The University of Iowa Libraries

      During the Great Depression, youth, a group young enough to be in school, while old enough to enter the workforce, worried American political leaders. The fear was that they would follow the path of youth in Germany or the Soviet Union and bring drastic change to the American political system. To alleviate the suffering of America’s younger generation, the Roosevelt administration created many youth-focused programs within the New Deal, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the National Youth Administration (NYA). These programs sought to aid youth by giving them work to do, money with which they could help support their families, and education. This educational component often involved retracing what youth missed from dropping out of school early, as well as providing vocational training to make them more competitive in a job market that was already teeming with qualified applicants. Along with academic and vocational education, the CCC and NYA often included civic education in their programming to promote youths’ commitment to American democracy and create a generation of engaged citizens. While the job training upset some labor unions, educators, and businessmen, it was the political education that created the largest concern over the work these youth facing programs were undertaking.

       During the mid to late 1930s, there was constant anxiety that the youth needed help to avoid Fascism and Communism, while simultaneously the New Deal efforts sometimes resembled European programs that indoctrinated youth. To gain a better understanding of everyday American’s view on these programs, I have been working on mapping the worksites of the NYA and CCC as they overlap with regions of Iowa intensely hit by the Depression. I intend to use the visualizations to understand more clearly how aid to youth on the ground materialized and highlight areas of disproportionate assistance or lack thereof.  

     I began by creating a spreadsheet of NYA and CCC reports, which included the site, sponsors, and number of youth working on the projects in Iowa. I showed this draft map to the director of the CCC/POW museum in Iowa; they mentioned they would love to have a version they could share with their visitors. Upon finding this out two weeks into my project, I realized that I need to start thinking of this project as a more free-standing project than as merely a visual component of my research findings. In modifying the narrative sections of my work, I’m finding that I can adapt my digital project that transmits information to varied audiences.

      The conversation with the museum led me to investigate similar mapping projects to try and get a better understanding of how they are structured and presented. In thinking about making a website or page, I am still concerned about the staying power of the project beyond my time at the University. I spoke with my advisor about possibilities, but ultimately, I think it is down to what the museum feels most comfortable using to ensure that the project gets used and I will be meeting again with them this week. I will continue work in the next few weeks to create a Storymap that tells both the broader history of the CCC and NYA but also shows Iowa specific projects and the conditions in Iowa that necessitated the programs. I imagine in the coming weeks I will also be exploring the basics of creating a website and gaining a better understanding of what all that would entail.  

-Luke Borland

 

Hi blog, Julianna here. This summer I’m working on a documentary film about my home state of Texas, hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), a pipeline headed for the border, and whatever happens when it reaches Mexico. I began production this spring and was going full steam ahead until, uh, real life intervened.

It happens.

One minute, you’re in your routine, caught up in the stuff of everyday life. Can I make it to the gym today? Why would a taco cost more than $3? What if I can’t get the rights to this footage? The next, you’re on a plane to a hospital 1,000 miles away.

Sometimes, something bad happens and it fades with time.
Sometimes, something bad happens and it draws a line through your life. 

There is before

 

---

 

and after.

Before, I might have spent these 500 words on minutiae: a tough edit, playing phone tag with an activist, the self-imposed stress to achieve on a timeline. After? These things feel so small because they are small. (And, let’s be honest: would you want to read that blog post?)

 

Stills, L to R: “Southwestern States” (1953), “The Army-Navy Screen Magazine 51: Report from Texas” (1945), “Home on the Range” (1942), courtesy of Prelinger Archives and Internet Archive.

I spent a week in an aging leather armchair in an East Coast STICU and then, adamant to stay on track, I left to film. In the fracking fields of West Texas, roiled by catcalls and wilting in 110°F heat, I began to see that what I was doing – squeezing my new life into the void left by my old one – wasn’t working out. 

As an aside: 110°F is astonishingly hot! It’s so hot that I wasn’t sure if my camera would work. (The operating temperature range of my Canon C100 is, roughly, 23°F to 113°F.) While I hope to not feel it again soon, the fact of the matter is that it will get hotter. Surrounded by pumpjacks, gas flares, and tankers barreling down Farm-to-Market roads, the Anthropocene was undeniable. Here, I was a witness to why the world as we know it is changing, and… it pushed me over the edge. 

