A Collection of Resources for Community & Interview Projects (under construction!)
One of the goals of the Why Here | Why Now Project is to empower other communities to tell their story by examining local issues that are pertinent to their cultural sustainability. This page of resources is meant to be a collection of digital tools and guiding ideas that can help others conceive of — and implement— similar projects to address hyper-local issues.
Digital Tools for Text and Spoken Word
When I say “digital tools” I refer to open-access computational applications that anyone can use to explore and/or present data. Because my work focuses on interview and narrative, I focus on using digital tools for spoken word applications. To that end, here are some of my favorite tools.
Wordle
Wordle is an algorithm program that creates a graphic representation of text by weighting the number of times a given word appears with a greater font size. I use wordle extensively throughout the project, in some cases (believe it or not) as a primary research tool. Because we tend to repeat what is most important to us when we are speaking, I have found that visualizing full interviews always renders something wonderful.
During my first stage of project design, it became pretty clear to me that editing the one to two hour interviews into something that people would actually listen to (which, yes, is the goal) would result in a great loss of thought and context. My original intention was to create slideshows of audio and images for each interview, produced somewhat like a documentary radio or podcast series.
But I quickly found that I wanted to decide which images to linger on for myself (rather than passively watching a rotation) so I decided to publish the audio and photography separately. Still, many thoughts were lost in editing the audio down to a succinct 3 to 5 minute piece (which, for this project, is really unacceptable). By transcribing the full interview (minus any redacted parts) and pasting the text into wordle, I felt I had made some headway towards representing what was lost in the editing process.
Visually, the word clouds are very engaging, and have been mentioned by more than one participant as the reason they decided to be interviewed. In an attempt to create an ongoing, weighted community conversation, I have been combining each new interview (a transcription) with the previous interviews so as to watch the conversation bloom. More on that after I’ve done more interviews. For now, know that Wordle is somewhat limited in its function, but is darn good at what it does. It is also dreadfully simple to use, so you can’t go wrong. Grab some text from Google Books and go try it.
Tagul
Now there is also Tagul, another visualization tool that produces graphics that look similar to Wordle pieces, but is actually quite a different animal. Unlike Wordle, which makes static images from the text I provide, Tagul slurps in text from a site you can designate, or from google itself — all to render a live word cloud that links to those instances of text. Tagul functions as a search mechanism. Wordle, in the way I am using it to explore spoken word, is something akin to a research tool. Interestingly, both of these tools are literal in that they use the words that are actually present in text. A third kind of tag cloud is built right into WordPress, but it is a cloud of meta-terms, or terms that an admin assigns. For instance, when someone is talking about gentrification of a neighborhood, they rarely say the term. By tagging your posts in WordPress with meta-terms, the tag cloud generated by WordPress (found at the very bottom of this page) is like an index to a taxonomy you have created to structure your content.
Many Eyes, TAPoR, Seasr, etc.
Whereas Wordle and Tagul are visualization tools, Many Eyes is a text mining tool that can identify patterns in text. For instance, the word “community” is prevalent in my visualizations. But how is the word actually being used? The tree mapping application will allow you to see each instance of the word “community” in context, that is, within the phrases that the word appears in.
Many Eyes is not difficult to use, just keep in mind that “uploading a data set” can be as simple as pasting some text into a box. Know that any data you provide will be visible (and accessible) by other members of the Many Eyes community. In other words, before you upload a transcript of your interview, be sure that your interviewee has given you explicit consent to open source their words in this way. For this reason, I have not analyzed my interviews yet, but intend to move towards TAPoR to do so.
Like Many Eyes, TAPoR and Seasr each include multiple applications you can work with, but beginners will probably find them more difficult to approach.
Digital Tools for Photography and Info Graphics
We are blessed to live in an era of digital development that is creating new and free-to-use tools for nearly any purpose you can conceive of. Here are a few of my favorites, from timelines to powerful photography collage to new conceptions of the slideshow, you will find some of these to be effective tools no matter the scale of your project.
****coming soon!****
On the Art (and Best Practice of) the Interview
Interviews are curious things. Will your interviews be informal, vox pop, journalistic, an oral history, or ethnographic in nature? Why should you care? I have mixed feelings about this, but capturing and presenting spoken word carries pretty serious ethical burdens, invokes responsibilities under the law, and may change your relationship with people you interview or feature. (And that doesn’t even begin to address various best practice standards as expressed by academic disciplines and societies—things get complicated quickly.)
