 Thank you. Yeah, I think it's show time. All right, and everybody over the zoom hear me, please give me a thumbs up for great. Thanks everybody for coming. I'm Dave road. Today we have our spring research talks of our bestie fellows and graduate fellows. Kevin will be up first with the Department of dance will be called by Trevor Smith. They're just in communication. Matt also will be talking about this project of history. John Flynn will be a Marty will be joining us from soon. So without further ado there, please. Thanks a lot, David. I'm just going to put a timer on here so I know I'm at 10 minutes. Thanks everybody. Thanks everyone on zoom. Thanks to digital matters for this grant for this project called nomadic performance technologies for dance making in the 21st century. So this is an exciting collaboration between two colleagues of mine at Virginia Tech and myself. And I will just sort of roll us through what this project was all about. So our goals were to research and develop the assets for an original digitally enhanced dance theater performance and to merge our interests and technologies typically not used in performance with our need to move beyond traditional performance infrastructures. Maybe that will come become clear in a second. So our initial tools and the principal roles here so we were working primarily with two Mavic pro quadcopters drones and to see you know could these be artistic meetings. And so my colleagues are Scotty Hardwig. He is an assistant professor at Virginia Tech he's a movement artist and performer, and Zach do or also at Virginia Tech composer engineer and drone pilot. So why drones. I boiled it down to these three principal ideas of affect vertical space and human drone interactively were seemed to be like the three areas of interest here. And so you know a drone is a moving surveillance technology, and it's physical and sonic presence coupled with our associations and projections can produce an uncanny effect. And so we're very interested in this kind of uncanniness that the drone seems to have on us at least three of us. So. But also many dances happen in theaters with a proscenium arch, and this architectures defined by its overhead open space that is at about minimum about 20 feet high. So nothing happens in that space except light. And maybe if you have a backdrop, like classical ballets use a lot of backdrops for some reason as yet unknown to me in modern dance we don't really use backdrops that much. But most dances remain limited to the horizontal plane of stage four, and we want to explore the affective potential of vertical space. So questions are basic question here was could drones be an artistic medium. Interactivity could be achieved between a dancer and a drone. And what new affects could be produced by distorting how drones are typically used. So our mode of inquiry is called practice based research and this is a heuristic iterative process of discovery choice making and shaping in which the art making context of the rehearsal is the site for emergent outcomes. So there's just like work solving for X on the fly, and whatever X manifests as is part of the performance. Okay, so this falls within the tradition of devised theater, which is a process of collaborative creation, often using improvisation as a way of finding repeatable patterns, meaningful images and actions. Or as I like to say this is a process of working with what is in order to find what is. So our procedures we began Zach and Scotty began in Virginia with some early drone tests, mostly outdoors, working with their onboard tracking system. It was the tracking system of the Mavic that we were most interested in because other experiments that I've done with drones have involved motion capture, which is great, highly, highly expensive and not really portable for what we were trying to do. So, after that they were out here in Utah for five days and we were rehearsing at the Marriott Center for Dance, two rehearsal periods a day, post rehearsal review of recordings, developing documentary footage and sound design development. And then post residency experimentation with the drones and some other materials that's ongoing at Virginia Tech. I'll talk about some of those other materials as we get further. So day one while they're out here is what can drones do, right? We're just discovering this and some of the obvious things they fly, they see, they record, they track, they are loud and the propellers create wind. And that was the big discovery on that first day that we hadn't really thought about. We thought of them as objects in space but we hadn't necessarily accounted for their wind and that became the new question. And this was like the pivot point for us. Like could the wind that the drones produce be the medium by which they affect change? And then the question then was like how could we visualize this change in ways that might be dramaturgically meaningful, right? So, okay, let me see if I can show a little bit of video for this year of this first day. Scotty is under feathers and this is one of the prime things like how we're going to visualize change. So what you can see here is this drone is operating. It's doing a few things, right? I mean it has its own presence but it also creates this mess. It cleans up the mess for the next aspect of the theatrical production and it advances on Scotty at the same time. So we're finding like that compression of space is part of what's contributing, I think, to a certain kind of affect, a certain kind of drama. This sort of this thing that is slowly moving in there. And we'll talk about the speed of the drones in a minute to two, but that was day one. Day two, sorry, that was day two. Day three, okay, we want to work with light and this is Zach's quote, it's a dumb dangerous hovercraft with momentum. And so what he's meaning is that these drones know where they are in space through GPS. Ideally, and that's what happens outside, they lock into their GPS and they're incredibly solid. So with a flying drone or a hovering drone, you can grab it, but you can't move it because it will resist that. It's locked in. When you bring it inside and close the windows, you cut it off from GPS, but it switches to its optical sensors. It's a vision, and its vision is really good. And it also makes it very resistant to change, but very stable. We kill the lights. So basically because its vision sensors are reliant upon light. So we close the windows, douse the lights, and it's at that point that the drone goes blind and it starts to drift, which was both dangerous, but exactly what we want. Because then we could use it as a moving light source. We basically tapped, we taped tactical flashlights to the drones. And because they were drifting now, Scotty, who you'll see was able to play this kind of dangerous game of catch with this drone. And so let's talk, let's look at this. So in an effort for Dancer drone interactivity, so he's able to touch the drone and move it through space and give it some momentum. I'd be happy to share these videos with anybody if they want. So my computer is thinking here. Okay, day four, water. So we were interested in the possibility of the drones making marks, finding some way to make marks. So we attached paintbrushes to the drones via string, use water on the floor to see if there was any possibility here of drones making marks. So here we have drones able to track Scotty around him and drag these brushes through water and then create traces. I'm just going to kind of speed through here because I'm running out of time. There's water, paintbrush goes through it, we drag the mark. So this idea actually didn't work in how we wanted it to. What we have on the stage is calligraphy paper that you can paint on with water and the marks turn black and then they evaporate. So this idea of the gesture of the mark that dissolves was really interesting to us. So what we needed to do is this. We need to go back to wind being really the medium by which the drones create change. So now we can add water to this paper, we're going to leave marks and the drones can push the water around over the over the paper. So the drones leave these marks. And let's continue on. And Scotty leaves marks on the same paper. So again, trying to leave traces because in dance, it's a very ephemeral art form. It doesn't really leave too much of a record of itself, like the artifacts of dance don't necessarily need records, except certainly if you record them, but they don't necessarily leave traces. So just quickly moving through here. So our trial and error collaborative art making process fused all these ways of knowing digital analog biological mechanical physical musical temporal spatial theatrical and mythic ways of knowing. And the process involved working with the drones and ways that they were not specifically designed and misusing the drones led to behaviors that were key to defining moments of this emerging dance theater piece that we're calling data. Dataless dreams. So, and then Scotty had this last insight here we're choosing a particular technology media or model of drone quality of the process and possibilities will be shaped by these containers yielding a unique result for experimentation play in emergence. So if we had different drones, different capabilities, different product would totally arise. So next steps, get some netting to protect the audience from the drums. So I know I'm often safety third but we definitely have to get this get this net. So, then, got to complete the creative process and premiere the piece either in Virginia tech or here at the University of Utah, and then we have to pursue some domestic and international performance venues or either festivals or conferences, such as the conference and graphic interfaces. That is all she wrote. Sorry for taking too much time. All of our questions. Yeah. No problem. Hopefully. All right. Thanks so much. I'm Trevor Smith. I'm a current master's student in the Department of Communication. I, my kind of tentative short title right now this project is Generative AI and creativity, which we will get into a little bit more. And if you attended my workshop about a month ago there will definitely be some overlap as far as concepts but instead of kind of showcasing the technologies I'm going to focus more on my critical analysis of these technologies and kind of the points I want to make in my final project. I understand that this will this project is currently my final master's project which I definitely would not have been able to do without the kind of help of digital matters so I'm very grateful for them so I can take undertake this kind of ambitious project so happy for that experience. So, kind of the beginning the starting point of this project and the inspiration is really rooted in the existing critical literature about artificial intelligence algorithms, especially in social media context and digital spaces. I've been really inspired by the writing about how these algorithms recommend and moderate online media content and how that impacts society politics and culture. So this project is hopefully contributing to that focusing on artificial intelligence that instead of moderating recommending content independently creates content on its own. And part of why I'm excited about this project is that it's, and also why it's challenging is these technologies are somewhat new and definitely understudied and in some cases still kind of primitive. It makes it you know, really interesting but also kind of a challenge but as far as methodology I'm hoping to position this study as a critical textual analysis. I'm focusing on how the texts are related to power culture and society, and we'll get into what the kind of text I'm studying is as that's kind of another conceptual challenge I'm wrestling with right now. But in short, the goals of this project are to conceptualize review and critique generative AI which I will define in this presentation and paper. So, one thing that's been really great about digital matters is having, you know, colleagues and people in this circle who can I can talk to you about, you know, computer science stuff which I am not super well versed in. So what's been kind of the first challenge of this paper is navigating different definitions of what is artificial intelligence, what are the different kinds of artificial intelligence, and how are they different from each other at least as someone who's kind of new to that field. And I'm a very visual learner I always hope to find like a really clear graphic as far as differentiating these technologies and I ended up having to make my own. So this hopefully will help, you know, it's definitely helped me and I hope it helps other people too. But I see the definition of work I'm, I'm drawing from kind of positions artificial intelligence as the broadest category of these technologies. Very simply defined a machine that makes a human cognitive function. So that can be a lot of different things and take a lot of different shapes. Subsequently more narrow is our algorithms, which are a set of rules or processes that automatically attempt to solve the problem. And that also constitutes a type of artificial intelligence, as this graphic indicates. Then kind of getting more narrow into more specific types of artificial intelligence is machine learning, which is essentially a self improving or amending set of algorithms that develops as it runs and gets ideally better and better at the problem it's trying to solve. And then kind of most narrow within those subsets are deep learning, which is essentially just machine learning that uses a really big sets of data to self improve and augment itself, and GANs which we'll get into a little bit but these are kind of the This is the definitional work I've done to kind of use as a launch point for the rest of the project. And that brings us to what I see as maybe the, I guess, first or primary contribution of my project is to propose a definition for these kinds of technology, which I've turned generative artificial intelligence. And very simply, I'm claiming that generative AI can be defined as any kind of artificial intelligence that artificially independently creates a piece of media content. So what that can mean is really, I'm keeping it broad right so any kind of artificial intelligence or this broadest circle could be a generative artificial intelligence. A couple really quick examples of generative AI that are already kind of existing and in popular culture video games very frequently use generative algorithms to produce random landscapes or challenges for the player to solve. Minecraft is a very popular example that's been studied by a lot of game studies people on how you know algorithms create a new challenge and environment for the player every iteration of play. Then getting kind of more narrow are there's really interesting generative machine learning programs that are already available to public use on the internet. I really like this cat does not exist, which is essentially a machine learning program that was fed tons of real images of cats and then subsequently creates synthetic, you know, like polymer pictures of cats that do not exist that are essentially composite and made up by this computer. And then I mentioned I would talk about GANs generative adversarial networks. They're very similar to machine learning programs with the exception that they run a kind of Turing test or discernibility test after they create something that compares a created AI piece of media to a human made piece of media and tries to determine which one is real and thereby gets better and better at making that piece of media. So really fun kind of spooky one is this face does not exist, which asks the human user to discern between two different images, which face is a real face and which one is a composite AI created face and then uses your decision or your guests to independently get better and better at making faces. So, GANs are probably like the most narrow kind of generative AI and maybe the most, I'd say the most frequent kind of generative AI that is currently available. So I'll be talking a little bit about those technologies in this paper. So other types of media I mentioned at the top that discerning exactly what are the texts I'm going to analyze is a conceptual challenge. Furthermore, what counts as media is also going to be a little bit of a challenge with these generative AI examples. I've seen technologies and indexed technologies that include machine creative memes, music images, 3d objects text and narrative social media contact video games and more AI journalism is already kind of something that's being discussed in academia which is kind of spooky as well. So getting to, I thought, you know, for the purposes of this presentation and be useful to talk about some of the critical arguments that I have reviewed about AI in general, and how they might relate to generative AI and then go through some of my own arguments that are kind of unique to generative AI, instead of AI in general. And so one really good and frequent argument about artificial intelligence, as far as its role in our media and information environment, is that it exists under those guise of objectivity that because it is code, because it is a computer, it is therefore objective and fair and non biased. Most critics contend that this is not true, but instead the subjectivity of the creators of these AI is embedded in their very code, which is actually pretty easy to spot when you consider, you know, how AI contributes our information and media environments already. There's really good critical writing about how IRL biases are replicated in the way AI functions online, but in much more sneaky ways in that it's presumably objective robot, but is really also biased. They've also been criticized simply because they've been given tremendous amounts of power as far as shaping our online environments, and that they, even in having that power, they are kind of, they don't really have a lot of stake in the game as far as our information environments as non human entities, but they are the ones dictating those environments. But another kind of goal of my project is to incorporate indigenous and non Western perspectives on AI, I am not an indigenous person, but part of the inspiration for this project was a seminar on indigenous approaches to technology and information. And I think they really, especially in the cases of AI, they help us break out of traditional critical epistemological restrictions and help us think kind of what the different mindset about these technologies. Specifically, in the case of generative AI, I think it's really useful to think about how we form relationships with non human entities, something that has been conceptualized much more positively by indigenous scholars than Western scholars. Many indigenous scholars contend that human non human relationships in Western society are focused on hierarchy control of colonialism in a kind of master slave relationship with us and our artificial creations, which is then replicated in the services they provide us and And then furthermore, very simply, if AI is predominantly created by Western individuals, the content they create as generative AI will be dominantly Western and kind of restricted by that mindset. Some of my unique arguments really quickly. And these ones are more unique to AI that creates media content. There's one of my favorite journalists named Kara Swisher, she's an opinion journalist for the New York Times comments on generative AI as like the garbage in garbage out problem which I really like. That's, you know, if you feed these machines are print internet environment it will inevitably reproduce that kind of crummy environment. I'm a good example of that is Microsoft Twitter bot, hey, which only took like, I think like six hours to learn from Twitter about racism and really, really bad things and ended up tweeting some really horrendous things pretty quickly. And furthermore, it is clear that our media environment does not privilege all media creations equally and whatever and generative AI will essentially reproduce as equalities. Another kind of interesting argument is that since these AI learn from us on how to make things, whatever they create will inherently see derivative and, you know, a reproduction of existing media rather than anything that's truly new or inspiring, but essentially like a mash up of human creation already. Another kind of concern I have about generative AI is the amount of data and content that they can they can produce and how rapidly that might happen that that data takes up real real physical space and has a cost associated with it. One problem I'm going to coin, I think