Importance of Texture
Texturing the Digital Humanities
It is clear that one of the defining characteristics of the digital humanities is its visuality. This is seen in the fact that data visualization and graphical user interfaces underscore many developments in digital humanities (DH). In addition to the need to employ data visualizations such as charts, plots, and graphs to gain insights and to detect unseen trends in the era of “big data” and data-driven approaches in the digital humanities, seminal initiatives such as the Walt Whitman Archive, Early English Books Online, and the Internet Archive have transformed the ways users interact with text visually, and at the same time increasing worldwide accessibility (Altschuler & Weimer, 2020). Although these advances have had significant positive impacts on DH work, the tendency to privilege visual aspects has sometimes obscured the idea of texture and tactile experiences.
It can therefore be argued that the digital humanities need to be textured, or incorporate tactile (sense of touch) perception. Texturing may also be considered as an ethical responsibility to improve the accessibility of digital materials and digitized archives, as such materials increasingly complement, and in some cases replace, physical artefacts and archives. Consequently, texturing is an ethical responsibility (in terms of accessibility) as well as a way to incorporate diverse sensorial abilities and experiences. In the words of Sari Altschuler and David Weimer, “Simultaneously, a textured digital humanities could return forms of tactile engagement and the history that these objects tell to geographically dispersed blind and low-vision readers, who have been poorly served by digital surrogates” (Altschuler & Weimer, 2020).
Incorporating tactile experiences into the digital humanities corresponds well to the principles of Universal Design, an ideal to produce products, objects, and interfaces that are available to all people, regardless of physical condition or disability. Universal design is the motivating factor behind several successful projects to increase the accessibility of digital environments.
Braille is the standardized tactile writing system to make texts accessible for the visually impaired. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is widely used in the digital humanities, while Optical Braille Recognition (OBR) is used only sporadically for large-scale documents. Although OBR makes Braille documents digitally accessible, the process is very slow. However, OBR is needed to make Braille materials functional digital surrogates.
A collaborative effort between the Boston-area institutions Northeastern University and the Perkins School for the Blind, known as “Touch This Page! Making Sense of the Ways We Read”, demonstrates the need to texture the digital humanities. The initiative is a set of public exhibitions that shows visitors how reading can be a fundamentally multisensory activity. The exhibit first appeared at four locations in the Boston area in the Spring of 2019, and also has a notable online presence. 3D printing is one of the primary technologies enabling “Touch This Page!”. 3D printing is used to generate facsimiles of raised-letter, adding a tactile dimension to the normally visual activity of reading. Central to the 3D tactile experience is Boston line type (or Boston line letter), which was a tactile system of writing incorporating raised letters. The type was developed in 1835 by then director of the Perkins School for the Blind (as it is called today), Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe. Boston line type is considered to be a precursor to Braille.
The exhibition consists of six stations. Each station features a panel, in which a narrative is printed, encouraging readers to consider Boston line type and its relationship to universal design, and to ponder their own nonvisual reading experiences. Below each panel is a box in which visitors touch objects that were 3D printed with Boston line type.
The exhibit features 3D printed replicas from historical books for blind and low-vision readers printed between 1830 and 1910, including a 3D scan from an edition of the New Testament, as well as “The Dairyman’s Daughter” (1835) in Boston line type.
At a technological level, the originators of “Touch This Page!” collaborated with a team of engineers. A scalable, efficient approach based on computational algorithms was first used to approximate the 3D shape of letters in text from 2D images of pages in Boston line type. However, the prototypes that were produced from this approach were not considered to be acceptably tactilely precise. Consequently, the more labour-intensive approach of high-resolution 3D scanning was taken. In 3D scanning, specialized hardware, such as 3D scanners, are used to acquire data on the shape, and possibly colour and other characteristics, of real-world object or environments. The data acquired from the scanner are normally in the form of a point cloud, or list of 3D (x, y, z) coordinates indicating points on the surface of the scanned object. The point cloud must then be processed with sophisticated 3D reconstruction algorithms, such as tessellation, wherein a 3D surface is approximated with a mesh consisting of a large number (sometimes hundreds of thousands) of triangles. Triangles are preferred primitive shapes for representing 3D surfaces because they are the simplest primitive (basic) geometric object that can be represented in 3D (e.g. two points uniquely define a line, and three points uniquely define a plane), and can therefore approximate any 3D surface. Of course, surfaces with high curvature require a greater number of triangles for accurate approximation. In addition, normal vectors, or vectors perpendicular to a 3D plane that are used in lighting algorithms to shade the 3D object, is a simple task with triangles. Postprocessing produces 3D models, which are subsequently post-processed, refined, and/or 3D printed.
