When I first proposed my project for Doing Digital
Humanities, I did not have a purpose beyond creating an interactive website
that other lovers of Russian classical music—such as myself—could use as a
resource. I wanted to focus on six different composers, their symphonies, and
how these symphonies were affected by Joseph Stalin’s strict expectations for
Soviet music. As I researched and began constructing my site, I decided to
focus on only three composers rather than six due to time constraints. The
three composers I chose—Aram Khachaturian, Gavriil Popov, and Dmitri
Shostakovich—nicely balance each other because all three had different
reactions to Stalin’s oppression, which you can read about on my site.
It was not until the day of my class presentation at the
beginning of December that I discovered the true purpose of my site. Someone
asked me why freedom of creativity is important, and I realized that my site
had to be an exhibition exploring oppression and inviting my audience to
participate in a creative way. I already knew that I wanted to include poetry
in my site, so it was a natural step to invite my audience to write poetry
about oppression of the arts. As for the biographical and summarizing articles
I had already written for my three composers and their symphonies, I did not
have to change them to fit with my re-defined purpose; instead, I wrote an
article for the “About” page that plants my purpose in the mind of my audience
so that they can look for it while they explore the rest of my website.
One of the strengths of my site is the interactivity.
Audiences can flex their creative muscles and contribute a poem to my site. My
hope is that this activity will help my readers process the terrible oppression
my composers faced in the best way possible: expressing themselves creatively
and freely.
Another strength is the visuals I used in my project. On the
home page of my website, I have embedded a timeline of all the major events
that my website talks about. I used Timeline JS to make the timeline, and then
I had to embed the code into the HTML of my site in order for it to show up
where I wanted it to. Unfortunately, I could not figure out how to make the
timeline wider to fit the entire page of the website, so it is narrower than I
would have liked. I tried altering the code to make it wider, but it did not
work. Additional visuals include pictures on all of the articles in the “Background”
and “Composers” exhibits and embedded Youtube videos in all of the “Symphonies”
articles. To make sure I was within copyright, I tried to find Youtube videos
where the uploader was the one who played and, therefore, owned the content. My
two favorite visuals are the ones that I made myself: my site banner, made with
a copyright free picture of the Soviet flag, Microsoft Paint, and a downloadable
font; and the word cloud on “The Piano Bench” page. I could not get Wordle to
work, so I used Wordcloud.com instead. The word cloud contains key words from
throughout my site that my audience can use as inspiration to write poetry
about oppression and freedom of the arts.
The third strength of my site is the design. I organized my
site in six easy-to-navigate sections. The first section is the “About” page,
which serves as a jumping off point for the rest of my site. The next four
sections are arranged like the four movements in a symphony. Originally, I was
going to name the exhibits after the names of the movements in Shostakovich’s
Seventh Symphony, but after feedback from my classmates, I decided that was not
user-friendly enough, so I named each movement after what was inside of it:
background information, composer biography, summaries of each symphony, and
what happened to music in Russia after Stalin died. The Sixth section of my
site is called “The Piano Bench,” for that is where all of the miscellany is
put, such as the poetry gallery and the further reading section.
One potential weakness of my project is that I did not take
the time to cite all of my sources within the actual site. I had two reasons
for this. 1) I read and re-read much of the same information over many of the
sources that I looked at, and I did not want to clutter the articles that I
wrote—in which I put all of the information that I had gleaned over many
resources into my own words—with citations at the bottom of the page. 2) A
bibliography page is not user-friendly to my audience of general readers. I
decided, instead, to have a “Further Reading” page because it is less
academic-sounding. On this page, I made available the most interesting and
useful pieces of my research. I decided not to cite in Chicago style for the
same reason that I did not use the word “bibliography.” I was afraid that the
academic language would scare away my audience, so I used the title of the work
and author’s name instead.
In the future, I would like to continue working on my site. Maybe
I’ll add pages for the three composers that I had to cut out of my project. The
biggest thing that I would like to do to make my site better is to hyperlink my
articles together so that my audience can click easily from one article to
another. Additionally, I would like to write a poem to put in the poetry
gallery. I had intended to write one as an example, but since it is the end of
the semester, all of my creative and emotional energy is gone. I knew that if I
tried to write a poem now, I would not be happy with it, so I decided to wait.
I would like to write a poem for the gallery over Christmas break, after I rest
and regain some energy.
I spent about forty hours on my website, and I feel like I
have only scratched the surface of my topic. I also feel like I have only begun
to dip my toes in digital humanities. I would like to continue doing digital
humanities in the future, and I very much enjoyed learning new skills and
learning about the digital world from our class sessions. I do not know what my
future will be like yet, but I am confident that Russian composers and the
digital world will be a part of it.
Word count: 1,111
Link to finished site: https://symphoniesofsovietrussia.omeka.net/
No comments:
Post a Comment