Digitizing photographic heritage: the PHOTHEREL project

Issue 7 Spring 2006

Jan Baetens

Photherel is an online project addressing the complex information structure offered by visual media, and in particular photographic heritage, documenting the (fairly) recent past. It touches on several domains: visual and media literacy, digital repositories of visual cultural heritage, conservation of endangered visual cultural heritage, distributed course content creation for e-learning, and using a museum or archive in an e-learning context. This article deals mainly with the basic theoretical stances defended during the elaboration of the project, which attempts to valorize the cultural aspects of digitization.   The Photherel website is available at: http://www.photherel.net/

 

Recovering the visual history of the Andrée Expedition: a case study in photographic research

 

Issue 6 Summer 2004

 

Tyrone Martinsson

This case study is about difficulties encountered during research involving a collection of historical photographs. It reflects on problems that can face visual researchers when trying to access original sources in archives or collections. It further reflects on the confrontation of old and new technologies. These problems are often defined by a lack of knowledge of important technological developments and their possibilities. The case study further highlights the sometimes problematic status of visual material in archives and their sometimes ignored potential value as primary archival sources in research.

 

The Ethical Dimension of Aesthetic Research

 

Issue 5 Autumn 2003

 

Clive Cazeaux

 

Ethics, broadly defined, deals with questions of the origin of goodness, how we ought to live, and what makes an action the right, rather than the wrong, thing to do. This paper explores the complex relationship between ethics and aesthetic research, and is in two parts. The first demonstrates how our concepts of ethics and aesthetics are interwoven in the history of ideas. I consider the positions of Plato and Nietzsche in order to show that concepts of morality are worked out within theoretical frameworks which are also responsible for determining concepts of art and the aesthetic. In part two, I consider the ethical dimension of aesthetic (art and design) practice, and reflect upon what bearing the status of aesthetic practice as research has on its ethical implications. Once art and design are regarded as forms of research and, therefore, as contributions to knowledge, an additional level of complexity is introduced, I suggest, and in order to work through it, some of the philosophical relationships between knowledge, morality, and art (broached in part one) need to be borne in mind.

 

Tracking 'new traditions' in a (post)modern Balinese-Indonesian context

 

Issue 4 Spring 2003

 

Laura Noszlopy

 

Ogoh-ogoh are giant papier-mâché puppets or effigies usually created by groups of young Balinese men as part of the annual ‘cleansing ceremonies’ (ngrupukan), which take place on the night preceding Nyepi, the Hindu-Balinese ‘New Year’ or ‘Day of Silence’. While ngrupukan has been performed for generations, ogoh-ogoh, one of the defining features of the contemporary rites and discussed by many local practitioners in terms of ‘tradition’, were only introduced in the early 1980s. This essay tracks the difficulties of researching contemporary cultural and artistic innovations in a context where the notion of ‘tradition’, as a culturally legitimising trope, can sometimes ‘dissolve’ history in public discourse, both official and popular.

 

Understanding the User: Research Methods to Support the Digital Media Designer

 

Issue 3 Summer 2002

 

John Knight and Marie Jefsioutine

 

Designing digital media products that are efficient, effective and satisfying to use, relies on a number of research methods borrowed from disciplines as diverse as behavioural psychology, sociology and market research. This issue explores ways in which these methods can be adapted to support a user-centred design process, by focusing on understanding the user, their tasks, the context of use and the interaction between these elements.

 

So What is Haptics Anyway?

Issue 2 Spring 2002

David Prytherch and Mairghread McLundie

The term haptics in its broadest sense relates to the study of touch and the cutaneous senses. The word itself derives from the Greek haptikos, able to touch. The aim of this paper is to review the research on haptics from its foundations in the work of Ernst Weber to the later work of David Katz and others. The paper considers the relationship between touch and vision, and the implications of this research for thinking about the making of art.

 

In addition to the main paper this issue also contains a guide to digital haptics applications. The guide looks at the benefits for design offered by rapid advances in digital technologies for interaction and visualisation. A number of haptics devices and systems are reviewed.

 

Diaries and Fieldnotes in the Research Process

Issue 1 Autumn 2001

Darren Newbury

It is common to hear people talk about 'writing up' research. Implicit in the phrase is the sense that writing is a stage that occurs principally when the research has finished and is a straightforward process of telling what was done and what conclusions can be drawn. However, the process of research involves many forms of writing, from letter writing and minute taking to academic papers and formal research reports.

 

The aim of this issue is to consider one form of research writing that has received relatively little attention, yet which is central to the research process, especially, but not exclusively, for those conducting qualitative or action research studies - the research diary. Research diaries are considered as part of a broad category alongside other methods of recording such as research logs and fieldnotes. Particular approaches to notetaking, the use of visual material in diary record keeping, as well as practical issues are discussed.

 

This issue also contains extracts from three separate research projects. The examples are not intended to be prescriptive, they are simply offered as working examples of research diaries from actual research projects.