The “Territorio no Incorporado” platform is taking more shape with the creation of the new Exhibit: “Puerto Ricans in the Anderson-Pickens-Oconee County Area, Upstate South Carolina.” So far, this exhibit revolves around the story of Julio Rosado, an elite hairstylist living in the town of Anderson.
Successes
#1. The First Storyteller has Emerged
This exhibit features the “Julio Rosado, Elite Hairstylist and New Andersonian” page. Thanks to the contributions made by our storyteller, a privileged nodal point is generated in the “Territorio no Incorporado” map. This node has the centrality and the potential to connect other network notations and to visualize moments of articulation between other social nodes.
#2 More Variety of Source Types
Julio granted me an interview, which allowed for the curation of a story on how, as an elite hairstyling professional, Julio has facilitated social networking within the Puerto Rican, Latinx, and LGBTQ communities. Julio also describes the ways in which food and travel have played a major role in connecting him to various cultures and he connects with culture through food and trips to Puerto Rico.
Along with this interview, this page also includes other primary sources, such as photographs and YouTube videos. Content also comprises some secondary sources: population statistics, websites, scholarly articles, and newspaper pieces.
#3: Potential for Audience Members to Engage in Meaning-Creation
Audience members can now interact with Julio’s oral history and with the other primary and secondary sources. While primary sources tell the story of a Puerto Rican-Andersonian who identifies ways of visibilizing himself and contributing civically to the Upstate region, secondary sources point to larger conversations on how Puerto Ricans play a lead role in defining the Latinx and LGBTQ communities statewide and nationally.
Challenges
#1 Page Layout:
Boy is this layout a tricky thing! The goal of creating the “Puerto Ricans in the Anderson-Pickens-Oconee County Area, Upstate South Carolina.” exhibit has been to practice the organization of content in ways that would entice content-audience engagement and give storytellers like Julio, a platform that facilitates social agency and currency.
One of the many objectives is to rehearse (via the channeling of personas) points of contention and consensus between discourses (storytelling nodes). It is important that the exhibit I’m learning to build end up creating opportunities for audience members generate new meaning. And while the paper prototype I created for exhibits delineates a more integrated set of elements, I’m running into the problem of content clutter. How do I create more autonomous-yet-integrated content compartments? I need to continue playing with page layouts (and Omeka themes) until I find one that is appealing and effective for audience members to navigate and discover.
#2: To Neatline or not to Neatline? That is the Question
As much as I would like to use Neatline, my creative juices have not kicked in to identify ways to approach this plugin. Would this be the appropriate program to visualize the “Territorio no incorporado” social networks? If yes, how so? What should I represent on the timeline that pertains to the local Upstate stories? Unless the site collects and preserves more stories (nodal points), it would be challenging to make use of Neatline at this phase of the site creation.
Should I first consider a more effective mapping tool to use with Omeka at this point, or concentrate my efforts locating additional primary and secondary content? In the next few days, I’m going to entertain the idea of using other visualization tools for “Territorio…”, and compare them to Neatline. I’ll probably end up simultaneously comparing-contrasting between tools (e.g. Voyant, kepler.gl), while increasing source types.
The overarching question (and task) is: How can I create the right space in order for audience members to develop a sense of place?
Stay tuned…
