The Immigrant's Suitcase: Sketch Up Visualization

If you have been following my previous posts, you are aware that  Adriana and myself are working on creating an interactive exhibit featuring an immigrant's suitcase. Our first step was to put some ideas down on paper and sketch it out.  To refresh your memory, this is was our original drawing:

While Adriana did a mighty fine job drawing the above picture, we wanted to have a more detailed visualization of what our exhibit might look like.  This is where Google Sketch Up comes in.  If you are unfamiliar with the program, it is an open source 3D modeling program that lets you, well, model things.  While it is particularly useful for architecture and engineering, it also works great for modeling museum exhibits. 

These are some preliminary ideas of what our exhibit could look like. 

Our focus is on the suitcase itself, but it is nice to imagine how the suitcase could be displayed within a larger context.  The images on the left wall show the three immigrant identities we hope to explore - Ukrainian, Chinese, and African American.  The right wall features introductory text and a Canadian Pacific Railway poster encouraging westward settlement, written in Ukrainian.

If we zoom in on the table, we get a better picture of the suitcase and the artifacts.  The artifacts again represent the three immigrant identities - Matryoshka nesting dolls (Ukrainian), Cowboy hat (African American ranchers) and an art piece featuring Chinese script. Adriana is currently figuring out how to fabricate the Matryoshka dolls using the 3D printer.  If we have additional time, we hope to make at least one of the artifacts interactive, perhaps make the dolls talk or pop open in some fashion.

Now the suitcase itself is pretty bare at this point, just containing the necessary technology - RFID equipped passports, a laptop, solderless breadboard, arduino, and an RFID reader.  Our goal is to construct a false bottom to place over the technological components to hide them from view, which will allow us to place a few artifacts on top.  Upon entering the exhibit the visitor will receive one of the passports and when they near the suitcase, the signal will be picked up by the RFID reader inside. The RFID reader will communicate with the laptop using the arduino, instructing it to turn on a video which will then be displayed on the screen mounted to the lid of the suitcase. 

The process is probably a bit more complicated than I have laid out and will most likely require additional technology, but this will become more clear as we progress in our research and fabrication. Any suggestions for improvement or modification are most welcome!          

The Immigrant's Suitcase: A Foray into Interactive Exhibit Design

In my last blog post, I described an idea to make an Interactive Suitcase that would communicate the journey of an immigrant by making the objects of their suitcase interactive.  Having an idea is half the battle, but carrying it out is still quite overwhelming.  Thankfully, I have teamed up with my colleague Adriana Ayers, who possesses and abundance of creativity and technical capabilities.

After the initial idea came about, we let our imaginations run wild, thinking of all the possibilities for our suitcase.  Adriana began sketching the suitcase and outlining some of the items we might be able to include.  Toys? Musical instruments? Maps? Letters? Photo albums? Money? Clothes?  Over the course of a couple of weeks, we had more ideas than we knew what to do with.  The items in the suitcase also depended on the ethnicity of the immigrant whose story we wished to tell - did we want to explore Ukrainian, Chinese, Japanese, or Irish backgrounds?  One thing we knew from the start was that whichever immigrant identity we chose, they would be settling in Alberta.  As born and bred Albertans, we have to show a bit of provincial loyalty.

 Preliminary Sketch - drawn by Adriana Ayers

As we continued to toss around different ideas, the story of an Ukrainian immigrant became most appealing.  We thought we could include some Pysanky eggs and have them change designs upon being touched, as well as some Ukrainian nesting dolls that would pop apart by activating a switch.  We also wanted to incorporate some archival materials because, well, we are historians and have a particular affinity for old things.  Using digitized copies of photographs, we wanted to create a digital photo album depicting life in Ukraine and Alberta.  While these were just a few initial ideas, we were quite excited about the potentials of our project. Adriana even went as far to conceptualize a display of numerous suitcases with different immigrant stories - visitors would come to the exhibit and receive a passport that would only open the suitcase with the corresponding ethnic identity.   The possibilities seemed endless!

