We’ve just finished our first day of “Building  a Digital Portfolio,” a two-week seminar for graduate students hosted by The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

It was a whirlwind day, full of introductions, yummy Panera food, discussions of readings, the meaning of digital art history, and the ideas behind “threshold concepts.” Lots to chew on. We also spent a good deal of time discussing twitter (which I already use) and setting up our own domains (of which I already have one – but why not have another?). This page will serve as a blog, a repository of ideas, and a space to share reflections throughout the course of the seminar.

First things first: we’ll be working on individual projects, and I’ve had a tough time narrowing down what I want to do. Here are some ideas; all of these things need “doing,” but what can I reasonably tackle in the next two weeks?

Malthi Mapping Project – I’ve just returned from three weeks of digital GPS mapping of this intriguing Middle Helladic site in the Southern Peloponnese. As the official photographer, I’m sitting on a goldmine of photos of walls and rooms. I need to develop a good system of metadata-tagging these photos and filing them in a database of some sort so that they’re accessible to scholars working on the site. Along with this I also need to cull together a number of images that I took in the process of learning photogrammetry, and learn the software that deals with the creation of 3D images based on photographs.
Along with this, I’ve toyed with the idea of developing a website for Malthi, so that subsequent seasons can update their progress in a real-time manner. First I’ll need to discuss this with the Co-PIs, however, to see what their needs are.
Developing an interactive webpage that explores the differences in the landscape of Athens during the Ottoman period and today. This is a side project born of the work I’ve been doing at the J. Paul Getty Museum this past year. I’ve worked on developing an exhibition of the watercolour paintings of Edward Dodwell and Simone Pomardi, and I’ve become quite interested in exploring how the fabric of the Athenian city has changed in the past two centuries.
Creating a content-management system for my extensive (40,000+) collection of images related to my work and teaching. I am not sure how to begin this, but was relieved to read in some of last night’s assignments how this was an issue for art historians and digital management people.
Finally, I’d like to start brainstorming about the future of my dissertation work. I’ve long wanted to push the boundaries of my study of the Erechtheion frieze. Rather than a simple reconstruction drawing – which would be next to impossible, given the limitations of studying the very fragmentary frieze – I think the project calls for something digital, but I have lacked the time to explore this more fully. This could be a good time to start thinking seriously about the post-defence life of my dissertation.

This is a good start, although overly-ambitious for just two weeks, so I welcome ideas about where I could focus in such a short period of time!

Source: Day 1 of DH @ GMU