Abstract

The bandura, a large, lute-like instrument, is Ukraine’s national instrument and a symbol of resistance. The bandura developed from the kobza, a smaller lute-like instrument over the centuries. After the massacre of the kobzars – nomadic​,​ often blind​,​ musicians and storytellers who played the bandura or its predecessor – by the Soviets in the 1930s, the instrument was brought to the United States​​. Since then, ensembles have formed across the country, and bandura communities continue to this day. This project aims to explore modern Ukrainian American musical identity by digitizing musical programs from the Women’s Bandura Ensemble of North America (WBENA) from their founding in 2015 to today in an archive. This archive, powered by the Wax framework, will include recordings where available as well as tags for composers, country of origin, themes, tempo, genre, presence of religion, and language. The team will be working closely with a member of the ensemble for acquisition, publication, and context of the programs and will proceed in publication of this archive only with tacit approval from the Ensemble Board. This website will also include a section on the history of women playing the instrument, meditating on the intersection of gender, diaspora, and Ukrainian identity in a time in which that identity is under threat. 

 List of Participants 

• Project Lead / Backend Developer / Assistant Researcher – Anastasia Hutnick 

• Frontend Developer / (Internal) Dev-Ed Lead – Alex Millatmal 

• Researcher / Assistant Content Editor / Development Shadow – Lini Radhakrishnan 

• Researcher 2 / Content Editor / Social Media Specialist – Melissa McDonald   

• WBENA Liaison – Teryn Kuzma

Enhancing the Humanities 

Brief History of the Bandura 

The bandura is a large wooden stringed instrument, played similarly to a harp or a lute, that is native to Ukraine. The instrument has typically fifty-five to sixty-five strings, though it may have as few as twenty in the Classical style (“About the Bandura”). It derives from its instrumental ancestor the kobza, a smaller, more lute-like instrument. The kobza has been prominent in Ukrainian culture since at least the 15th century, with mentions of a lute-like instrument as early as the 6th century (“The Bandura”). Through the kobza and bandura, musicians (typically blind men) would carry on Ukraine’s independent identity through songs of its folklore, history, Chumaks (merchant, typically of salt), Cossacks, and legends. Due to these instruments’ pivotal role in perpetuating Ukrainian culture, any group that would conquer Ukraine would attempt to suppress or restrict kobzars / bandurists (Berezutskaya, 498 – 502). 

In this vein, the Soviet Union targeted bandurists in the late 1920s to 1930s. In 1929, the Bolsheviks began the “purges”: shooting, imprisoning, and exiling several bandurists to Siberia for their “counterrevolutionary” efforts in performing traditionally Ukrainian historical and folk songs. In 1930 – 1932, many bandurists died along with millions of other Ukrainians during the artificial famine, the Holodomor, enacted by the Soviets (Berezutska 55). Throughout the 1930s, Soviet persecution of bandurists continued, including the famous 1935 kobzari conference in Kharkiv, in which the Soviets executed the attendees (“The Bandura”). As a result, some bandurists fled to Western Europe and then the United States. In Detroit, Michigan, the first North American kapelia (ensemble) began from these Ukrainian emigrants. From here, the North American history of the bandura officially began (Ostashewski 126). 

Ostashewki argues that although the bandura is a “traditional” instrument, it has been retranslated, even physically reconstructed, and is now played in new contexts, with new repertoires, and by women. She goes on to say, “its nationalist image essentially portrays what it means to be Ukrainian” (Ostashewski 128). In order to justify his invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin said “it should be noted that Ukraine actually never had stable traditions of real statehood” (Hayda).   

The Women’s Bandura Ensemble of North America 

​​​​​This project will publish the programs of the Women’s Bandura Ensemble of North America (WBENA) from its founding in 2015 to the present on its own dedicated website. The ensemble is comprised of twenty-one women from seven different cities across the United States and Canada. The WBENA was chosen to examine the song choices of a North American bandura ensemble as well as the song choices of an all-female bandura ensemble, as the bandura is largely considered a male-coded instrument due to the kobzars traditionally being male (Ostashewski 143).  

Meanwhile in Ukraine, the Soviets institutionalized the instrument by only allowing bandura to be played in the conservatory. In so doing, the bandura would not perpetuate Ukrainian cultural sovereignty, but instead would be used to perform Neo-Classical music. Women became the main performers of this style, as men playing the bandura at this time would have risked persecution. After Ukraine became independent in 1991, Ukrainian folklore and tradition became a cornerstone for its reclaimed national identity. This focus on tradition can intertwine strongly with gender expectations, especially with the bandura. At this time, while women were playing the bandura, many people expected women to follow certain themes, such as courtship, seasons, nature, and work in the fields, and not play dumy – or epic poetry. Opportunities for women to play bandura beyond the conservatories or coeducational camps were scarce (Ostashewski). 

Today, the bandura endures and is played across the world by people of all genders in multiple styles. Yet, the tradition of bandura speaks to the enduring strength of Ukraine’s identity and sovereignty. The instrument survived countless invasions and spread throughout the globe. The bandura connects people of Ukrainian descent to their heritage, and continues to pass down Ukraine’s unique history to this day.   

Overview of Project 

For this project, PDFs for each program will be uploaded to the site and more information provided on each document and song performed via Wax, a Jekyll based website framework. The website will contain collections for both the Programs and Songs generated by a csv file with relevant information obtained by the project’s Researchers. Wax was selected because it is free to use, can be deployed for free through GitHub Pages, and is lightweight given the project’s relatively small file footprint.  

This framework fits the four questions of minimal computing posed by Roopika Risam and Alex Gil. Minimal computing refers to the Digital Humanities concept that a project’s software should reflect only what the project requires. Given that the team has three months to finish phase one of this project, we would do well to work within a set of clear boundaries without excess features to slow down our progress. For context, the four questions of minimal computing are “What do we need?”, “What do we have?”, “What do we need to prioritize?”, and “What are we willing to give up?” For this project, the team needs to be able to relatively quickly assemble two small static databases and generate pages for each item on both databases. The team has a Project Lead who is familiar with the Wax framework as well as sixteen PDF documents of concert programs. The team must prioritize both efficiency in their timelines and clear and open communication with the WBENA. Given Wax’s quick ability to generate pages and deploy via GitHub Pages, sharing the results of the site will not be difficult. Finally, the project does not require an expensive, dynamic database given that the ensemble performs a few times per year, so we are willing to give up that functionality. 