The possibilities are still endless, but the reality is, we are constrained both by time and our technical capacities.  After posing our ideas to our professor, it was clear that we needed to scale back the project and have a more defined focus.  While it would be cool to make twenty different objects in the suitcase interactive, I do need to graduate by October.  Our initial concept hasn't changed, but we are going to focus our efforts on making interactive passports that will send signals to a computer (cleverly disguised within a suitcase) and prompt the display of one of three immigrant stories. Using archival materials from Alberta, we are in the process of creating videos about the immigration of Ukrainians, African Americans, and Chinese to Alberta.  The passports will each contain a RFID (radio frequency identification) tag that will tell the computer which video to play - in this sense, it is "opening" the suitcase and displaying the immigrant experience. 

We haven't completely abandoned our ideas for the interactive objects.  If time permits, we are going to try and fabricate at least one object with an interactive component to display in the suitcase.  Or, with the brand new MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D printer, we may try and print an object for display.  A lot of the details are still up in the air, but we are proceeding with a more defined focus.  Up next, figuring out how exactly RFID's work! (So far my research has involved staring blankly at various websites, but I have renewed hope thanks to some great resources sent my way by Devon Elliott).

Be sure to check out Adriana's blog for her take on the project!

 

From Arduino to Exhibit?

Remember back in kindergarten, when your day largely consisted of playing at different centers?  I was a big fan of the block and sand centers, where I could build things and get my hands a little bit dirty.  While grad school seems far removed from my kindergarten days, it seems as though I am returning to my roots.

This semester, I am taking an Interactive Exhibit Design Class that is really like one big kindergarten learning center - just increase the complexity by 100 000 000.  In learning how to make interactive historical exhibits, we get to explore and experiment with different technologies, computer languages, and codes. So far this has mostly involved playing with something called an arduino.

What is an arduino you ask?

Basically, it is a little electronic chip that we can (or will learn to) manipulate to do really cool things.  Or if you want the technical version, it is "an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software." (For a more in depth explanation check out this blog.)

So you are probably wondering what kind of cool things this little chip of wonder can do.  So far, my partner Sushima and I have only been able to make it perform a few small functions. 

Hooking the arduino up to an LED light is the most basic function you can perform, but we have also learned to control this light with a switch and a pontentiometer (like a dimmer switch).  The highlight of the class last week was using the arduino to play a little jingle through an attached speaker.  We were so excited about this accomplishment that we spent the remainder of the class trying to make the arduino play different songs - specifically the Super Mario theme song.

An electronic chip that can turn on lights and and play jingles may seem quite unrelated to the historical discipline. I will readily admit that I don't know all of the arduinos capabilities, but I do know that it is extremely versatile.  I'll tell you how I imagine an arduino will be able to help me design an exhibit.

First of all, my exhibit will consist of a suitcase - probably from the early 1900s.  Perhaps it will look something like this:

When you open the suitcase, you will see an assortment of different items belonging to an immigrant, perhaps a letter, a musical instrument, some clothes, a few books and maybe some children's toys.  These items help to tell the story of the immigrant's journey to Canada, but are probably not too interesting just to look at.  This is where the arduino comes in.

Imagine that you open the suitcase and it literally tells you its story.  Press a button and hear the letter being read aloud.  Press another button and the musical instrument plays a song.  Turn a switch and the toys begin to move around.  You get the idea?  These are the sorts of things that an arduino can help accomplish in an interactive exhibit. 

While these are just some preliminary ideas that require further development, I am looking forward to manipulating the arduino to see if any of this can be accomplished.  If not, it is good to know that we have been given permission to make mistakes and fail in the most spectacular way possible. 

Thanks to Heather Rivet and Adriana Ayers for their great ideas about how to make the suitcase idea more interesting!

Seeing History through a New Lens (and Looking Cool While Doing It!)

The next time you embark on a tour of your favourite historical site, park, or landmark, you may not want to forget your sunglasses.  Now these wouldn't be your regular run of the mill sunglasses that merely protect your eyes and show off your style.  Rather, they would be history-enhancing sunglasses, allowing you to see what no longer exists in front of you.  Imagine that you are walking along the rue du Petit-Champlain in Quebec City.  It would probably look similar to the image below.

Quite charming, isn't it? However, as an educated individual, you know that the rue du Petit-Champlain didn't always look this way and you wish there was some way to experience the changes to this historic road over time.  That is where your sunglasses come in.