I have much more to say on this topic, but anyone considering an interview project needs a deep and nuanced understanding of “informed consent.” What is it, how you be sure you’ve got it, and how does putting people’s lives on an internet project complicate it? Listing a few links here would be too easy, so email me if you really want to wrestle with these things.
Website Framework
WordPress as Content Management System
A content management system (sometimes called blogging software, but preferably not) is the very first thing you need to start a digital project online. If you are looking for a way to present just one interview, use Wordle or WordPress powers the Why Here | Why Now project website, and there are two different versions of WordPress you may choose, depending upon your needs and your budget.
WordPress.com
The least intensive (to set up) version of WordPress is hosted on WordPress’ own servers. It is free to use (unless you purchase further capabilities), has limited functionality in a few areas, and will give you a domain name something like www.yourproject.wordpress.com. Despite its limitations, it is powerful and easy to use, and starting a site there is a great way to get up and running. First, you will get an API key (a code number) that will be important to you should you “upgrade” to a self-hosted version, and you will learn the basics of the administration panel, the back-end hub of the WordPress experience.
WordPress.org
The Why Here| Why Now project is powered by a self-hosted version of WordPress, which is also free to use, though it opens the door for other costs, like purchasing server space for web hosting (about $150/year). Self-hosted WordPress allows for much greater functionality, a domain name of your choice (www.yourproject.org- which should never ever cost you more than $10/year), and is the best option for those who want full functionality in media storage and the ability to modify the css of your theme (colors, alignment, fonts, etc.) for a custom look.
WordPress Themes
Themes provide the visual aesthetic for websites powered by WordPress, but they also determine the ways in which the CMS moves. That is, themes are built in different ways by different designers, and how you work with your content is determined by their theme functions. Without getting into too much detail, most of the themes I use for the projects I host and support are grid-based, magazine-style themes. See some in action at African Metro News, DaytonCREATE, and updayton.
My favorite theme designs are from Graph Paper Press, because the lead designer (Thad Allender), a photojournalist of some sort, has a keen minimalist aesthetic that makes his themes useful for a variety of needs. And they are category driven, which is an easy mechanism for code newbies to grasp in order to have control over your site. Click on the image to check them out — including F8, the theme used by the Why Here | Why Now project.
Be warned: self-hosted beginners often have a tough time setting up GPP themes out of the box. But once configured, the structure of the themes is incredibly easy to use. The Why Here | Why Now project has 5 categories (Interviews, Community Conversation, Photography, Process, and MLASC). My user never really needs to know this, but it allows me the ability to segment parts of my website for different purposes: blog posts on the project will never be seen in the same part of the website as my feature interviews, which will never be seen in the section devoted to my work in after school programs, which is kept separate from my sense of place photography.
Web Hosting
I use Dreamhost for all of my self-hosted sites. I find it to be an easy to use platform, with a navigable administration panel, and quick customer service via email. They have a carbon offset program to boot.
Compelling Projects
Here are a few projects that I find inspiring.
The Garden Conversations
Because this project is conceived to address a hyper-local community of interest at a time when external forces threaten its continuance, Garden Conversations might be the most similar to the Why Here | Why Now project. It is deeply meaningful to hear so many reflect on what it is to be an urban gardener.
Fragments of Another Life
This strikingly simple project is a look at what property people retain when they leave their native lands. Shown pictured with their material culture, participants tell of a few fine items, with personal pen marks. It is very much about how we invest our identity in the small things we own. This project inspires me to think of the ways that material culture sustains identity, and to find a way to work the emphasis of people’s cherished things into the Why Here | Why Now Project.
From the artists statement: “When people flee their homes and homelands because of persecution, they are often lucky to escape with their lives – and precious little else.
‘Fragment of Another Life’ is a series of portraits of people recently arrived to the United Kingdom. Each shows the few mementos that they managed to salvage from their previous lives and is personally annotated.”
Interview Project
The David Lynch Interview Project is a special favorite of mine, not only for the way it maps interviews to place, but because of the existential ethic the project embraces. Participants are unerringly human, and the raw honesty in which they present themselves to the camera while reflecting on the project’s “grand life questions” is endlessly interesting and surprisingly life affirming. Some are heartwarming, a few will chill you. Either way, many of the interviewees have remained on my mind long after I have watched.
