For the next two weeks, as part of the workshop Rebuilding the Portfolio: Digital Humanities for Art Historians, I will be exploring, evaluating and maybe even beginning to utilize a variety of digital tools to think through the beginnings of a digital art history project, intended for a new course but also hopefully for sustainable research, about American films and censorship.

In a country that prides itself on its unwavering and uncompromising commitment to the idea of free speech, voluntary and involuntary forms of censorship have been allowed to thrive, and often accepted as positively beneficial, in many different guises up to the present day in American popular entertainment in all of its forms. The course will look at the history of film censorship in the United States from the perspective of how such things as the Production Code (Hays Code), wartime restrictions, anti-communist blacklisting, regional and local censorship boards (for example, Southern Baptist Ministers prior to 1968), late 1960s movements for social change, and culturally and socially-determined moral and ethical standards restricted what could be seen and could not be seen on movie screens in American theaters. We will watch and then analyze approximately 30 films from a cross-section of the 120 year history of cinema in the US, paying special attention to the films of the “pre-code” era (1930-1934, when the Hays Office had been created but its industry recommendations were not enforced), “post-code” era, post-WWII and Cold War era, and after the shutting down of the Hays Office in 1968 and concomitant institution of the MPAA Ratings Administration. Consideration will be given to issues of gender, sexuality, race, class, and political persuasion as they affect on-screen representation, and also to specific religious (Legion of Decency/Catholic boycotts) and geographically regional (Southern state censors, segregation extended to films as well as to the experience of them in theaters) censorship practices over time. Films that fall outside the “mainstream” because of their resistance to censorship will also be viewed, for example so-called Race pictures and underground cinema. The ultimate goal of the course will be to cover the wide-ranging and myriad ways in which censorship determined/determines what audiences saw/see on film and how that created a seemingly culturally-unified image of “America” that was/is, for many actual Americans, restrictive and exclusionary of their life experiences, if not outright hostile to their participation in American cultural life.

So why Valentino and dressing?

Valentino was the sparking idea, but also I think at this stage a good metaphor for what I hope digital humanities tools can bring to the art history practice of close reading of visual materials. I like Rudolph Valentino movies. The way in which Valentino is presented on film, how his physicality is objectified–he gets undressed and dressed frequently, and in multiple versions of visually elaborate, exotic, and highly detailed costumes–is most often paralleled in the films of the period by how female stars are visually objectified in films. Valentino is the rare male star of the silent film period to have the camera so lovingly gaze at his physical form while he is in the process of disrobing, and as such opens up space for the discussion of culturally-defined codes of masculinity  and femininity, gender, race and the body, and how Valentino disrupts that definition, as supported in the reading of fan magazines, film reviews, and opinion pieces documenting the widely differing female (swooning) and male (threatened) reception of Valentino’s screen presence.

Undressing on-screen would become one of the prohibited activities vis-a-vis female bodies with the crafting of the Hays Office Production Code in the 1930s. Valentino was dead, but Clark Gable could still show his un-undershirted chest in It Happened One Night in 1934 (Claudette Colbert could only appear fully covered in his oversized men’s pajamas).

But every 1930s male fan wanted to be Clark Gable, not fight him off. It is the female body which gets censored as prurient.

On the workshop schedule, we have lessons planned in collection building and data-mining, collaboration and interactivity/community, mapping and networks and visualization. Understanding how film censorship is itself visually encoded will require some aspects of all of these conceptual frameworks. So many films, so many moments to isolate and read and interpret, so many tags linguistic, cultural, historical, gendered and racial, and how to visualize for a wider audience all of the layers, intersections and nodes and subversions of cinematically represented acts of censoring. And that doesn’t even get to funding, time, and sustainability!

So I thought I would start simply, with dressing Valentino, in so much more than an exotic costume.

Follow the workshop action on twitter at #doingdah14.

Source: Why Dressing Valentino?

The project that I will be working on over the course of Rebuilding the Portfolio is Mapping Paris: Social and Artistic Networks, 1855-1889. Here is an abstract of the project:

Mapping Paris, a project in its start-up phase, charts and analyzes nineteenth-century social networks in order to map the artistic collaborations taking place in Paris between the Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1889. In these years, Paris saw the shifting role of the Salon, the exhibitions that sprung up in counter-dialogue, and the expansion of galleries. It is during this period that Paris claimed its role as the center of the Western art world, and as a result, scores of international artists descended upon to the city to live and work. Mapping Paris plots the social relationships established in Paris during this time, a cosmopolitan mélange of aesthetic exchange and artistic cooperation.

Finding its place between collaborative and crowd-sourced inquiry, Mapping Paris provides a space on the internet for refereed individuals to input data about artists’ time in Paris, whether they were Parisian pure-sang, ex-pats or visitors passing through the city. In doing so, it allows scholars to view the data in novel ways, to foster considerations of aesthetic dialogue through crossed-paths, acquaintances, friendships, conversations and collaborations in the social condenser of Paris.

