Final Assessment
Looking back on our work together over this past semester, I attempted to create a matrix of the relationships between representation and access, material and space and to place the course content within those relations. While the matrix itself is still a work in progress, it did serve as a way for me to reflect on the thematic content and how each of our projects grappled to illustrate these same relations. It would be an interesting exercise to place our projects in a relational index together.
I will now look at a few aspects of my personal project as well as at the class as a whole in our ability to meet our evaluative criteria.
Concept & Content
When considering the arc’s of each of our projects, images of burrowing come to mind. It seems to me that the semester was a process of gathering and winnowing our initial proposed research projects throughout the research process. And although we found ourselves at times covered in dirt or seed husks (really pushing the metaphor now), I think that this passion for appropriate concept and content is the strongest parts of our maps. The evidence of the struggle with form and meaning is embedded into the projects and only adds to the construction of the compelling arguments.
For my own project, I wrestled most with what to connect to each other. I wanted everything to always be looked at as a body of work. How to achieve this eventually took shape through linking within my arguments, which I think I could do much more of to really give a sense of the relational web of a neighborhood.
Concept/Content-Driven Design & Technique
As we have talked about in class, the most exciting parts of our maps most often take place in experiments with breaking or exploiting the limitations of the database. I think that we all would have liked to do more of this, but were not quite sure how to determine the spectrum of ways this could happen, as only having a very superficial understanding of the medium. However, I think that even the limited understanding we have of it will serve as an insightful methodology for continued scholarship. The capacity to conceive of ways to perforate or permeate structural limitations became exponential in the process or conversation between thinking and making.
A few personal improvements for my own map to further illustrate my arguments:
- videos of the mural site to animate the space and add a sensory component to the visual perception of the mural
- ‘crowdsourcing’ some of the media, like Anne Balsamo suggested during our pecha kucha
- to add an additional perspective (literal point of view behind the camera) to further illustrate the argument for subaltern histories
- And, as Shannon suggested, writing descriptions of each murals context and content to further articulate the *how* of the artifacts
Transparent, Collaborative Development and Documentation/Academic Integrity & Openness
Proper citation and acknowledgement of source material was a central component of our class critique and discourse. I think we all took this aspect of our maps very seriously, internalizing the ontological and epistemological implications of contributing to discourse and the role of transparency.
The first iterations of my data model used the citation feature in URT, but ultimately I decided to input that information in a text field. The logic behind this decision came when looking at the front end of the website. Displaying the sources as text felt more accessible and visually familiar. It felt more important that every viewer had a sense of the priority of citation within my project than to be able to search or connect sources within other URT projects. It was a tough call, but it came down to the consideration of user scenarios and ultimately was a good lesson in the data modeling process.
Review & Critique
Finally, our projects attempt to compile critique and review into the final iterations. It is all part of reckoning with the medium and working to communicate concepts through structures. I have certainly internalized the methods from this course in myriad ways.
Fantastic, Laura. I really appreciate that you returned to our evaluative criteria and applied them to the class as a whole! The iterative nature of the entire enterprise allowed us to continually address these issues — to incrementally winnow down our topics, better match form and content, ensure that we’re tracing our paths and citing our sources, etc.