Over the past two and a half months, I have had the pleasure of directly supervising the Tongue Team project as a silkworm. Frankly, I feel like I got the best part of the deal—I got to be a part of two different teams: the teaching team and the student team. From the very beginning, before the students were even involved, the teaching team (made up of 2 professors, 3 library/tech specialists, and 4 TAs/silkworms) knew that we wanted the center of this course to be a research project on a student-generated topic completed as a group and presented online. We were not sure how to get to this end goal, but we knew that that was where we were aiming. I served as the middle-man between my group and our professors, an overseer of group dynamics and timely progress, a strict editor, and a morale-booster (hence my alias). At times, the only help I could provide was asking if they were being overly ambitious given, our time constraints. At others, my contribution was sitting at a round table in the library proof-reading for six hours straight. There were bumps along the way, as to be expected, but, standing here at the end, I am amazed at how magnificently this project came to embody our dream for the course. We hoped that students would find a topic they could really be excited about; we hoped they could create something that they could share with the world. I genuinely hope that they are as proud of themselves as I am of them. I anticipate that digital humanities will continue to gain momentum and evolve throughout my lifetime. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Monthly Archives: November 2016
Finishing up!
Last week, there was a little bit of a scramble. There was nothing up on the story map, the introduction and conclusion had hardly been written, and there were no sources. And the deadline was coming up very soon: we had less than a week to pull it all together and present a good project.
Luckily, this ended up being due to us not putting up the information, rather than a lack of information itself. We all had the content and the sources for the storymap, but it hadn’t made its way there yet. All we had to do that night was upload the sources, and write what we already knew into the introduction in conclusion. So what had been a nearly empty project on Thursday looked nearer to a finished product on Friday. And over the weekend, everything has been improved even more.
I think the story map came together very well. Teiji and my topic overlap quite a bit: a lot of concepts I introduce she later expands on, so two perspectives are given on a similar event. While Nathan’s topic doesn’t fit as neatly, it definitely is still relevant, and that idea can be easily expressed through our introduction. All in all, the project I’ve been stressing over all semester is finally coming together in a cohesive way, with interesting and interlocking perspectives.
One struggle I faced while putting together my section of the story map was finding the location of one of the sources. It was cited as being taken in the city of Kyria, which I could not find when I typed the name into Google. We met with Eric later that day, and he hadn’t heard of the city either. However, when I asked if I should just put the location of the picture as a more general area, Eric encouraged me to keep searching for the true location. I’m grateful he gave me that advice. I finally found the real city. When I found the original source, it spelled the city as Keriya rather than Kyria. With the new spelling, I was able to put my source to a concrete location. It was incredibly rewarding to finally find this location. While the current ability to Google everything and find an answer right away is incredibly useful, there’s something exhilarating about solving a small mystery and having to dig a little deeper. Here is the picture taken in the city of Keriya:
Ashes to ashes, worms to silk
This has been an exceptionally rough day for working on the research project. Study abroad meetings are draining my energy and I had to devote way to much time today to finishing up my Chinese visa. Additionally on top of that stress it’s been really difficult to make sure I’m still able to do the preflights and readings while putting as much time as I can into this research project. It’s been nice to know I’m not alone and I have heard that a lot of other students have been struggling to accomplish preflight assignments so close to the final due date.
However despite the difficulties of planning for China and maintaining class work while still putting in time on this difficult project, things are going well. Team Earth is scheduled for yet another meeting tonight, and ideally tonight is the night we finish everything. Shortly I will begin typing up the introduction to our team page using the notes we came up with in our next meeting. Our groups Story Map is nearly complete and only the addition of Sam’s slides and some light editing are needed in order to go live with the map. After the meeting the page will be ready for it’s due date on the 15th and the team is really excited about that.