For each program, the website will provide a PDF that the user can flip through as well as the date(s), location(s), performers, and if applicable collaborators. Each program will also list the songs performed (roughly 10 – 15 per performance), each of which will have their own page detailing where applicable the composer, the year / period published, the country of origin, language, genre(s), tempo, lyrics, and themes.  

Though the information tags are considered guidelines for the site’s database, the team will not be beholden to standardization in song identification where necessary. A song may not have one origin, may have nuances in its themes that cannot be replicated, etcetera. While the Wax framework requires some efficiency, the project requires the team to avoid reductiveness and respect the nonscalable aspects of songs harkening from a centuries-old oral tradition (Rawson and Muñoz). As such, the team will craft the csv structure at the end of the Research Phase, constructing the table to reflect the team’s findings.  

The first phase will focus on deploying the website with two programs and respective song pages populated as a minimum viable product. Throughout the process, the team will meet with the WBENA and present wireframes of the webpages for their approval. The team will draft an agreement that assures WBENA of transparency at every stage of the project to avoid any inaccuracies/ misrepresentations in the content and will include decision making processes as well as conflict resolution strategies to ensure the project stays on track. As Christen and Anderson advocate in “Toward Slow Archives,” the team will focus on their relationship with the community of origin (the WBENA), ensuring that the ensemble has the right to refusal concerning what is published about their repertoire, their history, and their performances (107). The team aims to collaborate with the ensemble rather than to speak for them.  

Environmental Scan 

Currently, we have not found a digital archive of a series of programs with background information on each song performed, regardless of whether these programs were for a bandura ensemble. The existing site for the WBENA presents the history of the bandura, information on its founding, introduction to its members, and a brief log of their past and upcoming performances. The closest archive to Bandurapedia at this moment appears to be the website for the CD recording of the bandura concert “Songs of Truth” by Julian Kytasty. For this website, The Word & Image Studio in partnership with The Centre for Cape Breton Studies at Cape Breton University published a brief history of the bandura, program notes and lyrics in Ukrainian and English for each of the songs on the CD, a brief biography for Julian Kytasty, videos of his performances, educational materials for bandurists, and a blog for the site’s ongoing development. Bandurapedia, like “Songs of Truth”, seeks to provide more context to songs played on the bandura by a particular artist / group.  

Unlike Songs of Truth, Bandurapedia has a larger scope and seeks to encourage more interactivity between the songs covered. Bandurapedia ultimately seeks to record the songs and program information for each of the WBENA’s performances. With this larger performance timeframe, Bandurapedia’s song page structure would focus more on providing points of categorical comparison – such as themes, genre, origin, etc. – than Songs of Truth’s brief history integrated with personal reflection in a singular editorial paragraph. However, Songs of Truth’s more familiar tone and content reminds the team to avoid being too clinical in its song summaries and to leave room for each song’s complex history.  

Besides Songs of Truth, the three types of websites most similar in concept to Bandurapedia fall under the categories of Bandura History, Program Archives, and Music Archives. Bandura ensembles – such as the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus of North America, the Hryhory Kytasty Cleveland School or Bandura, and the WBENA – typically include brief histories of the instrument and its players, from its cultural importance to Ukraine, development, arrival in North America, and current classifications. Given that the WBENA already provides a brief history of the bandura on its website, the team will seek permission to include links to the WBENA site for information on the history to avoid duplication. Any additional context required will be either provided on the song pages or a more general About page. 

Most Program Archives, such as the ones belonging to the London Symphony Orchestra or university music programs such as the University of Alabama’s School of Music, contain a digitized version of the program arranged by date and musical genre. Unlike Bandurapedia, they do not contain any song information that is not already provided by the program, although the London Symphony Orchestra includes an article pertaining to each song in its program. However, given the size of the organizations’ collections and number of resources that such creating an archive would entail, these archives’ simplicity is by design. The University of Alabama’s archive in particular is well designed for ease of access and provides the user with programs from twenty different genres and ensembles. Bandurapedia, on the other hand, is designed to provide more context to the existing programs, dedicating its resources only to this goal. For this reason, Bandurapedia exists as a separate website rather than as a tab on an existing site. 

Similarly, most music archives, such as those found in the Library of Congress or Internet Archive, exist to provide context and/or audio recordings for specific songs or albums. Unless the album is itself archived on the website, such as Ola Herasymenko Oliynyk – Ukrainian Bandura in Concert in the Internet Archive, each song is typically isolated. Context provided can vary from only providing topics to the Library of Congress’s more robust classification system, providing information such as title, performers, genres, topics, notes, location, language, etc. However, the tags provided to the songs can be vague, such as its collection which contains over one thousand items or topics such as “Ukrainian Americans,” which contains various media and topics not strictly related to the piece itself. Again, given the scope and resources of these archives, the broad categorization is part of its design.  Bandurapedia, like the Library of Congress, seeks to provide clear background information about each song, but also will provide more connections between the songs and performances. 

Work Plan 

Overview 

The first phase of the project serves to deploy a minimum viable product version of the site. Over the Spring semester (roughly mid-February to early-May 2025), the team will launch the website on GitHub Pages containing two program pages and pages for each song within those programs. An About section will also be provided with a brief overview of the project, any necessary historical or cultural context, names of the contributors, and links to the WBENA site for any relevant information such as the instrument’s history (subject to approval from the ensemble). 

The second phase of the project involves adding the rest of the programs and their songs into the already existing framework. The Project Lead will add the rest of the Program PDFs and songs to the framework, not including the context. This phase is intended to be completed by the end of May 2025.  

The final phase of the project will include adding the rest of the context to the Song Pages. Only the Project Lead will be working on this phase of the project with 14 additional programs containing songs to research; however, the Ensemble does often keep most of the same repertoire from performance to performance. Given these factors, this phase will likely conclude by 2026.  

The Project Lead will stay on to aid the Ensemble in running the site after these phases end. The Ensemble will also have full access to the site’s GitHub repository. 

Below are the steps to Phase 1 of the project: 

February to March 2025 – Song Research and Development Education Design 

The first month of the project is dedicated to compiling notes for the two programs and approximately 20 songs, split amongst the two researchers. For programs, the researchers will record the name of the concert, its location(s), the date(s), any collaborators if applicable, the performers’ names, the song titles, any other notes, and the PDF file path. For songs, the researchers will record where available the title, composer, original year or period, language, location of origin, genre, themes, tempo, description, YouTube link, lyrics, and soloists. The researchers will also be free to record any other relevant or interesting information that they find for the song. Given that the team will unlikely be able to read in Ukrainian, interviews with the WBENA will be essential for this research. The WBENA has generously offered to share their records available on google drive with the team which will be an invaluable source for research. The wireframes will be created, the group agreement will be shared and the team will seek approval from WBENA within this period.   

