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Part I![]()
1
Introduction
1.1Digital humanities
Humanists have interacted with computing machinery for more than 60 years.1 This is a history not only of using the computer as a tool, but also of how computers have influenced our thinking. The challenges posted by algorithmic thinking have been met in different ways in the humanities over the years. Ideas from different areas of the humanities have been in active interaction with computer science, with influence moving in both directions. One example of influence from the humanities to computer science is the history behind the development of XML2 (DeRose, 1999, 19–21).
The larger research strategy behind this book is to develop transformative digital intermedia studies as a means to better understand the differences between media with different modalities and with different semiotic systems. In order to focus the project on a manageable task, the book describes a study of the differences between maps and texts. The method used is critical stepwise formalisation, a type of conceptual modelling applied to geospatial information read from texts. The results from the study are put in the context of previous research and theory in order to establish a deeper understanding of general rules behind the media differences.
A turning point in the history of digital humanities was the establishment of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) in 1985.3 The TEI has proven highly influential, and a significant part of the work in digital humanities has been connected to it. It also led to the development of text encoding as the main method for formalising texts, at the expense of other solutions, such as databases (Vanhoutte, 2010, 129–131). The latter have been there all along, but always playing a minor role compared to text encoding.
In order to use the computer for advanced textual work, models have to be established. This happens partly at standard level, as the creation of the TEI guidelines exemplify (Burnard, 2013). It also happens at document level, either by making a local model for one specific set of documents or applying a pre-existing standard such as TEI (Eide, 2015a). Modelling has been an important practice in digital humanities, complemented by a growing number of theoretical studies.
1.2Modelling
Modelling is a core method in digital humanities, with close links to modelling in other disciplines, including the social and natural sciences and computer science. Models as we use them are representations of something, created for the purpose of studying what is modelled more closely (McCarty, 2005, 24).
Modelling as it is described in this book is also linked to modelling in cultural heritage. The latter has traditionally focused on database development and the development of documentation standards, but since the 1990s there has also been a development of formal ontologies, exemplified by CIDOC-CRM.4 Modelling in cultural heritage is a distinct tradition from modelling in digital humanities, but work towards comparing and interlinking the two has been ongoing for more than a decade (Ore & Eide, 2009; Ciula & Eide, 2014). In this book, modelling from both traditions will be combined with an understanding of media transformations recently put forward in Elleström (2014). Some key aspects of modelling will be highlighted here, whereas theoretical aspects of modelling will be discussed repeatedly later in the book.5
A key aspect of modelling in digital humanities generally and in transformative digital intermedia studies specifically is the focus on interactivity and on studying the modelling process with the aim of learning from it. The focus is on modelling rather than on models.
This book will show how computer-based modelling can be used to study media differences, which is an important part of the history of the humanities. The tradition is especially strong in comparisons between the textual and visual arts. We now have the means – technical as well as conceptual – to examine these questions in new ways, change them, and add new questions. This book focuses on the relationship between two media: one medium with a specific relationship to space, namely maps, and the other that traditionally dominates Western culture, namely texts. In Chapter 8, other possible comparisons will be suggested.
The importance of this specific comparison goes beyond its function as an example of general media differences. Maps have developed a special role in the humanities through the spatial turn. Understanding the theoretical implications of practical work is important in the application of computer based methods in the humanities, not the least in the area of spatial information implemented in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and as deep maps.6 The possibilities for integrating texts and maps and for creating map-based narratives are important in the spatial humanities. They deserve both theoretical and practical studies.
This book is conceived as a theoretical study; yet, the use of computer-assisted conceptual modelling and visualisation of specific works links it to practical examples of mapping. The computer application is another link to practical work; it can be seen as a tool implementing a method. The models created in the modelling exercises represent readings of the source documents; the models implement theories of the source expressions. As the method is dynamic and data-driven, the tool must also be dynamic and flexible.
Computers have been used in text analysis for many years. While the last decade has seen a significant rise in interest in macroanalysis,7 computer-assisted text analysis at micro level has not given comparable results or caused a similar level of interest. Text encoding in TEI is an established method for working with digital texts with wide applicability, not only in scholarly editing. However, certain types of analysis are hampered by the tree structures imposed by the underlying formalism of TEI.
Modelling as it is applied in transformative digital intermedia studies goes beyond text encoding by introducing critical stepwise formalisation as a text analysis method, representing features of the text as both sequential, tree-based, and graph structures. Models of texts expressed in TEI encoding are useful as input to the stepwise formalisation, but such pre-existing models are approached in a critical way and are the source of re-modelling in the experiments.
