CTDH Conference

Chair: Francesca Baird

Di Luo, "Photogrammetric Modeling in Surveying and Teaching Chinese Architecture"
The presentation I propose is half demonstration and half traditional (slide-show) presentation. The first ten minutes demonstrate the basics of 3D photogrammetric modeling using Autodesk ReCap Photo. I will showcase the workflow of generating a 3D digital architectural model, from taking photographs to the cropping and editing of the raw model, then to the publication of the refined model on the Internet. This is to demystify the techniques of photogrammetry. For the next ten minutes, I will share my thoughts on several broader issues related to photogrammetry: how it can be used in fieldwork to assist general surveys of buildings and what impacts it has made on the study, the preservation, and the teaching and learning of architecture. For my research on miniature and small-scale architecture in China, photogrammetry proves an invaluable tool to document the meticulous detail of the architectural interior. It complements traditional survey methods especially in cases where complex ceiling structures and ornate decorations render conventional measuring tools inefficient or inept. The ceiling of the Jingtusi monastery (1124 CE) is the major example of my current research on the wooden domes of Chinese architecture. Photogrammetry not only provides a 360 degree view of the ceiling but has further generated orthographic drawings for quantitative analyses of the scale and the structure. My presentation further showcases four more wooden domes I have surveyed using photogrammetry. The 3D models map out the visibility of the various parts of the ceilings and help to understand the purpose of image-making in Chinese domes. The digital “other life” or “afterlife” of the ceilings raises the issues of authenticity and replication, of the loss of the “aura” and the distortion of the scale, adding to the ongoing debates on the role of digital art. The presentation will include a few student-made models and reflect on how photogrammetry can be adopted in classrooms to enhance teaching and learning.

Sarah Oberbichler, Manfred Moosleitner, and Mag. Katharina Gallner-Holzmann, "DigiVis: Ways of analyzing and visualizing the digital estate of Ernst von Glasersfeld"
The extensive estate of the philosopher, communication scientist and father of radical constructivism, Ernst von Glasersfeld (1917–2010), has been available to the public at the Brenner Archive in Innsbruck (Austria) since 2013. A large part of the archive has already been digitised and since 2018, an interdisciplinary project team (computer scientists and humanities researchers) from the University of Innsbruck has been working on the analysis and visualization of the archive. In addition to network analyses, digital storytelling approaches and didactic processing, the visualization of argumentation structures in the scientific legacy is one of the main goals. For the analysis, established extensions such as Semantic MediaWiki or Semantic Text Annotator are used, as well as user-defined MediaWiki extensions to add tools for corpus-linguistic text analysis and natural language processing tasks (e.g. frequency analysis, topic modeling, co-occurence analysis and named entities recognition). Manual analyses and the interaction of manual and computer-aided analyses also play an important role. For the visualization, the team is working together closely with a specialist in data visualization. A further goal of the DigiVis project is to use the design principles of “generous interfaces” (Mitchell Whitelaw, 2015) to create a user-friendly and easily accessible interface for users with various backgrounds, ranging from students to experts. The talk shows the current state of the project (started October 2018), gives an outline of planned features, presents how our findings can be generalized and used for any digital archiving and preservation platform, and shows how MediaWiki is utilized as the core of the project.

Iris Bork-Goldfield and Jesse Simmons, "Genealogical Digital Story Telling: An Exploration"
Albert Alexander: In Transit to Success is the story of my great-great-grandfather who—like some German Jews—arrived on the shores of New York in the mid-nineteenth century only to return to the German Empire shortly after its founding in 1871. Albert was always on the move, from city to city, country to country, and street to street in both Germany and New York City. Therefore, maps were needed to tell this part of his story. For the past year, I have been experimenting with various programs. ArcGIS, with its many different templates, and for which Wesleyan has a site license, seemed to be a good program to use. My research assistant—an undergraduate student at Wesleyan—and I have been creating interactive maps, adding images, documents and screen shots of old maps, and links to an additional website created with WordPress to enhance the story. However, the question that we still have and are discussing is: Are there other—and possibly better—programs than ArcGIS for creating online genealogical digital stories for personal use but also as a pedagogical tool in the classroom? The presentation will show the advantages and the limitations of the above-mentioned program and application and, we hope, engage the audience in an enabling and revelatory discussion.