Late March to Early April 2025 – Backend Development  

Towards the end of the Research step, the Backend Developer will begin assembling the csv structure that will power the site. Towards the end of the Backend Development period, the Backend Developer will work with the Frontend Developer to confirm the information provided and needed for the user interface. The Developers will also generate and briefly deploy sample pages at this time to ensure that the csv is connected properly. 

Mid-March to April 2025 – Frontend Development 

As a part of research and development, in coordination with the WBENA, the Frontend Developer and Project Lead will produce wireframes for the WBENA liaison review. On receipt of the wireframe approvals, some tasks of the Frontend development will be initiated and run parallel to the Backend development, with use of placeholder data. 

Towards the end of the Backend development step, the Frontend Developer will add higher-fidelity to the site UI/UX, with the Researchers aiding in finding images and other material for site content. The Frontend Developer will also collaborate with the Backend Developer to ensure that all the information required for this design is available to them. The Frontend Developer will then collaborate with the Content Editor to incorporate the content for the site. The Frontend Developer will work under a model of deploying often to production, to ensure that the site behaves as expected. 

April 2025 – Women’s Bandura History Research 

At this time, the team will turn their attention to researching the history of Women playing Bandura to publish on its own page at the request of the WBENA. This time has been chosen since the WBENA will have finished their March concert series, and the team will have assembled the back-end for the song pages. This research will be inserted into its own static page featured in the About tab. 

May 2025 – Revisions, Testing, and Deployment 

After the completion of Frontend Development, the team will take the WBENA through the MVP of the site and resolve any edits provided. Once the WBENA is comfortable that the outcome has stayed true to the approved wireframes and okayed any minor deviations, the team will test all pages and links locally before deploying the site and testing all pages and links publicly for bugs or errors.   

Phase 1 Note 

Throughout the development process, we will have weekly check-ins with our liaison Teryn, and we aim to meet with the Ensemble Board at least once per phase / month. We will defer to the Ensemble Board’s schedule as they are preparing for a show in April. We will also have a standing agreement with the WBENA outlining expectations for both sides. In addition, the Ensemble will have full visibility into each phase of development as well as all our documents.   

Staff / Partners 

Project Lead / Backend Developer / Assistant Researcher – Anastasia Hutnick 

The Project Lead will keep track of the team’s progress and assist to ensure that they stay on schedule and will act as point of contact for the WBENA. The Backend Developer will create a basic csv-based infrastructure for the site from the Researchers’ findings and provide the internal database from which the Frontend Developer will create the site design. She has previous experience with the Wax framework as well as HTML, CSS, and GitHub Pages deployment. She will mentor the Researchers in creating the tables in Wax, will assist the Researchers where possible, and also seeks to learn Search Engine Optimization to benefit the website. 

Frontend Developer / (Internal) Dev-Ed Lead – Alex Millatmal 

The Frontend Developer will be responsible for the aesthetic design of the website and will program the graphical user interface (GUI) using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. She will coordinate with the Backend Developer to ensure that the infrastructure is optimized for the GUI. 

Alex will also take on designing low-lift learning opportunities for the team members who want to shadow development, in a way that builds upon and incorporates existing workstreams. Examples include: sequencing work to include well-defined, beginner- friendly implementation tickets; pair/group code reviews; pairing sessions; and further resource/reading curation. 

Researcher / Assistant Content Editor / Development Shadow – Lini Radhakrishnan 

The researcher will refer to the shared WBENA google drive contents and any other research sources to compile notes on the programs and songs. Lini will also assist the Content Editor/ Social Media Specialist in copyediting the site content and content creation for outreach. In order to understand the application of the Wax framework and the user interface, Lini will shadow the developers and develop allocated portions of the code.   

Researcher 2 / Content Editor/Social Media Specialist – Melissa McDonald  

The second researcher will also refer to the shared WBENA Google drive contents and any other research sources and compile notes on the programs, songs, and women in bandura. They will also write social media posts and any outreach correspondence with assistance from Lini. They will shadow the backend and frontend developers. 

WBENA Liaison – Teryn Kuzma 

Teryn Kuzma is a current member and Concertmaster of the Women’s Bandura Ensemble of North America. She will serve as liaison between the Ensemble Board and the Project Team. The Team will ensure consistent communication with the Ensemble Board and will not publicize any material without their approval. 

Final Project and Dissemination 

The final project will be deployed as its own GitHub Pages site and will be shared on the WBENA website. The Project Lead will coordinate publicization on social media with WBENA and will also reach out to organizations such as the Ukrainian Museum in Manhattan and the Ukrainian History Education and Cultural Center of New Jersey for them to share on their sites and social media.  

Within the CUNY network, the Project Lead will also reach out to the Ethnomusicology department at the Graduate Center and the Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies scholars at CUNY to share the site through their internal communications and social media as well.   

Works Cited 

“15 December Programme.” London Symphony Orchestra, 2024, https://www.lso.co.uk/15-december-programme/ 

“About the Bandura.” The Hryhory Kytasty Cleveland School of Bandura. 2021, https://www.hkbanduraschool.org/about-the-bandura 11 December 2024 

Berezutska, Maryna, “The Development of Bandura Music Art Between the 1920s and 1940s.” Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics, 2020, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 44 – 66, https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2020-0015. 11 December 2024 

Berezutskaya, Marina. “The History of Bandura Art or How Bandura Became the Musical Symbol of the Ukrainian Nation.” National Identities, vol. 23, no. 5, 2021, pp. 491–509, https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2020.1779207. 

Christen, K. and J. Anderson. “Toward slow archives.” Arch Sci vol. 19, pp. 87–116 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-019-09307-x  

Hayda, Julian. “War isn’t dampening artists’ determination to revive Indigenous Ukrainian music.” NPR. 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/04/17/1093264993/war-isnt-dampening- artists-determination-to-revive-indigenous-ukrainian-music13 . February 2025 

Herasymenko-Oliynyk, Ola. “Ukrainian Bandura in Concert.” Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/ola-herasymenko-oliynyk-ukrainian-bandura-in- concert_202411. 11 December 2024  

Kytasty, Julian and Marcia Ostashewski. “Songs.” Songs of Truth: Music and Song from the Kobzar Tradition. 2015, http://soundcommunities.org/archives/songs-of-truth/index.html.  

