#ben ray

I want to remind you that you can send me any requests! As requests on any subject(or any fandom), and requests for my characters! Here is a list of some of my characters:

1. Jay Handle(Perfeld Studio)

2. Harry Calen(Perfeld Studio)

3. Helen Gebren(Perfeld Studio)

4. Nathan Share(Perfeld Studio)

5. Jason Halern(Perfeld Studio)

6. Ben Ray(Perfeld Studio)

7. Alice Cane(Perfeld Studio)

8. Lara Sinler(Perfeld Studio)

9. Alan Panker(Perfeld Studio)

10. Will Nolen(Perfeld Studio)

11. Jeff Rinad(Perfeld Studio)

12. Jeremy Frig(Perfeld Studio)

13. Charlie Handle(Perfeld Studio)

14. Shadow Charlie(Perfeld Studio)

15. Sasha(Worldwide AU)

16. Jack Raindler(Worldwide AU)

17. Grant Lower(Worldwide AU)

18. Hungry(Worldwide AU)

19. Jester(Worldwide AU)

20. Dena(Worldwide AU)

21. Adela(Worldwide AU)

22. Demonika(Worldwide AU)

23. Shadow(Worldwide AU)

24. Liriya(Worldwide AU)

25. Mark Neiten(Worldwide AU)

26. Meos(Worldwide AU)

27. Detelux(Worldwide AU)

The Great Jigsaw Puzzle Panic

The Great Depression of the 1930s coincided with the introduction of mass-produced, die-cut jigsaw puzzles, meaning that in a time of poverty more people than ever could afford them.

It began, I think, back in September ’32 one of us brought home ‘Jigsaw of the Week’ – we spent all morning slotted around the kitchen table piecing together Monet’s Bridge Over Pond Lilies. It became a bit of a…

It is not like elsewhere in New York / uncontaminated by its sheer, terrifying monumentality: / in truth, I think it is its own exhibition / staircase hugging the inside of its hollow eggshell self, / pressed by the centrifugal force of architecture. / Look, if I had to describe it to you / I would say it is an American neo-liberalist metaphor / where the steps wind upwards to nothing; / but from…

    I’ve discussed Richard White and his Stanford paper “What is Spatial History?” on this blog before, but I’d like to try to tackle the topic again, now with a little more experience under my belt and with some different examples of how to go about creating a spatial, digital project.       

    Historians have used spatial analysis using physical maps to represent spatial ideas for visualization for centuries, and the recent development of technology such as GIS and other more accessible mapping tools has allowed historians to reinvent or re-approach these spatial questions. As a matter of fact, historical maps are still one of the most important components of spatial history and even specifically historical GIS, partly due to their value in placing historical events and places and partly because they are such valuable primary sources for capturing worldview, attitudes, and even the state of scientific understanding at the point of its creation. In David Rumsey and Meredith Williams discuss the new life that GIS has breathed into historical maps and as a result we see a “spatial turn” in the humanities, including history. The “spatial turn”, like most historiographical turns in history, is a trend among academics in the field to shift approaches and address old historical questions with new perspectives, and in this case new technology. In her article “The Spatial Turn in History,” Jo Guldi describes the spatial turn as an increased focus on the historical implications of space, place, and landscape. She notes that telling larger histories, such as the history of a nation rather than a family, necessitates using tools that “privilege the landscape over the portrait.” This is where GIS, or a geographic information system, becomes useful in a historical sense. 

 In the “Teaching the Salem Witch Trials,” Ben Ray discusses his total lack of experience with GIS and the dearth of existing digitized material at the beginning of his Salem Witch Trials project. He begins, like many of these projects do, by building himself an online archive to work from. Simply because one of his sponsors, the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, required his archival material to be geographically referenced, a mapping element was created and Ray and his colleagues used GIS to develop a database structure connecting historical maps and primary visual documents to demographic, genealogical, and legal material, which connected the places to the people. Ray found that “pulling together so many historical documents and types of information created a complex set of categories and relationships.” The Salem Witch Trials is a topic already explored in geographic terms back in 1867, and again in 1974, which only served to help the digital application of a geographic element. These relationships that were revealed changed the accepted picture of how and why the accusations occurred, changing the motivation of the accusers from economic to social. This project is one of many, including Anne Kelly Knowles work on Gettysburg that has truly begun to utilize the power the digital technology to question and reveal hidden patterns that close human reading can’t already do alone.

 Screenshot of an interactive map found on Ray’s Salem Witch Trials archive at http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/maps/. 

    Ray’s updated version of Boyer and Nissenbaum’s 1974 map moves along a yearlong timeline that shows where the accusations and accused pop up over 1692. I found this a particularly useful tool that we have discussed possibilities for in class as it is able to show temporal and spatial shifts that can be essential in understanding the existing relationships in a huge data set. The downfalls of GIS as a mapping tool are also crucial to understanding whether it is the right tool for a given project. Most of these exemplary projects that we look at are using some form of GIS, but a number of projects reject the specificity of GIS because you need exact coordinates that don’t always matter to historical analysis and are often unavailable or unreliable. There are also issues with GIS inherently ignoring complexities of historical narratives due to its exact nature. Luckily GIS is not the only option for mapping projects, as there are apps like MyMaps on Google, StoryMapJS and other mapping software like Atlas, and there are mapping tools that use GIS or similar geodata tools behind the scenes, but don’t require that you know it to use the tool. You can also create simple map visualizations in Excel, as well as some other smaller online tools that may not be developed, but need the valuable feedback and ideas that we can provide by trying them out. 

    I think digital spatial tools are applicable to so many of our projects. It was already a part of my plan to apply GIS or something similar to my Sanford project, I simply lacked the time and experience like most scholars beginning in the field. I planned to have a map of Downtown Sanford on the splash page of my website and have each point connected to one building and its juxtaposition page and small narrative. It seems simple, but once it was mapped I was hoping to see patterns of change across the city, and compare the dates and trends of major changes to commercial buildings in Sanford. GIS seems to be good fit for a project like that because most of the buildings are already georeferenced for the sake of the Florida Master Site Files and the National Register. I can use the exact coordinates that have already been identified. I would love to be able to use a temporal-spatial interactive map such as the one shown above. I would love to find someway to have the historical photos display on the map if you hover over a point and then change into the next photo in it’s juxtaposition set when the timeline hits the year that a significant change was made to the building. 

Garrett’s Call for Collaboration: