This week has really made me realize how much I need to buckle down and get to work on my data collection and building the tools. I think right now I need to work on building a web scraper to get collect all the Supreme Court documents I need online, and put them into text files for each justice. I found a website in which the URL of each case mimics the docket number, so now I just need to write a code that will collect the documents. This should be fairly easy to do, but I will need help from computer science professors. However, that is what I will spend most of this week doing. Since I already have a lot of my research done and some of my literature review written (because my outline consisted of parts of my literature review), it shouldn’t be too hard to dedicate my time to building the code for this part of the project. After that, I just need to run the topic modeling analysis on MALLET—which I already did with the sample text MALLET came with. So, that should be fairly easy to put together. My goal for the end of the week is to have successfully collected by data and to begin the analysis.

I have been increasingly frustrated with using google maps. The more I try to do with it the more I feel it is not going to be the path I want to take for my project. I have begun working with Tableau and using that to generate maps. I really like tableau although it is also challenging to use. At least with tableau I am satisfied with the way the map is starting to look. I have input data for endangered species from 2008 and 2015 for all countries and islands. Now when you scroll over the countries it displays this information with the percent increase for the number of endangered species. I am currently working on trying to figure out how to create different colors for the percent increase for each country. I want to code the map based on which countries are experiencing the most species under threat. So I am currently working on trying to figure out the best way to do that. In addition to that I want to create a graph that interacts with the map. Tableau allows you to do this but I am having difficulty so far generating one. I plan to keep reviewing the instructional videos to figure out how to create a graph the way I want it. The only other challenge I am facing is having too much information and narrowing it all down to be more concise. I am trying to include a human factor to show why all of my data has increased over the past 7 years so I am thinking of incorporating not only human population, but maybe deforestation and pollution/emissions data as well.

Iran is a dense country, dense in the most endearing sense however. The more I explore the nuances of Iranian politics, history, culture, the more forceful is the realization that there is a dearth of concepts that I am yet to flirt with. The better part of my previous week was spent willingly engulfed in the infinitely deep oasis of Iranian polity. The complexity of the intersection of politics, religion and culture in the Iranian scenario is enticing . The political structure in Iran is unlike any other, unprecedented in its formulation, robust in its ideology, and yet constantly at friction with itself. At this juncture of my research, it appears to become increasingly clear that an analytical model tailored specifically for the Iranian political structure is the only way to reach the uncharted depths of Iranian political culture.

Having elaborated much on the gains of the week, I must admit to some innocent sluggishness on the ‘technical’ front. Technologically almost illiterate, I, understandably, am nervous. Particularly testing is the realization that in Digital Humanities, much like other academic ventures, the mode of presentation is as significant as the content. While writing is a devil that I have managed to befriend, technology continues to be the ‘first crush’ that is forever elusive. But I shall not surrender.

A few attempts at understanding the tools through which my project will come alive in the digital world were mildly successful. I plan to capitalize on such mild successes in the technical aspect which hopefully will culminate into an attractive, effective digital project.

Although the past week has unearthed technical roadblocks, it has happened only in good spirit. Moreover, treading in Iranian waters, I am relieved to say, our ship has set sail.  

After reviewing many of the poems of William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot, I have fallen even more in love with my topic. The theoretical conception of my authorial and influence theory has been well under way for months. Thus, I have been working to clean poems for analysis by tools, such as Voyant. Although the cleaning of work-sheets has proven tedious and meticulous work, I am excited to get the analysis. This analysis would not be possible without an inordinate amount of time that is by analyzing every work by hand. However, I do worry that my lack of technical ability may cause me to falter. However, I think that is the “fear of only empty men.” I will continue to hone my skills and develop computer knowledge. The one thing I am thinking about is whether the analysis proves my theoretical concept, or is the work of the author more important? This question and how to structure my paper will plague my mind for the remaining planning weeks. –Joe Bronzo

Reflection 2- Narrative of Electronic Music Synthesis

After researching many different forms of electronic music synthesis, I have realized that it would be impractical to include all of my findings in a catch-all timeline as I wanted to before. One large timeline with all of the researchable types of synthesis would be a huge undertaking. With the amount of odd and/or underused forms of synthesis a timeline like this would have with scattered pieces of anecdotal information and would be lacking an easily accessible “story arch.” Instead, I have decided that it will be more feasible and effective to chose a few types of synthesis that have made significant impacts in music and music industry. I will use a scalar book to portray each different type of synthesis in an interactive semi-linear narrative with each form of synthesis as a chapter, containing a digital representation/ explanatory model explaining how this form of synthesis works, a composition demonstrating the sonic character of that form of synthesis, and an interactive timeline highlighting key historical points in music pieces and music industry.

I have had difficulty choosing some of the forms of synthesis to represent in my narrative. Because I will be constructing a narrative of synthesis that is inherently incomplete, I must be very careful in choosing which forms of synthesis to include so that they represent reality as nearly as possible. I have already identified most of the types I will use because they are clearly seminal to this narrative and easily distinguishable: Analog Subtractive synthesis, Frequency Modulation synthesis, Sample-based synthesis, and Physical Modeling synthesis. However, I have a general confusion about the distinctions between Digital Waveguide synthesis, Advanced Vector synthesis (Wavestation synthesis), and Wavetable synthesis that I need to reconcile. These forms are not only similar in name but also in the sounds they create and the basic technological principles at work. Digital Waveguide synthesis seems to be closely tied to Physical Modeling synthesis, while Wavetable synthesis is a real-time form of Additive synthesis in effect. I am still trying to find the proper terminology to represent the essence of these technologies in one simplified section.

I have discovered a general trend in the most popular forms of synthesis in my research. Each popular form of synthesis became popular largely because it could create new and more realistic sounds than its predecessor. The trend is true for the progression from Analog, to FM, to Sample-based, to Physical Modeling. While electronic musicians have been known to rush to the “next-big-thing,” in recent years there has been a huge industry shift catering to the widespread nostalgia for “that classic analog sound.” The most technologically advanced form of synthesis, Physical Modeling synthesis, is used to replicate the sound of analog synthesizers in ever-increasing detail in both hardware and software synthesizers called Virtual Analog synthesizers. With the release of the Yamaha Montage and Korg Volca FM this year, the market is also moving to cater to the growing nostalgia for the FM sound that dominated the 1980s.

Older forms of synthesis such as analog or FM do not exist compartmentalized into different periods of time. Writing about synthesizers as if they exist in one singular form in one era is similar to writing in the ethnographic present in anthropology. These older technologies are integral to the current state of the music industry. Companies and musicians alike are actively searching to replicate the classic sounds of previous eras and innovate upon these technologies. I have chosen to represent each popular form of synthesis in chapters to create an easily accessible and comprehendible narrative of the progression of synthesis but this could create the illusion of each form of synthesis compartmentalized to an era. I will use the interactive timeline in each chapter to show the different incarnations and innovations of each form of synthesis up to the present in order to dispel this illusion.

As the due date for this project comes close, and every article I read opens up new avenues for research, I feel overwhelmed with amount of reading I have to do. However, while I still need to do more research, I think I have created a good outline for my project, and established the different avenues of research I need to look into. As I read more and more scholarly articles and books, I am noticing tangible steps forward in my familiarity with the names of prominent scholars and theories. These improvements in my fluidity with scholarly language encourage me to read more, and make my reading list seem less overwhelming. Overall, I think these first couple weeks—familiarizing myself with the literature and designing the project—will be the most challenging.

I look forward to building my research tools and coding. I hope to start doing that after I create a solid theoretical basis for my research and write a literature review. Of course, there will stumbling blocks along the way, but I think this process will be—for the most part—enjoyable, since it will combine a lot of my different interdisciplinary interests. It will also allow me to build skills I want to develop to produce the best project possible.

But for now—with the goal of focusing more on the tools needed to build my project in the future—I feel the need to keep reading as much of the literature as possible. While I will look into what tools I will use as part of my research process, the project’s final design will not come until later.

In the past week, my project has finally been taking shape into something where all the parts seem to be falling into place. By choosing my focus to be student activism as seen through The Lafayette, I have found purpose and academic placement for my project. I have spent my first week doing a number of productive things. I have found a lot of excellent primary and secondary sources about student activism in the US and at Lafayette, which has led to me narrowing down the years I plan on using.

After meeting with Diane Shaw, I also have some great resources on my hand. I have good primary/secondary sources about my topic in the context of Lafayette. Additionally, the index about the Lafayette and social-issue related articles is going to be extremely useful and gives me more time to focus on the rest of the project. From this point on, I have some clear-cut work to do. I will continue to do background research, particularly finding article on the modern state of student activism. I also want to make edits to the already created index to adjust it to what I want to focus on, and also to go through and double check the articles they included. I also will be making a modern index. I also discovered a cool tool call Cytoscape which looks like it will lend itself nicely to the type of topic modeling I want to do. However, I definitely need to mess around with it more and I anticipate that it will take some time to get it to do what I want. Overall, things are going well and I feel more secure in what I am doing and what my next steps should be.

My personal and intellectual curiosity for this topic has been a strong source of motivation in keeping up with my research. There are numerous ways in which I can approach this project, and finally finding some direction by choosing a timeline has made me feel more confident in facing the upcoming weeks. In this past week I have come across tons of valuable information that is helping me turn my ideas into an actual website. Another big source of inspiration is that my research will not stop after the program is over as I plan to use this information towards a larger project about Yemeni diaspora in the Indian Ocean. For the larger project my argument will be more concerning ideas of identity and home rather than globalization, but nonetheless learning the history behind the contemporary Yemeni diaspora has been extremely useful.

The Project Review assignment was also a useful experience. Seeing different ways in which Digital Humanists organized their information and utilized different tools has made me think less about the research content and more about how I plan to convey the information. While both are important, I feel that the visual data–especially the mapping–is more important than the textual information I have been compiling. While the software I am using for my site looks sort of bland, I have been trying to be realistic given the short amount of time we have left. For the next upcoming weeks, I will most likely have to make more sacrifices for the sake of time, but I don’t plan on letting that get in the way of creating a great project.