It was with some hesitation that I embarked on the process of documenting the stories, the people and the physical fabric that embody three World Heritage Listed sites of Sydney. Though there was some luxury afforded by a raft of emerging digital technologies in executing the project, the conviction of the authorial voice to fully describe the complexity of these sites remained elusive. To represent anything there came a selective process that would inevitably neglect certain stories and advance others that did not deserve such elevation. Whose history would ultimately emerge from this philosophical battlefield would be unclear, if it could ever really be known. But with the insight gained from this disclaimer (of sorts), it is clear that to have been arrested by this post-modernist angst would be a great disservice to the people and their stories which needed to be told.
Perhaps a compromise could be achieved in the approach to represent the experiences of the common man beside the events and characters of the political and cultural elite who would be remembered even without the input of an undergraduate humanities student. We shall now turn to the nuts and bolts of the project to discuss aspects which were simple, challenging or otherwise taxing on one’s patience.
Perhaps a compromise could be achieved in the approach to represent the experiences of the common man beside the events and characters of the political and cultural elite who would be remembered even without the input of an undergraduate humanities student. We shall now turn to the nuts and bolts of the project to discuss aspects which were simple, challenging or otherwise taxing on one’s patience.
Structuring the Narrative
The decision to divide the content between three independent websites emerged largely from the difficulties faced in reconciling such disparate events, people, media and resources into a cohesive whole. In addition to appearing aesthetically busy, an initial attempt to present an integrated website suffered from an absence of meaning as their was too much content and this was distracting from the core purpose of having such a website, that is, education and engagement of new audiences. The immediate visual impact of a website is key in retaining the gaze of Secondary audiences (the targeted demographic for the websites) whose mobility on the web and tendency for flight when faced by visual and textual overload is well understood. In response I attempted to present a streamlined presentation with the structure of the content faithful to sound logic. The content on each website was divided into the conceptual categories of “People”, “Events” and “Site” which became the three key depositories for textual information.
These categories would illustrate the multifaceted nature of heritage sites which are manifest in these conceptually distinct categories. The content fed into these three categories referenced well-known stories and physical features, but they also- where possible- revealed the perspective of the general public who experienced the sites during the now “sacred” past. Numerous repositories were utilized in this purpose, including the Federated Search Trove, the digitized newspaper repository Australian Newspapers, contemporary sites with user generated content including Picasa Web and YouTube as well as the websites of the managers of the heritage sites which have in recent years relinquished much of their authority to frame interpretations by allowing the stories of common people to be told. In the process of integrating these digital resources my websites emerged as value-added mashups. I consider the added value is manifest in the aggregation, annotation and structuring of otherwise disparate sets of material.
The potential for digital technologies to pool the input of ‘the crowd’ in ascribing the meaning they see in the content of digital entities is fundamental if the semantic web is to one day be realised. I was cautious when digitizing my own material to maintain standards in annotation, naming, file format and to the greatest extent possible the systems which hosted the content. There was some difficulty faced in this pursuit as I encountered limitations and strengths in all of the systems that I utilized in completing the project and this rendered me unable to effectively persevere with only one hosting system.
Cultural Heritage on the Web- Opportunities and Pit-falls
The web offers a unique platform to engage audiences that are spatially remote from the cultural heritage site. Moreover it opens the opportunity to provide material that may only be accessible otherwise through libraries, museums and other collecting institutions. When compiling the content for my site, I attempted to provide the means for remote audiences to explore the sites in a meaningful way. I was able to create a 3d model of Hyde Park Barracks during its convict era that would allow audiences to get a feel of the site in a time temporally remote from the present. Unable to replicate this visualization for the Sydney Opera House, I resorted to providing a link to models created by other users that had been made freely available for reuse. These models are exemplary illustrations of the opportunities offered by digital technologies for humanities research and user engagement. Supplementing these resources, I made available in digital form site maps that had been retrieved from Government archives to allow users to gain a sense of awareness of modifications to the built fabric of the sites over the course of their early history.
