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SUMMARY:Deep Mapping Middletown: Designing Immersive Experiences for Spati
 alized Historical Data - James Connolly\, John Fillwalk
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20240926T100000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20240926T103000
DTSTAMP:20260814T214602Z
UID:pretalx-spathum24-U73UUS@pretalx.com
DESCRIPTION:Deep Mapping Middletown seeks to represent in spatial terms th
 e substantial archive produced by research on Muncie\, Indiana\, USA\, the
  site of Robert and Helen Lynds’ seminal community studies\, Middletown 
 (1929) and Middletown in Transition (1937).  The success of the Lynds' wor
 k\, which is considered to be among the most influential interpretations o
 f twentieth-century American life\, inaugurated a tradition of using this 
 small midwestern city as a barometer for assessing broader social and cult
 ural trends in the United States. Researchers\, journalists\, and filmmake
 rs have repeatedly returned to the city over the past century to document 
 social and cultural change\, generating an extraordinarily rich multimedia
  archive documenting local experience. Most\, though not all\, of this mat
 erial is accessible in digital form. \n\nWe have begun to build a multi-ti
 ered platform that mobilizes this archive for "deep mapping" the city. By 
 deep mapping\, we mean the process of generating user-driven\, multimedia 
 depictions of a place.  Drawing on postmodern theory\, scholars engaged in
  deep mapping have employed digital technologies to create complex represe
 ntations of spaces and empower users to explore them from a variety of per
 spectives. Deep mapping aims to destabilize depictions of place\, conveyin
 g the multiple meanings that different groups of people have assigned to s
 pecific settings and their evolution over time. Our deep mapping platform 
 integrates GIS and immersive 3D simulation technology to provide access to
  this material and facilitate investigations of spatial-historical experie
 nce\, including the evolution of racial geographies and the civic and soci
 al consequences of deindustrialization.\n\nPart of our aim in this project
  is to reframe Middletown Studies for scholars\, students\, and public aud
 iences. While there is an extraordinarily rich collection of Middletown re
 search materials\, including extensive published scholarship\, hundreds of
  recorded interviews\, thousands of photographs\, hundreds of hours of fil
 ms\, survey results and unpublished research reports\, much of the work th
 at produced this archive rests on a problematic premise. The Lynds’ init
 ial investigations neglected Black and other minority experiences\, an ove
 rsight that many follow-up studies failed to remedy. Only since the 1970s 
 has Middletown research has become more inclusive\, incorporating the expe
 riences of racial and ethnic minorities that the Lynds and their immediate
  successors ignored. Recent work has also jettisoned the anthropological g
 aze in favor of more collaborative approaches that share authority between
  researchers and community members. A key goal of Deep Mapping Middletown 
 is to elevate this later body of work\, using the multivocality inherent i
 n deep mapping to repurpose the Middletown archive as a resource for inves
 tigating and empowering the marginalized\, not just the mainstream. \n\nIn
  its current\, prototyping stage\, our project aims to overcome several te
 chnical and design challenges. These include: \n\n1.	The development and r
 efinement of a Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure (HSDI) that include 
 geolocated historical data from various sources and in various formats (te
 xt\, image\, audio\, and video) ingested into a GIS\, as well as tools\, f
 eatures\, and procedures to manage and facilitate use of the data. A key p
 art of this work is establishing lat-long coordinates for photographs and 
 audio-visual material as well as for passages extracted from textual sourc
 es such as oral history transcripts or ethnographic writing.\n\n2.	Applica
 tion of manual and computational techniques developed by various scholars 
 for capturing and representing vague or subjective spatial information in 
 both 2D and 3D. The Middletown archive includes a substantial body of purp
 osely obscured evidence in ethnographic writing\, as well as spatial data 
 contained in oral histories\, and anonymized survey data. While researcher
 s have employed a range of visualization techniques that extend beyond tra
 ditional coordinate-based cartographic methods to represent these kinds of
  data\, we are especially interested in approaches that link vague and sub
 jective experiential evidence to coordinate locations.  \n\n3.	Development
  of the interface between a Unity-based virtual environment and a GIS-base
 d HSDI that enables users to engage with the spatial data we are assemblin
 g.\n\n4.	Development of a virtual environment that includes in-world visua
 l cues modeled on game analytics\, such as heat maps and dwell times\, tha
 t visualize spatial data\, including affective and sensory experiences\, d
 ocumented in Middletown research.\n\nWe propose to present a paper documen
 ting our progress to date in meeting these challenges and explain the pote
 ntial of 3D immersion for deep mapping. Working with a team of scholarly a
 dvisors\, librarians\, designers and developers\, we have produced an init
 ial GIS that includes geolocated sample data for a single neighborhood dra
 wn from collections of photographs\, oral histories\, and ethnographies. W
 e have also developed a 3D immersive space using the Unity game engine\, e
 mploying the ArcGIS SDK for Unity to integrate our GIS and 3D model\, givi
 ng users access to spatial data within our immersive environment. We are a
 lso currently creating role-playing experiences that limit access to space
 s and information depending on the role adopted by the user and the period
  selected. These experiences are derived from spatial data in the Middleto
 wn archive. We will also follow best practices for heritage visualization 
 as described in the London Charter by making paradata that documents our i
 nterpretive choices available to users. \n\nOur presentation will also inc
 lude a demonstration of our prototyping work to date\, including a sample 
 walk-through of our immersive test environment and a review of the HSDI.
LOCATION:MG1 00.04 Hörsaal
URL:https://pretalx.com/spathum24/talk/U73UUS/
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