When you put on your sunglasses, they take a scan of your immediate surroundings and send  a digital image to a photographic database over a 3G network.  The database matches the scanned photo to historical digitized images of the same location and then proceeds to project those images onto the lenses of your sunglasses.  The image is thus overlaid onto your vision of the actual surroundings, allowing you to see change over time. In this case, the sunglasses retrieve the following images:

 1880

 1916

1923

1978

While these sunglasses are only a hypothetical invention in my attempt to marry an everyday object with an interactive historical element, I was inspired by technology that already exists.  In imagining how these sunglasses might find appropriate photographs, I thought of Google's feature that allows you to drag images into the search bar to find visually similar images.  I tested this search feature using the first image displayed above and it was successful in finding other images of the rue du Petit-Champlain. However, the older images did not appear in the results. 

Another technology that came to mind in thinking about this project is the augmented reality device showing the digital reconstruction of Yuanmingyuan garden.  The original garden structures were looted and burned by French-Anglo forces in 1860 and were left to deteriorate.  You can still see the ruins today, or you can look through the augmented reality viewer developed by the Beijing Institute of Technology to see a digitally reconstructed view of the original structures. The video below demonstrates the process.

With these technologies in mind, the sunglasses do not seem entirely implausible.  Just don't hold your breath waiting for them to show up at your nearest Wal-Mart.

Let's get Digital, Digital!

I have been putting off writing this blog post all semester.  I wish I could say it is because I was waiting to write a grand narrative summarizing my profound conclusions about the digital history course, but in reality I have been overwhelmed as to how to approach a topic that fundamentally challenges the way I think about history.

Before entering the course, I had an extremely limited comprehension of the digital history world.  The extent of my prior knowledge was confined to my familiarity with blogging and online journals, but even self-professed Luddites know their way around those mediums.  Throughout the course of the semester, there were many times when I felt so lost that not even a GPS could help me find my way out of the abyss of algorithms, arduinos and acronyms.  That being said, there were other times when I felt extremely enlightened, like I was rediscovering the historical discipline.

One of the more thought-provoking discussions in the class centered around the potentials and pitfalls of digital source materials – both those that are born digital and physical sources that have been digitized.  As digital historian Roy Rosenzweig suggested in 2003, we are moving from a culture of scarcity to one of abundance in terms in the amount of sources we have available. However, the advancement of technology seems to be a double edged sword in terms of historical applications, offering new opportunities but also exposing new problems.

As someone who is primarily interested in social history, I am fascinated by the growth of social media and its ramifications for the future of the discipline.  While there are many seemingly mundane things tweeted and posted, the pervasiveness of social media in our lives positions these seemingly irrelevant statements as insight into the vernacular culture of our time.   Historians of the future will replace the often painstaking task of deciphering handwritten diaries and letters to the equally painstaking task of sifting through thousands of webpages and emails filled with LOL, TTYL, LMAO and other unusual acronyms. In this sense, the historical methodology is not fundamentally changing, just shifting in accordance with the new mediums of the current culture.  What is changing however, is the amount of information being produced in the digital age. Our society's obsession with broadcasting itself is just one of the ways in which the historical record is becoming abundant.  With over 140 million tweets broadcast on Twitter every day and subsequently preserved in the Library of Congress archive, it is easy to see how such an abundance comes about.

The advantages of accessing a seemingly endless amount of information seem obvious.  If we look at the example of Twitter specifically, the ability to read people's observations and thoughts on a diversity of topics throughout space and time appears to be an historical gold mine.  Historians looking back at the present age will be able to analyze trends, compare tweets cross-culturally, and observe the real time reactions of individuals to world events.  The democratization of information through social media allows everyone to contribute to the production of the historical record, diminishing the power of the cultural elite to control the popular narratives of history.

The digital production of information only creates abundance because of the ability to easily store massive amounts of information. As Clay Shirky points out, we no longer have to question whether or not to save an item based on its value as an historical document as the availability of storage space allows almost any digitized material to enter into the historical record.  The rapidity with which information is created combined with immense digital storage capabilities gives the illusion that the historians of the future will be able to access sources on almost any topic imaginable.

