Project 4: Lansdowne Undead - 14 views
started by Jordon Tomblin on 30 Mar 14
started by Jordon Tomblin on 30 Mar 14
started by Jordon Tomblin on 30 Mar 14
started by Jordon Tomblin on 30 Mar 14
The Digital Humanities is understood to be a "culture that values collaboration" (Kirschenbaum 2011: 9) while investigating traditional social science and humanities questions with the use of computing technologies (Fitzpatrick 2011). This week, I worked alongside the assigned group to explore some of the architectural, social, historical, and visual elements of Ottawa's Lansdowne Park. Inspired by the work of historical sociologist scholars (see Abrams 1982), I was eager to know more about this area, as I had no knowledge of Lansdowne's history or its importance to the surrounding communities. After briefly investigating its rich historical roots, it was troubling to witness the disturbances taking place by the pernicious influence of vacuous public/private sector partnerships. Accordingly, our group sought to explore the history of this public space despite the vicissitude of Ottawa's beloved Park.
To visualize our group's research and findings, we employed the StoryTrek authorware to map out the connections among the political, social, historical, and visual elements of the Park. In the interest of time, we followed the path of least resistance and captured the "front stage" public discourse (Piche 2012: 235) of the surrounding area through open source materials. This included newspaper articles, blogs, a thesis, and imagery of the grounds located online. Assembling these various elements, our group mapped out a brief aspect of Lansdowne Park's past, present, and future. This approach was carried out by crowdsourcing materials of the Park among group members and subsequently distributing our findings across the grounds. Creating a division of labor proved to be the most feasible methodological approach for this project. In summary, we produced over 20 nodes that provided short, but rich and accurate description of how this space has moved in and out of various roles throughout its history, how spaces on the grounds have become repurposed overtime, and how recent changes are harming preservation efforts. Moreover, we explored the problems of enclosing this space and how efforts to create surplus value to financially profit private sectors is being done at the expense of community and with significant harm to surrounding businesses and denizens. It is perhaps on that last note where future research and more exploratory projects can be undertaken.
A project worth undertaken around the Lansdowne Park would be to map the controversy surrounding the appropriation of the land through various human and non-human actors. Inspired by the work of actor-network theorists, particularly Bruno Latour (1987, 2005), many scholars have recently taking up his ideas through his project "Mapping Controversies on Science for Politics" (MACOSPOL). The idea behind MACOSPOL is to explore and visual the complexities of modern society by using computing technologies to understand how controversies get taken up by different actors (human and non-human) while refraining to make assumptions around relations (i.e. networks) a priori (see Callon 1986). One case study in particular by the Manchester School of Architecture (MSA) could serve as a model to understand the controversies surrounding Lansdowne Park's architecture and design. Recently, the MSA took up a project entitled "Ongoing Controversies: The Design of the London Olympic Stadium", which "mapped [the] ongoing controversy surrounding the design and development of the [London] stadium and visualized the controversy in terms of actors, concerns, and intensity" (MSA 2011: N.P.). The timing of such a project would be worthwhile to take up as the controversy is currently ongoing and there exists a plethora of data on the subject (e.g. newspaper articles, interviews, images, etc.). Further, given that it is a project delegated by the City of Ottawa, the municipality would be subject to Freedom of Information Requests, which would allow the researchers to move beyond the "front stage" and gain partial access to the "backstage" of government activities. This could provide a more comprehensive understanding to emerge surrounding this controversy beyond public discourse, which is often carefully prepared and presented to the media.
Works Cited:
1. Abrams, Philip. 1982. Historical Sociology. Cornell University Press.
2. Callon, Michel. 1986. "Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen. Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge." Pp. 57-78 in Technoscience: The Politics of Interventions, edited by Asdal, Kristin, Brita Brenna, and Ingunn Moser, 2007. Oslo Academic Press.
3. Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. 2011. "The Humanities, Done Digitally" in Debates in the Digital humanities: 12-15.
4. Kirschenbaum, Matthew. 2011. "What is Digital Humanities and What's It Doing in English Departments" in Debates in the Digital humanities: 3-11.
5. Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Harvard University Press.
6. Latour, Bruno. 2005. "Third Source of Uncertainty: Objects too Have Agency" in Reassembling the Social by Bruno Latour. Oxford University Press: USA.
7. Manchester School of Architecture. 2011. Mapping Architectural Controversies: "Ongoing Controversies: The Design of the London Olympic Stadium". http://www.mappingcontroversies.net/Home/PlatformLondonCaseStudy
8. Piche, Justin. 2012. "Accessing the State of Imprisonment in Canada Information Barriers and Negotiation Strategies" in Brokering Access: Power, Politics, and Freedom of Information Process in Canada.