The networks are mapped through primary source documents, including letters, memoirs, and exhibition records. This practice examines the nodes (i.e. the individuals) and the links between them. Mapping Paris takes into account the possibility of other connectors, alongside the more traditional hubs of nineteenth-century art historical discourse, such as the Impressionists. It provides the opportunity to engage and reconsider the concepts of center and periphery in Paris itself, renegotiating the international nature of this cosmopolitan city.

Mapping Paris evolved from my dissertation work on the social networks of Degas and contemporaneous Italian artists and their resultant artistic repercussions. During my research for the project, I realized the difficulty in keeping track of and analyzing social networks without a layered, visual means by which to examine then. Instead, I kept lists of social interactions, letters, and other primary sources of known contact between the individuals. I spent a lot of time and space establishing a credible, text-based social network, upon which I then began to investigate the resultant implications in the realm of artistic process and exchange. Upon reflection, I have realized that it will prove much more useful and efficient to visually map out these social networks, and expand them beyond the realm of just Degas and the Italians, opening up consideration of the larger artistic networks of Paris during this time period.

What Mapping Paris brings to the equation is the ability to quantitatively visualize these networks, and in doing so, ask ‘bigger’ research questions – questions that engage with the larger whole of the social network, and not just case studies of nodes. A sample, non-directional social network can be seen here, a mapping of the networks of Degas, his Italian contemporaries and their circles [click on image to enlarge]:

Each node is connected by an edge and the references for each edge have been bibliographically cited with notation. Another direction this map could take is to add weights (i.e. multiple references). In this sample, each node is only connected via one, unweighted edge, mapped using a Yifan Hu layout. The map allows the viewer to get a sense of the social relations between groups of individuals, allowing for an understanding of those nodes that function as expected hubs (Degas) and connectors (e.g. Desboutin, De Nittis, Martelli, etc.). The source information for this map is found in the primary sources referenced in a chapter of my dissertation – and thus the map itself is admittedly biased, showing Degas as the major social condenser of the network (which was, after all, my thesis). Such an example points out the need for other data inputs, to consistently move towards more data and thus less bias within the sample.

Source: Homework Day_1: Write a paragraph on your new blog about your proposed project.

St. James’ Episcopal Church (Wilmington NC: 1839)

During the first half of the nineteenth century, Americans built extensive networks of transportation that scored the land with hundreds of miles of canals, roads and railroad tracks. As these physical emblems of technological development connected established cities with new towns and growing hubs of industrial development, other technological webs, including federal post roads and the services of private delivery businesses, added a second layer of communication throughout the states.

This dynamic landscape was recognized as a distinguishing characteristic of modern life by the country’s first self-proclaimed professional architects, who pursued avenues to practice that were more broad-reaching than those of any previous generation.  Much less geographically bound than their Colonial forebears, nineteenth-century architects expanded their client base, entered competitions, made use of newspapers and communicated across state lines with clients and builders they would never meet, completing buildings that they would never see. Even so, the growing rail network still imposed certain nodes of concentration and areas of disconnection that are invisible to later travelers.  The spatial reality of antebellum America influenced the early professionals and the ways they pursued jobs and practiced architecture.

This project proposes to research this dynamic landscape through the case study of Thomas U. Walter (1804-87). Walter provides a significant model as one of the country’s most active architects in this period: designer of hundreds of projects in several states (and also China and Venezuela), including prominent works in Philadelphia (Girard College) and Washington (additions to the Capitol). Walter used virtually every imaginable kind of conveyance, from horse-drawn wagons and steamboats to trains and sleighs, as well as post and parcel delivery services, in order to visit and communicate with clients and builders, oversee construction, observe quarries and foundries, and socialize with professional peers (especially as a co-founder of the American Institute of Architects); twice these travels took him overseas (Europe in 1838, Venezuela in 1841). Walter noted the details of his travel in office notebooks and journals, which not only record his movements but also his lively commentary on various means of conveyance.

This project will not only illuminate Walter’s practice but also contribute to an understanding of the problem of technological determinism in seeking the extent to which modes of conveyance (of people, materials and information) influenced the way architectural practice developed as it did—either as a determining, influencing, or coincidental relationship (or potentially all three).  Mapping technology might identify the temporal interplay between materials suppliers (quarries, foundries) and the means by which they were shipped to Philadelphia (canal, rail, road) on one well-documented project like Girard College, or the dependence on communication technologies for a small group of marble buildings that Walter designed in the early 1830s. Another option would consider the determining factors for Walter’s approach to projects that he carried out either through personal travel, complete dependence on mail, or a combination of the strategies, through decades of his career.

Source: Project Proposal for DAH: Mapping the Dynamic Landscape of Architectural Practice

Experimental, amusing, or beautiful, artist books are art in book form. Four years ago, we began collecting artist books for teaching and research. This non-browsing collection varies in structure, technique, and content. Our books have been used by students, faculty, and museum professionals.

Although artist books are tactile experiences, they are hidden in Special Collections for preservation and can be difficult to access through the library catalog. In order to increase accessibility, we have begun the digitization process for over 300 works. The first phase of the project will focus the 50 books by local and regional artists.