However, that access may be just an illusion after all.  Our current infatuation with technology often causes us to ignore the downsides that can result from an overabundance of digital sources. From a practical standpoint, there is uncertainty about the stability of digital formats and a reliance on digital materials may paradoxically lead to a future scarcity of sources.  The pace at which technological advancement occurs means that born digital documents may be rendered unreadable or incompatible with newer software. A new form of scarcity may emerge, centered around technological obsolescence.

If we alternatively assume that all the digital material will be adequately preserved for perpetuity, a more interesting problem emerges.  As Rosenzweig notes, it is difficult to abstract generalized themes from primary sources on a particular topic when they number in the hundreds of thousands.  The ability to store virtually everything may prevent historians from writing effective history as they are burdened by their objective to analyze the totality of their subject.  It may be pertinent for historians to learn a few lessons from their brothers and sisters in the archival profession as they appraise all records to determine their value for future historical research.  While this inevitably leads to the loss of some information, it is better to have a manageable historical record than a complete record that limits its usability by its sheer abundance.

Completing the digital history course does not make me qualified to judge the state of the historical discipline, but I am confident it will adapt to the problems posed by the digital medium and also exploit its potentials.  The practice of history has never remained static and it will continue to evolve concurrently with society and culture.

Old-Fashioned Online Shopping

If you have ventured to the mall at any point in the last month or so, you are well aware that Christmas is fast approaching. While most people at this point have at least thought about the presents they are going to purchase for their loved ones and many have probably finished the monumental task, I have yet to give more than a passing thought to the gifts I will generously bestow.  Being a graduate student doesn't afford you a lot of time (or money) to devote to Project Christmas Shopping.  For these reasons, I am resorting to online shopping this year - but not just any kind of online shopping.  I was recently introduced to the online version of Eaton's Fall and Winter Catalogue from 1913-1914 and it is full of fabulous things that I know my family would enjoy.  That mink shawl with muskrat lining has my mom's name written all over it.

I know what you must be thinking -  that here is no way on earth I can afford fur. You're right, even at 1913 prices, it is a bit out of my range.  That is why I am making it simple and choosing from the books listed in the catalogue for everyone on this year's list. While the books are already a steal of a deal with most running around $0.25, I cheated the system and found them online for free.

Here are a few of the books I carefully and thoughtfully selected for my wonderful family.

1. Boy Scouts in a Submarine, or, Searching an Ocean Floor                    


When I saw this title, I knew it was perfect for my husband, an aspiring marine biologist. Since we are currently land locked, he can live vicariously through the Boy Scouts as they explore the ocean. I was sure this book would be difficult to find due to its relative obscurity. My first search on the Hathi Trust website didn't yield any results, but my subsequent search in the Internet Archive provided links to multiple versions, including a downloadable Kindle version for my e-book loving husband, as well as the original version digitized by Google.

Author: George Harvey Ralphson
Date: 1912

2. First Aid to the Injured

The Eaton's catalogue tells us that this manual should be in every home in case of an emergency or an accident.  Although my brother is a paramedic, there may come a point when his memory fails him and he is in need of a handy guidebook. To find this book, I stuck with the Internet Archive. Multiple results emerged when I typed in "First Aid to the Injured" as it was apparently a popular title for first aid manuals from the early twentieth century. Although this was the first result to be listed, I added "St. John Ambulance" to the search term and performed another search to ensure I had located the right book.

Author: St. John Ambulance Association
Date: c. 1908


3. Maternity Without Suffering

My sister-in-law is very pregnant and most likely experiencing mixed emotions about the pending process of child birth. Fortunately, this book promises to gently relieve suffering before, during, and after child birth. If I knew it only took a book to accomplish this, I wouldn't have waited until Christmas to pass along this treasure.  I decided to perform a simple Google search to try and locate this book, but the first result just sent me directly back to the Internet Archive website where the book is available in multiple formats.

