Itinera's Displacements: A RoundtableMain MenuItinera's DisplacementsFraming #1: Itinera as renvoiChristopher Drew ArmstrongDisplacement #1: Itinera as MethodologyJennifer DonnellyDisplacement #3: Itinera as CodeVibeka McGyverFraming #2: Itinera as ClassroomAlison LangmeadChristopher Drew Armstrongd4432077657d8a0c6942cfcadf31b4972c877b15Lily Brewerfd1343e9d77488043312967064d900e930f4af55Jennifer Donnelly1eb0cf81bf15615ae94fbdfda5c9f48eb2057f1dAlison Langmead45b02a5aa4aae31e620320cfe8eed69638dc958aVibeka McGyver355578ca060d5cc1a61da1dcce649d082fc551b5Meredith North230239d5acaa96d4a0e35bc5c3c3512521459184 Published in Journal18: a journal of eighteenth-century art and culture Issue 5: Coordinates: Digital Mapping and 18th-Century Visual, Material, and Built Cultures (Spring 2018) Edited by Carrie Anderson and Nancy Um
Displacement #2: Itinera as Site
1media/NewLalande.jpgmedia/Montagu.jpg2017-10-14T06:49:00-07:00Meredith North230239d5acaa96d4a0e35bc5c3c35125214591842291543Lily Brewer and Meredith Northimage_header2018-03-25T14:50:05-07:00Lauren Cesirof37e4e52c3d9a4ff08b7937020ee9048f11c6739This displacement represents not only a conversation between Lily Brewer and Meredith North, both past project managers of Itinera, but also a video tour of the project's front-end and back-end interfaces that they both choreographed and produced. The video represents a walk-through of what it takes to create life events for Itinera, including the work of adding a new site when it does not already appear in the geographic hierarchy. The story of working with the data-entry interfaces of the project is told through the travels of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her sister, Lady Mar.
This walkthrough is a vivid reminder that "data entry" is not a mechanical process. Transforming the historical record into structured data that can be manipulated and visualized effectively requires not only a great deal of time, but also intellectual, interpretive labor. It is not a simple thing to read, digest, and carefully re-present the information left to us from the past. The ability to think through the consequences of our actions is essential to the process. Critical reflection is key.
As Lily and Meredith discuss in their interactions with Itinera and one another, the visitor is also invited to engage with the text-based annotations that step through the work that is happening on screen, providing guidance and further information about the process of working with Itinera's data.
The system that they use, and that underpins all of Itinera, is called CollectiveAccess, an open-source collections management system designed and supported by a group called Whirl-i-Gig. The Whirl-i-Gig team, including Seth Kaufman and Sophie Byerley, have been critical to Itinera's current design, having been continuous collaborators with the team at Pitt team over the past five years. CollectiveAccess has been chosen as a platform for a number of reasons, but perhaps the most critical is that it not only allows us to effectively model agents, objects, and sites as co-equal actants in a complex system, but it also allows us to describe the qualities and the characteristics of the links between them.
The video will begin playing automatically after a loading, or after clicking the arrow/play button. The annotations will appear automatically once the film begins streaming.
Header: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s network visualization, generated by Itinera. Screenshot by Nancy Um, modified in Adobe Illustrator, 2018.
12017-10-14T06:48:16-07:00Lily Brewer and Meredith North: Itinera as Site2Video contribution to Journal18plain2017-10-15T10:19:52-07:00Vimeo2017-10-14T09:08:30video238187963Alison Langmead