11 December 2024. 

Ostashewski, Marcia. “Women Playing the Bandura: Challenging Discourses of Nationhood.” Ethnologies, vol. 23, no. 1, July 2001, pp. 123–45. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.comlogin.aspxdirect=true&db=hus&AN=510040971&site=ehost-live.  

“Program Archive – School of Music.” University of Alabama School of Music. 2024. https://music.ua.edu/program-archive-2/. 11 December 2024 

Rawson, Katie and Trevor Muñoz, “Against Cleaning” Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019, ed. Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein. 2019 

Risam, Roopika and Alex Gil. “Introduction: The Questions of Minimal Computing.” Digital Humanities Quarterly Vol 16.2, 2022 

“The Bandura.” Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus of North America. 2021, https://www.bandura.org/ bandura-history11 December 2024 

​​“Women’s Bandura Ensemble of North America.” 2023,  https://www.banduristka.org/. 11 December 2024.​​​ 

Abstract

Carousels evoke joy and nostalgia, drawing people across diverse backgrounds, yet their placement is often restricted to wealthier neighborhoods, limiting accessibility for many communities. This project seeks to explore and address these disparities through an interactive digital exhibit and mapping tool that visualizes carousel locations throughout New York City. Each carousel pin will feature practical information about the carousel including fee structures and visitor policies with layers to highlight neighborhood demographics such as income levels and density of homes with children across the city. Through this mapping and analysis, the project aims not only to illuminate existing spatial inequities but also to serve as a resource for families to discover accessible carousel options. The project will conclude with a reflective analysis offering recommendations for a more equitable distribution of carousels, inclusive fee structures, and enhanced community engagement strategies for future carousel installations in NYC.

List of Participants

• Project Manager: Kelly Karst
• Digital cartographer: Carla Ordonez, Leonard Santos
• Photographer(s): Leonard Santos
• Data analyst: Carla Ordonez
• Field workers: All staff members
• Website Developer: Kelly Karst, Leonard Santos
• Social Media: Julissa Russo
• Graphic Design: Julissa Russo

Narrative

Enhancing the humanities through innovation

Carousels have brought joy to New Yorkers since the 1840s, with the first two installed in the now-lost amusement parks of Vauxhall Gardens and Jones Woods (Bartash-Dawley). Today, carousels can be found across New York City’s five boroughs, though they are notably concentrated in Manhattan and Brooklyn, often in affluent neighborhoods. While these carousels appear on digital mapping platforms like Google Maps, these platforms do not offer a comprehensive view to easily identify carousel locations or provide logistical details such as fees and policies, which vary from one carousel to another.

The NYC Carousel Mapping Project seeks to address these gaps by creating an accessible, interactive map using ArcGIS that highlights where carousels are located and, crucially, where they are missing. This map will overlay socio-economic data—such as income levels and the density of households with children—to identify areas in need of carousels or other low-cost recreational spaces. Evidence shows that accessible recreation is vital for community well-being (Sullivan and Chang) and social equity (Beck, et al.l), while newer carousels themselves have been tied to larger projects to increase their neighboring real estate value (Bagli), (Ronderos, et al.), (Rosin) . With the City of Yes legislative initiatives promoting urban development, now is the ideal moment to advocate for these spaces.

In addition to serving as a tool for urban planners and policymakers, the project will benefit local families, visiting families, and carousel enthusiasts by simplifying the process of planning carousel visits across the city. The platform will be hosted on WordPress and designed to work on computers or mobile devices with an intuitive design where users will see a map with pinned markers for each carousel. When clicking on the pins users will see a summary of information including an image of the carousel, the name of the carousel, date created, borough/neighborhood, fee structure, important carousel policies, and a link to input directions. An optional layer can be clicked to see how the carousel locations land along income lines and homes with children based on information found on NYC Open Data and the NYC Population Fact Finder.

Environmental Scan

This sort of project falls under the cultural asset mapping method which has been utilized a number of times, and sufficient documentation exists on incorporating this methodology. In that vein, carousel maps exist such as Carousel History’s Operating Historic Carousels – North America and Historic Lost Carousels – 1880s – Present and the National Carousel Association’s Carousel Census Map which utilize INEGI/Google Maps. However, these maps do not focus specifically on New York City, and are limited to “historic” carousels, and therefore do not include all the carousels currently in operation. The pinned information is limited and their purpose is to complement the larger website which celebrates the historicity and artistic value of the carousels, rather than providing practical information for potential visitors or those seeking to develop recreational facilities.

The HueArts NYC Map & Directory which maps art entities founded and led by people of color in New York City. This project utilized ArcGIS to create an interactive map whose pins symbolically represent the art discipline of the art entity (ie: Music, Dance, Art Gallery, Literary Arts, etc.) on a map of New York City’s five boroughs. Users can either search by keyword to locate art entities, browse through a provided list, or browse through the map pins. Each pin includes a small amount of supplementary information about the art art entity such as the community it serves, its location, and website. This collaborative project came through to fulfill a need to highlight art entities by people of color in the city, while also providing data to advocate for increase funding and support of these entities.

Similarly, the Bronx Council on the Arts Cultural Asset Map also utilizes ArcGIS and data incorporated from NYC Open Data to map to highlight arts and cultural offerings in the Bronx. The project invites individual artists and larger projects or organizations to submit their information to be included on the map. Beyond exploring the pins on the map, users can also select various layers such as zoning districts, construction years, and green spaces to paint a larger picture. The purpose of the map is to both highlight these cultural assets while also advocating for their continued preservation.
The CAMP: The Cultural Asset Mapping Project from the municipality of Austin Texas was a community oriented project which asked participants to map cultural assets in the city that felt important to them. In so doing, they created a directory, report, and map of nearly 3,000 points. Users are encouraged to discover sites, bridge connections between cultural organizations and projects, and for developers to keep in mind existing communities and their strengths to avoid displacement and work towards continuity of cultural community strengths. The map platform utilizes Open Street Map and Carto to map points using differing colored dots to represent the cultural asset by type (ie: Public Art, Organization, Event/Festival, etc.). Each point houses a small set of information such as the name, district, and website of the cultural asset.

The Carousels of New York City mapping project aims to continue this work by creating a space specific to currently operating carousels in New York City to be both be used as a practical tool to easily locate carousels, but also to provide a snapshot of important logistical information for those that wish to visit them. With that aim, we will bear in mind the tenets of minimal computing (Risam and Gil) to try and create a simple website to host our map with the aim of allowing for its use across various devices and with varying levels of internet access and computational speeds. Further, like the projects above, it aims to act as an advocacy tool to provide a clear visual representation of where carousels may be lacking, and where new ones could be considered either by developers, private entities, or New York City’s Parks and Recreation Department.

