institutions to document and address more sensitive factors, seek funding for critical and historically underfunded projects, as well as invest in electronic cataloging to complement digital collections. Sanford also discusses how digitization leaves out certain details or context, such as textural information or non-visual clues. Digital surrogates of art objects are noted for providing a specific interpretation of the original, which can be influenced by factors like restoration efforts or the desire to showcase the object in a particular way. There are also limitations of two-dimensional digitization and how it doesn’t capture the full three-dimensional qualities and historical aspects of objects. It suggests that careful observation of user habits can help create more accurate digital surrogates, but there is no one-size-fits-all approach. However, Sandford suggests the International Image Interoperability Framework as a solution for creating versatile and collaborative digitized collections, mentioning specific tools and viewers designed for art interpretation. Some of the images that Sanford uses to make really compelling arguments for the importance of digitization were really poignant. As a scholar, I felt like her argument was really clear and very compelling. The importance of digital imaging is crucial for future generations to study art, but feels antithetical to previous art historical practices. Part of the joy of art history is studying ephemera, and scholars seem to give special attention to objects that are the “first” or the “only” of a kind. By digitizing, these labels seem to be removed, but Sanford is correct that there is more benefit to accessibility of these objects than keeping the curtains up around these objects. Digitization practices are good for everyone. It always amazes me how often scholars have no idea who the people are in portraits. Even in my own family, it only takes a couple generations before the names and relationships of people in family photos are lost to time. In the spirit of that, I have chosen to upload a picture of my grandmother and me. I hope that future art historians will look at this picture and think, “what a cute kid”. Kidding. In seriousness, Sanford’s discussion of ephemera should strike fear into the hearts of  those who are interested in family history. My grandchildren or great children will probably have no idea who is sitting in this photo. Knowing who is sitting for the photo is half the battle of family histories, and by not knowing, you may as well not have the photo at all. Fires, moving, or misplacing can also result in the loss of the photo and digitization is a way to save (assuming flash drives, the cloud, and the technology are all cooperating) your photos.

In Linda Shopes’ Making Sense of Oral History, she discusses oral history in the digital age – definitions, best practices, and questions we should be asking about oral history. Shopes’ working definition of Oral History:

“…a self-conscious, disciplined conversation between two people about some aspect of the past considered by them to be of historical significance and intentionally recorded for the record.”

She discusses bias within the field, using examples to illuminate how bias can present itself in varied ways. She gives us two products from different interviews with the same person, side by side for comparison. Both interviewers spoke with Susan Hamilton or Hamlin, a formerly enslaved person in South Carolina. One interview was conducted by a white interviewer and one by an African-American interviewer. In the side-by-side write-ups we can see the evidence, or lack of evidence, of the interviewers’ identity within the narrative they write. The white interview begins their summary by saying “On July 6th, I interviewed Susan Hamlin.” Immediately the white interviewer centers themself within the narrative. Throughout the summary they refer to their role within the interview and the questions they asked. The African-American interviewer’s summary does not include any written evidence of their presence or questions. Their transcription of Susan Hamlin’s answers are clearly written in the dialect in which she spoke, making us aware of the editing of the speech that happened in the white interviewers’ summary. What I find interesting here is the ambiguity about how much an interviewer should be centered in the final product of an oral history interview. I believe the centering of themself and the editing done in the summary by the white interviewer highly biases and alters the information given by Susan Hamlin. We are getting a filtered view of Susan Hamlin’s speech and life through the lens of the white interviewer. It is important to recognize that the summary by the African-American interviewer also filter’s Susan Hamlin’s answers yet this evidence of bias or perspective is less evident to the reader. I would be more inclined to read the African-American interviewer’s summary as more historically “accurate” due to less editing of Susan Hamlin’s dialect. But, I think it is deceptive how the interviewer is not at all visible in the narrative, giving a false impression of an impartial account of Susan Hamlin’s life. I am unsure about the appropriate amount of visibility for an interviewer within an interview product. Shopes helps us think about this question in her piece. Shopes helps showcase art historical methods within the digital age besides the static image. She also puts forth the importance to look critically at these altered mediums, such as oral histories, as we would other historical disciplines. The Software Studies Initiative shares Cultural Analytics – Mark Rothko Paintings – on the 287-Megapixel HIPerSpace Wall at Calit2 (developed jointly by Software Studies Initiative and Gravity Lab).

This tool can take data from visual images and sort them by varying characteristics. This example demonstrates the tool by uploading all Mark Rothko images. Viewers are then able to sort through the images using varying metrics. For example, one could look at color chronologically throughout Rothko’s career. This allows someone to sort through a large amount of data from a large set of visual images that would otherwise not be possible. Additionally, this can all be done in a digital format. With this tool, art historians are able to quickly recognize patterns and breaks from the patterns within a set of visual images.

This tool helps me imagine a world in which technology enhances physical museum experiences. Imagine that you walk into a museum of which you know little about. As you walk in, you are greeted with a large touch screen that hosts high quality images of all of the objects housed within the museum, on and off display. On this touch screen, you are able to sort through the objects by time period, color, artist, geographic region – exploring objects both in the galleries or in storage. You are then able to pick out specific objects you would like to see in the galleries and are presented with a map of the museum aiding you in finding these objects during your visit. The Cleveland Museum of Art houses the Art Lens wall.