According to project literature, participants agree to be interviewed after serendipitously encountering the interview team. The crew traveled 20,000 hinterland miles over 70 days and conducted 124 interviews. 121 of these will be posted to the site.
Rochester Black Freedom Struggle
Studs Terkle
Studs Terkel is highly regarded for the dynamism of his interviews with others. Here, you can listen.
Asides
A bit of press for this project, excerpted from the Yellow Springs News:
Web site profiles life in village by and for young families
By Susan Gartner
***
“The idea of the project is to try to glean information from the people who have the potential to raise their families in Yellow Springs to see what their needs really are,” explained Bryan. “Who plans to stay, who plans to leave, and what realities are affecting those decisions.” Blending photography, audio interviews, and music chosen to match the cadence and energy of the speakers, the interactive Web site presents each family’s story in a unique, engaging, and avant-garde format.
Participants Caryn Diamond and her family were ideal candidates for the test project, having moved to town from Dayton in March 2008.
“It felt a little like reality TV,” said Diamond, who was interviewed along with her husband, David, and their three children Phillip (7), Eve (3), and Noah (7 months). “It was fun. Brooke was really good at blending in and not interacting. She just followed us around. She took pictures of us eating dinner. It was surprisingly easy to be normal because she was so in the background.”
Diamond and her husband — both professional trumpet players — fell in love with Yellow Springs on their first visit. It reminded them of Boulder, Colo., where they had lived several years earlier before David became a band member of the United States Air Force Band of Flight, stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force base. They were attracted to the public schools, Glen Helen, the YS Food Co-op, the culture and arts orientation of the town, and the community mindset.
Finding affordable housing, however, was a major concern. After going through the required home-buying process with Home Inc., the long wait for a suitable house conflicted with the couple’s desire to have their oldest, Phillip, enrolled in first grade at Mills Lawn school. A well-timed raise for David and the determination of a real estate agent turned things around quickly.
***
Participant Amanda Turner appreciated the interview opportunity to rethink a difficult family decision.
“There’s an oral history that has been a part of people’s experience in Yellow Springs, but that oral history is not easily passed onto new people,” explained Turner who still feels “new” even after having lived here 10 years.
The subject of affordable housing was also brought up as a major concern for Turner, who has had to take in housemates and live communally, splitting resources and sharing rent, in order to stay here.
Bryan is not only respectful in the way she goes about the business of gathering images and sensitive information, Turner adds, but also knows how to spot the unique details that capture a family’s personality. The interview session, conducted over two days, took approximately two hours; the photography session lasted about 30 minutes.
Ode Magazine Exchange
Exploring community: Why Here|Why Now Project
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Yellow Springs, Ohio has a storied history, and often finds itself at the center of the storm. From civil rights marches in the 1960s (protesting a barbershop that refused to cut black men’s hair), to Antioch College’s controversial sexual correctness policy, the village is no stranger to notoriety. Though like many American small towns, this once vibrant community faces a dwindling population, loss of its tax base, the closing of its flagship institution (Antioch, though poised to reopen in 2011), and the general economic recession of central Ohio. Nevertheless, the village still attracts those in search of an arts community and, at least occasionally, young families seeking one of the last places in which to incubate a Tom Sawyer childhood for their offspring.
Enter Brooke Bryan, an Antioch University graduate, young parent and self-described “phenomenologist with an audio recorder.” Concerned about the polarization she observed in the community over issues ranging from affordable housing, to schools and green space, she launched the WhyHere|WhyNow Project. She observed the propensity for minority voices to trump majority opinion, and her project is an attempt “to create an asynchronous conversation among village residents” and to draw a larger demographic into the discussion of the future of the community. The project includes collecting interviews from villagers about why they choose to live in the town, what their concerns are, and to post them on the website, combined with sense of place photography and audio recordings.
Bryan noticed that the people who stood to be the most affected by the issues at stake – low-income or young working families – were the ones with the least time or resources to get involved in local politics. Their voices were getting lost amid those of wealthier or retired residents with the time and/or money for community involvement. Bryan believes that a collective project such as this has the potential for sharing stories of personal experience with many people….
Read the full piece…