How I got interested in history...

Trying to pin down the source of my first historical inspiration is difficult. I am very aware of the biases of my current mind-set and the failings of my own terrible memory, and I curse a lack of sources that could confirm or deny conceptions of my own personal mythology.

Though it is embarrassing to admit after taking so many courses that were based on post-colonial theory, as a child I was totally fascinated by the exotic. Influenced in large part by my very well-travelled father, I loved the art, music and utter strangeness of foreign cultures. At my very cool, fairly hippie, ultra WASPy elementary school in the Gatineau we used to have "Around the World Day" every year. Classes would spend a couple month getting prepared for it, studying one country's traditional food, culture, arts, sports, history, etc. Then on the actual day of the event each class would decorate their classroom to look like the country they studied, the students would dress up in traditional costume, serve national dishes and provide very brief overviews of their country's history. Students would take shifts alternating between presenting their class' studied culture and visiting the other rooms. Everyone got really into this. Houses were constructed out of desks, chairs and paper; I remember one older class reconstructing a Japanese teahouse where we had to kneel and respect certain cultural traditions. My class did India one year and that probably made the strongest impression on me. Wearing a sari and helping to reconstruct the Taj Mahal out of paper towel tubes and cardboard made a big impression on me and looking back it probably played no small part in inspiring my fascination with the country I eventually had the privilege of visiting. Looking back with my university training, I can see all sorts of problems with this event in terms of exoticization, but it still sticks with me as one of the earliest times I was ever asked to really study and think about the way a very different culture functions and flourishes.

Another big influence would be my Granpa Walt. He, my grandma and a bunch of my uncles lived in Edmonton, Alberta where my family and I used to go visit them most summers. Grandpa Walt had been a pharmacist before he retired and so he volunteered mot summers at Fort Edmonton historic park in their early 20th century pharmacy. My cousin and always used to like helping him concoct various "remedies" with the heavy stone mortar and pestle. Much like my fear of life sized cartoon characters at Disneyland, I was always somewhat freaked out by the overly friendly costumed folks at the heritage park, but my Grandpa's presence really helped. I remember trying to think of what it must have been like for him to live in whatever long-ago landscape I had imagined. Though the period I imagined him living in was probably some three or four decades before he was actually working, I was fascinated trying to comprehend how different this past was.

In late elementary school and early high school I had some terribly mediocre social studies teachers. They weren't awful, but they clearly had minimal passion for the subject (why always gym teachers? I had some fairly good ones, but what is with that connection?) and the subject came across as a curriculum requirement rather than an engaging and alive topic. It's funny though because in all our idealistic talk about getting primary source documents integrated into high school history I know my gifted learning high school class thoroughly rejected such moves. My class developed an immediate dislike for Mr. M and his unconventional emphasis on diary entries and non-"Big Men" individuals. Mr. M had won an award for innovative teaching methods but my classmates and I found him completely unrelatable in the classroom. He clearly had a lot of theory under his belt but his weak classroom management skills was the blood in the water that we frenzied upon. We were definitely hot-headed brats but I think it is important to remember that many high school students are and that is a reality to deal with. I am glad that we have two teachers in our own class to keep the perspective of the realities of teaching. Mr. M's class "should have" been the class that set my historical passions on fire, but it certainly did not.

As I discussed in class, it was my (optional) grade 12 international history since WWI class that really got me excited. In that class I felt like I was finally learning the background to all those casual references that my family and the media made to topics such as the Israeli/Palestinian conflicts, the Great Depression and the Cold War. It was like I was being let in on this adult secret, that I was old enough to learn about the past, and I ate it up. For me it was practical in that it helped me to understand the references I was constantly inundated with.

University was where I had my completely mind blown by a few extraordinary professors. A course on modern China introduced me to the concept of completely different worldviews and conceptions of the past. It was also the first class where I was explicitly encouraged to go beyond traditional text sources for information. The idea I could examine propaganda and art and clothing and food to tell a history was incredible. My first Indigenous history course expanded on these themes while introducing a history that couldn't be dismissed as a foreign subject. Learning how little I knew about an incredibly important part of my own country's history was shocking and the way in which it forced me to challenge my own assumptions and ingrained dichotomies made my brain physically ache.