I got in my car and yelled I DON’T NEED THIS RIGHT NOW!  Then I drove the 1,200 miles back to Iowa. 

 

Stills, L to R: Boomtown traffic at the lone gas station in Coyanosa, Texas.

 

The bad: I can’t edit my own footage this summer.
The good: because of the flexible nature of digital work, there’s still a lot I can do!

With the help of satellite imagery applications like Google Earth Pro, I’ve been exploring remote areas in West Texas and restricted places like gas plants and shale plays. To contrast past and present relationships with oil, I’ve been combing through news archives and pulling from public domain films.

 

Stills, L to R: Google Street View as featured in my film; “Our Texas Heritage” (1963), courtesy of Prelinger Archives. 

 

Though my film isn’t turning out how I thought, it’s okay: it’s becoming something else. Films aren’t made in a vacuum, and I believe that crisis and chaos can be turned into meaningful work.

More soon,
Julianna Villarosa

My name is Ramin Roshandel and I’m a 2nd-year PhD student in Music Composition. My summer project for the Studio comprised of two parts: first is the analytical part and the second is the compositional piece.

For the first stage of the first part, I’m analyzing the difference between microtonal Iranian intervals and western classical ones in terms of frequency. Except for the major and minor second, there are two other types of seconds in Iranian music which are different compared to western classical music; We will name them J and H. At this point, we have isolated 2-3 short recorded examples of these intervals from pre-recorded sound files so that we can find out what the exact frequency of those pitches is. These recordings will either be chosen from the well-known Iranian music maestros’ recordings or by playing them by myself on the setar (one of the Iranian classical instruments). In this research, analyzing the frequencies has been done by using two software: Audacity and Max/MSP. Also, for analyzing our sound files, I have used another software called Sonic Visualizer.

For instance, except for two types of intervals which are in common with western music (whole-step or whole-tone, and half-step or semi-tone), there are two other types of the interval “second” in Iranian classical music.
One is called “Mojannab” and it is almost ¾ of a step and the other is called “Taninee” which is 1¼ of a step.

w= Major 2nd or whole-step

hs= Minor 2nd or half-step

j≈ ¾ step

h≈1¼

 

 

Next, we played each of the tetrachords on the setar and recorded them. This way, we are able to get the plot spectrum for each frequency.

For example, after importing the recorded sound file into Audacity and getting the plot spectrum of it, we found out that the first strong peak is 297 Hz (shown above in the picture).

In the next level, we used another tool which is essentially a Max patch that converts the frequency to pitch for us. In other words, if we give the frequency as the input, this Max patch will give us the closest pitch (on the piano as a MIDI note) plus the number of cents it is far from the mentioned pitch. In this case, 297 Hz is a D4 which is 20 cents higher than D4 on the piano. As another example, if we take 321 Hz now, the result will be a sharpened D#4 (+54 cents).

 

Also, this patch has another ability that it can get two frequencies and calculate the interval between those two frequencies in semitones. As in this example, the interval between the first (321 Hz) and the second (351 Hz) pitches is about 1.54 meaning that it is 0.54 bigger than a semitone and it is interesting that this the exact amount of cents that we got in the previous paragraph.

These are the processes I have been going through in order to get the technical information for writing these intervals for the western classical instruments in the second part of the project.

-Ramin Roshandel

 

I’m Jeremy, a PhD student in Educational Psychology and the Learning Sciences. I study and design informal learning environments. This summer, with the help from the Studio, I am prototyping an app for a new exhibit at the Iowa Children’s Museum.

The project is built upon prior work with the Iowa Children’s Museum. I was fortunate to be able to work with their exhibit designers to help redesign on of their exhibits around the physics of skateboarding. Families love the new exhibit, but we noticed two things. First, some parents were unsure about the physics content and told us in interviews that since they were uncomfortable with the content, they did not try to engage with it. Second, many parents were pulling out their phones. Sometimes to take pictures or videos, sometimes to look up a physics term, and sometimes to play games. I thought an app might support parents engage with their children in the exhibit through activities they were already doing on their phone.

