1
00:00:00,101 --> 00:00:03,515
(Fraistat) So I'll turn it over to Jen
for the introduction.

2
00:00:04,197 --> 00:00:06,526
So I'm Jen.
Nice to meet you.

3
00:00:07,618 --> 00:00:11,093
I actually printed out what to say,
in part because Anne

4
00:00:11,093 --> 00:00:14,543
has a CD that's like 8 million pages
longs full of incredible things

5
00:00:14,543 --> 00:00:16,365
and I didn't want to fuck it up!

6
00:00:17,503 --> 00:00:19,517
So for those of you who don't know
who Anne is,

7
00:00:19,517 --> 00:00:21,614
She's a leading scholar in
media studies,

8
00:00:21,614 --> 00:00:25,307
whose work links cultural studies,
digital humanities and interactive media.

9
00:00:25,307 --> 00:00:29,235
She received her PHD in Communications
from the University of Illinois,

10
00:00:29,235 --> 00:00:32,154
like some of the rest of us
and since then

11
00:00:32,154 --> 00:00:33,660
has been affiliated 
with Georgia Tech,

12
00:00:33,660 --> 00:00:38,316
Xerox's PARC, the Annenberg School
and School of Cinematic Studies and Arts

13
00:00:38,316 --> 00:00:40,753
at the University of Southern California.
She's currently

14
00:00:40,753 --> 00:00:43,796
the Dean of the School of Media Studies
and Professor of Media Studies

15
00:00:43,796 --> 00:00:45,468
at The New School.

16
00:00:46,298 --> 00:00:48,369
It's funny when you get to introduce
somebody whose work

17
00:00:48,369 --> 00:00:52,089
you've read and lusted 
over for like 15 years.

18
00:00:53,565 --> 00:00:56,849
I think Anne's work for me,
and for a lot of people in the room,

19
00:00:56,849 --> 00:01:01,012
is a great representation
of what feminist scholarship looks like

20
00:01:01,012 --> 00:01:06,998
and risky feminist scholarship
that, sort of takes a lot of agency,

21
00:01:06,998 --> 00:01:09,764
not just for the reader,
but sort of empowers you as a reader

22
00:01:09,764 --> 00:01:12,212
and a scholar to go and implement
the types of theories

23
00:01:12,212 --> 00:01:15,030
and methodologies and approaches
she has in her work,

24
00:01:15,030 --> 00:01:17,258
so if you haven't read her yet,
you should definitely

25
00:01:17,258 --> 00:01:21,799
go pick up her work on Biotechnologies
on the gendered body,

26
00:01:22,906 --> 00:01:25,686
Designing Culture, which is a great book,
on technological imagination

27
00:01:25,686 --> 00:01:29,625
at work which is transmedia
to transmedia publication,

28
00:01:29,625 --> 00:01:32,059
that has all kinds of really great 
stuff that comes with it.

29
00:01:32,059 --> 00:01:36,025
If there's a scholar to watch,
as careers grow,

30
00:01:36,025 --> 00:01:40,891
I hope she's got another 30 years in her
because I want to see what she does next.

31
00:01:40,891 --> 00:01:43,658
So I'm delighted to welcome today
to give her talk:

32
00:01:43,658 --> 00:01:46,859
'Heavy Data, Cultural Memories: 
Lessons from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

33
00:01:46,859 --> 00:01:48,691
Digital Experience Project'.

34
00:01:48,691 --> 00:01:50,191
Thank you.

35
00:01:50,914 --> 00:01:52,608
(Applause)

36
00:01:54,678 --> 00:01:56,879
I'm not sure I want to have 
another 30 years..

37
00:01:56,879 --> 00:01:58,648
(laughter)

38
00:01:59,174 --> 00:02:01,787
Not quite ready to retire but...

39
00:02:02,111 --> 00:02:05,121
So thank you Jen,
Stephanie, Neil, Trevor,

40
00:02:05,121 --> 00:02:08,520
I had some great hosting
already happening the other night

41
00:02:10,796 --> 00:02:13,961
and I have been a fan,
I've been kind of a "MITH groupie"

42
00:02:13,961 --> 00:02:16,205
although I've not been, ever,
here before,

43
00:02:16,205 --> 00:02:20,137
but I'm been following the work
of MITH from, I think,

44
00:02:20,137 --> 00:02:22,004
it might have been the late 90's.

45
00:02:22,004 --> 00:02:26,005
So I've known what's been going here,
and I've certainly been a fan

46
00:02:26,005 --> 00:02:30,124
of Matt's work as the digital humanities 
kind of blossomed,

47
00:02:30,124 --> 00:02:35,480
to then make sense of what many people
were doing before their term showed up.

48
00:02:35,480 --> 00:02:38,281
So I'm actually delighted to be here.

49
00:02:38,597 --> 00:02:44,102
I'm going to talk a little bit today
about designing digital experiences

50
00:02:44,102 --> 00:02:46,168
for the AIDS Memorial Quilt. 


51
00:02:46,168 --> 00:02:49,535
But before I get into the details
of that project,

52
00:02:49,535 --> 00:02:54,602
I thought that it would be useful
to frame it with some of the theoretical

53
00:02:54,602 --> 00:03:02,269
and the conceptual, kind of material,
that comes to bear on this project.

54
00:03:02,269 --> 00:03:07,091
So as Jen mentioned
the recent transmedia book project,

55
00:03:07,091 --> 00:03:10,660
Designing Culture: The Technological
Imagination at Work

56
00:03:10,660 --> 00:03:14,908
is actually an example
of transmedia scholarship

57
00:03:14,908 --> 00:03:21,350
and it is also a project
that took, probably, 15 years

58
00:03:21,350 --> 00:03:22,796
to realize.

59
00:03:23,772 --> 00:03:26,973
So as I joke often,
I am the poster child

60
00:03:26,973 --> 00:03:29,841
for slow scholarship
and a scholarship that takes place

61
00:03:29,841 --> 00:03:31,910
all over the place.

62
00:03:32,120 --> 00:03:36,319
It started when I was in the academy,
it continued when I was in industry,

63
00:03:36,319 --> 00:03:40,985
and then I got, kind of, 
embroiled in some start up companies

64
00:03:43,261 --> 00:03:46,562
in Silicon Valley, 
went back into the academy


65
00:03:46,562 --> 00:03:51,562
and the last thing to do was actually 
finish the print based artifact,

66
00:03:51,562 --> 00:03:54,061
which come to us in the form
of a book.

67
00:03:54,061 --> 00:03:58,352
And in the process
it has many other different media forms

68
00:03:58,352 --> 00:04:00,711
and what the project does,
is it does its intellectual

69
00:04:00,711 --> 00:04:03,812
and scholarly work
across media forms.

70
00:04:03,812 --> 00:04:08,046
There's an interactive documentary
of the UN Conference on Women in 1995,


71
00:04:09,676 --> 00:04:15,283
to an internationally touring museum
exhibit on speculations

72
00:04:15,283 --> 00:04:18,561
on the future of reading called 
"Experiments on the future of reading",

73
00:04:18,561 --> 00:04:23,701
to the development more recently,
of things that I call video printers,

74
00:04:23,701 --> 00:04:27,301
short pedagogical pieces
that take up top bits of the book,

75
00:04:27,301 --> 00:04:31,333
and the print book 
was the last thing to be put in place

76
00:04:31,333 --> 00:04:35,833
although it had been written
and written in these moments

77
00:04:35,833 --> 00:04:40,100
of oscillation, between doing digital
projects and reflecting

78
00:04:40,100 --> 00:04:42,234
on them and doing them and so on.

79
00:04:42,234 --> 00:04:46,533
So, in an interesting way,
I feel like the print based books

80
00:04:46,533 --> 00:04:50,500
serves as an avatar for all the digital
work and in fact the digital work

81
00:04:50,500 --> 00:04:55,767
came and went and in some cases
the shelf life of the digital work

82
00:04:55,767 --> 00:04:58,534
was very brief, 18 months 
before something,

83
00:04:58,534 --> 00:05:03,700
from the time something was developed
to the time till it lapsed.

84
00:05:05,207 --> 00:05:07,269
And the only thing I actually,
at this moment,

85
00:05:07,269 --> 00:05:11,569
will put my bottom dollar on,
is that the book will outlast me,

86
00:05:11,569 --> 00:05:14,402
whereas all the digitals 
are actually going to disappear,

87
00:05:14,402 --> 00:05:16,736
probably disappear even as we speak.

88
00:05:16,736 --> 00:05:19,200
If you go back to see 
any of the digital pieces,


89
00:05:19,200 --> 00:05:24,258
you see the bit rot, 
that marks the traces of digital,

90
00:05:24,258 --> 00:05:27,858
artifacts that were created 
on one platform,

91
00:05:27,858 --> 00:05:30,224
and then upgraded and upgraded
and upgraded

92
00:05:30,224 --> 00:05:33,192
till they can't be upgraded anymore,
they can't be recompiled,

93
00:05:33,192 --> 00:05:36,792
they can't be...
and they will be lost like in 2 years.

