A Window into our GIS Workshop

Blogging during class is my favorite! THIS IS WHAT BLOGGING IS ALL ABOUT. I stand by my decisions to blog during class - it's quite stimulating...and even though I'm posting this nearly a month after our GIS workshop, this unfinished blog post has allowed me to capture my intrigue and to revisit it with new and revised thoughts. Actually, part of me wishes I had documented more of my learning experience in this way...

Today, our colleague Don LaFreniere is giving us an introduction to Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

What I'm realizing is that spatial analysis is pretty neat! As a teacher, I'm always looking for different ways to present information - and visualizations can be so incredibly useful. Using maps and geographic locations can be a great tool for showing historical patterns, correlations, and changes over time.

What I'm loving about this presentation is that I'm seeing all different kinds of examples of how GIS can be used to analyze historical data for both public and academic history. From simple projects like mapping heritage buildings and incorporating hyperlinks, to past digital history projects that include heritage walking tours using GPS technology...it's got my mind working away.

What kinds of things can I "georectify" in the future? For my IED project? For my internship? Personal diaries?! I never would have thought to spatially analyze something like that.

Now, we are actually going to be able to get our hands dirty by georectifying a London fire insurance plan and analyzing the Talbot Street neighborhood that we all did projects on last semester.

This process was fairly easy (as we were given extremely straight-forward and helpful directions) and is basically a way of saying this point on the map = this point on the fire insurance plan. In this way, we can line up any coordinates and use this process to analyze or manipulate old maps, etc.

I love when technology works. It's so very encouraging.

The next step is to digitize our heritage properties on Talbot (607 for me), which basically just involves outlining it and giving it a pretty color.

Now, we're taking all the people from the census data in London and assigning them to their properties - putting the Londoners in their houses - using a "spatial join" that will say that each polygon (house) contains this point (person). In this way, we have linked several important layers of information: a map of London, a fire insurance plan, and all the census data according to where each person lived.

Now that we have this useful tool that contains all of this information in a visually organized manner, it's much easier to pull a meaningful analysis from it. For example, who was living within 200 meters of the Templar property. How many of those people had domestic servants? Did the Protestants and Catholics settle in different areas of London?

I don't think I've become a GIS master in those few hours of scrambling to keep up with the steps (mostly because I was simultaneously blogging) - but I certainly think of it as valuable exposure. Perhaps with a little more exposure and a bit of assistance, I can put the utility of these concepts into practice!

Here's a very simple GIS type project that was completed for a Banting House online exhibit entitled Captain Frederick Banting: The Luckiest Boy in France. Made in conjunction with a permanent exhibit in the museum, online visitors can spatially visualize Banting's military journey and learn information about his service according to geographic location.

Over the next few months, I am aiming at either expanding upon this online military exhibit, or perhaps installing a new online exhibit that focuses on another well-kept secret of Frederick Banting's, which is his extensive portfolio of artwork. I'm going to have to spend some more time with the content in the exhibits to come up with something, as my creative genius is escaping me during these final weeks of graduate school.

Anyone have any neat ideas for an online exhibit? Sharing is caring. :o)

Internship Developments!

Yesterday, I had a meeting with Grant Maltman over at Banting House - the site of my future (not-so-distant-future) internship.

Several things were accomplished - not quite a finished work plan at this point, but I think I'm well on my way to coming up with something that will a) significantly benefit the national historic site and b) allow me to walk away with a variety of experiences in the small museum field. While it is true that I've already worked in a small museum, a national historic site is slightly different from a county historical society (and not only in prestige).

Grant and I discussed three main projects that we would both like to see develop during my time at Banting House this summer:

1) Installation of PastPerfect Software - How fantastic is it that I've been working on this exact project at the Metras Museum all year? Banting House has ordered the software and is aiming to catalogue their collection in a more efficient database. Since only 10 donations came into the collection last year, we are going to start there and work our way backwards. A major benefit of this process for me would be that most of the collection at Banting House is archival material, so I would be getting that sort of archives experience that I have not had yet in my public history adventures.

2) Banting House Blog - After observing my fabulous display of blogging technique, Grant decided that perhaps it would be beneficial for the museum to have a blog of its own! No, not really - but a blog would be another way for Banting House to get its message "out there" into cyberland. Also, might I add that their website is inconveniently linked through the CDAs site. It's not terribly accessible. It's not terribly helpful. SO...the blog might be a way to keep the public updated about what's going on at the site from month to month.