See Here, p. 4 – 6 for an example.
Another example can be seen Here.
The postprocessing in 3D scanning just described is illustrated in the current context, where more high-fidelity models were generated, but the objects required further preparation. Although 3D scanning resulted in more precise models, tessellation, which is necessarily an approximation, reduces tactile legibility. Although a 3D object may have very high visual fidelity, the digitization process in approximating a 3D model often produces artifacts or defects, including rough or sharp points, which are easily detected tactically. Consequently, distinguishing the actual shape of an object from digitization errors (or as a result of the mathematical algorithms used in the modeling software) becomes difficult.
However, the 3D digitization process can produce 3D scans of books that can be touched and assessed in a tactile manner. They can also be visually zoomed, collapsed, and rotated.
Although incorporating tactile sensory input into the digital humanities is still in the very early stages, such research can potentially add another epistemological level to the discipline, and, in addition, encourage and stimulate interdisciplinary approaches for better understanding of texture. Such work will also allow insights into the potential of tactile knowledge into digital humanities. As Altschuler and Weimer put it, “[n]ow is the time to develop methods that emphasize tactility, to insist on the epistemological significance of touch, and to increase access for diverse users with a wide range of abilities. Now is the moment for texture” (Altschuler & Weimer, 2020).
The reader is encouraged to research some of the computer peripherals, hardware, and devices that can be considered compatible with universal design principles, and to understand the benefits they convey to both persons with and without disabilities Here and Here:
- Screen readers
- Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web (W3C) consortium
- Keyboard accessibility and adaptive keyboard
- Braille output devices
- Head wand
- Eye tracking
- Voice recognition software
3D Printing
3D printing is an additive process, by which objects are built layer by layer. The process is computer controlled, facilitated by computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). The end result is a three-dimensional object. 3D printing is related to rapid prototyping, in which a to-scale model of a physical part, component, or other object is quickly fabricated. 3D printing raises some important questions for the digital humanities.
Two such questions deal with the relevance of this technology: how are tactile objects produced from technology related to the fact that physical objects are imbued with potential meaning? and; how can 3D printing complement data visualization and its interfaces? (Tucker, 2017).
In one sense 3D printing can offer unique contributions to digital humanities, as the artefacts that are produced are both analog (existing as they do spatio-temporally) and digital (in reference to their mode of production). One of the benefits of this technology is that 3D printed objects, with its relatively easy mode of replication, can concretize and realize abstract ideals, thereby facilitating engagement of humanists with issues that cannot be represented in print, film, music, or other non-tactile media. Replication is a huge advantage for large-scale projects or for educational purposes. The prototyping enabled by 3D printing has a very low risk of failure, and is conducive to experimentation and iterative refinement. The recreation of lost objects, in the form of tactile models, combines technology and artistry.
Additionally, 3D printing can be considered as form of, and enhancement of visualization. Interfaces to 3D printing systems blend the virtuality of computer modeling with the physicality of the finished three-dimensional object. Aaron Tucker provides the example from his own work of translating poetry into tactile “landscapes” and sculptures, which adds a tactile dimension to what is normally considered as two-dimensional “text” and to the interfaces used in information visualization.
Another contribution that 3D printing can make to digital humanities is tactility, mass, and volume as aesthetic qualities that cannot be represented even by advanced interactive visualizations. Such qualities lead to more engagement among humanist scholars, as the “real” physical objects are immediately present to the senses. Or, as Tucker put it, “[g]enerating projects that take advantage of the physicality and materiality of such objects can be an exceptionally effective and emotive mode to considering virtual or past objects…” (Tucker, 2017). Examples of this work are found Here.