94
00:05:38,422 --> 00:05:41,992
So the last chapter of the book is called
"The work of the book in a digital age"

95
00:05:41,992 --> 00:05:45,487
and really theorizes why,
why did I spent the time

96
00:05:45,487 --> 00:05:49,118
over those fifteen years doing other kinds
of media scholarship,

97
00:05:49,118 --> 00:05:52,688
why did I take a commitment 
to writing a book?

98
00:05:54,713 --> 00:05:58,162
So the entire project, really,
is a meditation

99
00:05:58,162 --> 00:06:01,129
about the role of culture
in technological innovation.

100
00:06:01,129 --> 00:06:07,438
The book traveled, the work I did,
traveled across three territories

101
00:06:07,438 --> 00:06:09,805
certainly the academy, 
which is one site

102
00:06:09,805 --> 00:06:14,206
in contemporary culture for the work 
of the technological imagination

103
00:06:14,206 --> 00:06:17,971
and the production of and the process
of technological innovation.

104
00:06:17,971 --> 00:06:21,905
I also worked in the industry
research center, Xerox PARC,

105
00:06:21,905 --> 00:06:27,171
and on the third site,
my third site of analysis,

106
00:06:27,171 --> 00:06:32,494
is the cultural institution known as
"The Science Technology Museum".

107
00:06:33,277 --> 00:06:36,233
And so those are the places
where I've done this work

108
00:06:36,233 --> 00:06:39,977
I've done these projects
and where the scholarships circulated.

109
00:06:39,977 --> 00:06:43,932
In the academy, in the museum
and in the research studies.

110
00:06:45,022 --> 00:06:48,956
I'm actually not going to talk too much
about the broader project.

111
00:06:50,125 --> 00:06:54,606
I'm going to focus on one part of it
which frames the work through the quilt.

112
00:06:54,606 --> 00:06:56,506
Which is a chapter called

113
00:06:56,506 --> 00:06:59,706
"Public Interactives and the Design
of Technological Literacies."

114
00:06:59,706 --> 00:07:03,155
What I'm taking on in this chapter,
what is the cultural work

115
00:07:03,155 --> 00:07:05,813
of this thing called
Public Interactives

116
00:07:05,813 --> 00:07:09,646
and how does it serve as the platform
for cultural reproduction

117
00:07:09,646 --> 00:07:12,109
over time and in the future.

118
00:07:12,856 --> 00:07:17,646
To that end and what I've been working on
for the last 7 to 8 years,

119
00:07:17,646 --> 00:07:23,146
certainly since I've left Xerox PARC,
is tracking a category

120
00:07:23,146 --> 00:07:25,445
of what I will consider
emergent technologies

121
00:07:25,445 --> 00:07:27,478
on cultural studies scholar.


122
00:07:27,478 --> 00:07:31,345
I draw heavily on Raymond William's
understanding of residual

123
00:07:31,345 --> 00:07:34,711
emergent and dominant technologies
and I'm using this term

124
00:07:34,711 --> 00:07:37,945
"emergent technology"
to name a category

125
00:07:37,945 --> 00:07:41,211
of technological experience
that is not yet dominant,

126
00:07:41,211 --> 00:07:44,978
but in its state of emergence.
It's gaining traction

127
00:07:44,978 --> 00:07:48,946
and gaining momentum,
and in a pedagogical way,

128
00:07:48,946 --> 00:07:51,712
I think this is becoming 
the motivation for this,

129
00:07:51,712 --> 00:07:53,910
I think it's important to talk
and to understand

130
00:07:53,910 --> 00:07:58,011
this category of emergent technology,
that I call Public Interactives,

131
00:07:58,011 --> 00:08:01,944
to understand what kind of cultural
work is going to be done.

132
00:08:02,825 --> 00:08:06,624
To that end, for the last several years
I've been looking at and tracing

133
00:08:06,624 --> 00:08:10,690
through different type of travels,
mostly in Asia,

134
00:08:10,690 --> 00:08:15,591
and I've been working pretty heavily
in China for the last 6 years,

135
00:08:15,591 --> 00:08:18,824
on tracking the genres
of Public Interactives.

136
00:08:18,824 --> 00:08:21,725
I'm not going to go into this
because that's not exactly the focus,

137
00:08:21,725 --> 00:08:24,291
but looking at everything from
Urban Screens,

138
00:08:24,291 --> 00:08:26,658
which of course are,
kind of very prominent,

139
00:08:27,798 --> 00:08:33,665
type of part of the media ecology
to other kinds of emergent genres

140
00:08:33,665 --> 00:08:36,824
like interactive advertising
and a new genre

141
00:08:36,824 --> 00:08:39,825
of casual game called
"Walk Up Games",

142
00:08:41,486 --> 00:08:46,561
to a genre that is the kind of interactive
experience that I've been engaged

143
00:08:46,561 --> 00:08:51,622
in developing and this is the genre
of the interactive Digital Memorial.

144
00:08:52,326 --> 00:08:55,449
So wherever possible, whenever anyone 
tells me about something,

145
00:08:55,449 --> 00:09:00,776
I literally put this on my to do list
to track down examples

146
00:09:00,776 --> 00:09:04,276
of interactive digital memorials,
in public spaces,

147
00:09:04,276 --> 00:09:06,476
so not digital memorials
that are going on,

148
00:09:06,476 --> 00:09:08,943
in the, kind of,
pages of Facebook and so on,


149
00:09:08,943 --> 00:09:11,809
but the things that are starting
to be in the world

150
00:09:11,809 --> 00:09:15,409
and trying to imagine
what is the intersection

151
00:09:15,409 --> 00:09:18,508
between the digital
and the material

152
00:09:18,508 --> 00:09:23,309
in the, what are the purposes of,
kind of serving cultural memory

153
00:09:23,309 --> 00:09:25,800
in cultural [inaudible].

154
00:09:27,110 --> 00:09:29,738
And we started this work,
a group of us,

155
00:09:29,738 --> 00:09:34,106
actually started thinking about 
the creation of digital memorials,

156
00:09:34,106 --> 00:09:41,372
in late 2000, right around the turn of the century,
in 2001, we had an idea,

157
00:09:42,162 --> 00:09:44,606
just a group of us
who had worked at Xerox PARC,

158
00:09:44,606 --> 00:09:47,139
we got laid off at Xerox PARC,
we started a company

159
00:09:47,139 --> 00:09:50,566
called Onomy Labs because we wanted
to continue doing the design

160
00:09:50,566 --> 00:09:52,606
and research work that we were doing.

161
00:09:52,606 --> 00:09:54,439
Our tagline for Onomy Labs


162
00:09:54,439 --> 00:09:56,881
was "Innovation that takes 
culture seriously",

163
00:09:56,881 --> 00:09:58,643
that started with questions 
of culture

164
00:09:58,643 --> 00:10:01,766
rather than questions of technology
and one of the first projects

165
00:10:01,766 --> 00:10:06,235
that we took on to start imagining
was how could the technologies

166
00:10:06,235 --> 00:10:09,902
that we were engaged in,
a lot of smart furniture things

167
00:10:09,902 --> 00:10:13,266
and so on, our reading devices, 
how could they serve

168
00:10:13,266 --> 00:10:18,316
the mission and objectives
of the Names Project Foundation

169
00:10:18,316 --> 00:10:23,267
and in 2001 we prototyped 
a table top interactive browser

170
00:10:23,267 --> 00:10:26,088
using one of the devices
we built at PARC

171
00:10:26,088 --> 00:10:28,512
to create the first, kind of like,
spacialized browser,

172
00:10:28,512 --> 00:10:30,373
for the AIDS Quilt.

173
00:10:30,895 --> 00:10:33,662
We approached the Names Project 
Foundation, this is the foundation

174
00:10:33,662 --> 00:10:36,411
that serves as the stewards 
for the Quilt,

175
00:10:36,411 --> 00:10:42,378
we asked them if they would be willing
to participate and partner with us,

176
00:10:42,378 --> 00:10:45,448
and they said absolutely, 
this would be great but we have no money,

177
00:10:45,448 --> 00:10:47,917
so you're on your own,
and when you get money,

178
00:10:47,917 --> 00:10:49,668
you can come back to us
and then we'll allow you

179
00:10:49,668 --> 00:10:53,120
to use our data sets but not until then.
Perfectly reasonable response

180
00:10:53,120 --> 00:10:55,201
for the non profit,
that was at the time

181
00:10:55,201 --> 00:10:59,400
having and still continues to have,
struggles to keep it's doors open.

