Exploring Digital Heritage

Redaction and facial recognition certainly relate to security. In one the text is blackened for security and in the other we lose some security as computer programs are able to recognise us in crowds. I find it worrying how much is being spent in this field and wonder how long before we start seeing any of the negative side. At the moment we can untick this option on Facebook.

Face finding was more fun to explore – its almost like looking at clouds again. I’ve been seeing faces for years in patterns – but I’ve also been a face-watcher for years since my mother took me to an art show and to deal with my boredom she sat me down outside on the stairs and told me to watch people instead. They were more interesting to me and I haven’t stopped.

3D imaging is an interesting challenge for me and I enjoyed this week’s lesson. I downloaded 123D and had a play but certainly experienced some of its limitations with a lot of background, and at times some of the back of the image was missing. This app was a phone app – I would have loved to have been able to upload images taken by my camera to see if I could get better results. Due to time limitations I was not able to experiment with Meshmixer.

I enjoyed exploring the cultural heritage offerings at https://sketchfab.com/models/categories/cultural-heritage and can certainly see how useful they are in learning. It is certainly such a new technology that there are not many collections taking it up yet. I look forward to seeing it happen with historical fashion – so many times we complain as we only see one part of a garment which can be frustrating when the back and front can be so different. Museum of Victoria has so many interesting objects but only used this for its paleontology collection.

This week’s discussion in DIY web archiving reminds me what I do not like about internet and computers – the games. I feel so old-fashioned as I have resisted playing computer games my whole life and everyone must feel I am weird as I actually collect old-fashioned games that people played outdoors in the 18th and 19th centuries. So while you are playing games on the internet I’m outdoors teaching children how to play bat and trap, croquet and more.

But back to the topic! I actually really love the Wayback Machine and use it all the time. So often I’m finding dead websites in my historic costume research and this is my first go-to place. I’ve never really explored Pandora but believe that our old website is stored there. I wish I could update it as we’ve corrected a lot of the information since then. It certainly raises the question about what to do when the information archived is now considered wrong – how do we get it corrected? Is it right that misinformation can exist because of our desire to archive everything?

I like geocoding but find it becomes a mess when you play with a large dataset. I liked using fusion tables but options are limited for first-time users. A negative to exploring all these options is the creation of accounts all the time. I so wish that as first time users we could just explore the options. Every time I am asked to open an account, whether it is free or otherwise, I want to run away. Why can’t we open an account when we know more about the option?

Carto looks good and looks like a possibility to use for my data except that somehow my data wouldn’t map – it’s geospatial data wasn’t identified and I need to learn more in order to do this properly. Fusion worked like a dream so is probably safer for me to work with at this stage though I’d like to get Carto working one day.

So many new possibilities emerge for analysis and representation when we look at cultural heritage data in a digital form. This week I learnt all about how data visualisation shows statistical and numerical data in different visual ways and how useful it is for examining large datasets. It was also interesting to learn about infographics and learn how they tell stories to a particular audience but don’t actually use data – certainly handy for those who like pretty pictures. With the US elections happening right now we’re being exposed to a whole lot of visualisations, though I’d be very wary of where all the data is coming from. I’d be labelling most of these to be persuasive visualisations right now. Seeingdata.org linked through to a lot more explanations and possibilities to explore.

I was impressed by https://www.silk.co/ but restrained myself from exploring further as I am already using Omeka.net for another project.

I have been amazed by how many tools Tim has introduced into my life and whilst at first I want to use them all, time and reality steps in and I have go back to the basics.

I enjoy being able to look back and see what was happening on a particular day in history. Analysing speeches in the ways Tim recommended has been fun, although I find listening to old speeches even more fascinating – the way politicians spoke in the past was so different from today and some of the words they used would be considered too formal and stuffy.

I love Edmund Barton’s 1901 speech that came up when searching for the word ‘’vulgarism’ at Explore the Election Speeches – in fact, this was the only result that came back.

Will you not return men of principle who will uphold the dignity of the Parliament of a continent. An an old Speaker, I appreciate this need. Hope and believe Parliament will not be degraded by vulgarism and disorder. More and better business will be done, if done decently and in order.

QueryPic wasn’t working for me and kept on timing out. I’ll have to come back to it another day. Google’s Ngram gave me better results showing what I expected when I put the words refugee, humanitarian and illegal.