3) Volunteer Manual Revisions - One thing I have not yet experienced in my museum work is interpretation. I've never guided tours or had to answer questions about the collections I've worked with. This may come as a shock, since I have always had an overwhelming urge to educate. BUT, my background in education will hopefully come in handy in attempting to make the volunteer manuals a little more relevant and a little more user-friendly. I'm hoping to revise the way the information is presented to the volunteers so that they may learn the ropes with less of an overwhelming sensation, and also to perhaps revise the way in which the volunteers think when they are showing people around the house, so that they may present information or ask questions in a more engaging way.

These are only a few ideas that we bounced around yesterday. There's a lot that needs to be done and several ways in which I can help out, I'm sure. I was informed of a few interesting special events going on in July, which would give me some experience with event planning and networking, etc.

Also, I think I'm going to get my hands dirty and volunteer at the house as soon as possible (likely next month)! Saturdays seem to be a problem day for the museum to stay open (which is very unfortunate) and all that's needed is one volunteer to show the house *so if anyone is interested in volunteering at Banting House, the commitment is only 4 hrs a month*

*wink wink*

*nudge nudge*

The Simplest Lesson of All....

Today, I learned something very important in class - and it's something my teachers have been telling me since I was a little girl:

SAVE OFTEN SILLY.

So much for my Inkscape jail house illustration >:O

The Banting House: London's Hidden Gem

Ahhh, reading week... What's a grad student to do for a whole seven days to entertain her 16 year old brother? Drag him to local museums in search of an internship? Sounds like a good plan to me!

Today, my brother and I braved the bitter Canadian cold to venture across London and check out the birthplace of insulin. It seemed like an important place to see while I'm here, and as a National Historic Site, why not see if there was some work for me there?

Admittedly, the Banting House was not something I knew about before I moved to London - and even worse, the discovery of insulin was not something I've recognized as a Canadian triumph. But then again, why would I? I feel so very cheated sometimes with the version of history I've been brought up on in the American high school... I suppose that's why I'm here.

Tucked away on the not-so-scenic corner of Adelaide and Queen, stands a modest home with a extensive courtyard that distinguishes the Banting House from the rest of the buildings on the street. In particular, the Flame of Hope that burns next to the property is not only eye-catching, but captivating (not to mention, it commemorates the visit of the Queen to the site). One can't help but wonder - what is the story here?

And quite a story it is! The museum is a prime example of a pilgrimage destination that can really have a life-long effect on visitors. The museum director mentioned that there are three types of people who typically come into the museum: the cultural tourist, the academic/scientific researcher, and the people whose lives have been affected by diabetes. Even though each visitor is there for a different reason, they all seem to mention a particular aura, especially in the bedroom of Banting's house, where he awoke in the middle of the night to scrawl out his idea to fight diabetes. It can be quite an emotional experience. Even my brother (who isn't a fan of museums, school, or learning in general) said that this was the only museum he's ever been to that's managed to hold his interest.

The museum not only interprets the discovery of insulin and the fascinating life of Frederick Banting, but serves as a symbol for the on-going struggle against diabetes, people living with (and not dying from) the disease, and the hope that something better than insulin will soon be discovered.

With a mission like that, who wouldn't want to be a part of this museum?! If you haven't visited this site yet, I would highly recommend it - I tried not to give too much away here. The place is full of surprises and WOW-factor. Perhaps if you wander in during the summer months, I shall be enthusiastic intern who greets you at the door (which is quite stubborn to open and close, might I observe)!

ARDUINO...and Other Exciting Digital Ventures!

I must admit, I did not see myself taking an interest in using the Arduino for my Interactive Exhibit Design project (despite its Italian charm). It's occurred to me now that this was because I didn't really understand the magnitude of what it could do and I couldn't see it fitting into my expedition through "Music as Information." I immediately associated it with robotics and electronics (words that send me running for the hills) and it didn't help that I had never even seen a "breadboard" before a few classes ago. Intimidating, for sure. But as the weeks have gone by, Arduino and I have become quite friendly - to the point where I've even taken one home to spend reading week with me!

