Awadh Visual Database
To support the model images project a comprehensive visual database of Awadhi visual culture is being developed using original field research photographs and museum collections. The team is working on designing a database structure, digitizing records and making the database available online. The database will include, historic photographs, architectural drawings, maps, paintings, portable objects etc. The project will make primary evidence more easily available to researchers of Awadh culture and history. Researchers will benefit from acquiring database design skills and applying them to art historical research.
The Evolving Botanic Garden
The team is planning a multidisciplinary partnership to develop an interpretation program employing mobile devices for the forthcoming Islamic garden at the Devonian Botanic Garden in Edmonton, Alberta.
Implementing New Knowledge Environments
INKE is an interdisciplinary initiative spawned in the methodological commons of the digital humanities that seeks to understand the future of reading through reading’s past and to explore the future of the book from the perspective of its history. The Spark Research Incubator houses, in part, INKE’s Modeling and Prototyping team’s work on iterative publication and the social edition.
Twitter: @INKEproject
Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada
The LGLC project reconfigured Donald McLeod’s remarkable monograph, Lesbian and Gay Liberation In Canada: A Selected Annotated Chronology, 1964-1975 as a TEI-encoded resource. The text consists of event records organized by date and then by location, with each entry neatly summarizing a moment in history, followed by a bibliography of sources and includes three appendices listing lesbian and gay organizations, periodicals, bars, and clubs. The LGLC project extends the book’s codex form in order to data mine and represent queer history spatially and temporally. The project not only makes a much-neglected part of Canadian history available for mainstream scholarly use, it also provides a foundation for modeling identity and representing time in TEI.
Model Images
This project brings together art history and visual arts researchers to examine how 3D modelling software can be deployed as a tool for art historical and creative inquiry. Using 18th and 19th C North Indian (Awadh) miniature paintings the team is first tracing miniature paintings in AutoCAD, developing multiple interpretations of the possible plans and elevations and building 3D models using Autocad and Autodesk 3DS max. The team is also deconstructing the paintings using Adobe Photoshop layers to analyze representations of carpets, portable objects, clothing, etc. We aim to be able to create a model of the paintings that one can walk into virtually and examine what new insights into the conception and representation of 3D space are possible as a result. Student researchers also benefit from acquiring practical drafting and modeling skills in conjunction with traditional humanistic research skills.
Poetry Okanagan Sound Archive
The Poetry Okanagan Sound Archive (POSA), currently under development, is a sound archive that will house the works of Western Canadian poets, including Daphne Marlatt, bill bisset and others. The archive, complete with scholarly apparatus, will serve as a rich resource for poetry and sound scholars, students, and members of the public who wish to explore the life of poetry, not only on the page but off.
World Art History Mashup
The world art history mashup project examines how the concept of world art history can be applied to design a web interface that remixes existing online art historical resources like the Heilbrunn timeline at the Metropolitan Museum of Art website. This will be a new resource for the teaching of introductory art history.
The Victorian Review
Victorian Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Victorian Studies publishes research articles on all aspects of Victorian literature, history, science, arts, and culture. The journal, which began publication in 1972, is published twice annually. The journals social media outreach team is partially located in the Spark Research Incubator.
Twitter: @victorianreview