Sentence chosen:
“We are sometimes the square pegs that expose the unacknowledged round holes. “
As a Latino who was raised in South America, this sentence resonated with me the most. Sometimes I feel that some humanistic studies that involve technology are not inclusive of my culture. For example, many of the historical artifacts created in 3D, and virtual representations of paintings focus on European artists, and classic antiquity. For instance, it is easy to find online 3D representations of Ancient Greek artifacts, and to see Van Gogh paintings through an online museum tour. The same cannot be said about Tupi artifacts produced in South America.
Looking deeper, it is possible to see that even the technology that powers such studies is not accessible for many in Latin America. There, most people, even those who have undergraduate degrees, are not fluent in English. Tools to do 3D modeling, designing user interfaces and other software used in research and design is sometimes only available in English. What is more, a great part of the documentation and tutorials are not available in Spanish/Portuguese, which makes the access and mastering of these tools restricted. Therefore, as a square peg in a round hole, I see this as a problem in the study of digital humanities.
I am currently interested in the developing software and digital products and releasing them to the general public. Even though I am not sure what I want to work on, it has to be inclusive and take in consideration the backgrounds and experience of many people. Burdick mentions that design is the practice of harnessing social, economic, cultural and technological constraints to bring a system to the world. My goal is to expand on the range of each of those categories in the development, design and implementation of such products, so no one feels like a square peg in a round role. One area of inquiry I am particularly interested in, and hope to learn more in this course, is 3D modeling, as I believe it is a great way to make the access of historical artifacts easy (especially those from South America).
Sources:
- Burdick et al. “One: Humanities to Digital Humanities,” in Digital_Humanities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 1-26.