If everything goes well tonight and everyone brings with them their completed assignments then this night should mean a lot of stress off of our shoulders. I think that the introduction page and the story map will be complete at the least which will be very exciting. I am also hoping to get another member of the team to create something for our additional information page. I’m excited to get to utilize the anchor links that Tierney has taught us but I think we need more information their. While the additional information page is not necessary to the class I think it would be a nice addition to our page that adds some depth.
Hopefully tonight at the meeting everyone will be prepared and calm enough that the idea of pitching additional information will not sound completely ludicrous. While we’ve talked about the additional information page before something tells me that peoples minds may be different after working on the project for so long. This all being said I’m feeling very exhausted and worn out from both this project and especially the meetings and tasks I had to do today for the Jan term. Here is a photo I am hoping to use for the additional information page:
Almost to the Deadline!
Uyghur dancing, Urumqi, Xinjiang, Ludo Kuipers, 2014
So the Sky Team had our next to last meeting before the Story Map and accompanying introduction, conclusion, and bibliography pages are put onto the website and finished for Tuesday November 15. I had a bit of a panic moment because before this meeting, the Story Map was empty and the introduction and conclusion were barely started. However, the team worked hard to put up information the night before our weekly meeting. I think that they had mostly everything ready, and they just needed to input information into the Story Map. However, there is still a good bit of writing, editing, and perfecting that needs to happen before this coming Tuesday, including citations. The team plans to meet Monday morning to do any last edits and make sure everything is ready to be seen by the public.
After the teams post their information to the website, the TAs will then begin our part of the project of creating a front page interactive map that has all of the points from each of our teams, which will be linked to each team page, respectively. The TAs will also be involved in writing introduction information about the course and class content and goals overall, as well as making sure the overall look and feel of the website is intuitive and appealing. I think that the TAs’ job will be a good amount of work crammed into a week and a half, but not impossible. All of the TAs are planning to have a get-together where we will input information and have each other there if we have any questions about the technologies we will be using.
The website goes live right after we get back from Thanksgiving break, so it is ideal to have everything done before break, that way we do not have to worry about it. I am very apprehensive about putting all of the class’s work on a public platform where people will be able to read, see, and judge our writing, knowledge base, and technological skills. However, I think that the entire class has done a fantastic job at learning so many new technological skills in such a short time, while simultaneously balancing the readings, quizzes, research, and blog posts for this class (let alone balancing everything outside of this class). I am really very proud of everyone in the class, but I am especially proud of my team in particular. We had a few rough spots where we were frustrated that there was not enough communication, or that we were not moving fast enough with the project. I think in large the rough spots were due to different work habits, which could have been due to the difference in ages within the team. Our team was the only one with an age disparity like ours, with two high school aged students and one adult student in the same group. It made for interesting interactions and team dynamics. There definitely had to be a lot of negotiation and patience from everyone’s side. However, at least up until this point, with the deadline for the project within a few days, I think that the team is feeling more cohesive than ever and I know we can push through and make a great product for the website.
The Naan
My experiences with Naan have usually been different. Most of the time when I have Naan it is served before the meal and is a light fluffy flatbread with a light structure inside, this Naan was completely different. It had a dark seasoned crust and was much larger and heavier than the other Naans I have had. Additionally, the Naan had poppy seeds as well as sesame seeds on the outside of it and was brushed with butter. The bread was also served with the main course and was a perfect utensil to scoop up the other food. Naan
Naan seems like an integral part of the dining experience in Uyghur cuisine. In my experience, I have found this to be a commonality amongst many Muslim communities across Asia and Africa. Another thing that I found different about this Naan compared to others I have tasted is that it was more salty and yeasty. It tasted like the dough had plenty of time to rest and develop. Something that I look forward to tasting is the difference in the yeastiness of the bread when I get to taste it in Kashgar.
Darwins Instruments
With the direction of the professors, team earth has set some deadlines that are firm. this will help us to make sure and finish all the work we can earlier than the class due date. We will meet these deadlines and we won’t be very stressed because throughout the semester we have discovered as a team that each individual member is able to perform under pressure well. I think that having these deadlines is a huge motivation factor and I have gotten even deeper in the work since we set them.