Work Plan

This project will culminate in a layered ArcGIS map which pins all the carousels in current operation in New York City with supplementary information on the location, fee structures, and policies of each carousel while also allowing the user to choose layers highlighting the income levels and the density of households with children on that map. As such, data collection, data analysis, map building, original photography, website building, and visiting or calling the carousels to understand their fees and policies will be the bulk of the project.

Data Collection & Analysis

Project staff will use tools such as Google Maps and publicly available data on NYC Parks/Recreation websites to locate carousels locations across the city and collect their GIS/spatial data. Staff will be assigned to visit and/or research carousels and fill out a Google Form. The data collected on the Google Form will be used to start a spreadsheet which will include information such as the carousel name, fee structure, policies, contact information, and website (if available). Staff may need to call or visit the carousels in order to fully understand the fee structures and policies, and will be encouraged to ride the carousels if possible. While visiting the carousels, staff should take original photographs to be embedded into the map data point, corresponding website, and possibly for social media.

Data will also be collected from either one or both of the platforms NYC Open Data and/or NYC Population Fact Finder. Extracted data should focus on income levels and density of households with children. This data will likely need to be cleaned to highlight only these data points.

Map Building

Once this information is collected, staff will begin the map building process in ArcGIS with an initial focus on mapping the carousels and creating a unique pin that exhibits the fun character of carousels. A few major data points (such as the carousel address and price) will be included in the map snapshot of information on the carousel, but will also link to a supplementary webpage with more information about the carousel created on the hosting website.

From here, two layers will be added to optionally view the income levels and density of families across the city. Color shading may be implemented to decipher income level differences.

Website Building

Once the map is complete, staff will develop a simple website using the WordPress platform to display the map. Graphic design choices and imagery will be created to align with carousel aesthetic. Supplementary pages on the site will include spaces for a brief analysis with recommendations for current and future carousels, a space for community input, and information about the project and staff members.

Staff

The project will be led by Kelly Karst and executed with a group of 2-4 graduate level students. Staff members will likely be responsible for more than one task depending on subject knowledge and technical expertise. 

• Project Manager: Kelly Karst be in charge of project management while also working on the project website.

• Digital Cartographer: Carla Ordonez with experience with ArcGIS will lead the development of the layered map based on the data collected by the staff. Leonard Santos will provide support.
• Photographer(s): Leonard Santos will take original photographs of the carousels and choose one to represent each carousel on the digital map.
• Data collection and analyst: Carla Ordonez will collect data on:
  • Where carousels are located in New York City including GIS information, the textual address, contact information, website, fee structure, and visitor policies.
  • Income levels across New York City based on data collected from NYC Open Data and/or NYC Population Fact Finder.
    • This information will need to be extracted from the larger data sets available on these platforms.
  • All information will be consolidated into a spreadsheet provided to the digital cartographer(s).
• Field workers: All staff members will visit and/or call/email carousels to determine information such as their fee structures and visitor policies.
• Website Developer: Leonard Santos and Kelly Karst will create the structure of the website and embed the digital map on the site and upload text to be included in an about section and essay on recommendations for future carousel development. They will also incorporate means for visitors to the site to contribute comments.
• Copy Editor: All staff will be responsible for writing copy for their deliverables as well as any needed communiques for emailing carousel staff for information as well as to potential media for dissemination.
• Social media: Julissa Russo will be responsible for creating and maintaining the social media account. This includes creating content and creating an organizer of the content to post.  Social media accounts includes Instagram and potentially TikTok.

Final Product and Dissemination

The final product will be a digital map hosted on CUNY’s Academic Commons WordPress website. Efforts will be made to reach out to potential audience members and media outlets for dissemination. New York City family centered websites and social media platforms such as Brooklyn Bridge Parents, Park Slope Parents, Mommy Poppins will be asked to include the carousel in upcoming newsletters, website features, and/or social media posts. The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation will be contacted to similarly consider adding our map to sites for carousels they currently manage. We will also include our commentary on recommendations for future carousel considerations for possible use in advocacy for city budget planning. Major developers and development project coordinators may also be contacted to request consideration for new carousels in areas determined to have a gap in carousels with  large densities of households with children. Potential outreach may include reaching out to carousel, digital humanities, and/or mapping experts for guidance and building enthusiasm for the project.

The social media lead will create an individual social media space that will  highlight all carousels. Content will be created based on the information gathered about each carousel.   The social media account will direct the audience back to our main website.

Future projects could include a history of each carousel with research essays conducted by students interested in contributing. A foreseeable challenge will be maintaining an up to date website when fee structures or visitor policies change, or if a carousel closes, or if happily, a new carousel opens.

Works Cited

Bagli, Charles V. “Battery Park To Try Again With Offering To Developers.” New York Times, 16 Jan. 2003.

Bartash-Dawley, Linda. Carouseling New York: A History. Self-published, 2013.

Beck, Helen, Berney, Rachel, Kirk, Brian, Yocom, Ken P. “Building Equity into Public Park and Recreation Service Investment: A Review of Public Agency Approaches.” Landscape and Urban Planning, vol. 247, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2024.105069.

Fitzsimmons, E. “New York City Approves a Plan to Create 80,000 New Homes”, New York Times, 5 Dec. 2024.

Risam, Roopika and Gil, Alex. “Introduction: The Questions of Minimal Computing.” Digital Humanities Quarterly Vol 16, no. 2, 2022.

Ronderos, N., Jones, C. “The Impact of Hudson River Park on Property Values.” Regional Play Association, October 2008, https://rpa.org/work/reports/the-impact-of-hudson-river-park-on-property-values

Rosin & Associates. “Brooklyn Bridge Park Assessment Analysis.” 2016, https://thebha.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2.1.2_PIER_6_ASSESSMENT_ANALYSIS.pdf

Sullivan, William C., Chang, Chun-Yen. “Mental Health and the Built Environment. In: Dannenberg, Andrew L. Making Healthy Places : Designing and Building for Health, Well-Being, and Sustainability. Island Press/Center for Resource Economics, 2011, https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-036-1.

The What

Inspired largely by The Palestinian Youth Movement’s communal translation of Trinity of Fundamentals from Arabic to English, I am eager to create a platform where diasporic communities can upload existing texts and work on their translations in community. 