182
00:10:59,400 --> 00:11:01,505
But they've been on, 
they've been a partner

183
00:11:01,505 --> 00:11:06,301
conceptually and philosophically
on this project since 2001,

184
00:11:06,301 --> 00:11:08,737
and of course, we couldn't have done it
without them.

185
00:11:09,696 --> 00:11:16,762
As you know the Quilt Project
and the Names Project Foundation

186
00:11:16,762 --> 00:11:22,840
have very long history.
It starts with, two people actually,

187
00:11:22,840 --> 00:11:27,538
Mike Smith and Cleve Jones,
who found the Names Project,

188
00:11:27,538 --> 00:11:32,104
and then the Names Project Foundation
in a small neighborhood

189
00:11:32,104 --> 00:11:35,565
in San Francisco, 
the Castro district.

190
00:11:35,565 --> 00:11:40,004
From the very early days
of the public recognition

191
00:11:40,004 --> 00:11:45,777
that people were dying 
of a set of diseases

192
00:11:45,777 --> 00:11:49,937
that seemed more than
coincidental.

193
00:11:49,937 --> 00:11:53,147
So these aren't exactly the earliest
days of HIV Aids,

194
00:11:53,147 --> 00:11:55,872
it was certainly before
we were just talking about that,

195
00:11:55,872 --> 00:11:58,553
it was before we had returned..
(mobile phone rings)

196
00:11:58,553 --> 00:12:00,553
Who's calling me in the middle
of my talk?!

197
00:12:00,553 --> 00:12:02,476
(laughter)

198
00:12:04,421 --> 00:12:09,405
But this project that we
kind of [inaudible] into now,

199
00:12:09,405 --> 00:12:13,062
comes 25 years later,
after the development,

200
00:12:13,062 --> 00:12:16,706
the first kind of quilt panels
were created,

201
00:12:16,706 --> 00:12:21,515
and about 30 years after
the public awareness of HIV Aids

202
00:12:21,515 --> 00:12:25,089
as an international pandemic.

203
00:12:27,248 --> 00:12:30,182
And I won't go into too much detail
about the quilt,

204
00:12:30,182 --> 00:12:33,117
but just to refresh everyone's memory.

205
00:12:33,363 --> 00:12:37,482
So this is a quilt panel, 
quilt panels from those very early days

206
00:12:37,482 --> 00:12:43,699
1986, the panels measured
3 feet by 6 feet,

207
00:12:43,699 --> 00:12:45,748
which was, in some respects,


208
00:12:47,271 --> 00:12:50,090
there were a series 
of very interesting accidents

209
00:12:50,090 --> 00:12:53,778
that led to this understanding
about quilting names,

210
00:12:53,778 --> 00:13:00,165
putting names on these textile pieces
but it is and was,

211
00:13:00,165 --> 00:13:02,498
[inaudible]
understood to be,

212
00:13:02,498 --> 00:13:06,230
this is the form factor and size
of a casket cover,

213
00:13:06,230 --> 00:13:10,483
so it has, kind of from
it's very early moments,

214
00:13:10,483 --> 00:13:15,571
some understanding about 
reconfiguring our material

215
00:13:15,571 --> 00:13:19,448
kind of monuments 
of memorialization.

216
00:13:21,294 --> 00:13:25,078
So 3 feet by 6 feet 
are individual panels.

217
00:13:25,078 --> 00:13:28,610
When the panels are submitted
to the Names Project Foundation,

218
00:13:28,610 --> 00:13:31,284
they are stitched together
into blocks

219
00:13:31,284 --> 00:13:37,311
that are 12 feet by 12 feet,
so they are typically 8 panels per block.

220
00:13:37,311 --> 00:13:42,180
So the size of the quilt,
when we talk about the quilt,

221
00:13:42,180 --> 00:13:45,611
the quilt is kind of quilted
on several levels.

222
00:13:45,611 --> 00:13:49,421
Its panels are quilted together
into 12 foot by 12 foot blocks

223
00:13:49,421 --> 00:13:52,412
and then the blocks are often
displayed together

224
00:13:52,412 --> 00:13:54,970
although they're
not stitched together,

225
00:13:54,970 --> 00:13:58,722
the blocks are often displayed
in continuity with one another.

226
00:13:59,420 --> 00:14:03,547
The first display,
public display of the quilt,

227
00:14:03,547 --> 00:14:06,101
happened in 1987.


228
00:14:06,101 --> 00:14:10,515
It was to..
actually it was part of the march

229
00:14:10,515 --> 00:14:13,649
on Washington for gay and lesbian rights
and it was also

230
00:14:13,649 --> 00:14:16,049
work of activism to lay the dead
at the feet

231
00:14:16,049 --> 00:14:19,450
of the law makers of Washington, 
who at that point,

232
00:14:19,450 --> 00:14:24,455
were not taking seriously,
the massive number of deaths happening

233
00:14:24,455 --> 00:14:29,719
in what they thought at the time,
was just California and New York.

234
00:14:29,719 --> 00:14:33,715
I just want to tell a story about this.
They were getting ready

235
00:14:36,330 --> 00:14:40,096
to ship the quilt panels
and the blocks

236
00:14:40,096 --> 00:14:44,055
from California to Washington,
to be part of the march on Washington,

237
00:14:44,055 --> 00:14:48,555
the Names Project, 
the Foundation of Castro (group),

238
00:14:48,555 --> 00:14:51,063
the workshop there,
had just put out word,

239
00:14:51,063 --> 00:14:55,664
to members of the castro, 
if you could get us your quilt panels

240
00:14:55,664 --> 00:15:00,139
by September 16th, we will make sure
that the quilt panels

241
00:15:00,139 --> 00:15:03,439
are on the truck that is driving
to Washington

242
00:15:03,439 --> 00:15:05,606
that we're going to lay out.

243
00:15:05,606 --> 00:15:09,306
And so because they had to rent 
a truck to take everybody out

244
00:15:09,306 --> 00:15:12,045
they were organizing
as a community group.

245
00:15:13,787 --> 00:15:16,785
At 5 o'clock that day,
the US post office

246
00:15:16,785 --> 00:15:20,017
calls the Foundation
and says "you'd better bring your truck"

247
00:15:20,017 --> 00:15:22,385
and they were like
"well, we're not going to load

248
00:15:22,385 --> 00:15:24,926
the truck until tomorrow".
They were thinking about loading,

249
00:15:24,926 --> 00:15:27,775
it was an RV and they were going to take
a whole group of people out,

250
00:15:27,775 --> 00:15:30,659
and they were like
"no, no, you need to bring your truck now,

251
00:15:30,659 --> 00:15:34,129
because you have all these packages"
and they were like "what packages?"

252
00:15:34,129 --> 00:15:36,260
Because people, all day,
had been bringing in panels

253
00:15:36,260 --> 00:15:39,521
to the actual workshop 
so they didn't have the truck

254
00:15:39,521 --> 00:15:43,739
but they got a Corvette, convertible,
and they made seven trips

255
00:15:43,739 --> 00:15:46,445
back and forth 
to the San Fransisco post office

256
00:15:46,445 --> 00:15:50,061
picking up packages of quilt panels
that had been shipped

257
00:15:50,061 --> 00:15:54,678
from all over the country,
to be included into the display

258
00:15:54,678 --> 00:15:57,689
of the quilt, for the first time,
before even anyone knew

259
00:15:57,689 --> 00:16:02,057
what the size of it was going to be,
for the march on Washington.

260
00:16:02,057 --> 00:16:04,331
And that was before the internet.

261
00:16:04,331 --> 00:16:08,230
And that was before our typical 
notions of social networking.

262
00:16:08,230 --> 00:16:12,436
The word spread throughout the US
through friendship networks,


263
00:16:12,436 --> 00:16:16,284
kinship networks, partnerships 
and so on that people said

264
00:16:16,284 --> 00:16:19,766
we want to create a quilt, a panel, 
on behalf of someone we've lost,

265
00:16:19,766 --> 00:16:24,152
and they came in from all sorts
of small towns around the US.

266
00:16:24,736 --> 00:16:28,384
So I say that now
and I use this example often

267
00:16:28,384 --> 00:16:32,889
to remind people that social
networking and viral marketing

268
00:16:32,889 --> 00:16:39,664
and other kinds of cultural means, 
did not start with the internet.

269
00:16:39,664 --> 00:16:42,638
But there were other kinds 
of social networks

270
00:16:42,638 --> 00:16:46,100
that were actually very good
about getting the word out

271
00:16:46,100 --> 00:16:50,189
and not in ways that left traces
of how the word traveled.

272
00:16:57,815 --> 00:17:01,814
1996, it grew in a very short 
period of time.

273
00:17:01,814 --> 00:17:08,615
1987 to 1996, from about 2000 panels
to 40,000 panels.

274
00:17:08,615 --> 00:17:12,149
This was the worst, kind of, 
time in terms of frequency

275
00:17:12,149 --> 00:17:19,330
of death from HIV Aids. 
And so that was the last showing

276
00:17:19,330 --> 00:17:24,980
of the quilt, 40,000 panels
on the mall of Washington, 1996.