This video is a musical performance by the Silk road Ensemble, which is a group created and led by the legendary Yo-Yo Ma and it is the incorporation of many varied types of similar and vastly different instruments that were developed along the Silk Road throughout history. The Silk Road was a superhighway for the evolution of instruments such as the lute. The class was treated to a visit by a friend of Eric’s who is a professor at UNCG who studies instruments throughout time, with a focus on Myanmar. This man showed us a trail of changes to similar lutes that gave each one a personal and locally cherished sound, ingraining itself in many cultures.
The Beginning of the End
Coming back from fall break and getting into a steady rhythm of work and communication between Team Earth members was excellent. We picked up where we had left off and began to dig deeper into specific areas of our respective topics after having a few talks with Eric in class about which direction to take. This half of the semester is more stressful, but it is more rewarding as we begin to see our intentions and work become represented physically by our webpages and blog posts. I heard there is an oven being built by another group…that’s awesome!
My artifact here is an 18th century representation of what Marco Polo may have looked like when dressed in traditional Tartar garb whilst he was traveling the empire as an emissary. Very bright colors punctuate the landscape of his chest as the baggy clothing settles on his tall frame. This may not be how he dressed all the time as it it seems ornamental and fine, as if to be used for special occasions.
Experimental Room Recap
Today in class we were able to set a date of completion for our final project. This will be taking place on Thursday at around 9pm in the Hub. I am truly excited to be seeing our Team Earth page on that day. Of course, it will not be perfect, hence the earlier date than the actual deadline, but that’s what our group meeting will be considering. Numerous tweaks will be required such as the implementation of our story map and other coding to make the page be more visually appealing.
As a silkworm, I will be focusing on aiding the team in the visual aspects of page. Learning how to add things such as “jump links” that would take the reader to different sections of the page if they so wish to. Also, adding in autoplay codes that will play a specific youtube or soundcloud (for example) link when the reader goes into the page. So forth, these will be the things that I would wish to contribute in and hopefully be able to support the members of Team Earth.
Mongolian Music Double Feature
It’s been a long time since my last blog post, so I thought I’d make this one a double post of sorts. Since our “soft final deadline” before the real final deadline is more or less right now and I’m running a bit behind, I’m hoping to use today and tomorrow to blog about and finalize my work before the Heart Group StoryMap is complete.
I’ve refined my research topic to focus on modern Mongolian music groups, and I’m hoping to have a point for each one. I’ll be covering the first two of these in this blog post.
The first music group I chose to research is a metal band called Tengger Cavalry. I actually happened upon this band on a music discovery platform long before the beginning of this course. Although I was surprised at first to learn that a Mongolian metal band had made inroads into the American metal scene, I later discovered that Tengger Cavalry was, oddly enough, based in New York City. It turns out that even though the band’s lead, Nature Ganganbaigal, was born in China and is proud of his Mongolian heritage, he started the band while attending school at NYU.
The music may be made in America, but it’s true to its Mongolian roots. The band’s name is derived from Tengger or Tengri, the sky god in the Mongolian shamanic tradition, and their songs derive themes from shamanic ritual, cavalry exercises, and ancient war campaigns. The music itself is performed using a mixture of typical metal instruments such as drums and electric guitars, and traditional Mongolian instruments like the morin khuur, better known as the horsehead fiddle. Their songs also feature Nature’s throat-singing (also known as khuumei/khoomei/xoomei), a technique in which a single singer manipulates their voice to produce multiple overtones.
My second music group is also a rock band, but of a very different genre. Beijing-based Hanggai combines traditional Mongolian folk themes and lyrics, sung in Mongolian, with elements of punk and alternative rock. Like Tengger Cavalry, they also integrate throat-singing techniques and the morin khuur into their music.
