Humanities Visualization Space at TAMU

One goal of the TAMU Humanities Visualization Space initiative is to explore all the possibilities for virtually engaging with literature and languages, geography, philosophy, music, performance and the visual arts from across all cultures in all times.  In order to better grasp the potential for the Humanities Visualization Space initiative, watch these youtube videos on data visualization, cultural analytics/software studies and interactive immersive spaces:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLqjQ55tz-U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtbzVuDqSas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YlT1qFhJhk

Then visit the Gallery One Project at the Cleveland Museum of Art:

http://www.clevelandart.org/galleryone

Watch the youtube video presentation on the interactive immersive Gallery One experience:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc_GtVvzO4A&feature=youtu.be

If you have an iPad (2 or later), download the ArtLens app:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/artlens/id580839935?mt=8

Next, check out the resources available on the google art project:

http://www.googleartproject.com/

Finally, fly over to the Prado Museum in Madrid using Google Earth and zoom in on the masterpieces in the collection:

http://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/sueltas/masterpieces-of-the-prado-museum-with-google-earth/


Once you've reviewed all of these videos and sites, compose your first blog post for the Humanities Visualization Space initiative, drawing upon the following premises, descriptions and sample content for inspiration.

The best way to experience a work of art is to come into close physical proximity to (or in the case of architecture, direct physical contact with) the work.  In most cases, a digital reproduction of an oil painting (for example), achieves only about 30% of the full aesthetic force of the painting represented.  High-definition digital video can offer a full 360-degree view of a work of sculpture, but sharing the space in which the work is displayed resolves issues of scale that undermine even the most sophisticated video presentation.  Similarly, digital video can capture the affective power of great architectural interiors and exteriors, but to feel and hear one's feet on the floor of Chartres Cathedral connects one to the medieval past through specific types of sensory stimuli that are missing even from IMAX 3D films of that sacred monument.  Virtual encounters with art, then, have certain limitations.  On the other hand, interactive immersive content delivery systems allow for certain types of experiences that are for the most part absent from conventional museum and gallery settings.  One can assemble collections and exhibitions of works that simply cannot otherwise be seen together in a single setting.  One can compare and contrast works of a given artist or within a movement over a specific period of time.  One can listen to a recording of a deceased artist speaking about the work that is being displayed, read an art critic's response to the work or watch a video of an artist discussing the work's influence on his or her own work.  One can add contemporary text, music, film, photographs and other relevant materials such that the context for the work is displayed and experienced along with the work.

For example, in the Humanities Visualization Space one will be able to

1) view Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's painting A Montrouge (Rosa la Rouge) to scale and then zoom in to see the heroic brushwork and carefully controlled palette with which he created the composition
2) call up a copy of the lyrics to the song A Montrouge by Aristide Bruant (the inspiration for Toulouse-Lautrec's painting)
3) link to an online dictionary that will help to identify and translate the many slang terms used in the song
4) listen to an mp3 recording of Bruant singing A Montrouge at Le Mirliton, his Montmartre cabaret (available on iTunes)
5) link to the downloadable pdf of Colta Ives's exhibition catalogue "Toulouse-Lautrec in the Metropolitan Museum of Art," which includes information on Bruant
6) link to the wikipedia.com article on "femme fatale" (a late nineteenth-century trope of which Rosa la Rouge is an example)
7) link to JSTOR to find Chris Snodgrass's excellent 1990 Victorian Poetry article on Arthur Symons and Aubrey Beardsley
8) link to the library.tamu.edu website to check on the availability of Bram Dijkstra's Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siecle Culture
9) link to online collections that include other examples of "femme fatale" paintings and graphic works such as Toulouse-Lautrec's La Goulue, Gustave Moreau's L'Apparition, Aubrey Beardsley's designs for Salome and Edvard Munch's Vampire
10) curate an HVS exhibition on the visual cultures of the femme fatale in the late nineteenth century that includes contemporary textual, musical and visual resources for each work in the exhibition as well as 20th- and 21st-century scholarship on the topic

These examples represent only a few of the options that one might consider when creating content for the Humanities Visualization Space.


Assignment:  Select at least one work of art from each day's lecture/discussion to serve as the focus of your HVS content-development blog post.  In each post share your personal thoughts on the work and suggest some additional images, texts, music and other art forms that provide context for the work that you have chosen.  You may also suggest possibilities for displaying the work or for creating an exhibition that includes the work.