Author: Dr. Emma Frances Drake
Date: 1902



4. With Wolfe in Canada
 
In his quest to become a bonafide French teacher, my brother is currently studying French in Trois-Rivieres.  As such, it is my duty as an historian and sister to ensure that he has adequate knowledge of Quebec history. Although it is debatable whether or not a book written in the late nineteenth century will provide an accurate description of Wolfe's endeavours in Quebec, I am going to say it's better than nothing.  This book was located quite easily through Project Gutenberg and is also available through OpenLibrary.org.  While I originally intended to find my brother a copy of LaRousse's New French English dictionary, searches on multiple sites did not yield any results. I was not particularly surprised by this, as the necessity and desire for outdated language dictionaries is probably minimal. Joyeux Noel, mon frere!

Author: George Alfred Henty 
Date: 1894

5. Radford's Practical Barn Plans

My grandfather was a farmer for many years, and like most farmers, had a necessity for well-constructed barns.  His farm had quite a few barns of various shapes and sizes that my brothers and I always enjoyed exploring. Being a good Dutchman, I am certain my grandfather would appreciate this book's promise to save you money by teaching you how to build a barn in an economic fashion.  The Internet Archive has multiple links to the full-text version of this book, but neither Project Gutenberg or Google books offer full-text barn plans.

Author: William A. Radford
Date: 1907



6.  The New Galt Cookbook

According to the Eaton's catalogue, this is one of the most popular cookbooks of all time. Since my sister-in-law is an avid cook and is always experimenting with new recipes and ingredients, I thought she might enjoy trying some great old-fashioned meals. In giving her this gift, I fully expect to be invited over for dinner.  To find this gem of a book, I performed a simple google search and was surprised to find a digitized version on the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) website.  In a section entitled Bon Appetit: A Celebration of Canadian Cookbooks, LAC allows you to search for recipes in two different cookbooks from the nineteenth century, one of which is the New Galt Cookbook.

Author: Margaret Taylor and Frances McNaught
Date: 1898


So with a few simple clicks, my Christmas shopping is complete!  As I walked through the proverbial aisles searching for these books, I was pleasantly surprised at the wide variety of full-text books available  online.  At times, I purposefully sought out books that I thought would be far too obscure to warrant digitization, but time and time again, they were readily available.  Not only were most books easily accessible, but they were also offered in multiple formats.  It was interesting to find so many books available for download on the Kindle, perhaps reflecting the growing popularization of the e-book.
Of the different online repositories, the Internet Archive seems to offer the best selection and it will likely be my first choice for future searches.  I am certain I will be consulting both the Eaton's catalogue and the Internet Archive again soon - after all, the new year will bring many family birthdays.

Movember Moustaches - Part 4

This blog is the fourth and final installment of my Movember Moustaches series featuring historical moustaches to coincide with the Movember campaign to raise money for prostate cancer. To find more about Movember, please click here. To donate to a specific 'stache, check out the River Riders Team.


The end of November has arrived and soon the women of the world will breathe a collective sigh of relief as their loved ones abandon their moustache experiments.  However, thankfully for you, there is still time to explore one last magnificent moustache entrenched in the annals of history. Without further ado, I present to you His Imperial and Royal Highness Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Besides his impeccably groomed moustache, the archduke is perhaps best known for dying.  Sad, but true. His assassination in 1914 was the catalyst that moved the world toward war, and although we all know (or should know) the causes of war were diverse, it is much easier just to blame it on His Royal Highness falling victim to Gavrilo Princip's gun.

While we have all learned about Franz Ferdinand's death, few of us learn about his life. Before the Archduke's unexpected death, he spent some time traveling - hunting kangaroos and emus in Australia and taking a sailing trip from Japan to Vancouver.

The Archduke was also a bit of a romantic. After falling in love with a non-royal, the lovestruck Franz  refused to follow the marriage rules of the Imperial House of Hapsburg which required a royal spouse to be a member of a reigning or formerly reigning European dynasty. It took no less than the petitions of Pope Leo XIII, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany to convince Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph to let the Archduke marry Sophie Chotek. Talk about commitment.  Sadly, Sophie was assassinated along with her husband as they rode in their car throughout the streets of Sarajevo.

So there you have it, the man behind the moustache. Until next November, I urge you to keep your eye out for worthy Movember Moustaches throughout the historical record. No moustache is too big or too obscure to tackle.  Requests/suggestions are welcome - and no, Tom Selleck doesn't count, even though he does have a fearsome stache.