This post getting long but it is an interesting topic and one that I don't often think about. Looking back, I guess my interest in history came in a few stages moving from exotic appeal to practical knowledge to a way of thinking. At least according to my unreliable sources that is.

Thanks for stimulating the conversation Libschoollady! (*Apologies for my initial misidentification of this blog writer*)

Dali's Surreal Stache

Since my attempts to grow my own mustache have, sadly, all but failed I thought I would follow my classmates' lead and write a profile of a famous hairy-lipped figure from history.

When I think of unique mustaches, one of the first people who comes to mind is Salvador Dali; apparently I am not the only one as a recent poll of 14,000 men ranked Dali's stache as number one. His unique upturned stache was an important part of his eccentric public persona and is nearly as recognizable as his surrealist paintings.

Born Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech on May 11th 1904, Dali was raised by his middle-class family in the Catalonia region of Spain. According to my intensive Wikipedia research, he was not, in fact, born with that great mustache but apparently grew it sometime during his adolescence. Dali was artistic from a young age, studying drawing at a local academy and discovering modern painting during family trips abroad.

Dali moved to Madrid in 1922 in order to study art at the Academia de San Fernando. It was here that he began experimenting with cubism and surrealism. These early paintings earned him a good deal of praise from his classmates and teachers, so much so that he grew quite arrogant and was eventually expelled from the Academia for stating that no one at the schools was qualified enough to examine him and his work.

Dali's personal style was notorious. He dressed as a dandy, wearing long hair, stockings, and knee breeches typical of the late 19th century aesthete fashion. Seventeenth-century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez influenced his iconic mustache.

1929 was a big year for Dali. Not only did he collaborate with surrealist director Luis Buñuel on a short film but he also met his future wife, Gala. And really, what lady wouldn't be attracted to that spectacular stache? Dali married the Russian immigrant who was ten years his senior in a civil ceremony in 1934. That year also marked his first exposure to America where his show Persistence of Memory became a huge hit. The title painting of this show is perhaps Dali's most famous work. Populated by soft, near melting watches and clocks, the most popular interpretation is that the work rejects the notion that time is rigid or deterministic.

Dali continued to paint, write and work in film. In 1940 he and Gala moved to the United States to escape the Second World War where he enjoyed increasing levels of commercial success. In 1949 he returned to Catalonia where he lived for the majority of the rest of his life. His choice to return to a Spain ruled by Franco brought much criticism from his mainly leftist surrealist contemporaries. Dali's politics had long been ambiguous but his acceptance of the Spanish military General's right-wing authoritarianism caused many artists to reject his later works. Nonetheless he continued to  experiment with bulletism (which involved shooting ink at a canvas) and holography. His use of optical illusions would influence young artists such as Andy Warhol. Dali also became more involved in the advertising world and in 1969 designed the Chupa-Chups logo.

Here he is on the popular American television show "What's My Line?":





By 1980, Dali's health was deteriorating quickly. Allegedly, the nearly senile Gala had been providing him with her own cocktail of medication which eventually wreaked havoc on his nervous system rendering his hands artistically useless. After Gala's death in 1984, Dali lost much of his will to live. He died of heart failure on January 23rd 1989, listening to his favourite recordings of Tristan and Isolde.

Dali's use of surrealist symbolism was enormously influential and the popularity of his works, especially his prints, persists today. Just look at the undergrad poster sale. His famous mustache set the creative bar high, but I hope with the rising popularity of Movember his eccentrically upturned stache will make a resurgence.

Finally, if you have never done so before be sure to check out the World Beard and Mustache Championships website. The picture below is just a sample of all the wonderfully styled facial protein growth showcased in these rather bizarre contests.

Survival of the Most Interactive

Between our class discussions, reading parts of Nina Simon's The Participatory Museum and exploring options for my internship I have been thinking a lot about museums lately.