is the Ouroboros problem that these AI could learn how to make media from other media generated AI, which in turn, you know, could create something totally unhuman and unpredictable, and that they'll be learning from themselves, which is kind of kind of different. One of the problems of ownership liability and textuality with these generative AI, you know, who owns their creations, who's liable for their creations and then what is the text is it the AI itself or the creation. And then finally, I think there's some really interesting I'll just summarize this really quickly. Interesting things to consider about how despite these AI are very primitive now, they could end up being better at making media than humans and where does that leave us right what happens when they produce media that is more engaging or exciting or or desirable and how does that seem to make creations and how does that impact our media environment. And how will that impact there by society culture and politics so the main purpose of my paper is to conceptualize these topics and define them and and also propose, you know, some of my own analysis and that we think more critically about these as they are primitive now they will continue to develop and become more important as as time progresses. So that's it and I'm happy to answer questions at the end. Thank you. No, I'll click there. He's going to join me to talk about his section. Let's just bring it to the PowerPoint, and then we can click through to the website. Okay, yeah. I think the start of the place. Thank you for the invitation to talk through this project. Thank you for my co collaborator to my co collaborator john Flynn for joining me. And thanks of course the digital matters for for supporting this. Thank you for the invitation to it. So our idea was to build a World War two. Omega s website, and it doesn't really want to go through for me. Let's see how do I forward this thing. The big track pattern. So this came out of a National Park Service World War two home front study that I'm the PI for. And as we did this project, one of the goals there's three different goals, one to create a national theme study essay basically that helps park service professionals know about the latest scholarship on the World War two home front. The second goal was to write histories of every state and territory, short ones for a new piece of legislation called the World War two heritage cities. An issue, which I'm happy to talk about but basically you got the drift take 55 histories right 50 states five territories. A lot of work to write these these state and territory histories. And we couldn't go super deep into it. The third is to write some national historic landmark nominations for those that don't know the national historic landmark is basically the highest achievement for a site right as far as national preservation, other than a park. But as we work initially on the state histories as I worked on them with a team of undergraduates and graduates get really interested in what might this look like as a digital project instead of as an analog or as a kind of written project. And as we all know, limits in both spheres but some pretty profound limits with with the written word right that we could potentially get passed with with a digital project. I knew it would take a lot more time to kind of try to figure that out. And thankfully, digital matters and the VP for research stepped up to give me some money to try to figure this out. And as you note here what I was really interested in was kind of an interactive exhibit a website that was modular, right so that could go in, people can approach it from three different areas, at least. That was an archive, and that was also curated with some bling, as I put it in johns the bling. Yeah, I just thought of that. That's an amazing line. You should put that on your Vita. I'm the bling. So johns the bling. And we kind of undertook this project together, kind of talking it through again the help of digital matters. And I said oh mecca s plus, they're going to have to pay me royalties for that. The plus is all the additional stuff that omega s works interactively with we wanted to see if it would work for us right. These are visualizations. Geospatial stuff, etc, etc. All right. What's my next slide. Oh, this thing is. Wow. Man. Loving this interface. Okay. So we look at omega models to think about what the possibilities for a mecca s might be. We came up with a beta beta site plan which is going to be evolving but site plan what if you will. And we began this research on the utahs world war two home front. Yes, we chose Utah, obviously, as kind of our case study on what this might look like, and came up with three different approaches that we wanted to try to follow and bring data through sites, themes and people. I have so much time left. Zero. Tell me when I'm getting close to. Thank you. All right. That's our framing. Now john's going to talk a little bit about our site. How you going? I got you hooked up with this computer. Yeah. So this is the beta site for the utah home front. And as Matt said, we're using omega with some various plugins such as Tableau for data visualizations night lab also has database as well as some like interactive timelines. And of course ArcGIS for spatial. And those integrate into Mecca, typically through an iframe. So the biggest thing we wanted was a map of these key sites because it originally was place based. And so, Oh, Mecca does have its limitation so there's not a super fluid way to integrate GIS with omega. I don't think Rebecca is maybe dealing with this as well. You have to essentially create a map and then embed it on the site and they don't talk to each other. So anytime you make a change that map, you have to re upload it. But the idea is you can click on these sites. And it will take you to the web page for a narrative through. So this is the often defense depot. And what will happen is there'll be these hyperlinks because as Matt was talking about it's this interactive but kind of this journey through and these different ways to explore. So if you see anything that's a link, it'll take you to another page on the site that is related to that. So if you clicked on this, this would take you to something under the themes category. So POWs in Utah. You have a landing page with a timeline. So this is a night lab timeline. And as well as some other categories where we have some visualizations and these are interactive and the ideas you can kind of bounce back and forth. So if you are reading about Ogden defense depot and say I didn't know there are POWs there, you can get this broad overview of POWs in Utah. So the idea is you can go broad to granular and granular to broad back and forth and the most granular I would think would be people where these are going to be biographies and stories and memoirs that are attached to these sites around. So let's take a look. So