Digital Humanities

At Pratt, I discovered Digital Humanities, the interdisciplinary field that combines the study of humanities with digital technologies and methods for research, teaching, and scholarship. The final requirement for INFO-687 Digital Humanities, was to create your own digital humanities exploration. I chose to utilize coding skills in Python learned from my course INFO-664 Programming for Cultural Heritage to analyze fruit crate labels pulled from the Digital Commonwealth, a site that allows visitors to view collections from archives, libraries, and special collections across Massachusetts.

A collection of fruit crate labels taken from the Digital Commonwealth.

The main research question began by looking at how to use computer-based methods to analyze produce crate label images from the 1930-1960s and to track any correlation between aesthetic choices and geography. I aimed to track the evolution of these visuals but as the project went on, the scope changed to look at the aesthetics of the labels themselves with special attention being placed on looking at brightness, color choices, and saturation. This was heavily influenced by the work of Kevin Ferguson and his project Digital Surrealism: Visualizing Walt Disney Animation Studios.⁷

Read my project here.

https://dhq.digitalhumanities.org/vol/11/1/000276/000276.html

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