Getting interactive seems to be less an option than a necessity for modern museums trying to compete for shrinking attention spans. Today's museum-goers are increasingly active online, not just as consumers but also producers. Take the changing nature of daily news consumption. When I read an article I can contribute a comment and join in on the conversation; if I find something particularly interesting or relevant I can repost that article on my blog or facebook or even Tweet it. In these venues new conversations are subsequently started, knowledge and experience shared. You all know this; you all do it. So much of the information we consume (that you are consuming right now) is online that it would be naive to think that the technology would not affect our relationship with offline knowledge.


Now I love a good exhibit but I have never been, and most likely never will be a person who is content with sticking with logical predetermined routes guiding me through a series of texts. It is embarrassing to admit but despite my commitment to history, unless I am really engaged with a subject I generally will not give it the time that a curator was hoping for. I think a lot of people living web 2.0 might sympathize. Museum "users" still genuinely want to learn but shifting modes of information consumption means that they (I) often have the attention span of a 6 year old. I like to keep this 1st grader metaphor in mind when thinking about how a museum can engage a modern public:


1) "The climax of the War of 1812 was intrinsically linked to.... Hey, what's that over there?!" Attention spans and more specifically our capacity to read long blocks of text are diminishing. Have you continued reading this far into my long-winded blog post? Gold star for you. No exhibit exists in a vacuum and if there is not enough to hold a visitor's attention, they won't stay long.


2) "Ooooh, it's a shiny thing!" That being said visually stimulating or unconventional displays can become hubs of activity. In Chapter 4 of The Participatory Museum Simon discusses the power of provocative objects. The Science Museum of Minnesota's exhibit Race: Are We So Different? featured a vitrine that contained stacks of cash representing various races' earnings. This provocative and visually startling display became a centrepiece for the larger conversation the institution had hoped to stimulate.



3) "But I want to play with it!" Even better is when a guest gets to become a participant. Bruce Mao's incredible Massive Change exhibit featured numerous wonderful interactive elements but one of the most effective was also one of the simplest. On one wall there was mounted two tall thin Plexiglas cases next to a body of text that discussed various advantages and drawbacks of genetically modified foods. A prompting question asked individuals to decide whether or not they were in support of GMOs and museum goers were then asked to drop a bright coloured piece of paper into either the "yes" or the "no" Plexiglas box. The simple visual power of this running tally not only provoked discussion but it allowed the participant to interact with and transform the exhibit. Some wrote messages or drew on their votes, some boldly proclaimed their stance as they dropped their paper and some chose to simply watch other individuals participate. Though there was a variety of ways that the public engaged I really liked this particular method not simply because it was participatory but because it is an excellent example of simple creativity. A creativity that doesn't require massive endowments or the latest technology but nonetheless engages a web 2.0 public.


We in the public history business should take a creative lesson from non-historic exhibits. While it is obviously vital to respect the material culture within collections (nobody should be clambering around on Queen Victoria's Empress of India throne) institutions should strive to integrate interactivity into their spaces. I like to think of it as the first date test. Would your guests feel comfortable bringing a date to the exhibit? Would it be an interactive experience where they could have fun and discuss interesting elements of the display, fall in love, make babies, etc? Or would it be one of those awkward silent dates that ends in a handshake? I jest but you get the idea; ideally, an exhibit can stimulate interaction between strangers. While it is fair for an institution to expect a reasonable level of attention from its public audience the best museum experiences are not dictations but relationships.

In closing I would like to do a bit of an about-face to quickly highlight one tool that is neither cheap nor simple but awesome nonetheless. I came across YrWall a little while ago but reading Nina Simon's book got me thinking of how this tool could enhance a museum exhibit. YrWall is essentially a digital graffiti wall and I feel like this tool could have some sweet applications for the history museum world. Users interact real time with a projected image using a "spraycan". Just like real graffiti writing the user has the ability to change colours and caps and can also use stencils to create their composition (the video below gives you a better idea of how it works). Afterward, the user can save and email their work or perhaps an institution could arrange to display these pieces elsewhere in the exhibit. The digital tool box could be loaded with appropriate contextual images and members of the public could use these stencils (which removes some of the pressure to have artistic skill) and their own drawings to create visual responses to stimulating questions. It would be important to ensure that the entire exhibit contained interactive features so that this one cool element does not overpower the show. That being said, there could be many applications for YrWall and if anyone has too much money kicking around and wants to help their favourite institution become an innovative exhibit leader I am looking for an internship...

