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Media Boundaries and Conceptual Modelling Between Texts and Maps Media Boundaries and Conceptual Modelling Between Texts and Maps Øyvind Eide Pre-print manuscript April 2015 Pre-print April 2015 2 To Aud Eide, 1932–2015. RIP. Pre-print April 2015 4 Contents Preface 11 I 13 1 Introduction 15 1.1 Digital humanities . 15 1.2 Modelling . 16 1.3 Text and map . 18 1.4 The book . 21 2 Texts, maps, and the landscape 23 2.1 Places and maps . 27 2.2 Textual landscapes . 37 2.3 Finding one’s way . 40 2.4 Geocommunication . 50 2.5 Texts and maps as graphical objects . 52 3 Critical stepwise formalisation 55 3.1 The modelling stages and fall-off . 56 3.2 The experimental process . 58 3.3 Starting point: the text . 64 3.4 Building the primary model . 69 3.5 Towards the formalised model . 77 3.6 Vector data . 79 3.7 Maps . 80 3.8 Critical stepwise formalisation as a method . 84 5 CONTENTS II 89 4 Case studies 91 4.1 Results from the setup processes . 91 4.2 Experimental setup . 95 4.3 Case 1: Povel Olsen . 96 4.4 Case 2: Ole Nilsen . 112 4.5 Cases 3–4: Peter Schnitler . 117 4.6 Results . 126 5 Towards a typology of media differences 129 5.1 Classification of results . 130 5.2 The question of context . 145 III 153 6 Texts and maps as media expressions 155 6.1 Comparing the arts . 156 6.2 Media modalities . 166 6.3 Texts and maps . 177 7 GIS and digital mapping 191 7.1 The mapping problem . 192 7.2 Geographical ontologies . 195 7.3 Time in maps . 197 7.4 Fuzzy maps . 202 7.5 Deep mapping . 206 7.6 Cultural capital . 208 8 Critical stepwise formalisation reloaded 211 8.1 Modelling and intermediality . 211 8.2 Text encoding, mapping, and borders . 214 8.3 The role of the programmer . 220 8.4 Formalising other expressions . 221 8.5 On formalisation . 224 8.6 The text . 225 Bibliography 227 Pre-print April 2015 6 List of Figures 1.1 Fragment of Schnitler’s map from 1744 . 20 3.1 Example of stepwise formalisation. 57 3.2 Example of a CIDOC-CRM model . 62 3.3 Screenshot from the modelling tool . 68 3.4 Example of computer-assisted stepwise formalisation . 78 3.5 Vector data example . 83 4.1 Screenshot from the modelling tool . 97 4.2 Model of the text of paragraph 42735 . 98 4.3 The relationships from Figure 4.2 . 99 4.4 Map based on the text of paragraph 42735 . 101 4.5 Model of the text of paragraph 42677 . 104 4.6 Map based on the text of paragraph 42677, version 1 . 105 4.7 Map based on the text of paragraph 42677, version 2 . 106 4.8 Fragment of the model of the text from Schnitler’s aggregation 122 4.9 Topological map based on the route description above . 125 5.1 Map examples showing symbology and map differences . 132 5.2 The border between Norway and Sweden . 134 5.3 Spatial relationship between points . 138 5.4 Spatial relationship between a line and a polygon . 139 5.5 Impossible figure . 143 7.1 Underspecification 1 . 194 7.2 Underspecification 2 . 194 7.3 Minard: Napoleon’s 1812 Russian campaign . 198 7 LIST OF FIGURES Pre-print April 2015 8 List of Tables 3.1 List of assertions found in an example text . 61 4.1 Statistics for form for Povel Olsen . 109 4.2 Statistics for relationship for Povel Olsen . 109 4.3 Statistics for form for Ole Nilsen . 113 4.4 Statistics for relationship for Ole Nilsen . 113 6.1 Elleström’s modalities . 175 9 LIST OF TABLES Pre-print April 2015 10 Preface The humanities are going through a period of deep change. This is partly due to developments in the society at large, but it also springs out of changes in our way of thinking and working. The linguistic turn has been succeeded by a spatial turn (Bodenhamer et al. 2010, Gregory & Hardie 2011, Tally 2013) and the digital is changing the foundations for research as well as for teaching. As humanists we should face these challenges by adapting to the new, to the digital and to the spatial, while keeping focused on traditional scholarly questions of great importance and consequence. This book forms part of the humanities tradition by facing one of the fundamental problems since antiquity, namely, that of representation. How do different media represent reality, fiction, myth, and others parts of the human lived world? It intersects also with the digital by addressing the problem with the help of a digital humanities method: computer assisted conceptual modelling. And it acknowledges the spatial turn by investigating the boundary between what has traditionally been the two main media for representation of geospatial information: texts and maps. The topic and method will be exemplified by a study of eighteenth century border protocols from the multi-cultural area of Northern Scandinavia. The book aims at making a contribution to the further