277
00:17:26,919 --> 00:17:34,968
In 2006, to mark the 20 year anniversary,
newspapers around the country

278
00:17:34,968 --> 00:17:40,951
had headlines like this;
"Quilt fades into obscurity"

279
00:17:40,951 --> 00:17:44,310
although it was still in circulation.
We had panels coming on average,

280
00:17:44,310 --> 00:17:48,734
and still do, kind of,
one panel a day.

281
00:17:48,734 --> 00:17:53,024
By 2006, in the United States at least,
people thought HIV and Aids

282
00:17:53,024 --> 00:17:55,802
was a done deal, 
was no longer a death sentence,

283
00:17:55,802 --> 00:18:00,006
that it had been early on
and people were, of course, ignorant

284
00:18:00,006 --> 00:18:04,121
about communities that were still
greatly at risk for HIV Aids.

285
00:18:04,768 --> 00:18:08,244
But there's a sense of which
the day of the quilt had been done.

286
00:18:09,291 --> 00:18:15,114
This headline really kind of gave us
more energy to work 


287
00:18:15,114 --> 00:18:17,119
on our digital experiences


288
00:18:17,119 --> 00:18:20,679
which we had done the design (fiction)
and the prototype in 2001. 


289
00:18:20,679 --> 00:18:25,245
By 2006 we had worked for 5 years
to try to get funding

290
00:18:25,245 --> 00:18:29,347
to build these digital experiences
and we got no traction.

291
00:18:29,347 --> 00:18:32,289
We couldn't get any client,
we couldn't get any funding,

292
00:18:32,289 --> 00:18:34,943
we couldn't get any foundation.
This was right before

293
00:18:34,943 --> 00:18:37,808
the NEH, Office of Digital Humanities,
starts, 


294
00:18:37,808 --> 00:18:40,124
so it was right before 
they were poised

295
00:18:40,124 --> 00:18:43,442
to even receive proposals
for this,

296
00:18:43,442 --> 00:18:47,576
so in 2006 we redoubled our efforts
to start looking for funding

297
00:18:47,576 --> 00:18:51,396
to do these digital experiences
or at least one digital experience.

298
00:18:52,656 --> 00:18:58,051
And in fact what happened was
we eventually got a digital start up grant

299
00:18:58,051 --> 00:19:00,672
from the NEH to build 
a tangible browser

300
00:19:00,672 --> 00:19:03,372
for the Aids Memorial Quilt
based on the prototype

301
00:19:03,372 --> 00:19:06,446
that we had done nine years earlier,
but this time,

302
00:19:06,446 --> 00:19:10,954
what had happened in the technology field,
is that our, kind of one off,

303
00:19:10,954 --> 00:19:14,740
interactive table that we had developed,
called "the tilty table"

304
00:19:14,740 --> 00:19:19,484
had given way to some consumer grade
interactive pieces of furniture,

305
00:19:19,484 --> 00:19:23,715
like Microsoft Surface,
and IBM, at this point,

306
00:19:23,715 --> 00:19:28,207
also had an interactive table
so we knew we were going to be able to

307
00:19:28,207 --> 00:19:30,977
do the tangible browser 
on a different display,

308
00:19:30,977 --> 00:19:34,063
had technology [inaudible]
the ones that we had developed.

309
00:19:35,559 --> 00:19:38,884
So in 2012 and this is where
we're going to turn the attention

310
00:19:38,884 --> 00:19:43,116
to what we built and what we did.
In 2012 this is the size

311
00:19:43,116 --> 00:19:49,075
of the quilt now, 91,000 names
plus, it's actually very difficult

312
00:19:49,075 --> 00:19:52,339
to archive all the names,
because some panels

313
00:19:52,339 --> 00:19:56,410
have literally hundreds of names
and it's unclear what the status 


314
00:19:56,410 --> 00:19:58,903
of those names, are they names 
of people who have died,

315
00:19:58,903 --> 00:20:02,768
or names of the community
members who have made the panel,

316
00:20:02,768 --> 00:20:05,469
but about 91,000 names 
they have documented

317
00:20:05,469 --> 00:20:07,450
of people who are memorialized.

318
00:20:07,450 --> 00:20:12,613
There are almost 6000 blocks,
those are the 12 by 12 foot pieces,

319
00:20:12,613 --> 00:20:16,276
48,000 panels so you can see 
that the number of panels

320
00:20:16,276 --> 00:20:18,723
have kind of slowed, 
in terms of the production,

321
00:20:18,723 --> 00:20:24,482
over the last, now, 20 years.
It weighs 34 tons.

322
00:20:25,701 --> 00:20:31,378
34 tons of material culture
is stored in a warehouse in Atlanta.

323
00:20:32,227 --> 00:20:36,886
It is stored in a warehouse
next to the headquarters

324
00:20:36,886 --> 00:20:40,244
of the Names Project Foundation.
There are three staff members.

325
00:20:41,643 --> 00:20:45,504
It continues to circulate,
continues to use a wider volunteer labor.

326
00:20:45,504 --> 00:20:49,450
It is a textile work 
of material culture.

327
00:20:49,450 --> 00:20:51,327
It is breaking down.

328
00:20:52,467 --> 00:20:55,893
Stitches either come unraveled,
these were not pieces

329
00:20:55,893 --> 00:20:59,963
that were done by professional artists,
for the most part,

330
00:20:59,963 --> 00:21:04,412
or by professional quilt makers,
so, kind of, the fragility

331
00:21:04,412 --> 00:21:09,002
of the quilt in the [inaudible]
is 34 tons is very obvious

332
00:21:09,002 --> 00:21:11,971
whenever you see it.
So what happens is of the 34 tons,

333
00:21:11,971 --> 00:21:16,993
it is constantly opened up,
restitched, so there's a constant

334
00:21:17,963 --> 00:21:21,800
crew of staff who do nothing 
but keep the quilt,

335
00:21:22,600 --> 00:21:24,637
literally, stitched together.

336
00:21:25,247 --> 00:21:28,254
If it were spread out,
it could be spread out,

337
00:21:28,254 --> 00:21:32,558
in its entirety, it would cover 
almost 1.3 million square feet.

338
00:21:32,558 --> 00:21:35,574
That would allow you to have space
to walk in between the blocks

339
00:21:35,574 --> 00:21:38,755
of 47 countries 
and this is when we started

340
00:21:38,755 --> 00:21:42,727
really understanding perhaps
a way to explore

341
00:21:42,727 --> 00:21:47,076
what could the digital do
that the textile couldn't do,

342
00:21:47,076 --> 00:21:50,982
which is that it would take you 33 days
if you only spent 1 minute

343
00:21:50,982 --> 00:21:53,896
at each panel to view 
the entire quilt,

344
00:21:53,896 --> 00:21:56,366
and there's no way 
a work of this magnitude

345
00:21:56,366 --> 00:21:59,192
could ever be on display,
one because we don't have big enough

346
00:21:59,192 --> 00:22:03,018
spaces for it and second of all
because of its fragility

347
00:22:03,018 --> 00:22:05,419
in terms of it being laid out.

348
00:22:05,825 --> 00:22:06,702
So...

349
00:22:08,425 --> 00:22:13,403
in 2012 with the funding 
that came from the NEH

350
00:22:13,403 --> 00:22:16,310
we embarked on a,
what I call,

351
00:22:16,310 --> 00:22:20,487
a distributed design research project
that involved

352
00:22:20,487 --> 00:22:23,657
digital humanists 
and cultural technologists.

353
00:22:25,533 --> 00:22:28,383
It was my group 
in public interactives research

354
00:22:28,383 --> 00:22:31,390
at the University of Southern California,
the digital studio

355
00:22:31,390 --> 00:22:34,253
for Arts and Humanities
at the University of Iowa,

356
00:22:34,253 --> 00:22:38,957
Andy van Dam's
data visualization group

357
00:22:38,957 --> 00:22:42,226
at Brown University
and then Microsoft Research.

358
00:22:42,226 --> 00:22:46,867
In contrast to what Donald
may have suggested,

359
00:22:46,867 --> 00:22:50,008
Microsoft Research came in 
at the eleventh hour

360
00:22:50,008 --> 00:22:53,632
to provide some displays
and funding

361
00:22:53,632 --> 00:22:56,125
and so I had to really
wrestle him to the ground

362
00:22:56,125 --> 00:22:59,629
to, not only just dump technology
on us, but to give us some money

363
00:22:59,629 --> 00:23:02,214
to pay for people
to use the technology.

364
00:23:02,799 --> 00:23:06,466
I love them and I was very grateful
for their help

365
00:23:06,466 --> 00:23:09,360
but they don't understand 
that dumping technology

366
00:23:09,360 --> 00:23:12,547
is not a panacea
for doing digital humanities work.