here's James who actually who worked at Hill Air Force Base. And these will at the bottom is the citation for the full oral history and the ideas as I was saying this is an archive so we're pulling from all these different places and the ideas you can kind of point back to where we got this. And this will hopefully get people to look at local museums around the state as well as the Marriott Library and these other big installations. And then you'll have at the bottom related themes so everything that this particular biography touches on he worked at Hill Field Ogden defense depot. Thematically it covers African Americans on the home front and also medically racial tensions and conflict. And I just going back didn't touch but so themes is the other broad category we have. And these are kind of changing right now but again it's if you're looking at a site and it talks about women in the workforce. You can say why didn't really know much about that click on that theme. Get a broad overview and then go into a deeper dive with the biographies of people that live there so it helps curate this experience of learning about the home front and anytime there's a question you have. You can bounce back to a thematic broad overview or if you want the nitty gritty details in the data visualization provide that. The advantage of omega is that it is really great for archiving these photos and sources. So you can even add a geolocation to it as well and point to where they came from. The limit I think we're having right now with it is it is a bit clunky as an interface right now to have this kind of seamless interaction we want between these. So that's that's kind of what we're working on right now it is a really great template to just load in a bunch of data archives as well as these data visualizations. But I think depending on what the end result would be it might change if they were going to be a large interactive display or something like that. Yeah, it's been super it's been super enlightening honestly working with with John on this and thinking through America as possibilities and its limitations. I'm kind of an imagination person. I'm like this is what I would like to feel like and look like and so on and we've been kind of trying to work with the realities of software and so on. That's still out there and I'm still very excited about it. I do think that the digital provides a really different way potentially of seeing the home front. I'll use one example as I as I wrap up and I'm going to go back to our original point which is geospatial stuff right. So my hope is that you might go to the granular particular place in Utah and you can track either a person or a material. Let's say to uranium and understand the connectivity across Utah across the broader US home front and globally right which really makes the home front a different story. Tracking a soldier does the same thing. Instead of just thinking about this person as a home front person. They become part of that global story of World War two pros and cons there. Same thing for producing a parachute by a rural woman a man time. If you can track that parachute and understand that as part of this bigger story of World War two it's really pretty exciting. Right with that archival kind of half of primary sources and the curated content that we're working on. So it's it's it's pretty exciting. I think it can capture folks. I'm especially excited about trying to make this mobile as well. Right. This is part of the geospatial thing and connecting these museums around Utah, which is the final point here. We've already had some good discussions with. I don't know if no or not there's a new. I know we're back in those a new museum of Utah is emerging up on the capital ground. And we're hoping that they'll think about making this exhibit either via omega s or a different software part of that that museum. So that's that's the exciting thing I might just either live in a digital space for them on their website or it could be a big exhibit wall. For example the big smart wall that you see right here. They were the smart wall. Oh, smart wall back. So something like that right that's that's kind of the hope stuff there. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. Yes. I forgot to mention that our undergrad intern David one with him a can't join us today. So I'm double dipping a little bit here. So the project that I've been working on for, I guess about the past year and a half through digital matters in American West Center is native places. It's an indigenous Atlas of Utah and Intermountain West. And I presented on this before and so some people here are familiar with it and some aren't. So I'll give a brief recap of what the project is, but then dive into the recent developments we've had and updates on the map itself. But I did want to point out this is kind of an old article now, but the importance of contemporary place name so Deb Holland the interior secretary right now. Just put a ban on the word squaw from federal lands or they're going to make this effort to remove the offensive word. There's been pushes for removing racial slurs as place names that are held by the USGS the US Geological Survey in the 70s and 80s and this will be the first time it's really applied to indigenous. So this got me thinking this project is based on this massive amount of USGS data. I wanted to see what place names in Utah had this word so there's about 53 in Utah. And here's a map that I put up of it. The key thing about the recent announcement is it's only names on federal lands so anything on BLM or National Force. I haven't looked at that yet but there is a way with this recent update in the map where you can overlay the land ownership and then you would be able to see which one of these dots are on federal land or which are on private. But moving forward kind of briefly a recap. So this is a spatial humanities project. It's just essentially a map that restores these indigenous place names that have been erased through a history of settler colonialism and the Intermountain West to start. There's potential to move beyond this region but we wanted to self contain area to start with so essentially as explorers came through. They were naming things after your American traditions or explorers and then these became codified by the USGS. And this kind of reshapes the mental landscape and physical landscape and erases ideas of native presence or native history. So this is a response that's kind of a deep colonized effort. How it works is as I said there's this massive bank of USGS names that is publicly available. And we start with that and then through tribal consultation and historical research. We prioritize the indigenous name. And here's a screenshot of one of the pages of there's like 65 pages of USGS data highlighted is in Utah. It's a really huge database but if you can plug it into GS there's a lot of fun stuff you can