The primary focus of Adrian S. Wisnicki’s project, Livingstone’s 1871 Field Diary, is preservation. Due to not having the proper technology, David Livingstone’s field diary had remained unpublished and inaccessible. By using spectral imaging and processing technology, the project team was able to decipher what was written in the original diary. Preservation is one of the most important topics when dealing with digital humanities. If we are not able to preserve the old texts, then we will never be able to transcribe them, meaning we will never get to read them. Preservation does not come with just old diaries, such as in the case of David Livingstone, but also with historical maps and records.
The primary focus of the project, Selfiecity, is visualization. By obtaining selfies from thousands of people worldwide and compressing them into a collage, it becomes possible to analyze demographic patterns of selfies. It may seem unnecessary to study selfies of people, but interesting findings have come out of the project – one finding being happiness. Of the cities studied, Bangkok has the highest ‘smile rating’ with 68% of selfies being smiles whereas Moscow had a 53% smile rating. In a study of social media patterns, it was very smart for the Selfiecity group to use the visualization method. Currently, Snapchat and Instagram comprise a large portion of social media where both medias are about posting or taking pictures of yourself. It would be much harder for Selfiecity to explain their findings if they did not have photographic evidence to back up their findings.
Mitch Gavars is a student at Bucknell University where he is a part of the swim team. Mitch is from Barrington, IL and has one sister. His favorite movie is Aladdin.
