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DH Toolbox Recap: Networks, Databases, and Collective Memories: A Look at Digitized Diasporic Memory

“The Internet is a giant mental network. In theory, it would be possible to create a miniature version of the web by creating one node with some content (an idea, a thought) and to ask people to create a branch of that node with a label of their own—based on what the initial node made them think about. People would keep on adding nodes, which would create interesting stories, like a non-linear cadavre exquis.” Anne-Laure Le Cunff (2020)
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It's been a few months since I graduated from OCAD, but I'm still sharing and presenting my thesis with the world. ✨

Last November, I had the honour of returning to my alma mater to give a presentation for the Digital Humanities Toolbox workshop series.

During this presentation, I discuss the process behind Digitized Diasporic Memory. I cover how I used Airtable and NocoDB to create a collaborative database of crowd-sourced audio memories which respond to each other. Then, I discuss how I used Logseq (an open-source knowledge-base) to convert the database into a web application that maps and visualizes the connections between the submitted stories.

With an understanding of diaspora as networked, rhizomatic, and tentacled, I illustrate how “freemium” and open-source software can be leveraged for collective storytelling, knowledge sharing, and what Anne-Laure Le Cunff describes as mind-to-mind networks.

You can view the recording of the workshop and slides below:

Video Presentation

Timestamps

  • 00:39 - Preamble
  • 05:38 - Intro
  • 06:30 - What is Digitized Diasporic Memory?
  • 10:44 - The thinking behind the thesis
  • 18:41 - Experiments with Technology + Demos
    • 19:26 - Database: Airtable
    • 24:28 - Database: NocoDB
    • 26:38 - Interactive Network Graph: Logseq
    • 32:17 - Generating multiple Logseq pages from a template and database (csv2md)
    • 33:21 - Publishing a Logseq graph online
  • 33:52 - Q&A
  • 45:26 - Quick Demo of Logseq page connections and project backend

Slides

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