These first three weeks have seen many changes, revisions, and even the very first wireframe. I walked into the first week at the Studio expecting to learn how to code and make a rudimentary app by the end of the summer. Ethan helped me establish a more realistic goal that would help build my portfolio as an exhibit designer. Instead of being the person that codes the app from start to finish, I can create a wireframe and design documents that outline the content and functionality of the app and the graphical design decisions, doing everything short of making the actual app. Then someone with more coding expertise can make the app better than I could have.

The first step in the wireframe was coming up with content. Looking at other children’s museums apps, I noticed they mostly served as digital maps or handouts. I wanted something more interactive, a way to support parents and children learning and playing together as well as a way to interact with other families. I took a page out of science education and developed a three-step series for each exhibit element: Question, Observe, and Tell Others. Families can post and see other visitors’ questions, can use our in-app tools to gather and analyze data, and can share their new knowledge with anyone via pictures or videos.

Then started the iterations of prototypes. First, I made a flowchart of the visitor experience and how they would interact with the app.

Next, I turned that into a paper prototype with hand drawn buttons and labels. Finally, I made a first draft of the wireframe. People can click through the app and see where the content would be and initial design decisions, but most of the functionality still isn’t enabled and the graphic design is less than ideal.

Now begins the first round of user testing, followed by revisions, graphical design updates, more revisions, more user tests, and more design documents. Things are coming together, but there is so much left to go.

Cheers

Jeremy Dietmeier

The Tale of Genji, written in approximately year 1000, during Japan’s Heian Period, was penned by  Murasaki Shikibu, a mid ranking noble court lady who served the Empress.

Widely considered to be the world’s first real novel, it combines fictional characters, relationships and plot line with the very real intricacies of every day life at the Imperial Court. It can very easily be used as an in depth guide to the aesthetics of the Heian Period, since it includes detailed descriptions of kimono colors and patterns, incense making practices, poetry and the societal expectations for both men and women.

It’s a complex and convoluted piece of literature to say the least, and there aren’t many in depth resources available to English language students of the text,  so Part 1 of my project is my ongoing work to create a Wikipedia-esque reference website. The website, entitled Genjipedia, includes relevant information about characters as well as details about things like plants and animals.

Part 2 of my project, and what I’m focusing on mostly this summer, is the digital map I am creating. Since the text is based in the real world, it stands to reason that there many places visited by characters and/or mentioned in the prose and poetry. However, much of the focus of research regarding “place” in the text is focused on Heian-kyo (the capital). Now, much of the novel does take place within the city but, as I’m discovering as I page through this text looking for place names, there are so many more locations that are mentioned or visited by characters that it seems remiss not to look at how travel and place outside the capital are being used and interacted with in the story.

Currently I am making lists of locations and whether they are mentioned in prose, mentioned in poetry, or visited by a character. I am creating Excel spreadsheets to organize my information and am including chapter title and number (there are 54 chapters in total!), location name in text, other/current names, the passage the location is mentioned in and, if applicable, which character(s) visited there. The next step will be figuring out which places existed then and still exist, which places existed then but don’t/are different now, and which places just never existed in the first place and were made up for poetic purposes.  Some places I know I won’t be able to pin point exact locations for, but I’m hoping with extensive research using other premodern texts and research by other premodern scholars, I’ll be able to at least figure out a general idea of where something existed.

-Mac Gill

               Audiology is a profession that involves studying about sound, ear and hearing. An Audiologist works with individuals and families of individuals with hearing loss. My current research and the research that I wish to do in the future, involves older adults with hearing loss. My goal is to improve hearing aid outcomes for older adults with hearing loss, and to improve access to affordable hearing care.

               Through my research, I seek to add evidence-based results to the Audiology research repository. I hope that my research findings can be used by Clinicians and patients to make better decisions about their choice of hearing aids and gain more satisfaction from their devices. Thus, since my research area is very patient-centered, I want my research to be easily accessible and comprehensible to individuals with hearing loss. This was the impetus for my digital project.