This new enhanced digital collection will include multiple images of a book. In addition, we are conducting artist interviews and creating videos to demonstrate the “reading” of an artist book which will be especially valuable for sculptural books. A unique addition is GIS mapping which is beneficial since the collection includes several items by local/regional artists. Mapping also demonstrates the relationships and collaborations between the book artists.

Behind the scenes, we are establishing metadata guidelines to improve the organization of information and accessibility. Part of this process is to create meaningful records by describing books in more detail (e.g. structure, materials). In conjunction with VRA Core, our content standards create a consistent, functional research tool. Starting with LUNA Imaging software as our digital platform, we will showcase images, audio, and video. This information will then be placed in ARTstor’s Shared Shelf to increase visibility.

Adapted from presentation abstract for Visual Resources and Digital Humanities (VRAlocal: Nashville 2014)

Source: Ongoing DH Project

Question: What is a man [sic] walking down the road?

Answer: Time.

—traditional Maya riddle

This riddle concerns esoteric knowledge, not humor. It also exemplifies the fused space-time continuum in Maya thought and explicates how to understand the physical and metaphysical worlds. Space, buildings, and imagery were integrated into Maya civic-ceremonial centers—the loci of political theater and Becoming (in a Deleuzian sense)—and hence cannot be understood as discrete entities or images. Moreover, in Yucatan, Mexico, causeways and colonnades suggested ideal traffic flow and created panoramic views. The famous capital of Chichén Itzá (ca. 800-1150) features spatial-pictorial tableaux composed of pillars whose four vertical faces are carved with distinct individuals and which collectively formed panoramas that would have shifted according to position and movement. I will attempt to recreate some of these so-called paths of perception from in situ remains, archival photographs, and mapping technology. Rather than creating flashy fly-throughs that are akin to video games, my goal is to create walk-throughs of what people at Chichén plausibly saw. This would be an initial step in coming to terms with aesthetics, vision, and flexible three-dimensional visual-spatial experiences, in essence the unique flavor of Chichén visual culture. The results might further an understanding of embodiment, habitus, and place-memory, all of which involve dynamic rather than static experiential realms.

Source: My Project

My project The Art of Imitation: Renaissance Ceramics in the style of Ming Porcelain examines the practice of imitating porcelain in Italian Renaissance pottery workshops and the reception of these imitations. Due to a growing appreciation of rare, imported porcelain, early sixteenth-century Italian potters appropriated and developed techniques of covering their brownish-red earthenware vessels in white, tin-glazes, followed by the addition of blue decoration. These imitations lacked the technical refinement of light, kaolinite vessels from China, but the outward appearance satisfied aesthetic demands. For this project I would like to explore the possibilities of spatial history and mapping in order to demonstrate trade patterns of true porcelain. I would also like to create visualizations of data related to existing inventories of ceramics in the Renaissance.

Blue and White Dish with Merchant Ship. Tin-glazed earthenware. Cafaggiolo. c. 1510.

Source: Project

 

I am on a digital humanities tear this summer, and I started by attending the Digital Humanities Summer Institute at the University of Victoria; my course was on games and particularly on digital games.  I signed up for the class thinking that I would produce a digital game for my students in the interdisciplinary humanities course and/or the art history survey.  My group did come up with a digital interactive library game called, I think, Zombies in the Library; Zombies are students who do nothing but sleep in the library. And I learned a lot during the week and brainstormed some great stuff including the idea of using rubrics as a form of game playing, but the biggest thing I learned was to temper my expectations.

Which is a long way of saying that my project(s) for this seminar may or may not be realistic. One of the projects for my summer and fall is to produce four digital interactive modules for my students. And I thought I would start that process of development here both by listening to what others are doing and by viewing some of the modules already published. The Art History Teaching Resources site looks to be very helpful in this regard. I am sorry that I had to miss the Games + Learning + Society conference at University of Wisconsin Madison and the pre-conference play with ARIS, but I intend to go next year, since I am also interested in writing a module for my Language and Landscape course for students to develop their own map of local, sustainable gardens in the Chicago area and another map on the language distribution across Chicago. (The two are not disparate; one of the assignments is for the students to collect the names of the plants in their garden and compare / contrast the language used by other gardeners.)

Another project on the radar is the e-portfolio, particularly as it might represent students’ work across their full time at Wright College and the way it might demonstrate achievements in certain general education competencies, such as writing, close reading, technological literacy. I have students use a collaborative wiki site for each class, and students that I teach at DePaul have access to individual e-portfolios, but Wright has nothing at this point close to an e-portfolio. And even my DePaul students don’t use it in the most robust way: they rarely show the growth, for instance, in their conceptualization and demonstration of critical thinking through writing, but instead just post their “best” papers.

Yet, I also have to think about the resources available at my institution and for my institution and for my students and for me. The administration has suggested applying for various grants, and that too is something I’d like to explore during this seminar, particularly start-up monies for small projects with collaboration across institutions and disciplines. But, again, my institution doesn’t really have much real experience in this regard, and we all may need to rein in our desires.

Source: My project(s)