In “Generous Interfaces for Digital Cultural Collections” Mitchell Whitelaw, highlights many of the shortcomings of traditional collection searching/ browsing. This has given rise to more humanistic ways of engaging with online collections that also encourage exploration. I think a crucial benefit of “generous interfaces” outlined in the paper is their ability to reveal patterns and relationships within a collection, and also how they can interface with outside archives. They also open the opportunity to create new metadata that connects works in the collection (for example, the Queenslander front-page color analysis). However, generous interfaces tend to take a heavy-handed approach to visualizing a collection and rely heavily on rich metadata to surface some works more than others. Because of this, works with less metadata could fall through the cracks in these interfaces, and the lack of information about them could be mistaken for lack of significance.

I think Marian Dörk frames these emerging interfaces in an interesting way, that they aren’t just technical solutions but “cultural artifacts”. In this way, these interfaces can be seen as an extension of the institution rather just just a supplemental tool. Dörk’s notion of an “information flaneur” is also compelling, particularly in how it highlights how generous interfaces can invite visitors who are both seeking information and “wandering”. Johanna Drucker, sharing similar beliefs, argues that tradiation visualization methods (bar charts, maps, etc.) have created an epistemic crisis within the digital humanites, and that the field needs to reimagine interface design in ways that are “suited to its critical principles”.

This reading brought to mind some artists and scholars who are working in similar domains and engaging some of the issues that “generous interfaces” address. One project is “On Broadway” by Lev Manovich that explores Broadway street in Manhattan through various visual, open datasets. Another is Jonathan Harris’s “The Whale Hunt” (RIP Flash), where Harris documents his experience living with Inupiat Eskimos in Barrow, Alaska over the course of week through various qualitative and quantitive datasets. However, in both projects the creators curated the collections themselves in order to explore “generous interfaces” as a medium.

In Digital Storytelling in Museums, the authors assert that museums have transitioned well from a traditionally didactic voice to more generative and dialogic approaches. However, it’s essential for museums to engage with visitor’s outside of their walls to maintain interest, relevance, and authority. A key question the authors raise is “not whether or not people are interested in stories.. [but] how can a museum best frame content to make it desirable?” Adding interactivity to collections and spaces can add new context and meaning to original works. However, if the technologies that facilitate this become too prominent, it can actually nullify the point of the experience and detract attention from the work. Quite a bit of the strategic advice they give for successful digital storytelling really resonate with my own perspectives: technology should be an invisible, connective tissue for interactive experiences. The user journey, the goal of the experience, and the new context/ meaning being introduced is the key focus—Technology is used to facilitate that goal. They also emphasize an iterative, rapid prototyping process which reminded me of the aquarium paper we read earlier in the semester.