               The aim of my project, thus, is to create a web interface to make my findings easily available to general public in a language that is easier to understand than journal articles. Designing a web page was relatively new to me. During the first few weeks, I discussed the purpose of my project with my studio point of contact, Ethan DeGross. He helped me come up with a more realistic plan of action. Thus, I decided to make a web page with a link to all my current and past research projects. I aim to continue adding to this web page as more results of the different projects become available, and also as I continue with my research journey in the future.

               Other questions that I had were about the consent required to display results from different studies. I received help to resolve these issues from the IRB office. Following this, I started the exciting process of designing my web page. I cannot say that this process has been completely hurdle-free, but with Ethan’s help, we have been able to resolve issues and I continue the journey to making this a very attractive and understandable tool.

               Moving on, I will add data from my past and current projects to the web page. I will also be learning about better visualization techniques in R which can facilitate the information transfer of the results of different studies to the audience. Professor Deborah Whaley brought up an interesting point which I hope to address during the course of the summer: this involves finding ways to attract more visitors to the web page, and I also hope to find better ways to disseminate these research findings to the population that will benefit from this research.

Soumya Venkitakrishnan

AuD student/ PhD candidate, University of Iowa

The importance of public art in American culture cannot be underestimated. It resides in public spaces as occasionally benign, sometimes celebrated, and at other times, downright inflammatory. Public art has the power to bring communities together and also has the power to divide them. It has the power to suspend moments in time and cement memories for all to see. For this project I have chosen to focus solely on athletic statuary as a distinct facet of public art and specifically I want to investigate the role of these statues in American culture.     

As a summer fellow at the Studio I am creating a digital project that aims to map the locations of various statuary depictions of athletes. The mapping project will also include visuals of each statue, its exact latitude and longitude, the year it was dedicated, and a small description of the athlete who is being depicted. The ultimate goal of this project is to engage themes of public art, bodies, space, and memory and how all of these notions converge through statues.

When I began to conceive this project I wanted to give myself guidelines and parameters as to what counted as athletic statuary. The various ways in which athletes have been remembered in public spaces has ranged from plaques at stadiums, to the renaming of parks and arenas in their honor, to simply retiring their jerseys. For this project I wanted to focus completely on a specific area of memorialization and with that I needed to craft guidelines for the things I would ultimately count as athletic statuary. During my first week at the Studio I spent time creating these boundaries and ultimately decided that the statues I put on the map must depict athlete’s bodies or body parts and they must reside outdoors. I decided to exclude coaches and other athletic personnel from my project. I aimed to make these distinctions to help myself narrow down the potential options, but also to emphasize the importance of the bodies of athletes in sport as well the importance of their bodies when commemorating them.

Upon entering the Studio and starting work on my project I have already greatly expanded the scope of my project.  I originally intended to include anywhere from 75-100 statues, with the hope that I would be able to locate that many and I am now up to 135 statues and counting. The larger number of statues has helped me to not only fill in my map more than I thought I would, but it has also helped me to begin to see some larger patterns within the commemoration of athletes. In addition to the number of statues, I have also added a time element to my map. I was able to find many of the dates that these statues were dedicated and where these original dedications took place. This has been important because it has offered an insight into the popularity of such works as well as provided a larger context for athlete’s inclusion within the broader umbrella of public art. The newest addition to my ever-changing project has been a WordPress site that will be attached to my map. This site will include longer narratives of the athletes who are depicted, their importance in a larger cultural context, and the importance of the placement and location of their commemorative statues. I think this decision to add a WordPress site was so important because it has given me the freedom to contextualize my project that I did not think was possible with a mapping project.

                      

With the remaining weeks of the summer fellowship I hope to be able to further adjust my project and continue to add more and more detail to my map and associated WordPress site. I also hope to be able to gain a deeper understanding of the digital humanities as a whole and how best to integrate this sort of technology based work into my more traditional understandings of scholarship.

-Ashley Loup