do with it. Yeah so the spreadsheet that we create is divided by these language groups for these five cultural language groups for Utah. And each dot will have a pop up with the indigenous place name the translation or some notes the USGS or the contemporary name. The actual feature type what it is so if it's a canyon a river or mountain and then a citation. So here's a look at our spreadsheet which is available download on the website and on the map itself. And then here's an early version of what the map looked like. And a lot of stuff has changed RGS recently has a new addition came out about a month ago. And so there's a lot of new tools that you can use and so I was experimenting with some of that. So some updates as we have many more place names we about 550 right now. We went through this publicity push because getting consultation from the tribes and other groups is really important for it to grow. So David helped me produce a video that we broadcast through the Marriott. There's a blog post that came up through UHQ on it and Greg Smoke who is the essential PI of this project and I presented at a couple of conferences this past summer. Some technical updates is I've started adding polygon shapes for rivers and mountain ranges so instead of a single point for a mountain. It'll have a range highlighted you can click on that same for rivers. Some of the dots as you'll see on the map are weird because they'll be way up in Montana, but that's because that's the head of the river. Really the whole river should be highlighted and some going through those polygons to make it a little bit more readable. And then adding a couple of different layers for land ownership and incorporating traditional maps. So there's a lot of maps that have been created throughout history that are trying to identify and place these indigenous groups in these territories and they're these polygon shapes that are really static and unmoving. And by overlaying the place names on that we can tell more nuanced history because we are going based on this history of linguistic presence so it's a lot of overlap rather than like a boundary starts and stops and these two the groups don't cross that. So the great thing about a digital map is there's a lot of flexibility there's a lot of data available online and we can constantly change as we add new data and have these different layers overlay. So as I said rivers and stream this is what it's looking like right now I still have a lot of work to do to map out all these rivers some of these are available through ArcGIS some of them I have to draw myself. And then adding historical maps in so here's a reservation boundaries from a treaty in 1883. And then here is one that I added in so this is contemporary federally recognized tribal land you'll see up in Montana it's really diminished. Even in Utah the even we're right reservation is much smaller now so the idea is there'll be a timeline we can click through these maps and see how they've changed over time. While these dots that are all the place names will remain on top so you can see this shrinking and growing as this history of settler colonials and moves across the West. As well as early maps from explorers that tried to draw these boundaries so here's one from 1863 Indian Claims Commission. And this is added in as an overlay so you can see how well it lines up with the place names that we have so and a brief caveat is. Our data is incomplete as it stands right now so you'll see that we are missing quite a bit of the Ute data so if someone were to look at that and say well I guess there's not really much of a Ute presence. That's just more on our part because we haven't had that travel consultation with the Utes now so that's a big challenge that we're trying to work through now is it can kind of create this skewed perception because of the way the Navajo Nation functions and they have this very organized structure of place name. We have this great wealth of data from them, and it's not the same case with the Utes but if someone were to look at that they'd say oh I guess the Navajos were much more prevalent in this region than the Utes or which we know is not true. So that's a big hurdle we're trying to move past in this travel consultation stage. Briefly show you a bit more in the map here. So as I said, you can click on any of these dots, and you'll see this pop up that has the place name, the language, here's a translation, USGS name and the feature. The spreadsheet is not able to click down here, but there's a tab down here that will bring up the spreadsheet. So you can see all the citations and all of our information in there and it's interactive so as you click through these dots it'll highlight that as well. The legend right here will have our five language groups and this was another challenge because a lot of the ways that these are segmented is through early anthropology in the start of the 20th century. But we had to work with something that was easily readable for people to see the map so we chose five language groups and then they break down into specifics. So you'll see there's Shoshone on here but when you click on the icon it'll have the actual dialect so this is Western Shoshone. As I mentioned, the thing that this does is move beyond these arbitrary boundaries. We do use contemporary political markers on the map just to help orient us as users. But you'll see there's a lot of overlap in certain areas so this tells a more nuanced history of native presence in Utah and the Intermountain West. One feature that I have added in that came with the new update is you can search for place names near certain area based on a radius that you set. So if we do eight miles we can do the University of Utah and it will zoom in and show us that there's nine place names within eight miles of the University of Utah. So this is what I thought a cool feature as people are exploring. You can search for specific place names either based on the USGS name or the native place name or you just say I want to know what's near my house and set it up to like 15 miles. Other than that, of course there's still these tabs here where you can filter by the feature type. So say I wanted to only look at maybe mountains and rivers. Everything that's on the map now is either a mountain or a river and I can do that as well for the language group. So say I only want to know maybe Shoshone and Navajo Mountains and Rivers. This is going to filter through so if you're looking for something specific you can find it that way. There's also a list view that updates. So you know that there's 170 Navajo Shoshone Place names for mountains and rivers and I'm out of time but the site is live. It's nativeplacesatlas.org and so you can go around and explore with it and it's still constantly changing. We're adding more data. There is a tab on the website as well for people to make suggestions and comments or try to