367
00:23:12,547 --> 00:23:16,220
You have to pay the people.
So they did finally [inaudible]

368
00:23:16,590 --> 00:23:18,700
with some funding,
late in the game,

369
00:23:18,700 --> 00:23:21,706
after many other institutions
had come up with

370
00:23:21,706 --> 00:23:24,611
and contributed extensive
pro bono work.

371
00:23:25,521 --> 00:23:30,372
Here are some of the challenges
that we faced in this digital design project.

372
00:23:31,708 --> 00:23:36,822
Absolutely noisy datasets.
We had two datasets to work with.

373
00:23:36,822 --> 00:23:41,047
The dataset of visual images.
We have a visual data set

374
00:23:41,047 --> 00:23:47,235
of each of the large block images.
They are photographed over 25 years

375
00:23:47,235 --> 00:23:53,038
meaning the earliest images 
were taken with analogue photography,

376
00:23:53,038 --> 00:23:56,369
and then they were digitized afterwards.
At the level of resolution

377
00:23:56,369 --> 00:24:03,176
of 25 years it means different
images, it's really kind of quite varied.

378
00:24:04,018 --> 00:24:07,609
So we have a very noisy 
and inconsistent visual dataset

379
00:24:07,609 --> 00:24:15,243
of these 58,000 large, or 5800 large,
images that are 12 by 12 feet.

380
00:24:16,063 --> 00:24:18,457
The metadata set is very noisy
as well

381
00:24:18,457 --> 00:24:22,410
because, again, 25 years 
of accessioning,

382
00:24:22,410 --> 00:24:26,392
some people were entered 
in with nicknames only,

383
00:24:26,392 --> 00:24:29,450
some people were entered in
with full names,

384
00:24:29,450 --> 00:24:31,618
some people were entered in
with their nicknames

385
00:24:31,618 --> 00:24:36,084
in quotation marks.
So the metadata and the visual images

386
00:24:37,154 --> 00:24:41,243
were challenging datasets
and they were not integrated.

387
00:24:41,243 --> 00:24:46,326
So you couldn't search the metadata
for the demographic information

388
00:24:46,326 --> 00:24:50,249
and get to a panel or get to a block
and you couldn't search the panels

389
00:24:50,249 --> 00:24:53,696
and the blocks to get to the metadata.
So one of the very first things

390
00:24:53,696 --> 00:24:55,946
we had to do was to get 
in under the hood

391
00:24:55,946 --> 00:24:58,057
to look at these datasets
and figure out


392
00:24:58,057 --> 00:25:01,263
how we could clean them up
to make them useable.

393
00:25:04,224 --> 00:25:09,035
And then there's a whole other
project about the lack

394
00:25:09,035 --> 00:25:13,715
of digital tracking,
for example, these 5800 blocks

395
00:25:13,715 --> 00:25:17,786
do not have QR codes
or any kind of bar coding on them.

396
00:25:17,786 --> 00:25:22,035
They have a magic marker
number for the block number

397
00:25:22,035 --> 00:25:26,549
on the actual quilt panel
which makes inventorying

398
00:25:26,549 --> 00:25:31,389
the 34 tons of textile material
very difficult.

399
00:25:35,569 --> 00:25:39,398
So we were able, 
because we had some funding,

400
00:25:39,398 --> 00:25:42,449
to come back to the Names Project,
they allowed us to use these datasets

401
00:25:42,449 --> 00:25:45,658
and start getting into the project
of cleaning up the datasets,

402
00:25:45,658 --> 00:25:49,034
both to help them
and to service the project.

403
00:25:49,034 --> 00:25:53,593
The work that I'm doing now,
the reflective work,

404
00:25:53,593 --> 00:25:56,516
is talking about this project
as an experiment

405
00:25:56,516 --> 00:26:00,873
in designing culture
and exploring two concepts:

406
00:26:00,873 --> 00:26:04,659
The poetics of interactivity
and the architecture of public intimacy

407
00:26:04,659 --> 00:26:08,919
and how the design of these particular
digital experiences

408
00:26:08,919 --> 00:26:14,715
kind of work out these two constructs,
that I think are central to discourses

409
00:26:14,715 --> 00:26:17,757
and conversations 
about digital humanities.

410
00:26:18,551 --> 00:26:20,344
So I'm going to talk 
a little bit about

411
00:26:20,344 --> 00:26:22,312
the three interactive experiences
that we built

412
00:26:22,312 --> 00:26:27,718
for the last display
of the quilt in Washington.

413
00:26:29,461 --> 00:26:35,566
This happened in summer of 2012.
It was a six week event

414
00:26:35,566 --> 00:26:37,883
called Quilt in the Capital.

415
00:26:38,744 --> 00:26:41,893
I think I have slide about this...
no skipped it..

416
00:26:42,676 --> 00:26:46,954
So the quilt was first put out
as part of the 4 day

417
00:26:48,477 --> 00:26:51,958
Folk Life Festival
sponsored by The Smithsonian.

418
00:26:51,958 --> 00:26:55,285
Then the quilt was, quilt blocks,
were distributed

419
00:26:55,285 --> 00:26:58,360
to about 50 venues
throughout the capital,

420
00:26:58,360 --> 00:27:02,722
in the intervening 3 weeks.
And then to coincide

421
00:27:02,722 --> 00:27:08,209
with the International 
Conference on Aids,

422
00:27:08,209 --> 00:27:10,483
which was happening
in Washington DC

423
00:27:10,483 --> 00:27:15,808
for the first time, 
since the Bush regime.

424
00:27:17,397 --> 00:27:22,434
We attempted to lay out the quilt again
on the mall of Washington

425
00:27:22,434 --> 00:27:27,565
and that ended up not happening
because, you guys probably remember this,

426
00:27:27,565 --> 00:27:32,500
summer of 2012, I mean
there was everything except an earthquake.

427
00:27:32,500 --> 00:27:34,804
I mean we had floods, we had hurricanes,
we had tornadoes,

428
00:27:34,804 --> 00:27:41,084
I mean it was the worst possible summer.
It was 106 degrees in the shade

429
00:27:41,084 --> 00:27:45,513
and the humidity was through the roof
and the days we were supposed to lay

430
00:27:45,513 --> 00:27:48,651
this out on the mall
it rained every single day.

431
00:27:49,649 --> 00:27:53,600
So the quilt, the physical quilt itself,
that was it's moment,

432
00:27:53,600 --> 00:27:56,213
it will never go out again
in public.

433
00:27:56,213 --> 00:27:59,832
If it was going to happen
it would have happened in summer 2012

434
00:27:59,832 --> 00:28:03,298
and we just, we literally got
to the end of the logistics

435
00:28:03,298 --> 00:28:06,100
that could make that happen,
we now understand. 


436
00:28:07,192 --> 00:28:10,928
So for a good portion of the 6 weeks
that the quilt was in the capital,

437
00:28:10,928 --> 00:28:15,260
the digital experiences were the only 
access to the Aids Memorial Quilt.

438
00:28:16,137 --> 00:28:19,975
The quilt was there.
If we could find a panel

439
00:28:19,975 --> 00:28:23,040
and the panel maker came in,
we would bring the panel out

440
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:25,742
and we would lay it out
in our tent that we had

441
00:28:25,742 --> 00:28:28,670
and we ended up turning
these digital experiences,

442
00:28:28,670 --> 00:28:31,970
which were meant to augment
viewing of the textile quilt,

443
00:28:31,970 --> 00:28:35,846
we ended up turning them 
into a media system

444
00:28:35,846 --> 00:28:37,494
for quilt archaeology.

445
00:28:37,494 --> 00:28:40,744
People would come in and say
"My uncle Steve has a panel"

446
00:28:40,744 --> 00:28:43,483
and we're like
Ok what's Steve's last name?

447
00:28:43,483 --> 00:28:49,346
When did he die etc and it was through 
the interactive experience

448
00:28:49,346 --> 00:28:52,865
and I'll show you some facsimiles
of these, that we would help people

449
00:28:52,865 --> 00:28:56,165
get to the actual panel
and then work backwards

450
00:28:56,165 --> 00:28:58,813
to getting to the block
and then work backwards

451
00:28:58,813 --> 00:29:02,843
to where in all the cargo containers
that were along the mall

452
00:29:02,843 --> 00:29:07,164
might that panel be stored
so we can bring the panel,

453
00:29:08,214 --> 00:29:10,389
or bring the block out
to show people.

454
00:29:10,389 --> 00:29:13,026
Who had traveled from Alaska,
Texas and so on

455
00:29:13,026 --> 00:29:15,061
to see these panels.