Check out this YrWall demo reel to see the tool in action. What do you think of it? Can you think of any applications for a history museum? Do you think it would be all flash no content in an institutional context? Let me know what you think!

Remembrance

This year I am really struck by how our national memory is aging. CBC reported this morning that the last Canadian WWI survivor died a few months ago; those remaining from the Second World War are noticeably getting on in years. With this passing of living memory it has become the younger generation's obligation to remember the significance of our relatives' sacrifices even if we know relatively little about their direct experiences. I don't know about about you folks but neither of my Grandpas were very forthcoming with their experiences of the war though it affected them profoundly. It's difficult to remember when our grandparents generation held so strongly to a culture of silence.

So this November 11th I remember my own perceptions of these men who I never really knew. I remember my Grandpa Harry who fought in the Pacific campaign, squeezed tight in a one-man sub, planting explosives in far away waters. I think of those who died because of his actions and am grateful that my life that was possible because he survived that hell. I think of my Grandpa Walt and his time in Italy and the connection he always felt to that place. Near the end of his years, after many rounds of chemo he had lost enough weight to fit back into his service uniform. Someone took a picture and it's often how I remember him, physically weak but strong in spirit, and lucky to have lived all those years after the war.

Remembrance Day does, however, bring up conflicting emotions in me. I do not agree with Canada's current military missions or the glorification of war, but I find solace in remembering my own ancestors who I love and respect and to whom I am very grateful.

I also like to take this time to think of those who have not always been so prominently remembered. Soldiers of Aboriginal descent had a strong presence in the Second World War. Initially, First Nations peoples were not exempt from conscription (with the exception of the Inuit), however several groups protested this mandatory service, some nations arguing it was against their treaty agreements. It wasn't until 1944 that the war cabinet granted this exemption to several groups but even then, many continued to volunteer for service.

Unfortunately, those that returned from fighting alongside their Euro-Candian counterparts found that they were still not equal in the eyes of the government. In many places, portions of already limited reserves had been given to Canadian farmers in order to increase wartime crop production, never to be returned. Indigenous veterans were also denied many of the benefits such as housing, employment offers and vocational training that white soldiers received. Such disparity after unfathomable hardship helped catalyze an Aboriginal activist movement that went on to fight for Indigenous rights. In 2002 the Canadian government finally recognized the sacrifices of First Nations veterans and the government's unjust treatment of these veterans them by offering cash settlements. I noticed today how the Canadian government was careful to maintain an Aboriginal presence, however minimal, within the national Remembrance Day ceremonies on Parliament Hill, providing an address in the Cree language in addition to English and French. I wonder how many Canadians listening knew about the unfair treatment of Aboriginal veterans. For me it is important to pay homage to those who have not always been at the forefront of the national memory in order to contemplate the consequences of not adequately remembering and honouring.

Anyways these are just a couple of my thoughts on this Remembrance Day. What or who do you remember today? How do you remember? Are ceremonies important to you or is it more of a personal experience? November 11th is a unique day in Canada and one of the only national events devoted entirely to the acts of remembering and honouring; I would love to know how you experience the it.

Culture, Community and the Commons

For my presentation this week I got to play around with Flickr's new(ish) initiative, the Commons. Be sure to check out Kira and Pam's blogs as well for other aspects of Flickr!

The Commons is an offshoot of Flickr that enables public institutions such as museums and archives to share their photo collections online. This web tool's two main goals are "to increase access to publicly-held photography collections", and "to provide a way for the general public to contribute information and knowledge". Created in 2008 as a partnership with the Library of Congress, the Commons has now grown to include over 40 institutions from around the world. Indeed, the overwhelming requests by institutions to register with the Commons has forced Flickr to close registration for 2010 while they catch up to the demand. Evidently this tool has found a market!