development of digital humanities as a discipline. It will build a bridge between digital humanities and intermedia studies. This bridge will carry theoretical con- siderations as well as practical results. The book will strengthen the the- oretical foundation for research and teaching in spatial digital humanities. Specifically it will develop further critical discussion of the practice of digital mapping, offering a theoretically based understanding of such practices from a humanities perspective. More generally it will contribute to the theoretical discussion of modelling in digital humanities. The book introduces a new area of research, namely, transformative digital 11 LIST OF TABLES intermedia studies, located at the cross section between digital humanities and intermedia studies. This will be done by introducing critical stepwise formalisation as a method specially suited for studying media differences. The aim is to use the computer to get beyond human meaning-seeking inter- pretations of media expressions. The book establishes a method for studying media differences, using texts and maps as a worked through case study. It is meant as a starting point rather than an endpoint. My hope is that it will be used to understand how modelling is related to media differences, how texts and maps are related in complex ways, and how they can best work together. The book is a result of a long research process, starting in 2005 with a chat with my PhD supervisor Willard McCarty. The story up until the finalisation of the PhD thesis is described in Eide (2012a) and will not be repeated here. This book is based on the PhD, but it is reworked in a number of ways. Bits and pieces of the argument have also been published in articles and book chapters. References are given in due course to these other publications. I will refer to the long list of helpers published in the Eide (2012a) for all the people who were important in the PhD research and in the writing of the thesis. Here I will mention the ones who contributed specifically to this book. Needless to say they have no responsibility for the omissions and problems still remaining in this text. Dear Arianna Ciula, Jonas Bakkeli Eide, Lars Elleström, Willard McCarty, Tim Ingold, John Unsworth, and anonymous reviewers: thank you for your help in the final steps towards this book. The results presented in this book has been discussed at a number of conferences, seminars, and workshops. I am grateful to all participants who have asked questions, raised concerns, and criticised my presentations. Dear Heidi, Oda, and Jonas: thank you for being with me in this process. We may fall, but we never stop climbing. Pre-print April 2015 12 Part I 13 Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Digital humanities Humanists have interacted with computing machinery for more than sixty years.1 This is not only a history of using the computer as a tool, but also of how computers have influenced our thinking. The challenges posted by algorithmic thinking have been met in different ways in the humanities over the years. Ideas from different areas of the humanities have been in active interaction with computer science, with influences going in both directions. One example of influence from the humanities to computer science is the history behind the development of XML2 (DeRose 1999, 19–21). The larger research strategy behind this book is to develop transformative digital intermedia studies as a means to understand better the differences between media with different modalities and with different semiotic systems. In order to focus the project on a manageable task, the book describes a study of the differences between maps and texts. The method used is critical stepwise formalisation, a type of conceptual modelling applied to geospatial information read from texts. The results from the study are put in the context of previous research and theory in order to establish a deeper understanding of general rules behind the media differences. A turning point in the history of digital humanities was the establish- ment of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) in 1985.3 TEI has proven highly 1The labels we have used to denote such interaction have changed over the years. For the history of what is now called digital humanities, see for example Hockey (2004). 2Extensible Markup Language. URL: http://www.w3.org/XML/ (checked 2015-04-03). 3The TEI Concortium has created and maintains a set of guidelines for how to best 15 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION influential, and a significant part of the work in the digital humanities has been connected to it.
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