456
00:29:17,523 --> 00:29:20,477
We ended up building the three
interactives,

457
00:29:20,477 --> 00:29:23,500
I can't show you this one,
I'll show you a facsimile of this,

458
00:29:23,500 --> 00:29:26,266
so we did use Microsoft,
what was then called Surface,

459
00:29:29,066 --> 00:29:33,360
interactive table top browser
to create a searchable

460
00:29:33,360 --> 00:29:37,282
and, kind of, viewable

461
00:29:38,854 --> 00:29:42,864
interaction, interactive experience
where you could view the quilt

462
00:29:42,864 --> 00:29:45,199
from different levels
of altitude.

463
00:29:46,219 --> 00:29:48,833
These were the tables in the tent.

464
00:29:49,120 --> 00:29:51,558
The team, the docent team.

465
00:29:51,558 --> 00:29:54,526
We didn't do any formal
user research

466
00:29:54,526 --> 00:29:56,757
because that was not really the point
of this project

467
00:29:56,757 --> 00:30:00,231
but people came, they looked,
they watched, they searched,

468
00:30:00,231 --> 00:30:04,245
they stayed for a half hour,
an hour at a time

469
00:30:04,245 --> 00:30:07,746
and again we ended up doing
these things called quilt archaeology

470
00:30:07,746 --> 00:30:09,721
working in one question
and experience

471
00:30:09,721 --> 00:30:12,212
would lead to another
to another.

472
00:30:15,369 --> 00:30:17,977
There was a list of names
that you could browse.

473
00:30:17,977 --> 00:30:20,170
You could browse by image,
you could browse by name,

474
00:30:20,170 --> 00:30:23,130
you could get metadata, you could 
go between selecting the panel

475
00:30:23,130 --> 00:30:25,633
and get the metadata 
associated with that.

476
00:30:25,633 --> 00:30:27,884
If you were to browse 
the list of names,

477
00:30:27,884 --> 00:30:31,535
it took 500 screens,
to browse,

478
00:30:31,535 --> 00:30:34,342
so there were some browsing techniques
to get you able to shorthand.

479
00:30:37,344 --> 00:30:39,396
We asked the question,
we were interested in,

480
00:30:39,396 --> 00:30:42,208
what is the, what's the equivalent
of a digital rubbing

481
00:30:42,208 --> 00:30:45,064
for a digital memorial?

482
00:30:45,804 --> 00:30:50,001
We know that, certainly in the context
of the national mall,


483
00:30:50,001 --> 00:30:53,155
that a lot of the way 
in which people interact,

484
00:30:53,155 --> 00:30:57,067
with the marble
and the carved pieces and so on

485
00:30:57,067 --> 00:30:59,843
and this was an unexpected,
kind of,

486
00:31:02,027 --> 00:31:06,236
practice that we noted,
that people would find the panel

487
00:31:06,236 --> 00:31:09,623
and then they would take a digital image
of people at the table of the panel

488
00:31:09,623 --> 00:31:13,890
and so there was something,
again, to be explored here,

489
00:31:13,890 --> 00:31:17,926
kind of how, the digital enables
people to be witnesses

490
00:31:17,926 --> 00:31:20,707
and to be present at a moment in time.

491
00:31:21,846 --> 00:31:27,133
Some amazing and very unusual
stories were evoked by this.

492
00:31:28,003 --> 00:31:32,754
This is a panel for a young man
named Chris Parcell

493
00:31:32,754 --> 00:31:36,970
and he died in 1990,
but in 1989,

494
00:31:38,969 --> 00:31:42,306
a photojournalist named Billy Howard,
had done a book,

495
00:31:42,306 --> 00:31:45,516
a photojournalist book 
with some entries

496
00:31:45,516 --> 00:31:49,517
on men who were diagnosed
as HIV positive

497
00:31:49,517 --> 00:31:53,558
who were in the Castro district
and Billy was coming over

498
00:31:53,558 --> 00:31:57,841
and he said I'd like to look up
the people who are in my book.

499
00:31:57,841 --> 00:32:00,842
And so we were looking up the various
names, about 50 names in the book,

500
00:32:00,842 --> 00:32:04,472
and 50 photographs
and Billy hadn't realized that

501
00:32:04,472 --> 00:32:13,741
Chris' panel was a quilted version
of the photograph that Billy had taken

502
00:32:13,741 --> 00:32:19,307
of Chris and it included
the clothes that Chris was wearing

503
00:32:19,307 --> 00:32:23,678
in the photograph.
So those kinds of stories

504
00:32:23,678 --> 00:32:27,118
that we wouldn't have seen otherwise


505
00:32:27,118 --> 00:32:29,008
because we wouldn't have been able
to have a mechanism

506
00:32:29,008 --> 00:32:32,819
to get in and browse so precisely.

507
00:32:34,184 --> 00:32:37,470
Some of the unexpected encounters


508
00:32:38,510 --> 00:32:41,656
and what we also realized, 
of course, in doing this work,

509
00:32:41,656 --> 00:32:45,168
unlike many of the other digital pieces
I've been involved with,

510
00:32:46,458 --> 00:32:51,912
it's very much about using the digital
to be present with people

511
00:32:51,912 --> 00:32:55,584
as they were remembering things
and to be a part of the witnessing

512
00:32:56,624 --> 00:32:58,906
of the, kind of, cultural memories.

513
00:33:00,671 --> 00:33:04,238
Second project that we did,
that is kind of on and off,

514
00:33:04,238 --> 00:33:08,103
in terms of whether or not 
it's still available on Microsoft's site,

515
00:33:08,103 --> 00:33:12,506
because we used a new 
Microsoft program called Chronozoom

516
00:33:12,506 --> 00:33:16,803
to create an interactive
timeline of the history

517
00:33:16,803 --> 00:33:21,247
of HIV Aids, that research
and those stories,

518
00:33:21,247 --> 00:33:25,508
and that kind of interactive
timeline about the history of the quilt.

519
00:33:26,769 --> 00:33:31,966
This was a very interesting opportunity
for me to get involved

520
00:33:31,966 --> 00:33:38,647
and deep in discussions
with researchers at Microsoft about

521
00:33:39,917 --> 00:33:42,664
some of the nuances 
of historiography

522
00:33:42,664 --> 00:33:47,750
and, like, this is so wrong
on so many counts,

523
00:33:47,750 --> 00:33:51,012
that this Chronozoom
is so wrong

524
00:33:51,012 --> 00:33:54,578
because it really is well suited
to telling the stories

525
00:33:54,578 --> 00:33:59,744
of epics and epochs 
and geologic times and so on,

526
00:33:59,744 --> 00:34:02,586
such that it ended up making AIDS seem
like an eyeblink

527
00:34:02,586 --> 00:34:04,992
in the history of humanity.

528
00:34:04,992 --> 00:34:07,616
And I'm like we'll do it,
but I'm not happy about doing it

529
00:34:08,436 --> 00:34:10,248
and I'm going to show you why.

530
00:34:10,803 --> 00:34:14,636
It's because every time you turn around,
you can zoom out so quickly

531
00:34:14,636 --> 00:34:19,740
to the geologic time frame that anything 
that has to do with humanities

532
00:34:19,740 --> 00:34:21,735
seems absolutely insignificant.

533
00:34:22,157 --> 00:34:25,905
So helping them understand that
perhaps they needed some breaks

534
00:34:25,905 --> 00:34:29,316
on those zooming capacities
on different timelines.

535
00:34:30,988 --> 00:34:34,200
We had interesting discussions about

536
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:36,521
how one writes history.

537
00:34:37,631 --> 00:34:42,858
Aids Quilt Touch.
This was probably our most successful,

538
00:34:42,858 --> 00:34:45,997
kind of unintended consequence.
Very late in the day

539
00:34:45,997 --> 00:34:49,763
the Digital Studio 
for the Public Humanities at Iowa

540
00:34:49,763 --> 00:34:52,178
said you know, 
you need a mobile web app,

541
00:34:52,178 --> 00:34:54,330
everyone's going to show up
at the mall

542
00:34:54,330 --> 00:34:56,937
and they're going to want to know
where on the google map

543
00:34:56,937 --> 00:35:00,017
is the panel that they're looking for
and we're like,

544
00:35:00,017 --> 00:35:03,339
wow, we don't have any funding to do that
and the Iowa team said we'll do it.

545
00:35:04,481 --> 00:35:08,279
And so in about 4 weeks
they built a very robust

546
00:35:08,279 --> 00:35:10,168
mobile web app
that is still up

547
00:35:10,168 --> 00:35:12,202
and available
and I'll show you that.

548
00:35:12,202 --> 00:35:16,260
So I'd like to show you
just a few of the experiences here.

549
00:35:17,783 --> 00:35:19,536
Let me start with..

550
00:35:21,789 --> 00:35:24,632
let me start with this one.
So this will give you a sense

551
00:35:24,632 --> 00:35:27,034
of what you could do,
this is what I mean by

552
00:35:27,034 --> 00:35:33,607
the poetics of interactivity.
So this is a virtual image

553
00:35:33,607 --> 00:35:38,748
of 1.3 million square feet,
almost 6000 12 by 12 blocks.