A lot of software translation tools seem primarily concerned with translation at scale – translating many texts, or into many languages, or crowdsourcing translations, or building translational memory over many different translations. This proposal differs fundamentally in that it is concerned with the pedagogy of communal translation – creating a place for members to work and decide on translations together, and treating the process of translation as its own important text. 

Last semester for an Introduction to Translation course, I wrote a paper that examined translation theories of “diaspora as translation” and “translation as pedagogy,” and applied them to the specifics of Afghan linguistic and literary contexts. 

For the fourteen work weeks of this praxis course, the focus will be on building and deploying a prototype tool that allows users to:

• upload a static document
• create an associated document where they collaborate on a translation of the original document
• add comment threads on the translation

The How

The Team

• Alex Millatmal – Lead developer responsible for:
  • back-end, API, and rich-text editor schema development
  • co-defining front-end and other development tasks
• OPEN – (1) UI/UX developer responsible for working — primarily with React (JavaScript library) and CSS — on implementing designs and fine-tuning usability of the software
• OPEN – (1) Project manager responsible for:
  • posting weekly team updates to the class blog
  • overseeing that each deliverable’s work stream remains on track and removing any obstacles to work
• OPEN – (1) Designer responsible for researching existing comparable software examples, finalizing wireframes, and defining UI/UX requirements

The following roles are smaller in scope and can be distributed among the above team members:

• User tester responsible for quality assurance of the software as it is built and deployed
• Researcher responsible for learning and advising on best technical practices for features like file uploading, text editor support across languages, etc.

Project Timeline

I propose we work in two-week sprints over the course of the semester:

1. Feb 10 – 23
   • project scope definition
   • research
   • wire-framing
2. * Feb 24 – Mar 9
   • development phase 1 (technical foundations)
3. * Mar 10 – 23
   • development phase 1 (technical foundations)
   • paper outlining and drafting
4. * Mar 24 – Apr 6
   • user testing of deployed prototype
   • paper outlining and drafting
5. Apr 7 – 20
   • development phase 2 (refining UI; additional features)
6. Apr 21 – May 4
   • development phase 2 (refining UI; additional features)
7. May 5 – 18
   • dress rehearsal
   • project polishing
   • finalize paper
   • showcase!

* denote sprints taking place over Ramadan

The Why

The idea for this academic exploration came from on of my WhatsApp group chats. A question about what translation means to our Afghan diasporic community turned into a sprawling conversation about: who is translated (and why and by whom); what texts we would like to read more closely and the barriers to accessing them; the inspiration of Palestinians learning political theory from their own history; and the way that the family archive pushes us to connect with and learn our heritage languages. As is often the case with this tenor of conversation, each participant had a piece of the puzzle — one had access to hard-to-find texts, another had time to scan the documents, another had language fluency, another had contact with elders doing regular work on translation projects. 

What would it mean for us Afghans (and other communities) in diaspora to learn from our own textual histories through the act of communal translation?

Beyond this semester, I’m interested in applying and extending these ideas as a means of moving beyond the static nature of the digital archive, which I find frustrating and limiting. For the kinds of technology and computing we have at our disposal, is the most transformative thing we can do with the archive to digitize and disseminate its materials? Following diaspora studies scholar Ipek Demir, what does it mean for the agency of the archival subject — particularly the kind of dual-subject of the diasporic viewer — to be able to translate, interpret, and annotate archival materials in-place, to make meaning against the archival grain?

Working at the level of software also allows us to think about translation choices at the very granular levels of words, annotations, texts, and hyper texts. I have professional software engineering background working in rich-text editors and content management systems, and deeply enjoy the philosophical exercise of thinking about how to model the data that supports content and its various metadata in ways that bring functionality to the document that is uniquely-achieved in a digital realm. From an academic perspective, I’m interested in the ways these additional layers of functionality and metadata open up possibilities for multiplicities of meaning in the documents themselves, and how interaction with the documents can become their own important texts and sites of cross-generational exchange and education.

Do you believe in equal opportunities for all genders? Do you want to challenge yourself with a different genre outside of the typical fields of academia?  This is the project for you. You don’t have to be a wrestling enthusiast to be part of this project. This project focuses on exposing the issue of gender disparity in professional wrestling through data visualizations. Gender disparity is evident in many fields and is still an issue today. However, the field of professional wrestling is rarely discussed on the subject of gender disparity, much less information and data available on it. Get in on the ground floor to a project, and you can cement your name into the foundation. Thanks for your time. Any questions can be asked in the comment section or by email.

Abstract

Over the decades, professional wrestling has entertained billions of people via television, radio, the internet, and other media. Though how audiences consume professional wrestling has changed, the lack of female matches in wrestling events is evident if one is to look at the event cards. This project aims to examine professional wrestling through the available digital humanities data visualization method to reveal and analyze the disparity between genders in professional wrestling, in which males have more matches than females over the decades. Data will be gathered from the Cagematch.net website. Cagematch.net is a website that serves as a database for professional wrestling information. It includes match results, ratings, and other information about wrestling events worldwide, and this data will be used to create interactive data visualizations on Tableau and publish this information and findings on WordPress. The disparity explored in this project will show that despite the inclusion of more female wrestlers in professional wrestling, they still perform fewer matches than male wrestlers on average.

By viewing and extracting the final event of each year from 1934 to 2024, which took place in Madison Square Garden, we can examine the overall difference between genders in the world of professional wrestling through Tableau and WordPress to display how much the inclusion of female wrestlers over the years has barely improved. By creating an interactive data visualization, I will make it possible for website visitors and fans of professional wrestling to reach their conclusions about this gender disparity. More academic-based research on professional wrestling needs to be conducted compared to other forms of entertainment to explore these disparities. In an industry that is overlooked and seen as mock combat, this project will use digital humanities tools and collaboration to expose gender disparity, starting with ninety events that took place over ninety years in New York City.