Once accepted, in order for an institution to share a collection they must agree to a Rights Statement which ensures that their photos qualify under "no known copyright". Pretty much this phrasing covers their institutional butts in case some restrictions are eventually discovered. Also, while institutions are sharing these photographs with the online public, they are not expressly providing a warranty for public use. The practical applications of that seem a bit of a mystery to me but again I assume this, again, is to cover their liabilities in case someone uses the images inappropriately.

It is fairly easy to navigate the Commons. For users just intending to browse, along with a description of the project, the front page provides links to a randomly generated selection of institutional collections. Below this is a sample of the photos available to explore within the Commons; I suspect this selection is not so random as funny animal pictures, arctic explorers, ghosts and jazz musicians feature prominently, a choice which is meant to draw the public in, I believe. The Flickr blog also often features Commons collections.

In the Commons, institutions have a "photo stream" that contains all their photograph, but these can also be viewed in "sets" which function somewhat like photo-albums or exhibits. There is a "collection" feature as well which allows someone to bring together themed pictures they like from across Flickr, but most institutions choose to present their photos in a set instead as they are interested in promoting their own images. Users can view these sets independently or by means of a very smooth slideshow interface. Additionally it is important to note that you don't need a Flickr account to view these images, only if you want to comment and make notes. Generally the picture is given a title and the host archive or museum provides some basic information such as the date of creation, location and photographer. Institutions vary with how much contextual information they provide, but I find my experience of their images much richer when they do so. Most institutions also take advantage of their new-found audience by providing links back to their website.

Ultimately the interactivity of the Commons comes from the comments of Flickr users. Responses can be made as notes directly on the photos or underneath the image in the comment forum. Some users provide very valuable information as Rob Ketcherside did when he made notes identifying each of the buildings in Brooklyn Museum Archives' photo of the World's Colombian Exposition (1893) as pictured on the right. Notes can often be a little less constructive (see below) but whether moronic or insightful, notes and comments document how the public interacts with these primary sources.

Another very cool aspect of Flickr Commons is your ability to share interesting slideshows directly within your blog, such as this set on the theme of Remembrance Day from the Musée McCord. This feature makes it easy to share interesting collections of primary sources with your contacts online.

As the first partner involved, it is perhaps not surprising that the Library of Congress made particularly interesting use of the interactivity of the Commons. In late 2009, the Library put out an album challenging Flickr users to help figure out the locations of a series of unidentified travel views. Given that these photos used photochrom technology, the Library knew that they had to have been taken between 1890 and 1910, but the locations of these tourist shots were more difficult to ascertain. Below is one example of one of the mysterious photocrom prints:

The Flickr community responded swiftly. The Library of Congress posted this challenge on December 24th 2009 and within a few days, members had identified every one of the 22 pictures. They did so by posting personal insights, pictures and research in the comments section below the photo. Within this comment section you can see the various ways individuals interact with the Commons (and Flickr more generally). Some individuals took a very cursory look at the photo, identifying it as Mexico or Italy because of the apparent colouring of the flag. Others put in a surprising amount of thought and research into their analysis:

Flickr users engaged with one another, building upon the collected knowledge until a consensus was reached regarding the photo's location. It was taken at Pont Napoléon in Nice, France. Though there was some tension regarding users who chose not to read previous comments and therefore provided redundant insights (about 3/4s of the way down the page, after Kevin's careful analysis, someone writes "umm, just look at the flag."), on the whole this was a inspiring bit of collaborative research that points to one potential use of the Commons. Click here to view the whole conversation.