Hanggai was formed by its singer and frontman Ilchi, who was born in Inner Mongolia but moved to Beijing with his family when he was 12. He has since returned to Inner Mongolia, where he learned throat-singing and began to write songs for his newly-formed band. To some extent, Hanggai’s songs reflect Ilchi’s own journey to rediscover his ancestral culture in the environment of modern China, where it seems to be rapidly disappearing.
Before I end this blog post, I’d like to talk a bit about the research process so far. Although I’ve managed to locate numerous Mongolian music groups, it’s been much more difficult to find information about them. Most of my knowledge of these bands comes from their own bios and scattered news articles, and the few scholarly sources I have refer not to them, but to broader topics such as the cultural role of throat-singing and the rise of Mongolian hip hop. As a result, some time ago, I shifted my focus away from in-depth analysis of any one group and towards the production of a “tour” of modern Mongolian music. There are countless different bands, and given my time constraints and the limitations of our project, I can’t hope to cover more than five. That said, I do want to cover a few prominent groups, and at present it looks like I’ll be able to arrange my points so that the StoryMap viewer travels closer to Mongolia as they progress through them. Crunch time is upon us, so I hope to have another blog post with another group or two ready by tomorrow evening.
Sources:
Pegg, Carole. “Mongolian Conceptualizations of Overtone Singing (xöömii).” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 1 (1992): 31-54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3060726.
Marsh, Peter K. 2010. “Our generation is opening its eyes: hip-hop and youth identity in contemporary Mongolia.” Central Asian Survey 29, no. 3: 345-358. Humanities International Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 7, 2016).
“Tengger Cavalry,” Tengger Cavalry. 2015, accessed November 7, 2016. http://www.tengger-cavalry.com/
Great Big Story. One Part Metal, One Part Mongolian Throat Singer. Video, 2:00. November 10, 2015. https://www.greatbigstory.com/stories/one-part-metal-one-part-mongolian
Kelly, Kim. “Heritage, Horses,and Tengger Cavalry: Inside the World of Mongolian Folk Metal.” VICE Noisey. April 30, 2015. https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/tengger-cavalry-interview-stream
Lim, Louisa. “Hanggai: Chinese Punk Looks to the Past.” NPR. November 10, 2008. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95430242
Nearing the End
As we near the end of this assignment I am becoming increasingly nervous which is proving to both be a good and a bad thing. On the plus side my nervous feelings surrounding the project are pushing me to put more and more work into my research and writing. On the downside however this class has began consuming a lot of my work and attention span. I now have all the research I think I will need for the final project, and all of my ideas have been typed up and I hope are ready to go onto the final website. I’m a little hesitant because despite being ready, our group hasn’t yet revealed our completed final work to one another yet.
We had an amazing meeting this Wednesday and I’m feeling really excited about the things we have planned for our website. Our members all seem to have great work done and I know they both excelled in research after getting to see some of their amazing resources during our meeting. We also had a great meeting with Tierney that proved to be really helpful in terms of our website planning. We got to draw out how we wanted our webpage to look, as well as learned some awesome web developing skill I hope to be able to put in action during our web implementation phase.
Our group has set deadlines for a lot of final pieces so I think that it all should fall into place well in these next few days. The main portion I am feeling a little nervous about now is all of our ideas coming together on the story map. Our meeting was really helpful in getting me to rewrite some of the ideas I had jotted down as well as helping to re-shift my focus to help support the team. I had a great conversation with Sam that really helped me change up two of my story map points in order to help the flow and work better with the work he’s producing.
I am really excited now to see the final project, My only hesitation is that without a concrete deadline from the class before the last due date I’m worried about everyone on the team being ready at the same time. However, despite all of these worries I have a feeling it will all work out.
Here is an awesome artifact I found, I was worried about not getting an image of the letter from Guyuk to Pope Innocent but found this Creative Commons image of the Persian Letter! What is awesome about this is it’s the letter that John Di plano Carpini brought back with him to deliver.