 

Access to data has been central to our journey throughout this unit…

One of the things I love best about my job is the contribution that I make to the NMA’s collections online – Collection Explorer. At any one time, about only 5% of the museum’s collection is on display. Collection Explorer gives access to 50% of the museum’s collection 24 hours a day. On the surface, Collection Explorer seems effortless, but the records and images displayed have taken years of development and are undergoing continuous improvement. In some cases, we can provide better and more in depth access to objects on line than in the gallery. In the gallery you can view the exterior of a car, online you can view the engine and the interiors. In gallery you can view one page of a sketch book, online you can read from beginning to end.

I am all about possibility and access. I believe in the power of collections to help people connect with past present and future, to inspire and promote discovery. This power is lost when collections are locked away in storage. At present, Collection Explorer does not have an API, but perhaps it should. I feel I should think that an API is a great idea because it fits with the ideology that I have just outlined. I love the idea that an API might give access that inspires new creation, new ways of looking at the collection, new discovery, new connection and for aboriginal communities re- connection and engagement. But I worry about misappropriation. The NMA releases records to Collection Explorer in an effort to provide access to the collection, but the majority of the content is not copyright cleared, nor have moral rights been applied. In good faith, we are leaving it up to our online visitors to decide what is appropriate in terms of use – but are they suitably qualified or informed enough to make these kinds of decisions. When DJ’s sample music, they can use a mere 8 seconds before royalties are due. What is the equivalent in data and images in terms of what is appropriate?

I also wonder about how we can capture new discoveries about the collection, how the museum can collaborate with those who engage with the collection. In an environment of dwindling resourcing it is essential that there is a two-way conversation about what is created from the data made available through an API. In relation to collections, the NMA is merely a custodian. We have no real desire to lock the collection away, but we do have responsibilities in terms of the collection and to ensure that museum operations are sustainable so we can continue into the future. I am left conflicted, but I am just one small cog – fortunately in this case, these decisions are bigger than me!

As far as class went this week I spent a great deal just trying to finalise my tools for my website. This unit provided me with a surprising amount of techniques used to collect and display data. This definitely made the choices I made for my final assignment more simple.

I’ve definitely enjoyed this unit this semester. The way that we were allowed to slowly learn skills and build on them each week made in useful when I was learning new techniques like GIF making and 3D Modelling.

The three questions that we were asked to dwell on really drove home the point that the techniques that we learned in this unit are likely to become more prominent. As the future of cultural heritage continues to expand, it is our job as future conservators and heritage associates to grow with it. Many of the implications for the tools that we have explored in this unit, or used in our assignments have barely begun to be explored. This unit has really helped to open my mind in terms of some of the different ways that technology can be used to assist and identify different heritage processes. I must admit that digital record keeping is a part of the heritage sector that I will hopefully continue to have an interest in, if only to see the new and wonderful ways that technology can be used for heritage collections.

 

 

This week basically served to remind me of a whole bunch of internet memes. The Redacted art was a really cool thing I’d never thought about before and I think my favourite from the series that was included was the Ship doodled on the government file.

As far as recognizing faces go, all I could think of was that prank where people go putting googly eyes onto various inanimate objects. Its one of those things that never fails to bring a smile to my face.

All that being said the use of computers for recognize faces is not something that should be that foreign of an idea. Image storing services like Picasso use algorithms to identify different people in photos and suggest tags so that you can correctly identified in photos. This has lead to some humorous situations in the past where photos of my 11 year old self were confused by the algorithm as being the face of my 40-something Uncle. Not to mention apps like Snapchat would be unable to work their filters if they did not have some sort of facial recognition service.

As creepy as some of the uses for these tools can be, such as for security, you certainly can’t deny they can’t also be used for fun.

Week 7 looked at interpreting data on a map by way of geo-coding. The geo-coding was something I had come across before in another of the units run by Tim in a previous semester. Consequently I did not find this class as difficult as I might have otherwise.

In looking at some of the examples used during this lesson I found that the interactive map “The Forced Migration of Enslaved People” was interesting to look at, but I found it a little frustrating to use. My frustration was mainly in terms of there being so many different things to look at on the one page. The multiple graphs combined with little to no direction in terms of how to use the website made for a rather confusing experience.

While I do not think that my data lends itself to this particular technique very well, I do still like the idea of being able to see the different data points placed on a map. I find that it helps to add an extra level of impact to the information.