After Wednesday's "Putting it all together" class, I've not only discovered that YES, the Arduino can definitely teach me some neat things about Music as Information, but this could be something I'd be interested in as a hobby. Basically, the project that Bill took us through in class was using an Arduino and an accelerometer to communicate through the Processing program on a computer. Using a library called SoundCipher, it is possible to have the values being read from the accelerometer be represented with musical pitches. Once I realized where the class demonstration was going, the wheels started turning in my head.

I'm envisioning musical composition through body movement - a sort of marriage of interpretive dance and improvisational music. It would be a difficult art to master, but possibly rather easy to create (if I'm not underestimating the logistics here). LilyPads - the wearable Arduino - one for each sleeve and pant leg.

The specifics would be a lot easier to see in my head if I had actually been successful in getting the Processing sketch to actually play notes like Bill had done in class.

This is where the home-adventure begins. I tried following the example and directions from the class wiki. I was successful in opening the serial monitor so that I could view the values that the accelerometer was reading. When it came time to use those values to control a sketch in Processing, I was not so successful. I followed the Graph tutorial on the Arduino website and copied the code, but I wasn't sure how to get Processing to recognize the accelerometer values. The code worked and my graph ran perfectly, but it didn't show any values.

This was frustrating...I definitely don't know enough yet to diagnose problems on my own.

So... not wanting the adventure to be a total and utter fail, I left it and just played with SoundCipher for the rest of the night!

Exciting things started happening after that (well, I'm easily amused by musical ventures). I explored all of the tutorials in SoundCipher just to get a feel for what I could possibly do with it in the future. Then, I set off on a very small project, but I'm pretty proud of it, I must admit.

I created a monophonic song with the simple bing program. This program plays a single note and defines its pitch, dynamic, and duration. This is the most basic thing one can do with SoundCipher, but I wanted to see if I could really figure out how digital/algorithmic music works. The only knowledge I started with was that the numeric value assigned to a middle C note is 60. From there, I used the playPhrase program and I created a C chromatic scale to make sure the values for the notes were consecutive. Then, I created a one-octave C scale so that I could map out which notes I would be able to use for a song played in the key of C (60, 62, 64, 65, 67, 69, 71, 72).

And then I wrote a simple childhood song! Here's the code:

import arb.soundcipher.*;

SoundCipher sc = new SoundCipher(this);

float[] pitches = {72, 69, 65, 60, 62, 64, 65, 62, 65, 60, 67, 72, 69, 65, 62, 64, 65, 67, 69, 67, 69, 70, 69, 67, 72, 69, 67, 65, 67, 69, 65, 62, 65, 62, 60, 60, 65, 69, 67, 60, 65, 69, 67, 69, 70, 72, 69, 65, 67, 60, 65};

float [] dynamics = {80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80 ,80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80};

float[] durations = {1.5, 1.5, 1.5, 1.5, .5, .5, .5, 1, .5, 3, 1.5, 1.5, 1.5, 1.5, .5, .5, .5, 1, .5, 3, .5, .5, .5, .5, 1, .5, .5, 2, .5, 1, .5, 1, .5, .5, 2, .5, 1, .5, 1,.5, 1, .5, .5, .5, .5,.5,.5,.5,1,.5, 3};

sc.playPhrase(pitches, dynamics, durations);

I understand that there are very few other people who will be excited by this, but it was an extremely satisfying experience for me.

CREATION.

It's a bit annoying that each and every note has to be assigned a dynamic. In this case, I just wanted all the notes to be the same intensity. I'm sure there's a way to do it, but I don't know how. Also, I wonder if there is a way to set a time signature - because I realized halfway through my song that I was smart enough to pick one that was in 6/8 time...which is a pain to feel out, especially when trying to convert beats into seconds.

But there you have it - "Bicycle Built for Two" is a musical and historic gem, one must admit.

In the future, I would really like to figure out how to use the score setting so that I could add chords on top of the notes and have them play at a specific time. Also, perhaps one day, I can understand how the algorithms work...but that would require a better grasp of mathematics in general...and I am in the field of history for a reason...

In the meantime, must resist the urge to recreate the theme song from Super Mario Brothers!

THE VISION

I think I've finally got my thoughts in order for this Interactive Exhibit class. I see...A VISION. THE vision. I've already indicated on my website that I'm interested in creating something that conveys information through music. Admittedly, I had absolutely no idea HOW I would go about doing this, or even WHAT such an exhibit would look like, what kind of information it would be transmitting, or how people could use it. Enter: the vision.