Work Plan

The first steps of this project fall on the project manager, who will be responsible for extracting the data from each year and inputting it in Excel to allow the Data Viz expert to create an interactive table, charts, or graphs that will enable viewers to use the data we have provided to make their own conclusions. The data for this project will be gathered from Cagematch.net, the largest wrestling internet database. Cagematch.net was founded on the 15th of March, 2001, by the trio of Philip Kreikenbohm, Nicolas Pape, and Knut Linke. The site started as a traditional combination of a wrestling news site and a discussion forum (the “Cageboard”), as they had some experience with this format, which was pretty popular then. Cagematch.net officially opened the site to the public on the 1st of June, 2001, with a team of about 20+ people working on the discussion forum and posting news from around the wrestling world. In 2007, they revolutionized the wrestling internet by establishing the first internet wrestling database and creating the rating system, which allowed thousands of wrestling fans to rate their favorite wrestlers, events, matches, etc. In total, over a hundred people have helped make Cagematch.net a success. Currently, they have over 30 voluntary team members working to keep the database up-to-date and fill in the gaps in history that are not yet covered. The website has data from each wrestling event in Madison Square Garden from the 1930s to 2024. Data is crucial in digital humanities as it allows multiple tools to be used to create a project such as this one. The data used for this project will be as unbiased as possible by not specifically choosing a promotion or random dates. The data from each year will be needed for the last event that took place at Madison Square Garden, which is likely to always be in December.

This yearly wrestling data also allows a more manageable workload to be used, and it will not impede other staff as we are focusing on just one month, once a year, for 90 years compared to twice a year or each month of every year. The data required for each yearly selected event will consist of how many matches took place, how many were men’s matches, how many were women’s matches, the date/year, how many men performed, how many women performed, broadcast type, name of event, and name of promotion. The best thing about cagematch.net is that it provides all this information, and although it may need to be manually extracted into an Excel file, no one will need to sit through all these matches and watch them. Lastly, the project manager is responsible for tidying the data as it is a critical problem to ensure it is clean and accurate.

During the same time frame as data extraction, which should be about two weeks, the Data Viz expert will focus on the best methods and tables used for this data. Thus, the Data Viz expert will be required to present handwritten and hand-drawn rough drafts of how this data will look by just looking at the data that will be extracted. In this case, after the first ten years of data have been extracted, it is the project manager’s responsibility to send that small amount of data to the Data Viz expert to allow them to see what the rest of the data will look like and allow them to use that data to begin designing the visualizations. During the initial stages, the web designer on WordPress will need to commence creating the site and sending invitations for administrative rights to the other staff members. When the site is opened, the web designer must send a hand drawing or screenshot of how they see the site and what it should look like for the project, allowing an earlier insight into how and what links will be available for others.

Less than halfway through the semester, about week five/six, the data extraction for each year of wrestling in Madison Square Garden should have already been filled in Excel and submitted to the Tableau expert to begin creating their tables, graphs, etc. At this point, the lead project manager will work closely with each staff member to ensure that all appropriate data on Tableau and WordPress are moving in the right direction from the project’s initial vision. The Data Viz expert should have at least three to four kinds of data visualizations by the end of the project. Still, only three will be used, and at least one must be submitted weekly so the web designer can attach the Tableau data to WordPress. Each data visualization presented will require a summary of what the data means and what can be learned. One staff member is responsible for writing an overview of how to use the data visualization so that the Web Designer can include it in WordPress.

Following these steps, the copy editors must adequately check all the information on the data, Tableau, WordPress, and white paper to ensure everything is correct and accurate. The copy editors will be all three staff members, making the next step essential. Throughout the semester, the copy editor must submit a weekly summary of what they have adjusted or fixed for their part in the project and what they need from other members to progress. Thus, this will allow everyone to double-check their work in the future and allow for communication between staff members on what is missing or needs attention.

In the last weeks, all staff members must complete each task and submit any last-minute changes before presenting the final product. The project manager must check the data correctly; the Data Viz expert must check if their visualizations are all working fluidly; the web designer must check if there are any broken URLs, if the page has public accessibility, etc. Suppose any team member is unwell or needs help to do work for a particular week. In that case, it is always possible to continue the following week, or if help in any way or form is needed, the project manager should be notified, and proper time will be given to allow us to finish any work that needs to be done. All of this is doable in one semester the way it is planned out.

List of Participants

• Project Lead, Outreach, and Data Extraction/Entry: Martin Bueno
• Excel/Data Visualization (Data Viz) Expert/Outreach(Flexible): OPEN
• Web Designer/Developer for WordPress: OPEN
• Researcher/Documentation/Copy Editors: OPEN

Endgame

The final product of this project should be a WordPress site with links to three different data visualizations that depict the disparity of genders in professional wrestling matches throughout the years in New York City. The website will be distributed online within wrestling communities such as Reddit and BlueSky so that others can look at this data and have a different perspective about how there is still an inequality gap in almost 90 years of including women in professional wrestling. Moreover, other communities may also want to examine how the disparity is reminiscent of different sports. The project lead will also disseminate the website in person at local wrestling shows within the tri-state area. Our project will include our findings about gender disparity. However, it is crucial to allow visitors to the website to make their own conclusions by interacting with the data visualizations created for this project. Though more data can be included in this project, there are limitations and considerations to other staff members who may need adequate time to balance workloads from other academic projects, personal lives, and employment. Though my project proposal may be small in scale from its initial stages, it aims to keep building on the findings. This continuation may include the use of other digital humanities tools that can further ground itself in both academia and the sport of professional wrestling.

Confront the Canon

Overview

A 2019 diversity study of eighteen U.S. museums found that 85% artists in the collections are white and 87% are men (Topaz 2019). A similar trend was observed in the racial make-up of the curatorial staff and the resultant displays tend to propagate a largely Western perspective. Exhibitions play a crucial role in promoting and perpetuating the myth of greatness concretized in the art historical canon. Critical examination of the collection can uncover problematic institutional practices and allow the display to be viewed in a new light that reveal relevant hidden context. Confront the Canon (CTC) is visualized as a tool designed to reflect on the institutional bias integral in museum collection/ exhibition practices with the aim of highlighting marginalized or missing voices. The central question being explored is: How does an institution’s collection and curatorial practices contribute to the marginalization of artists based on race/gender/nationality?

Why CTC?

The inspiration for CTC is Fred Wilson’s brilliant project, Mining the Museum that delivered a powerful statement against institutional racism. While Wilson culled forgotten African-American artifacts from the Maryland Historical Society’s permanent collection to create compelling interventions in their conventional display, CTC will empower the users to challenge the represented histories. The project will provide contextual information on the exhibited objects that highlight potential exclusionary aspects and allow the informed user to introduce an alternate intervention object that could initiate important conversations around biased institutional practices.