contribute. Yeah, so thank you. All right, I'll give you some privileges. All right, Marty, you should be able to screen share now. Okay, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, great. Okay, so thanks. I wanted to thank Digital Matters for the incredible support which helped fund Jonathan Sandberg's time and he's joining us today as well. I also wanted to thank the Marriott Library user experience and web development team, who've been incredibly helpful in terms of building the structure for this website and search engine. So Jonathan and I have spent the last 18 months or so building this public facing website, and the purpose of it is to educate the broader public about artists books and facilitate use of a common vocabulary by scholars makers, community users, and potential users of the objects. Artists books really took off in the late 1960s and since that time these novel publications have become increasingly tricky to describe. The reason that's a problem is that artists books collections are held typically involves a special collection repositories, rather than browsable shelving so better digital tools really are critical in increasing discoverability and access. So artists books can cover limitless topics they really are resources for scholars and patrons across disciplines without accurate metadata and a commonly known or commonly used vocabulary. These material artifacts are difficult to access without assistance from a quote gatekeeper such as a curator and outreach librarian or teaching faculty who knows the collection. In February 2020 at the College Book Arts Association conference I coordinated a panel with fellow quote gatekeepers from Wellesley and Emory, and our discussion further explored opportunities for a shared language between curators catalogers and makers. And as an explanation of the title of this panel the word colophon refers to a statement, often included at the close of an artist book that provides notes on materials and production, and potentially an explanation of or note on content. And this information can really be crucial for cataloging and curation and in turn for increasing discoverability. My colleagues Ruth and Beth represented the perspective of curator and cataloger respectively, and I presented as both a maker and educator, and pose these questions. What can we do as makers to improve access to our work in institutional collections. What can we do as educators to improve accessibility to student work that will become part of collections and that's where one can really be helpful and educating around the use of colophons. What can we do as makers educators researchers to synthesize language with catalogers and curators, and what can we do as gatekeepers of institutional collections to diversify audiences. As a librarian who contributes to the curation of artists books collections and exhibitions, and studies and teachers with these objects, and who creates and facilitates student production of visual book work. I'm really increasingly driven to improve discoverability of these wide range of works. I found that even commonly use contemporary forms are referred to with a variety of terminology. So this structure, for example, could be and is referred to as an oxplow book, a booster feeding or a snake book. For example, and often regional practices and innovations result in a localized vernacular that may or may not apply in other places or in other communities. All these examples by the way are from the rare books collections here at the Marriott library. As you can see that there are also uncommon and new forms for which no descriptive language currently exists, or in common anyway, as well as non traditional materials and practices and new technologies that fall outside of the scope of approved vocabularies used by catalogers. Years ago, Jonathan and I began to gather additional metadata on artists books in the rare collections for the purposes of enhancement of the records in the catalogs, and to identify specific terms that were needed to accurately describe these artifacts. So in July 2021 original cataloger Ali McCormick Interim Associate Dean Todd Samuelson and I submitted an NEH grant that will hopefully fund the record remediation and enhance cataloging practices of both historical illustrated books and contemporary artists books. These improvements to the records, these are some of the records, the spreadsheet, the metadata that Jonathan and I have been gathering from the objects. These improvements would be made to both the catalog records at the Marriott library, as well as to OCLC, which is a global digital resource. This is kind of a snapshot of that aspect of the project so the remediation of the records, and it also gives you a list of the approved sources for vocabulary. So catalogers are understandably very specific about what vocabulary is allowed. And essentially, we found and many others as well that there there just isn't enough vocabulary to accurately describe the objects that are being created now so a note on this final source here the art libraries, whoops, sorry about that. Oh, great. Now I. Sorry, back here. Okay. The art library must look forward, apologies. The Art Library Society of North America has an artist book thesaurus and that process that project was underway in 2012 and then in 2016 the volunteer group found that they just couldn't sustain that site and the site was intended for catalogers to be able to develop an expanded vocabulary. So we have, in a sense partnered with them we received their blessing, and they are no longer working on that project so we've kind of taken their, their data expanded upon it. And then our purposes are for a wider audience. So, this is kind of a early spreadsheet that we were using our table that we were using. And so Jonathan and I began matching terms in common use to approve cataloging terms and when I say common use. We have a wider community of makers and educators around a book art so that terminology was not often included in the cataloging terms so we examined the scope notes for those approved terms and evaluated the term specific applicability to artists books. This is a look at the database behind the website as it exists now. We have the term the OAB the opening artists books are definition, and then related digital sources, or, you know, that we've used we've, we've, we've looked at and we invite the public to look at, and then related terms so these are brought out broader and narrower terms which is often used in cataloging as well synonyms. And then we also developed the term called also called. And that would allow us to be as inclusive as possible so we also have a piece on our website where anyone from the public can suggest terms. And that's coming to a common language necessitates that inclusivity. So the long term goal of opening artists books is of course to encourage the use of this tool and, and to group sources