11B Digital Humanities Meetup #4 (5 December)

DIGITAL PUBLISHING IN PERFORMANCE AND ART  Today’s presentation, one of our Digital Humanities Meetup will be led by Debra Levine about Scalar, Tome and other digital publishing platforms used by performance and cultural scholars as well as artists.  Deb will also introduce the Hemispheric Institute Digital Publishing initiative, drawing on some examples from it, her own work as well as projects carried out by NYUAD students.  The presentation will be followed by a open discussion.

In preparation for class 12A, please go to Center for Academic Technology in the library C2, 3rd floor and have them install Sketchup on your laptop.

Note: the IM Sunday meetup on 5 December will explore Unity for 3d modeling.

Modeling objects and spaces

12A Modeling z-Axis Spatial Content (7 December) 

Reading before class:  Johanson (NCDH) 110-126 “Making Virtual Worlds,” McDowell, “World Building,”
Explore Thingiverse , 3duniverse, Sketchup’s 3dwarehouse and Yeggi make a list of things that seem relevant to the humanities (and search Abu Dhabi or your home city, or other interesting search term, to see what you find).  If you are interesting in fossils, check out this site for sharing fossil datasets.

What kinds of ways can you imagine a humanist being interested in 3d objects? How might 3d printing be thought of as “disruptive“? What do the 3d repositories above contain? What do you think about the selection of the objects for Abu Dhabi? How do their projects carve new space for the humanities? What are potential applications in museum studies, design fiction, archeology? Architecture?

Before class, check out two of these projects and take notes on them for discussion:

Virtual Williamsburg / Forma Urbis / Simulating Gothic Arches / Musée Charles X / What Jane Saw / Virtual Monastery / Off the Map / Rome Reborn / Mapping Soweto / Edge Hill 3D parametric modeling / Unity 3D Schooner / Hadrian’s Villa / 3DHOP / 1893 Columbian Exhibition / Virtual Harlem / The Sound of 18th century Paris / Virtual Paul’s Cross Project / Reconstituições virtuais de Teatros (Lisbon) / Visualizing Early Baltimore / Heritage Together / Z-axis Mapping / Triumphal Arch / Dubai 3d printed architecture

3D panoramas such as this one or these for Abu Dhabi are created from aerial photography. How do you think the illusion of three dimensions created in the historical projects above? If we pay close attention to “Off The Map” the initial shots of the video narrate the move from 2D drawings into 3D. This is accomplished by “extrapolation and averaging of information” (dh101). What is different about the Virtual Monastery? Do these projects remind you of gaming environments? If so, does this interest you? bother you?  How are the spaces integrated with soundscapes? What does Kenderdine mean by embodiment? To what extent are these projects a traditional organization of humanities knowledge just with a powerful visual rhetorical bent? To what extent are they new forms of knowledge? Do virtual landscapes “unflatten” their content?

Lab with Sketchup  (30 minutes)  

12B Open Lab for projects (10 December)

13A Arts Center showcase (5-7pm) – Go to show off your projects.

December 18-22 extra hours

Blog #7 is a wildcard blog. You are welcome to write about any digital humanities concept or experience since Week Ten (to be posted the day before the next class begins by 6pm.)  CANCELLED LAST BLOG – FREE CREDIT ON THIS ASSIGNMENT