554
00:35:40,517 --> 00:35:43,247
There's no scale markers on here.

555
00:35:43,247 --> 00:35:45,885
This is also the first time
when we did this,

556
00:35:45,885 --> 00:35:49,659
this is the first time,
that the quilt block panels

557
00:35:49,659 --> 00:35:52,011
were laid out
in chronological order.

558
00:35:52,747 --> 00:36:00,037
So that means that they're 
by accessioning numbers, 0001, 0002..

559
00:36:00,037 --> 00:36:03,996
it doesn't entirely correspond
to the chronology

560
00:36:03,996 --> 00:36:06,905
of when the panels were created
because also what we learned

561
00:36:06,905 --> 00:36:10,823
is that people hold onto the panels
until they're ready to let go.

562
00:36:11,539 --> 00:36:15,245
And so down here you may have panels
that were created 25 years ago

563
00:36:15,245 --> 00:36:19,314
that would have been up there
but weren't submitted at the same age

564
00:36:19,314 --> 00:36:21,085
but at least for the way 
in which the panels

565
00:36:21,085 --> 00:36:24,167
were brought to the Names Project,
stitched into the blocks

566
00:36:24,167 --> 00:36:27,238
and then accessioned,
this is a historical document.

567
00:36:29,554 --> 00:36:32,080
And a document where you can
start to see the difference

568
00:36:32,080 --> 00:36:35,257
in resolution.
So at the table

569
00:36:35,257 --> 00:36:39,018
that you were at in, 
one of the surface,

570
00:36:39,018 --> 00:36:41,703
you would be able to do this kind
of zooming

571
00:36:41,703 --> 00:36:46,093
just by gesture-based
and it's pretty fast,

572
00:36:46,093 --> 00:36:49,163
it's pretty fast,
you could pan,

573
00:36:53,361 --> 00:36:58,223
you could pan across,
zoom in at different altitudes

574
00:37:00,115 --> 00:37:04,547
to the point where you would
get to a resolution

575
00:37:04,547 --> 00:37:06,816
focused on a singular panel.

576
00:37:09,036 --> 00:37:14,499
This project, to create that very smooth,
kind of, zooming from different altitudes

577
00:37:14,499 --> 00:37:19,561
of viewing brought the computers
to its knees.

578
00:37:20,217 --> 00:37:23,845
This was the Brown group
working furiously

579
00:37:23,845 --> 00:37:27,276
to make a Microsoft 
deep zoom application

580
00:37:27,276 --> 00:37:32,240
able to handle the size
of the images.

581
00:37:32,240 --> 00:37:34,223
Because this is 1.3 million
square feet.

582
00:37:34,223 --> 00:37:36,706
This is not, so there
were different kinds of hacks

583
00:37:36,706 --> 00:37:39,277
and work arounds
and stuff like that.

584
00:37:40,082 --> 00:37:42,279
We really had the best 
thinkers...

585
00:37:43,836 --> 00:37:47,032
So at the table, 
you would have been able to,

586
00:37:47,032 --> 00:37:50,217
with gestures zoom in and out
to different altitudes,

587
00:37:50,217 --> 00:37:53,558
you could pan around,
you could start to see patterns and so on,

588
00:37:53,558 --> 00:37:56,439
but if you were at the table
you would be able to click

589
00:37:56,439 --> 00:37:58,629
on a particular panel 
and then get the metadata

590
00:37:58,629 --> 00:38:02,122
for that panel
so you were able to go from,

591
00:38:02,122 --> 00:38:05,705
and this is one of the examples of what 
I mean by poetics of interactivity.

592
00:38:05,705 --> 00:38:09,262
This is something the digital
could do that wasn't able to be done

593
00:38:09,405 --> 00:38:11,652
on the textile
which is that you could zoom

594
00:38:11,652 --> 00:38:18,896
from the, most, bird's eye view
of these large displays at this scale,

595
00:38:18,896 --> 00:38:23,104
down to the 3 by 5, 
3 by 6 panel.

596
00:38:23,104 --> 00:38:25,398
To give you, kind of, a sense
of the oscillation

597
00:38:25,398 --> 00:38:27,591
between the personal 
and the cultural.

598
00:38:28,580 --> 00:38:32,427
The significance of Aids
is certainly about every name

599
00:38:32,427 --> 00:38:35,316
that's on the panel,
the most intimate

600
00:38:35,316 --> 00:38:40,387
and the most, literally,
kind of, signature experience.

601
00:38:40,958 --> 00:38:44,357
But for us, culturally, 
the impact of HIV Aids

602
00:38:44,357 --> 00:38:48,627
is arrayed by this,
apprehending this scale of the image

603
00:38:48,627 --> 00:38:51,988
and that table,
that interactive table

604
00:38:51,988 --> 00:38:55,706
enabled people, literally, 
to go very seamlessly

605
00:38:55,706 --> 00:39:01,630
from the individual signature name 
to the sense of the scale of the project.

606
00:39:03,983 --> 00:39:06,992
I'll just show you 
the Aids Quilt Touch.

607
00:39:06,992 --> 00:39:10,212
So this is still up and running
although it's definitely,

608
00:39:10,212 --> 00:39:14,806
it's not even in beta, 
some of the things that we did

609
00:39:14,806 --> 00:39:19,132
and this is, kind of, the going in point,
we were interested in

610
00:39:19,132 --> 00:39:24,318
being able to map for people
where a particular

611
00:39:28,692 --> 00:39:31,914
where a particular panel
is going to be located on the mall

612
00:39:31,914 --> 00:39:34,722
so it's really a google map 
mash up.

613
00:39:36,738 --> 00:39:38,404
(brief silence)

614
00:39:50,547 --> 00:39:52,603
And so this is what I mean
when I say the database

615
00:39:52,603 --> 00:39:55,382
was really noisy,
this is what we have:

616
00:39:55,382 --> 00:39:58,907
We have "Bambi" for an entry
without really reliable

617
00:39:58,907 --> 00:40:02,588
secondary metadata
so the kind of things we have to do

618
00:40:02,588 --> 00:40:06,536
to clean up this database,
requires going back

619
00:40:06,536 --> 00:40:08,746
into the physical archives.

620
00:40:09,891 --> 00:40:11,400
(brief silence)

621
00:40:23,180 --> 00:40:27,180
Anyway, so there is kind of a mash up
of where the displays are.

622
00:40:27,180 --> 00:40:33,712
And then this was the first time
that the Names Project Foundation

623
00:40:33,712 --> 00:40:37,050
had any sort of digital guest book.


624
00:40:39,027 --> 00:40:45,291
So what we invited,
what we invited people to do,

625
00:40:45,291 --> 00:40:49,358
so here was something that was,
...a year after,

626
00:40:50,773 --> 00:40:53,640
this was a celebration
for this person

627
00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:58,961
and it's submitted by somebody 
named by David Julio

628
00:40:58,961 --> 00:41:02,509
and it's a testimony to somebody, 
his friend named Michael,

629
00:41:02,509 --> 00:41:06,192
who was an important part 
of his life in 1979.

630
00:41:06,192 --> 00:41:10,888
So this is now the first time
that the Names Project

631
00:41:10,888 --> 00:41:15,045
had the capacity to invite people
to submit anything

632
00:41:15,045 --> 00:41:20,649
from simple memorials to stories.
This is what we are now hoping to do

633
00:41:20,649 --> 00:41:22,331
in the next phase of the project
which is to create

634
00:41:22,331 --> 00:41:25,201
a much more multi media rich
and multi modal

635
00:41:25,201 --> 00:41:31,489
kind of story, story engine 
or story accessing engine.

636
00:41:34,419 --> 00:41:38,151
And building off of the notion
that you could celebrate

637
00:41:38,151 --> 00:41:41,320
individual people,
you could share your thoughts

638
00:41:41,320 --> 00:41:46,193
about the quilt itself
and there were certainly

639
00:41:46,193 --> 00:41:47,977
a number of...

640
00:41:51,327 --> 00:41:55,425
a number of contributions
from people saying

641
00:41:55,425 --> 00:41:57,566
I had no idea the quilt was so big
so people who didn't have experience

642
00:41:57,566 --> 00:42:00,736
with a particular name
but was talking about

643
00:42:00,736 --> 00:42:03,120
the significance of the quilt.

644
00:42:04,046 --> 00:42:08,987
So I'm just going to talk about
two other, maybe more wonky, things,

645
00:42:08,987 --> 00:42:11,707
that digital humanists in the room
will understand and appreciate.

646
00:42:13,848 --> 00:42:15,970
So one of the struggles 
that we had

647
00:42:15,970 --> 00:42:21,982
was we only have images
of the 12 by 12 foot blocks.

648
00:42:21,982 --> 00:42:25,367
We don't have images
of the individual panels.