These site maps were embedded through Google Earth onto modern satellite imagery to enable improved visualization of change over time. This was possible in the instance of the Hyde Park Barracks and Cockatoo Island, however in the case of the Sydney Opera House I was unable to find any early drawings of the site plan and therefore for this site, images and paintings were provided as a surrogate. I found the opportunity to embed the historical site maps on modern imagery as a promising means to illustrate change over time. As I had expected, however, the visualization also revealed distortions in the initial representation of these early maps. For instance in the case of site maps of Cockatoo Island prior to the 20th century, I experienced great difficulty in determining which feature would be most appropriate as a ground point to anchor the image as each possible candidate readily distorted the placement of others. In the end, I decided to use the prison building as this was depicted on each of the five historical maps used and it provided the best reference for scaling. One thing that I did discover in the process was that the Sutherland Dock was consistently misrepresented, possibly being a political tactic to heighten its importance. In this way the distortion can be as telling as the correctly depicted features of the map, albeit incurring the visual appearance of fault on the part of myself as the creator of this superimposed visual representation. It was my hope, perhaps without success, that users would use their critical, geographic literacy to notice and explain the distortion.
These site maps were embedded through Google Earth onto modern satellite imagery to enable improved visualization of change over time. This was possible in the instance of the Hyde Park Barracks and Cockatoo Island, however in the case of the Sydney Opera House I was unable to find any early drawings of the site plan and therefore for this site, images and paintings were provided as a surrogate. I found the opportunity to embed the historical site maps on modern imagery as a promising means to illustrate change over time. As I had expected, however, the visualization also revealed distortions in the initial representation of these early maps. For instance in the case of site maps of Cockatoo Island prior to the 20th century, I experienced great difficulty in determining which feature would be most appropriate as a ground point to anchor the image as each possible candidate readily distorted the placement of others. In the end, I decided to use the prison building as this was depicted on each of the five historical maps used and it provided the best reference for scaling. One thing that I did discover in the process was that the Sutherland Dock was consistently misrepresented, possibly being a political tactic to heighten its importance. In this way the distortion can be as telling as the correctly depicted features of the map, albeit incurring the visual appearance of fault on the part of myself as the creator of this superimposed visual representation. It was my hope, perhaps without success, that users would use their critical, geographic literacy to notice and explain the distortion.
The second primary difficulty faced in presenting cultural heritage on the net was the constraints of copyright restrictions that prevented me from displaying some material. To the greatest extent of my ability I attempted to reference where available the authorship of content being reworked, however in many instances these details could not be found. After considering the difficulties I faced in obeying copyright laws, I made a decision to provide a Creative Commons licence for two sets of photographs I had taken at the Hyde Park Barracks and Cockatoo Island and were hosting in Picasa web albums. As my research was indirectly financed by the state through the generous HECS arrangements, I saw it as my responsibility to provide this licence so that others may use my resources without undue impediment.
Tailoring the web sites to a Secondary Audience
The intended audience for the websites, a secondary audience, have unique characteristics that needed to be considered when designing the resource, creating the content and deciding which interactive applications to include. If I had been targeting a younger audience, say school children, undoubtedly I would have simplified the academic voice and tailored the content around the social histories without going too deep into some of the debates regarding the representation of heritage. Clearly secondary audiences are more discerning in the way that they interpret material related to cultural heritage and it was essential in this respect to respond to their research literacies. The provision of primary sources was useful not only to provide a snapshot of the sites in their historical context, but also to provide the means for secondary audiences to read and critically interpret what information was being represented in resources such as newspaper articles and posters.
There were many opportunities to engage with secondary audiences through social media such as twitter feeds however I decided not to pursue this route for reasons twofold. Firstly, there was a paucity of available content and I was not prepared to create a twitter feed myself. And secondly, I had serious doubts that this resource would be appealing for secondary audiences. Its inclusion, in my opinion, would have appeared as a tokenistic novelty. Clearly young people are more discerning in their consumption of social media, and are not simply attracted to it for its own sake. In contrast I did believe that a Picasa public gallery and 3d models embedded on Google Earth would attract their attention and as such these resource were provided.
My approach to tailoring the content to Secondary Audiences had been intentional, however I similarly hoped that it wasn’t too severely narrowcasting to this audience alone. It was my belief that the material provided should be interesting to a broad audience so that many demographics may benefit from the resource and also because if it appears to young audiences that they are being intentionally targeted, suspicion is usually forthcoming.
Digital Technologies Used
Picasa web albums
Picasa 3 for image metadata (tagging and location)
3d Modelling through Google Sketchup
Timelines generated from Google Docs
Quizes hosted by Quibblo
Maps with points and polygons and overlayed historical images through Google Earth
Audio and Visual resources from various repositories
Federated Search- Trove; Australian Newspapers
Database Management Systems: Heurist and MSAccess
Blogging through Blogger and Google Sites
Wikipedia, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Dictionary of Sydney and other web resources
