 |
"Hello, World !" code in C++ |
For me, coding has always been connected to the scientific endeavor, running calculations, digital signal processes, or other such work. Whether it is hubris or subject blindness, I will confess that website development hardly counted as coding in my eyes. It always felt perhaps more like a craft project people used to show off the sweaters they made for their cats.
This misguided notion of mine was formed in the age of people pimping out their Myspace and geocities pages. In the development of an inherently online existence, coding is far more important in web design for engagement to be sure, but ever more the real power lay in one’s ability to access information. The access to information is one of the most powerful currencies in this information age.
While companies and corporations want people to be able to access information in order to maximize their profit, projects that seek to inform and edify others for their own sake, are vital partners in the work toward such goals as the common good, solidarity and justice. These projects need solid coding to offer information as well as be able to create space for people to share what they know.
 |
| One of the Inter|Urban murals in Cleveland from https://arrestedmotion.com/2016/10/streets-interurban-project-cleveland/ |
This understanding is especially important in the humanities, as evidenced by the Painting On Walls project. Erin Benay describes the project in her case study “Art History and Action In The Rust Belt.”[i] Benay worked in the Cleveland area, as what she called an “engaged art historian.”[ii] Cleveland, like many other Rust Belt cities that suffered decline with the crumbling of the steel industry, had a robust mural tradition. Abandoned buildings make excellent canvasses for murals, after all.
Benay started a service learning course at Case Western Reserve University, in collaboration with LAND Studio’s Inter|Urban project, where students learned the history of murals and do something with that knowledge that went beyond traditional class work. Benay wrote, “I wondered how we might connect the longer history of mural painting with the more recent trajectories of urban development and public art-making that regularly appeared in Cleveland news. Even more significantly, I was curious to see if it was possible for students of art history to do something with this knowledge, rather than to simply regurgitate it in neatly conceived seminar papers.”[iii]
As the course progressed and students documented and learned about the murals, it became evident that passersby engaged the public art visually. That each of the murals was based on Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards went largely unknown. Students in the course wanted to provide access to background material and context for the murals. The murals could move beyond an object of visual engagement and offer something more.
To accomplish this end, the students created informational text about murals and placed them in train and bus platforms. Additionally, they created QR codes that offered greater information about the art. Benay wrote, “Developing a better mobile app and more sophisticated digital mapping interface for Inter|Urban would, students believed, allow this content to be more accessible to the very underrepresented populations that the texts seek to address.” [iv]
Among all of the art history, coding underlined the work that took the information to the people of Cleveland giving a broader view of the people who lived in the city. This work of coding moved this project beyond a class assignment and connected folks outside of academia.
No comments:
Post a Comment