DIGM 680 - Week 2

Thesis Development Week 2:

I am still trying to get at the heart of my paleo-visualization project. 

I had somewhat placed the 'cart before the horse' in that I had a fairly fleshed-out project idea (an animated visualization of the developmental changes of an extinct organism) but didn't really have a compelling or specific enough question to go along with it. I have the somewhat tricky task of justifying a pure visualization project. I see an intrinsic valve in a science visualization, but others could very well argue that by itself, it doesn't really produce 'new knowledge'. It can synthesize, clarify, and focus knowledge, but can it really generate it?

To get some feedback, last week I set up a meeting with Dave Mauriello, since he has a background in biomedical visualization. I had come to the meeting with a short list of larger contexts that I could place visualization within:

• Historical - explore how visualization has changed through time/ how visualization is tied with the development of technology.
• Science outreach - it can be challenging for scientists to share their findings with the media & the public. 
• Create tools - Paleontologists are slowly adopting digital techniques/ I could potentially design tools to facilitate this. 
• Simulation modeling - Use a digital model of an organism to led support towards a scientific hypothesis - finite element analysis, biomechanics, hydrodynamics 
• Accessibility - Fossil collections are often difficult to access

My talk with Dave converged on the idea of accessibility. Visualization could be used to make fossil collections & the science surrounding them more accessible to the public. 

While going through readings for this week (Booth, 2008), I began using the template in the book to set up a potential 'Practical question'. I envisioned a practical question because there really is a logistical issue that exists in the world. The vast majority of items in a museum's collection are in storage, either due to fragility or the impracticality of displaying every single specimen. Because they're stored away, the public cannot benefit from their beauty, cultural history, or their importance to science. Here is a passage I stumble upon this week:

The key challenge for museums according to Glaister is to realize more of the fantastic potential of their collections by giving more people more opportunities to engage with them, increasing virtual access to collections, and releasing available information and promoting knowledge generation (e.g. more collection-focused research work of students) (Geser et. al., 2013)

An animated visualization could be used both to showcase these stored fossils and present them within the context of science. For example, the Bothriolepis fossils at the Academy are stunning objects by themselves, but as a collection they 'tell' an important story about development, ecology, and evolution. An animated visualization could tie together all these disparate things into a coherent narrative. The project would also address the growing movement to digitize museum collections. 

Here was my attempt to fit my project into the template:

Practical Question

Condition: Significant fossil collections are inaccessible.

Cost: Public is not exposed to source fossils and the important science that surrounds them/ missed opportunity for museums 

1. Topic: I am studying Digital Interpretive Visualization 

2. Question: because I want to find out how to produce an animated growth series based off of a collection of fossils

3. Significance: In order to increase accessibility of fossils collections and the science that surrounds them. 

It's still a rather broad question. I may want to find another word besides accessibility.  It is more commonly used when designing software for people with disabilities.

There is also the issue of how one would assess the success of a project like this. 

Hours:

• Blog writing: 2 hrs
• Proposal submission/ writing: 2 hrs
• Readings: 4 hrs
• Meeting with Dave: 1 hr

Readings:

Hublin, J.J. "Free Digital Scans of Human Fossils" Nature, 2013.

Lautenschlager, S. "A Digital (R)evolution in Paleontology" http://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2013-04-23-digital-revolution-palaeontology"

Lukeneder, A. "Computed 3D visualisation of an extinct cephalopod using computer tomographs." Computers & Geosciences, 2012.

Geser, Guntram, and Franco Niccolucci. "Virtual museums, digital reference collections and e-science environments." Uncommon Culture, 2013.