1.3Text and map
In an interview at the farm Solem in August 1742, Ole Nilsen said that ‘North of there, no peasant farms are found’.8 How can we put the knowledge expressed in this sentence on a map? First we need to know where to put the ‘there’ referred to and how far north ‘north of there’ implies. Given that we are able to decide on that, how do we express the fact that no farms are found? We could make the area north of ‘there’ blank. But blankness on a map does not say ‘no farms’, it rather says ‘nothing of interest’; after all, we know there are things everywhere – stones, trees, streams. And maybe a farm or two, even if the map is blank.
How can we better understand such problems? Any text containing descriptions of an existing or fictional geography could in principle be examined in search of geographical information that is impossible to express on maps. Such problems are more likely to be found in some texts than in others, however.
In the 1740s, Major Peter Schnitler was appointed by the Danish government9 to explore the border area between the middle and northern parts of Norway and Sweden.10 Significant parts of the text in the manuscript that he handed over to the Danish government consist of transcripts of local court sessions carried out by Schnitler in order to gather information about the local population, as well as their knowledge of the border areas. The material includes information directly relevant to the border question, as well as general information about these areas. The text corresponds to similar material collected through work carried out in other parts of Europe at the time (Burke, 2000, 125–132).
The text used in the case study includes testimony taken from farmers and nomadic herders who likely did not use maps but described their landscape in terms of wayfinding. S1 represents a coherent edited document which includes a multitude of quite different voices: ‘Sami reindeer herders, Norwegian farmers, and military officers – thus bringing a set of different perspectives into the geographical conversation’ (Eide, 2012b). In addition, the text is available as a computer-readable TEI document, making use of it convenient at the technical level.
In order to expand on which types of differences between maps and texts I assume to exist, I will provide another introductory example, taken from Schnitler’s protocols and from a map he made in the same period. In order to see how this fits together, I will first give a short description of Schnitler’s method.
The text of Schnitler’s protocols reflects a history of information aggregation. First, he would collect data. The court protocols were written, and older written evidence was attached. Then, based on the court protocols together with other sources of information, including his own observations, Schnitler would write aggregations describing larger areas. Based on his sources, Schnitler also drew maps of large areas to indicate where the border should be located.
On the one hand, his project was based on information from the witnesses, transcribed so as to remain truthful to each person’s understanding of the situation on the ground and the manner of his explanation. On the other hand, in Schnitler’s aggregations only the hard facts obtained from the witnesses survived. This process was completed with the maps. It is claimed that truth is supported by the map as a medium (Jacob & Dahl, 2006, 32). ‘The map becomes a visual memory of the discourse, in which time is frozen. Although texts can also strive to be outside time, in general it is maps that have a stronger tendency to lie outside it’ (Eide, forthcoming 2015b). As we will see in the next example, this process of creating consistent maps could sometimes be difficult.
It was in Schnitler’s interest to remove any inconsistencies in the witnesses’ statements when he created the aggregations. The example given in Figure 1.1 shows how that could be difficult. The border is indicated by the line going north-south on the map fragment, crossing the mountains Amberfield and Baanesfield. In his aggregation, Schnitler discusses two different views held by groups of witnesses living in different parishes, in which either one or the other of the two mountains is seen as the border landmark. Schnitler says he is not in a position to choose between these two views, as he has not been able to gather the two groups of witnesses together to reconcile the matter. He argues that the most likely solution is Amberfield, with Baanesfield being a part of it, to make both groups of witnesses more or less right. Still, both mountains are included in his list of border mountains with an ‘or’ between (S1, 174).
They are both included on the map as well, but the ‘or’ has disappeared. The two mountains are situated close to each other on the map; the former is larger and transected by the border, and the other is smaller and crossed at the edge by the border. Whether the differences between them in size and in location relative to the border on the map are due to Schnitler’s view on the choice most likely to be correct is something I do not know.11 But it is worth noting that, while in his written aggregation the ‘or’ concept was easily expressed, this concept was not something he could express with similar ease on the map.
Figure 1.1Fragment of Schnitler’s map from 1744, ‘The original is in the National Archives of Norway, archival reference: Riksarkivets kart- og tegningssamling RA/EA-5930/T/T023/T023f/0018: GA 269’. Printed in Mordt (2008, appendix). The locations of Amberfield and Baanesfield are marked by me with a rectangle. The line crossing the two mountains is the border
How can we systematise problems such as the two exemplified above? Is the information a map can convey different from the information a text can convey? Are maps more truthful than texts? Are maps outside time? These are among the questions to be discussed in this book.
1.4The book
This book is divided into eight chapters. In Chapter 2 of Part I, maps, texts, and their relationships to landscapes will be introduced. In Chapter 3 I will present critical stepwise formalisation as a type of modelling through an example of how it can be applied to texts and maps. In ...
