2000s

Curating the Digital Humanities: How to Save the Humanities With Just a Few Clicks

“Save the books. And the film reels. The photos, the manuscripts, the letters, the maps.

These artifacts that fill our libraries threaten to sink into oblivion. But the good news? You can save them. As it turns out, the fate of media soon to be housed in the Digital Public Library of America lies in the hands of everyday Internet users, thanks to the power of crowdsourcing. How? You just have to play (sic) little online games.

These particular games just happen to add keywords to help organize media files like images, manuscripts, and more. Welcome to the future of digital curation: gamified Wikipedia.

The goal: to make printed words and imagery imminently findable once they’re moved from physical shelves to virtual ones. The British Library announced in 2012 that millions of cultural heritage artifacts could be effectively lost to the world if they were not put online — the photos and maps stored in boxes all around the world will simply be forgotten as we move further into our digitally connected age.

For the generations who’ve grown up without the library as a core part of their lives, this mission might seem a strange one. But ever since the first libraries in ancient Southern Iraq started archiving clay cuniform tablets over five and a half thousand years ago, libraries have held each successive society’s greatest treasured documents and artifacts of learning and knowledge.

As vast as Google’s reach is, the mega-corp’s multiyear Book project has, to date, scanned only about 15 percent of the world’s books.

After the books and photos and manuscripts and home movies are scanned, all of that material must be labeled by name, type or category — along with a description with detailed words to help us find it.

These archives have all the stuff Google doesn’t show you. . . . “

“Young Designers’ Exuberant SCADpad Homes Fit in a Parking Spot”

There is a fascinating trend in the younger American generation to leave behind the large, two- and three- story homes that have for so long controlled our domestic architecture. Instead the current movement is toward smaller, more economical housing that is more affordable and yet still stylish. Designers have come a long way in making these places attractive to those who live alone and appreciate these smaller places. As one of those new graduates who cannot even begin to dream of affording a small “traditional” home in the near (or long) future, I think this is amazing movement truly adapts to the needs of present society. Plus, I was beginning to grow tired of the generic sameness of most housing architecture; this is the first real innovation I have seen in a while. ** DB

“Young Designers’ Exuberant SCADpad Homes Fit in a Parking Spot”

by Ilyce R. Glink via “Yahoo!“

“Imagine an urban parking garage, emptied of its cars and filled instead with dozens of parking-spot-size homes.

It’s the vision of a group of more than 80 students, alumni and educators from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. They have been experimenting with these car-sized homes, called SCADpads, that could be plunked into any parking garage and instantly provide housing in overpriced downtown areas of major cities. The units are prototypes for urban housing, but students will live in them first to test out the concept.

“We’re targeting decks built in the middle of the 20th century, located in the heart of a city,” says Christian Sottile, dean of the school of building arts at SCAD. “Many of these were built as fallout shelters and will basically be there until the end of time.”

For its experiment, the folks at SCAD built their beta SCADpad neighborhood in the college’s midtown Atlanta parking garage, with incredible views of the city’s sprawling skyline. They took over the fourth floor of the garage, using eight parking spaces to create the three pads. The pads reflect the design aesthetics of the college’s three campuses: SCADpad North America for its Savannah campus, SCADpad Europe reflecting the campus in Lacoste, France, and SCADpad Asia reflecting its Hong Kong campus. Each pad takes up two parking spaces—one for the unit itself and the other for an outdoor garden area—and then there’s space for the community garden and a workbench. . . . .”

Everyone’s a Piano (Wo)Man in Lynchburg!

Lynchburg, VA (my other hometown) has decided to put up five different pianos across downtown for people to stop and play. Just to remind us that music doesn’t have to be planned or come with great preparation ~ sometimes it can just come from the heart.

Water Art!

Coming Exhibition: Jenny Saville’s “Oxyrhynchus”

“Jenny Saville’s “Oxyrhynchus”

Jenny Saville - Oxyrhynchus

Who: Gagosian Gallery

When: June 13 – July 26 (Tues-Sat. 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.)

Where:

6-24 Britannia Street
London WC1X 9JD
T. 44.207.841.9960 F. 44.207.841.9961
london@gagosian.com

How Much: Couldn’t Tell

More Information: Here.

“Following the success of her show at the Saatchi Gallery in 1994, which generated a great deal of publicity for her work (the images were ubiquitous that year), Saville went on to take part in the exhibition American Passion, which toured from the McLellan Gallery, Glasgow, to the Royal College of Art and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut.

By 1994 many people were familiar with Saville’s massive paintings, such as Plan, in which a naked woman is seen from below, her body filling the canvas through a combination of physical bulk and extreme foreshortening. Contour lines, as would demarcate the changes in altitude of land masses on a map, are drawn across the surface of the woman’s skin.”

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