Apart from art institutions, CTC can be adapted to examine collections hosted in museums of natural history, libraries and other custodians of history. The platform audience could include art historians, researchers, students from art history/ digital humanities/ gender studies, curatorial staff, museum educators and others interested in exploring exclusions in preserved histories. Institutions can use CTC to evaluate their collections, invite collaborators to diversify their displays and make their audience interactions more inclusive. Since several institutions have a digital presence when it comes to the exhibition space, there is an opportunity to adapt CTC with the express aim of engaging their audience to examine their collections. CTC is also intended to work as a pedagogical tool that will allow students to participate in their learning process and use the platform as an alternative to standard evaluations.

Vision for the Final Product

The project will encourage users to examine how curatorial practices enact the canon and reinforce the set narrative. To this end, CTC will showcase a past exhibition featuring additional contextual information in the object labels, produce relevant visualizations and allow the user to insert strategic replacements in the display. The project website will host the following panels using the WordPress platform:

• Past Exhibition Panel: Display selected past exhibition.
  • Research past exhibitions on museum websites to finalize a display.
  • Create basic dataset design.
  • Create the display utilizing Google Slides* to provide an immersive experience. The accompanying object labels will provide insightful contextual information.
• Intervention Panel: CTC seeks alternative perspectives and insights into the collection in the form of these interventions.
  • Users will have the option to intervene in the display in a meaningful way by choosing to replace an exhibit in the original display with an appropriate intervention object.
  • For replacement objects, the option is to partner with a smaller collection and use Omeka* to provide a searchable object list to choose a replacement intervention object.
  • Create the new display after integrating the intervention object into the exhibition display.
• Data Visualization Panel: Provide additional context about the exhibit.
  • A separate page will feature Tableau generated data visualizations displaying statistics involving the race, gender, nationality of the featured creators.
  • Visualization data will analyze the objects in the display. Depending on the availability of usable data, additional visualizations analyzing the entire collection will be included.

* Contingent on the theory that Google Slides and Omeka can be embedded into WordPress.

One of the challenges is to locate a manageable dataset because collection datasets are typically huge and will require considerable investment of time in data cleaning and data management. At the prototype stage, the solution is to either work with a smaller collection so both the intervention selection and the visualizations can benefit from having access to the entire collection OR feature just the exhibition data on the project site and direct the user to the original museum site to explore intervention objects while the visualizations will be limited to the available data. There are also access restrictions to consider and the issue of permission rights will have to be addressed by taking appropriate steps to seek permission or locate alternatives in the public domain.

CTC will be disseminated with the help of the project team and consultants. The team will approach academic institutions (departments of fine art/ art history/ history), libraries, museum curatorial and education departments. CUNY GC Digital Initiatives team and GC Digital Fellows Team will be consulted to reach the CUNY community along with platforms such as CUNY ACADEMIC COMMONS to spread awareness of the project and invite collaborations to enhance CTC’s capabilities as well as advance the project into its next phase of expansion to work with different collection types.

STAFF/PARTNERS

• Project Lead/Researcher: Review collections to select one for the project, initiate intervention object options and collaborate with programmers and consultants on visual design and usability.
• Programmer, Data Analyst: 1-2 team members with programming expertise on Python to scrap data, build datasets and website. Expertise in Omeka.
• Consultants:
  • CUNY GC Digital Initiatives team and GC Digital Fellows: Consult for project approach and optimum digital tool options.
  • CUNY GC Art History Department: Consult Art History graduates for perspectives on project approach and suggestions on making meaningful interventions.
  • Museum Curator: Perspective on the collection and curatorial practices, appropriate collections and intervention objects to consider.

The project will be a team effort, truly collaborative and we will make all critical decisions collectively as a group.

Slide Deck

PPT version

From children to adults with nostalgic eyes, surely all of us can appreciate the joy of carousels. New York City is lucky to be home to several vintage and new carousels that bring joy to families and just about anyone that happens upon them!

Why create a NYC carousel map?

• Although maps can be found on traditional mapping apps (ie: Google Maps), there is a lot of clutter to get around- it would be nice to have a visual that clearly shows their locations to help with planning visits
• One needs to dig for logistical information on visiting the carousels such as pricing, policies, accessibility, nearby bathrooms, and nearby attractions. This map will include a subset of criteria that directly addresses these concerns to help visitors better plan their visit.
• The visual of a “carousel only” map will highlight where there are a lack of carousels in the five boroughs. Adding a layered map indicating socio-economic data or real estate prices in these areas may shed light on why these disparities exist, and help as an advocacy tool for creating carousels in these areas, as well as recommendations to investigate if there is also a lack of other recreational facilities in the same places.

How will it be done?

Carousel locations are easy to locate and retrieve GPS/address information. We will need to visit/call/research what the carousel’s policies and logistics are. Ideally, team members would sign up to visit specific carousels to a) provide a short review of their experience that may further help interested visitors and b) to take original photographs if no open-license/creative commons photos are available.

We will need to use source(s) like NYC Open Data to determine which data point(s) we want to use to create the layered map.

This information will need to gathered in a systematic way to include in an interactive map. As someone that is new to mapping, I am open to different platforms based on the groups current expertise and interests.

The map will need to be hosted on a website. For now, I propose using CUNY Academic Commons, but am also open to discussion here. Beyond hosting the interactive map, this site should also have a “Recommendations” page based on our analysis of areas in need of carousels. Other fun features may include our personal reviews of carousels, and a call for site visitors to add their own comments/experiences.

Outreach is twofold- one is to family centered and/or tourist centered social media and blogs. Mommy Poppins, Brooklyn Bridge Parents, and Park Slope Parents are some family accounts that come to mind. Time Out NYC, NYC Tourism, Visit NYC are a few examples of possible tourist outreach. Secondly, reaching out to government agencies such as the NYC Parks/Recreation Department, the Department of City Planning, and possibly development companies to advocate for placement of future carousels in areas “in need” of one.

Social media buzz can involve little teasers of carousels, personal experiences on them, memories of carousels, quick tips, etc. Perhaps also providing carousels themselves with QR code flyers of the map once completed.

Why this project?

This project is a fun and practical way to put into practice some DH elements that we have learned about so far. The amount of data to go through is very reasonable, there are less that 20 carousels, and we will be very selective in the NYC data we use to layer. I think the vision of the project is clear, and believe the scope of the project is well within reason to come at least close to a finished product. I also think the skillsets required are approachable and align with many of our own.

I also think that carousels have a universal appeal, both to ourselves and to the wider public. I think it could have some impact on the “real world” and is easily presentable and intuitive to outside parties. Could it have 15 minutes of fame?

As the project “pitcher” I also want to make clear that I feel no particular ownership of this project, and am open to all suggestions/ideas/feedback. I am excited to see how the project will evolve when great minds come together!