Scaling Stories
Project Narrative
In thinking about a final project for this class, we all wanted to prioritize the element of collaboration. As Art History scholars, we are rarely, if ever, called to work collaboratively; individual work, research, and publishing are prioritized. Within the field of Digital Humanities, however, the possibilities are extensive with help of technology and the other scholars around us. The scope of our project became triple the size of what one person could have individually accomplished, which provided us a larger data set, and gave us the opportunity to explore themes and similarities across various oeuvres, rather than focusing solely on one artist.
We approached this project each with a curiosity regarding repetition of objects or motifs throughout various artworks. Sydney had already done some prior work, taking a look at the works of Francis William Edmonds, noting the inanimate objects throughout the backgrounds of each of his paintings. Hannah had a similar idea, tracking the repetition of items in the paintings of Clara Peeters. Lastly, Mert was interested in a slightly different data set--he wanted to track the recurring items seen throughout The Legend of Zelda canon, main timeline video games. While I was ultimately in charge of bringing cohesion to these different projects, I did focus on helping Mert do this tracking of items as well.
Throughout all three of these data sets, we noticed that the items that were more often repeated, were items of ostensible insignificance, for example, the small key in The Legend of Zelda games. These items would typically be overlooked when viewing these artworks or playing these games, brushed off as nothing extraordinary. However, in this deliberate process of tracking each and every relevant object, we were able to pull those small details, shining a light on parts of the art that would otherwise stay hidden.
Rather than attempting to force cohesion of our findings, we acknowledge that since the art and artists focused on by each of us were so different, we were limited in overarching themes. However, the significance of this project for us was largely in methodologies and collaboration. The method of tracking repetition was used by all of us within our individual scope, and then presented to the rest of the team, showing what may have been overlooked. Moreover, the aspect of collaboration in this way, was helpful in sparking inspiration and other ways of viewing our own work, which we will be able to take with confidence and use for future research, both individually, and in other collaborative settings.
- Addie Magyar