Harnessing the power of the Flickr community to develop a collective knowledge on a subject got me thinking about the Commons potential for Library and Archives Canada's Project Naming. Project Naming has two main goals which are to a) identify Inuit individuals portrayed in LAC's photography collection, and, in the process b) connect Inuit youth with Elders in order to help bridge cultural gaps. These goals are achieved through either community meetings where the images are projected on a screen and Elders speak out when they recognize someone or through youths' visits to Elders' homes. While it would be vital for any changes to ensure this inter-generational connection, Flickr provides a useful interface that can reach a wide audience and this may be of use to the project. Especially when efforts to identify individuals have failed, Flickr provides a broader pool of people who might have relevant information. Given that it is open and accessible, Flickr facilitates interaction unlike LAC's current protocol that prompts a user to fill out a confidential - and somewhat daunting - form. This accessibility also means that photos can be easily shared via facebook and personal blogs, further increasing awareness. The use of Flickr's Commons to gather not only basic information but contextual and cultural knowledge could allow the subaltern to reinscribe their presence within colonial institutions but it would be necessary to develop a strong moderating system for ensuring genuine contributions and respectful useage. It seems to me like this Flickr detective work could benefit both a variety of communities and institutions if done right



On the topic of power imbalances, it is also important to note that given the expensive nature of digitization (as well as the current backlog of requests), the Commons is currently dominated by developed countries. Some of collections contain photos packed with the colonial gaze and are missing historical context. While some of this context can be provided by users, as mentioned earlier, I would like to see more information provided by the institution, not necessarily about the individual photograph (thought his would be great!) but hopefully about the set. I imagine as the Commons becomes more popular, more budget and work hours will be alloted to maintaining a Flickr collection.

On the whole I find the Commons to be an innovative new way of publicly sharing photography collections. Institutions in the Commons not only tap into a pre-existing online audience, but they also benefit from Flickr's stylishly designed and user-friendly interface. While it is important to be realistic about the power of the Commons to contribute to historic knowledge, this Flickr initiative is an intriguing web 2.0 approach that increases awareness of and interaction with institutional collections.

Open it up!

This week's digital history class centred around the concepts of open access and open source. Open sourcing refers to programs that allows the user to view, and alter source code. By opening up the guts of a program and letting millions of users tinker around, make changes, make improvements, make frankensteins, etc open source software allows users to alter a program until it works for them. No one individual can be credited with developing an awesome program, instead it is a product of thousands of different needs, perspectives and processes. I find it incredible that open source programs not only exist, but are, along with professional developers paid by Gates and Jobs, responsible for the evolution of the internet.

There are so many free alternatives now. Open Office can be used in lieu of Word and, unless you're doing some professional-level design, Gimp works great for image manipulation. I think what's needed is a change of mentality. Finding the right program can be more challenging than using the default Mac or PC version but the results can be better tailored to your needs. Better programs overtake redundant or ineffective ones so that while you have to keep yourself informed you also get the best tool for the job. It seems like patience and an exploratory nature are key virtues when diving into the world of open source programs which are not often, especially in their alpha and beta stages, refined products. There are bugs, there are oversights, there's a learning curve, but ultimately you're getting something for free created by your fellow interneters rather than a mega-corporation (insert ominous music here).

Before I go, I have one thought on open access that I'd like to put out there. Roy Rosenzweig discussed many options for increased access to scholarly works in his essay "Should Historical Scholarship Be Free?" including charging the authors, self-archiving and partial access. I found his argument for electronic only journals quite compelling; as a graduate student who has never read an actual physical journal, I feel no particular affinity towards print journals. I was surprised, however, that he didn't focus more on advertising as a way to off-set costs both for new and established journals. Journals such as J-stor could perhaps have two tiers, one with an abundance of directed, Google-style advertisements and delayed access to material and a premium paid subscription with no ads and immediate access. While I don't like the idea of ads in academia, I also don't agree with universities paying $60,000  for one bundle of journals. I would also imagine that advertisers would be eager to tap into an affluent, educated market. I wonder if the advertising revenues would be enough to satiate publishers...

Though I believe in open source and open access whole-heartedly I do feel a little hypocritical or at least like a web-mooch as I have never contributed to anything open sourced, yet I reap the benefits from such programs all the time. I am so comfortable in my role as a consumer of the web that I forget I can also be a producer. Professor MacDougall has asked us to edit a Wikipedia page by next week in order to be better informed for our discussion. Have to admit that I'm glad we've been given the push as editing Wikipedia has been something I been wanting to get into for a while. Stay tuned to find out how that experiment goes!