Art & Culture

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. . . . “

Coming Exhibition: Afghan Rugs ~ The Contemporary Art of Central Asia

“Afghan Rugs ~ The Contemporary Art of Central Asia”

Who: BOCA Museum of Art

When: May 3, 2014 – July 27, 2014 (Tues-Fri. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.; Sat.-Sun. 12 p.m.-5 p.m.)

Where:

BOCA Museum of Art
501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton, FL 33432
In Mizner Park

How Much:

Adults ($8) Seniors 65+ ($6) Students ($5) Children 12- (Free)

More Information: Here.

“The international exhibition, Afghan Rugs: The Contemporary Art of Central Asia, features over 40 rugs from a private European collection, traveling for the first time to museums in North America. Selected for their exceptional quality and stunning imagery, the rugs in this exhibition represent a unique category in decorative arts. They constitute some of the most powerful visual inventions of the late 20th century and are skillfully crafted with hand-spun and dyed, tightly knotted wool.

These exquisitely woven works of art are designed with thoroughly untraditional motifs. Approximately half of the rugs—some produced well before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979—feature cityscapes, portraits, landscapes, and world maps, framed by tanks and helicopters. Other rugs in the include weapons and fighting scenes made by weavers in Afghanistan, or in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. No matter the central imagery, each rug is traditionally bounded by an intricately framed and detailed border design offering incredible works of art to be enjoyed on the floor as well as the wall.”

“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. . . . .”