Exhibit Caption, Final

Here is the final edited version of my exhibit caption:

This horn supposedly belonged to Edward Braddock, a British General in the French and Indian War. Robert Tempest acquired this horn after Braddock’s death in 1755. Engraving their names and adding metal fixtures, five generations of Tempests turned this horn into a canvas documenting their personal connection to colonial America. 

I kept to a straightforward, chronological history of the horn that reflects back to colonial America at the end. Referencing how the Tempests altered the horn and used it to connect them to the past brings in the commemorative aspects of the horn. (And, it's exactly 50 words. Yay!)

Readings Response: Emotions and Things

Things often resonate with people is different ways. The material that people interact with throughout their lives can trigger emotions and memories, and can provide a point of access to share those emotions and memories with others.

Kay Healy’s “Lost and Found” was a wall instillation at the Free Library of Philadelphia that featured rooms with objects that the artist made from people’s recollections of things that they once possessed but are now lost. The people selected all have emotional stories that connect the thing they have lost to their life and draw out larger lessons about concepts of family and home. On one hand, asking people to talk about a lost thing they wish they could still have is a set-up that required respondents to feel an emotional attachment to their objects as a prerequisite for participation. On the other hand, the lost and found motif is extraordinarily relatable and prompts listeners to think about their things and what they would say if asked the same question.

This American Life’s “House on Loon Lake” tells the story of a young boy who broke into an abandoned home and became enthralled in the mystery of the family that once lived there. Where Healy told the stories of object that people longed for, this story was about one that people consciously abandoned. The conclusions of this story, though sad, offered perspective on how and why people sometimes choose to leave the past in the past, whereas others, like the narrator or any of Healy’s interviewees desired to hold onto it.

The Radio Lab episode “Things” more directly contemplates the emotional connections people form with things. At one point in the episode, the presenters discuss whether a 3D print of a sugar egg that resonates with childhood memories means the same as the original. In the end, the process of making a new egg with a child turned out to be more meaningful than a 3D print could have been. Talking about the difference between things that have a physical connection to people led to a discussion of what one presenter called the “unbridgeable gulf” between people and the things that people make with technology. This conversation highlighted the role of human imagination in making things powerful. The ability to touch something and think about how someone made it, what they did with it, and what it meant to them may be the most important part of studying material culture.

Sam Roberts’ “Object Lessons in History” speculates about the popular surge of object-based histories that the three previous works arguably feed into. Acknowledging that material culture is a great way to lure people into history, the article points to correlations between more recent object histories and contemporary reality television. This link that Roberts makes between momentary popular trends and object histories makes me think about whether the relationships that people currently have with material things are the same relationships that people in the past had with material things. How would Kay Healy’s project be different if it revolved around people 500 years ago, or 50 years from now?

Powder Horn Reflections: The works covered this week largely had to do with how people look back upon things and how they use things to look back. The powder horn, passed down through generations, could have been handled as a vehicle for some story about the past that the family relayed to every succeeding generation. Its owners could have looked at it in the same way Radio Lab’s presenter looked at the Neil Armstrong letter and asked many of the same questions. Thinking about that letter, the presenters wondered whether the letter being typed instead of handwritten affected its meaning, if the emotional connection to the letter would be the same even if Neil Armstrong never actually touched the thing. For my powder horn, this is an integral question because I have no proof yet that the horn ever belonged to General Braddock, nevertheless the care of the horn implies that it was important to the family.

Works Cited:

Healy, Kay. “Lost and Found.” Instillation runs October 2, 2014- October 2, 2015.

This American Life. "House on Loon Lake." Episode 199. November 16, 2001.

Roberts, Sam. “Object Lessons in History.” New York Times. September 27, 2014. 

Radio Lab. “Things.” Season 12, Episode 8.  

Digital Storytelling: A Discussion

(Note: I did not read ahead on our course syllabus, and incidentally touched on some of the points of this weeks topic on my last post. Sorry!)

(Another Note: My former life as a children’s librarian and my background as a visual artist/illustrator biases and informs this discussion in ways that are too many to tell.)

I love stories, and history is full of them. For historians, especially public historians, digital storytelling can be a great way to captivate an audience, introduce people to the field, communicate complicated interpretations and just have fun with doing what we love. From what I understand the definition of what counts as “digital storytelling” is overwhelmingly broad, and as of yet, generally undefined. Yet, thinking in terms of how other forms of storytelling are defined I like to think of digital storytelling as storytelling that conforms to the limitations of digital technologies, and particularly to people’s expectations of, say, a website. This is not to say that those limitations cannot be tested. The adaptability of digital technologies may be the most exciting thing about digital storytelling.

Last week I looked at the multimedia film/website Welcome to Pine Point and the blog Small Town Noir. These are still my favorite history related websites though outside of history Dangers of Fracking may take the amount-of-time-spent-staring-at-computer prize. This week I tried to focus on examples that are manageable for a final project. The first tool that I came across was Meograph, which many news organizations use, but can also be used for history, like this brief overview of Women’s Rights in the USA (made by KVWM San Diego). Part of me (the control freak) does not like having to concede to the capabilities of a tool like this, yet it does offer fast and easy ways to create complex histories.

Another example that kept running through my head was the Drunk History series on YouTube. Though Comedy Central has acquired the series, at its inception Drunk History was made for the Internet. I know it is not “History,” and is ripe with troubling interpretations and flat-out inaccuracies, yet the first episode (here), to date, has had over five million views. There might be something that we can learn from the format, in this case an absurd YouTube short, that we would not learn if we let our disciplinary boundaries restrict us.

Naysayers of digital storytelling for the purpose of history would likely say that digital media could easily dumb down content, exclude multiple perspectives, misrepresent history as fact rather than interpretation, and convey too much of a linear progression of historical happenings. Moreover, from the public historian’s standpoint, digital storytelling can strip away the shared authority in which we are proud. On one hand, these things are true. They are also true for articles, books, documentaries, exhibits and pretty much all modes of expression.

From bedtime stories and campfire tales to novels and film people are familiar with a range of storytelling techniques. Scholars writing historic monographs often use the narrative form and storytelling conventions to convey their argument. Moreover, we, the academics, understand that while history is multidimensional and dynamic, an historic monograph is the singular interpretation of its author. So why do we question putting a similar form to the public? People are smart and are capable of recognizing that multiple perspectives exist, even when only one is presented. 

In short, storytelling is an integral mode of communication among people. While digital storytelling has the potential to mask meaning with novelty, forgoing storytelling would deny the very thing that attracts most people to history in the first place.