I envision an exhibit that allows visitors to VIEW how people have historically used vocal expression to convey meaning. Not everyone is musically inclined and can't quite understand how music, or even sound, is really a rich language to be interpreted. I plan on taking a look at a couple different vocal media; for example, Inuit throat singing, opera, or perhaps even political speeches. The idea is that the visitor would be allowed to look at the visualization of the sounds and gather information about what the vocalist is trying to say without necessarily understanding the language of the words they are using. Sound does not need words to communicate. Perhaps by seeing the visualization of the sound, visitors who never had before will learn to Listen.

Ideally, the interactive part of the exhibit would be to create a way for visitors to visualize their own voices. This would require a real time translation of sound into visual design.

I'm not entirely sure HOW I'm going to pull all of this together. At the moment, I'm just trying not to overwhelm myself, so I'm taking "Processing: A Programming Hangbook for Visual Designers and Artists" by Casey Reas and Ben Fry, a day at a time. Thus far, I've been reading about the components of sound and essentially trying to re-learn a lot of high school physics (amplitude, frequency, oscillators, etc.). I think it helps a bit that I have a strong musical background and a general understanding of musical vocabulary like pitch, octaves, modulation, transposition, etc.

As far as digital representation of sound and music, this is where it starts getting a little complicated for me, as it combines a lot of math and digital code (there is a reason why I study history). However, I'm getting the general idea of sound synthesis and processing. For example, from what I understand, sampling allows you to synthesize all kinds of frequencies just by processing a single sound. Then you can either sustain the sound, modulate it, or even create echo and reverberation effects.

I've just begun tapping into the world of Audio Analysis, or the derivation of information from digitized sound. This allows us to create interactive systems that "listen" to audio input and tell us what it means. The most obvious example of this type of technology is speech recognition.One thing I've found that will probably be useful is the idea of "attack detection", which is programming a computer to trigger an event at the onset of a sound, or when the sound reaches a certain frequency or amplitude. In other words, you could create a program that would synchronize a visual action with just the percussive sounds of a recording. Another concept that I'll probably find useful is "timbral analysis," which allows us to transform audio signals into data that can then be mapped to interactive computer events. One way to derive data from a signal is to count the number of times the signal turns from positive to negative - or even filtering out the loudest frequencies to test their harmonics or timbre. Of course, all that I've mentioned thus far are nothing but concepts in a book, so I only very vaguely understand them. If I can get my hands on the technology and actually see, hear, and feel how these concepts work, I think this could be something I might be good at.

As I'm reading along, I haven't really come across anything that is going to map out exactly what I have to do with this project. It's going to be a learning experience that I'll have to piece together myself - and perhaps just let my interests take me where they will. I'm really interested in how digital technology has changed the face of the music industry, for example, but I've never understood how sound engineering works. I'm learning now though, because of this project (which only illustrates further the beauty of this degree).

I suppose it's only natural that I lean toward sound for this project - my mother being both an audiologist and a musician on the side. Conversations of music theory and hearing aides were not uncommon around my dinner table. Though I can't say that I ever foresaw myself studying these things seriously...or the convergence of several of my passions in one class!

Roll On, Round Two!

Here I am, back in the land of the maple leaf. I couldn't be more thrilled, all sarcasm aside. I missed Western and my friends and learning and even working - working toward something and feeling a sense of accomplishment. So I'm getting back on the horse here. It should be a productive and exciting semester!

All of my public history projects are rolling along quite nicely and I'm looking forward to seeing the end results. I'm venturing out into the world of academic history, for real this time, not just auditing - so that's a bit scary. It's not difficult to see that last semester has turned me into a completely different historian, so it should be interesting to see how I tackle that course.

Finally, I've got my interactive exhibit design course! I still can't picture myself actually creating something technological with my own two hands. I have a hard time believing that my brain can work that way - but maybe it can! I'm feeling a bit of encouragement after hearing that I actually did really well in the first half of digital history. I never thought I'd see the day...but turns out "the day" was last Wednesday! Hmm...

So... I've started by updating my website. I'm toying around with a few ideas for my IED project, but I could really use some help with getting a more concrete vision. Feedback is much appreciated as always!