“The ArtLens Wall, a 40-foot interactive, multi-touch, MicroTile wall, displays in real time all works of art from the permanent collection currently on view in the galleries—between 4,200 and 4,500 artworks at any given time. In addition, the ArtLens Wall displays thematic groupings that may include highlighted artworks currently on loan as well as select light-sensitive artworks that are in storage.” The Software Studies Initiative and Art Lens Wall help us imagine a world in which art history exists beyond the static image – it exists within oral histories both written and available for listening online, within the partnership of technology and physical art spaces to enhance art and culture experiences. These examples show how technology can be an asset to art spaces and the power of thinking of art history beyond one static image in a book or on a projector.

Before I started reading through Introduction to Imaging, Revised Edition I took a look at the hardcopy edition specifications to note the year of publication: 2003. I find that it’s always important to be conscious of the publication year when reading articles and texts because it helps to provide some context – but I find it to be especially helpful when reading anything that deals with technology. In the year 2003, I was twelve years old and thanks to this website I was able to recall the technological landscape of that specific year. It was the year Blu-ray discs were introduced to consumer markets and was the year that myspace.com launched; just three years earlier, the first camera phone was invented. While I’m sure no one could have predicted the way camera phones (and similarly, the eventual mass-affordability of personal digital cameras) would cause digital photography to take off – it’s interesting to note that Introduction to Imagine, Revised Edition largely focuses on the digital image as a digital surrogate for a physical item. Hubbard and Lenert actually provide a fairly confusing definition of what they understand a ‘digital image’ to be and I’m left feeling unsure if they’re factoring in images taken digitally or if they’re specifically referring to scans/digitally duplicated objects. I’m leaning towards the latter as their use of the term digital images is never paired with the word camera and instead seems to be exclusively coupled with mentions of scanners. For example, in their section titled The Digital Image Defined they write, “This matrix is created during the scanning process, in which an analog original is sampled at regular intervals, or the color of selected points of its surface, corresponding to each pixel, is recorded. Generally speaking, the more samples taken from the source image, the more accurate the resulting digital surrogate will be.” Though in later sections titled “The Image” and  “Image Capture” they do mention the use of digital photography as a reproduction method/capture method, I wish that they would have been more clear in their definition from the start. Below is an image I took circa 2010 of my grandma and her boyfriend. This is a scanned 35mm print – it was scanned using a household flatbed scanner and I used photoshop to do some minimal spot touching for dust.

New technology makes museum collections available for academics and the public. People can now access museum collections anytime and anywhere. However, making these collections available for online audiences is not an easy process. Curators struggle to analyze the large number of digital collections. This process is complicated and beyond human ability. It is necessary to find tools to facilitate the curators’ missions, such as ChatGPT and machine learning. These programs save people time and effort. For example, these machines help structure information and data about museum collections. https://www.filmfest-muenchen.de/en/program/news/2023/06/ai/ Machine learning can identify the link between artworks. For that reason, museums, archives, and libraries initiate training programs to train their employees on using machine learning to analyze collections. For example, “Training the Archive ” is a project that aims to examine the ability of machine learning techniques to visualize and explore the links between objects and digital archives. The purpose is to make the data and information of the museum organized and accessible. This project profoundly interests me in understanding how to utilize these machines in museum collections.[1] However, the article was unclear because it used several terminologies, I wasn’t familiar with. This article was published to help beginner users understand how to use machine learning in museums. To me, I felt that this article was written for digital humanities professionals. The field is new; new users must understand these machines’ processes. Machines always make tremendous mistakes, and curators always fix these mistakes. Online audiences rely on a museum digital collection as a self-learning tool, so we are responsible for providing accurate information to keep the museum as a place for education and inspiration. https://blog.pigro.ai/en/digital-museums On the other hand, curators can develop engaging programs for online visitors. This is demonstrated in the author’s writing about Chinese history in Australia. The author uses people’s images to share the history of racism in Australia when immigrants were required to have a certificate with their image to return to the country. In this project, they collected the National Archives Australia images and then digitized and comprised images. Google allowed him to use facial detection to find photos.[2] With new permitted technology, people can now gather the information they need and answer questions. This program was very engaging to me. Public historians always suffer when trying to reach online audiences. They always ask how to raise the number of our online visitors because the number is less than physical visitors. However, if the museum was able to meet online visitors’ needs, this would expand the online audience. I can tell these types of projects would attract new visitors to learn about these types of projects. Digital humanities specialists face limitations while searching for digital collections. Since interface tools are limited, professionals would often find restrictions when analyzing digital cultural collections. The article argues that the problem with these digital collections is that they return very limited results when utilizing their search features. [3]This is not helpful for those who are trying to search digital collections for research, as researchers need to explore collections in depth to draw meaningful conclusions. The author argues that the solution is to create web platforms that are more exploratory. I agree with the author on this point that new tools to help users expand their research. I found the reading for this week to be very selective. By combining these articles, I could build my understanding of how to find and analyze digital collections. As a beginner in the field, I have difficulty learning about the terminology in the field, but I was able to understand how machines enable curators to expand their projects. New technology answered many questions that were impossible to answer in the past. However, with the rapid development of technology, people rely a lot on these machines, and they stop using their brains. It’s good to have these machines to help you save time and effort, but they cannot replace people. As everything becomes digital, will this affect our cultural institutions like museums and libraries? People now rely on technology to gather their data. What can we do to engage the community with their museums?

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[1] Dominik Bonisch. “The Curator’s Machine: Clustering of Museum Collection Data Through Annotation of Hidden Connection Patterns Between Artworks.” Digital Art History Journal (May 4, 2021) [2] Tim Sherratt. “It’s all about the Stuff: Collections, Interfaces, Power and People.” Discontents (November 2011) [3] Mitchell Whitelaw. “Generous Interfaces for Digital Cultural Collections.” Digital Humanities Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 1 (2015)