649
00:42:25,367 --> 00:42:30,190
They didn't decide to do that imaging,
they only imaged the block.

650
00:42:30,190 --> 00:42:32,591
But for researching 
and for searching

651
00:42:32,591 --> 00:42:35,146
we would really like to be able
to get people

652
00:42:35,146 --> 00:42:42,182
to return all the panels
for a particular name

653
00:42:42,182 --> 00:42:45,817
or we would like to do parameter
based searching,

654
00:42:45,817 --> 00:42:49,545
like I would like to know
How many panels are submitted

655
00:42:49,545 --> 00:42:54,220
on behalf of people who died
who have my birth date

656
00:42:54,220 --> 00:42:57,765
so that I can understand
who's my cohort

657
00:42:57,765 --> 00:43:02,293
on the quilt and their children,
what year they died and so on.

658
00:43:02,293 --> 00:43:07,156
I'm actually in the middle
of the demographics

659
00:43:07,156 --> 00:43:09,537
in terms of who was susceptible to this.

660
00:43:11,669 --> 00:43:16,518
So we did community sourcing
application, very down and dirty,

661
00:43:16,518 --> 00:43:19,375
that just puts a block
on the screen

662
00:43:19,375 --> 00:43:24,597
and then asks you to click
on the number

663
00:43:24,597 --> 00:43:29,815
that is most closely
at the center of an individual panel

664
00:43:29,815 --> 00:43:35,383
and then we also ask people
does this image need to be cropped?

665
00:43:35,383 --> 00:43:38,127
Which this one does...
so I'm going to say yes,

666
00:43:38,127 --> 00:43:40,627
it's a little kind of ugly there
and then you submit

667
00:43:40,627 --> 00:43:43,194
the block layout.
So what we're doing,

668
00:43:43,194 --> 00:43:47,263
we're almost near the end
of going through all the blocks,

669
00:43:47,263 --> 00:43:53,179
times 3 to get inter...reliability,
inter reliability,

670
00:43:53,179 --> 00:43:55,601
so that now we know
where on a block,

671
00:43:55,601 --> 00:43:58,930
is the location 
of an individual panel.

672
00:43:58,930 --> 00:44:03,296
Because there are actually 32
different permutations

673
00:44:03,296 --> 00:44:10,624
of 8 panels for each block,
some blocks are all 1 panel, 12 by 12.

674
00:44:10,624 --> 00:44:13,699
This was one where Andy and Dan
said you should be able to do this

675
00:44:13,699 --> 00:44:18,230
algorithmically and Andy said to us,
you're better off with human eyeballs.

676
00:44:18,230 --> 00:44:22,609
And it has to do with 
the imprecision of the colors,

677
00:44:22,609 --> 00:44:28,454
because we have such,
the capacity to really discern,

678
00:44:28,454 --> 00:44:32,619
to make distinctions between textile,
even in bad resolution images.

679
00:44:33,557 --> 00:44:36,802
So what we're aiming for,
and this is another thing

680
00:44:36,802 --> 00:44:40,129
we've got in beta,
we're aiming for,

681
00:44:41,429 --> 00:44:44,762
again we've got the proof of concept
for the ability

682
00:44:44,762 --> 00:44:48,904
to recreate the virtual quilt,
not for presentation and display,

683
00:44:48,904 --> 00:44:52,402
but for research so you can do 
parameter based searching

684
00:44:52,402 --> 00:44:55,216
and get a collection 
of the quilt panels

685
00:44:55,216 --> 00:44:57,849
that represent the parameters.
So like I just typed in

686
00:44:58,959 --> 00:45:02,957
"creation date 1992",
so this would be the collection

687
00:45:02,957 --> 00:45:08,455
of panels,
this is a sample data set,

688
00:45:08,455 --> 00:45:12,278
but the collection of panels
that were submitted in 1992.

689
00:45:13,721 --> 00:45:14,501
Take that out...

690
00:45:15,553 --> 00:45:18,728
We know that people 
want to do things like

691
00:45:20,604 --> 00:45:25,953
panels, where are the panels submitted
associated with a particular city,

692
00:45:25,953 --> 00:45:28,424
zipcode, things like that.

693
00:45:29,134 --> 00:45:31,885
I think this is going to be 
a very interesting

694
00:45:31,885 --> 00:45:37,147
set of research capabilities
when we can get this done

695
00:45:37,147 --> 00:45:40,564
because there is so many interesting,
so many interesting patterns

696
00:45:41,794 --> 00:45:44,861
that we can now start to see
in the quilt,

697
00:45:44,861 --> 00:45:48,281
including quilting patterns
which we're connecting

698
00:45:48,281 --> 00:45:50,350
up with the people 
at Michigan State University

699
00:45:50,350 --> 00:45:54,695
who do the quilt index.
So to also put the quilt

700
00:45:54,695 --> 00:45:59,371
into yet another context,
which is a folkal part context.

701
00:46:00,441 --> 00:46:05,520
It is one of the largest pieces of quilt
folk art in the history of the world

702
00:46:05,520 --> 00:46:07,220
as far as we know.

703
00:46:07,870 --> 00:46:11,032
So it would be a way,
this kind of capacity,

704
00:46:11,032 --> 00:46:13,924
it would be a way in which we would
enable the datasets

705
00:46:15,034 --> 00:46:18,199
to be searchable for cultural 
questions,

706
00:46:18,199 --> 00:46:21,900
not data analytical questions 
and so I use this as an example

707
00:46:21,900 --> 00:46:24,103
of what I mean when I say
"cultural analytics".

708
00:46:24,813 --> 00:46:29,814
That it's about searching for patterns
that the data by itself can't reveal.

709
00:46:29,814 --> 00:46:34,042
That if I just had access
to one set or the other

710
00:46:34,042 --> 00:46:36,102
I wouldn't be able to get at them,
I can only get them

711
00:46:36,102 --> 00:46:38,816
if I can do something different
with the data.

712
00:46:40,989 --> 00:46:46,096
That is, those are our examples. 
I'm not going to show Chronozoom

713
00:46:46,096 --> 00:46:48,049
because Chronozoom
is down right now.

714
00:46:51,718 --> 00:46:56,152
I think the lessons learned here
were that it literally,

715
00:46:57,682 --> 00:47:01,501
it literally takes a village,
or rather, this to me was an example

716
00:47:01,501 --> 00:47:05,084
of the thing, the construct
I've been working on,

717
00:47:05,084 --> 00:47:07,318
this is something
you guys were starting to talk about,

718
00:47:08,298 --> 00:47:10,928
the construct of a, kind of, 
big humanities project,

719
00:47:10,928 --> 00:47:15,598
like the big science project
that enabled us

720
00:47:15,598 --> 00:47:17,629
to do the [inaudible] sequencing.

721
00:47:18,136 --> 00:47:23,165
This is the kind of cultural
phenomena that cannot be done

722
00:47:23,165 --> 00:47:27,098
by any single institution. 
It's 34 tons.

723
00:47:27,098 --> 00:47:30,529
The Smithsonian can't take it,
the Library of Congress,

724
00:47:30,529 --> 00:47:35,505
is literally daunted by this,
so we've got to think about

725
00:47:35,505 --> 00:47:39,249
an entirely different way
of archiving the physical pieces,

726
00:47:39,249 --> 00:47:43,239
thinking about the role of the digital
and maintaining the integrity

727
00:47:44,079 --> 00:47:45,549
of the physical archive.

728
00:47:45,549 --> 00:47:49,714
We're talking about shifting from,
you know, putting it somewhere

729
00:47:49,714 --> 00:47:53,829
permanently, to repatriating the quilt,
and putting the quilt

730
00:47:53,829 --> 00:47:59,096
back to the cultural institutions
that are already vested in the project

731
00:47:59,096 --> 00:48:04,745
of keeping the memory of HIV Aids, 
gay and lesbian history alive.

732
00:48:05,345 --> 00:48:10,483
So repatriating the physical quilt
and using the digital platforms

733
00:48:10,483 --> 00:48:13,974
to do the work
of maintaining the integrity.

734
00:48:13,974 --> 00:48:16,171
So we're just starting
to have these conversations

735
00:48:16,171 --> 00:48:19,929
between the Names Project Foundation
and the Library of Congress

736
00:48:19,929 --> 00:48:23,024
to try to understand 
what's the mechanisms

737
00:48:23,024 --> 00:48:24,576
for doing this.

738
00:48:26,260 --> 00:48:29,446
So I use it as an example
of a big digital humanities project.

739
00:48:29,446 --> 00:48:34,384
It's too big for any single institution
or any single set of researchers

740
00:48:35,654 --> 00:48:37,385
and what it means
is it's more of a consortium

741
00:48:37,385 --> 00:48:41,104
or a collaboration model
that divides the labor.

742
00:48:43,009 --> 00:48:44,809
So thank you. 
I think that's my time.