Author: watrall
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Gliding through time!
Last time I described my idea for my CHI fellowship project, an interactive timeline on Michigan’s Archaeological history. I have had plenty of time to play with this idea and test out several different means to try and get a functioning timeline on my web page. I think I have finally decided on using Timeglider…
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Digitally Locating Hidden Spaces
I’ve been predominantly considering digital maps as a means of telling stories of communities. It could be that I’m a newbie at most things digital, but perhaps there’s something comforting in reclaiming space for the less represented or participating in the production of space on something seemingly so authoritative as a map. Interested in the…
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Decisions, decisions, decisions.
One of the challenges I have when doing research is focusing my work and narrowing the topic. I do not think this is an unusual issue to have. However, it is one I have struggled with this past month. I think this is obvious from my last post. When I first talked with Ethan about…
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Naughty Norris
While my project has changed, I am still trying to figure what the UI of my website will be. City plans tend to be static and insipid unless you are a city planner/architect/urban designer in which you start critiquing it. But I am getting ahead of myself. Currently as it stands my project will try…
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Workshopping: How to Model Variation
As a variationist sociolinguist, my research focuses on the way language varies and changes in communities of speakers and concentrates in particular on the interaction of social factors (such as a speaker’s gender, ethnicity, age, degree of integration into their community, etc) and linguistic structures (such as sounds, grammatical forms, intonation features, words, etc). As…
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3D Modeling and Archaeology at MSU
This past summer at the Morton Village site, located in Central Illinois, the joint Michigan State University and Dickson Mounds Museum archaeological field school uncovered an artifact unique to the site. It is an zoomorphic sandstone block pipe, that we are interpreting as being similar to a bison! This artifact remains housed at the Dickson…
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Easy Doesn’t Mean Right
Is the easy way always the best way? During the 1st semester of the fellowship, fellows are responsible for completing a series of tasks focused on certain topics such as project management, web mapping, and data visualization. As a returning fellow, I completed these tasks last year. Because of this, groups usually include at least one…
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Mapping the movement of community spaces
As evidenced through this month’s blog posts, the CHI cohort is putting together their initial plans for our main project. I had initially wanted to focus on how nostalgia imprints itself and is used on physical places as a means of sustaining culture; however, the initial approach had only considered the process of this dynamic…
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Timeline of Michigan Archaeology
I’ve been thinking a lot these last few weeks about my project for my CHI fellowship. As I have mentioned before, I strongly believe in making archaeology accessible to a broad range of people. In my work with the State Archaeologist of Michigan, as well as with various school groups, I’ve noticed that there are…
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Navigating the visualization of language and identity in Norway
Since my last blog, I’ve ruminated upon the overall purpose of my CHI project; it first shall serve as the digital component to my Master’s thesis, and it second shall serve as that culmination of my background in history, information technology, and anthropology. But even more important, this project serves to digitally represent a somewhat…