of knowledge by catalogers and makers, as well as researchers. And we'll be working with Beth Shoemaker at Emory, and Ali McCormack at the U to propose new terms to the Getty ATT which is probably the most receptive to expanding vocabulary, and both of those individuals are catalogers so they will have a voice that we would not have. Also exciting is this past week I met with researchers from the University of Iowa, and they're developing a digital tool for artists books for cataloging of artists books, and are doing record remediation at Iowa, and they're really interested in collaborating through link data sets and the use of these complimentary digital tools that we are using so you know right now we're, we're, we feel like the site is at a place where we can start to disseminate the use of the tool and market it per se. And then I also wanted to take a quick look at the site and its functionality. So, the homepage is a brief overview of the site and some acknowledgements. And then, if you click on artists books terms, you can search I'm going to search here for, I mentioned oxplow books earlier. I'm going to be hyphenated let's do the booster access it that way. Of course when I tested this earlier. Oh, I'm spelling it wrong. Here we go. So, that's on that term. And it includes our definition of booster feeding, and then it links to other terms so a synonym that we have identified is an oxplow book, which is what ABT was using for this form, as well as an also called which is a snake so also called don't link to anything in specific whereas a synonym will link to the Arles site where they define oxplow books. And then there's also broader terms so a single sheet book would be a broader term and that links actually to our site. It looks like we need to update that definition it definitely is a work in progress. And then, also external links, such as the Getty. So this gives you information about their definition of the writing system that is associated with this book form, and from which the term was derived. So I think that is it for me. I'm happy to entertain questions when we get to that. Thank you. Thank you for your time for questions. So those of you joining us with them, please feel free to jump in or write the things in the chat box. You can lay your questions to Trevor, I was hoping to ask you, you can provide nice kind of overview. Yeah, I mentioned that's still kind of a problem because I think, you know, you, the main kind of thing I'm wrestling with is you can analyze the media products of these ai right just like you would do any kind of textual analysis traditionally, or you could do a textual analysis of the code itself and the machine itself. And I'm kind of trending towards doing a little bit of both. But I think also, you know, the any critical arguments you can make about the AI technology itself, hopefully should be evident in whatever they're producing right. So I think, you know, by, I guess indexing and taking their media products will have sufficient insights about the AI technology itself. And that being said, I mentioned the variety of different types of media that can be created by these technologies. I haven't run into one that does dance choreography, but I'm sure it's possible. And I'd like to see it, but so I think that's going to require kind of a lesser definition of text anyway, in that I'll be referencing images games, probably a variety of different things I think maybe to narrow the scope of the project. Initially, I'm considering talking about music composition as a starting point, because it's a little bit more familiar and a little bit simpler than a lot of the other ones. Yeah, I'd answer your question. Yeah. I have a question for john, but about the native places. Have you guys received any concern about or desire for what was the first name. Right. That is kind of an originator's claim for sovereign territory based off of language, or place names or anything like that is there been is there been any tensions over that either among the indigenous nations, or among other users. Not specifically that that is a it is a question we're considering I mean there is tension, definitely between, say, like the Navajo and the youth. And so as I was saying, the maps that I'm overlaying in our snapshots from years, this is just kind of like any as it stands right now any site that has a place name from any group. So it's kind of like creates this linguistics present linguistic presence but it also is kind of timeless so we we don't have dates attached to those yet. That is a good point though that we should consider. Because they're, if you're looking, if you're looking in like the Salt Lake Valley, a lot of these overlaps were in one sense saying. Okay, a lot of groups use these areas and they there was overlap, but what you're saying is a really interesting point because we're not exactly saying it was the same time. So yeah, we haven't had anyone specifically point that out what it is something. Yeah, but it's kind of hard to because a lot of these names we're getting are pass out the whole tradition so there's not exactly like a firm date attached to it. And so it might not, it might just be something that wouldn't be feasible and maybe we have like a disclaimer about that. But how this map is presented to viewers that's like and there are a lot of challenges about that and that's one of them right there so. I think at some point, you know this has happened in other places in the US and certainly in other settler nations. Folks start using or trying to use an indigenous name, but if there's five competing names, the tension over which of those names gets used. Yeah, which is often an originator claim. Just curious what you guys have come across it yet and thankfully it sounds like not yet. There's something to be aware because a lot of people have approached this looking for land acknowledgments, and then they want like a simple answer and we're like okay well if you look at Salt Lake, which one are you, you know, going to do, or the same for like the replacing the offensive names like how are they going to go about doing that are they going to use an indigenous. Yeah, one or assign a new name. If you want to rename read your garden. After that indigenous name of the people that were first using it and you come across four different tribal groups will have different names for this space. What do you do. Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting question. I don't have to solve it. I know I'm going to point out the date because that is something considered like the way this happened. Question for Eric, I guess I should say first of all these are all fascinating presentations really wonderful to see the range of things going on here. My question for you are I was, as I was listening to you I was kind of imagining a spectrum between prop and performer. Prop like a cane that a dancer my youth right to entertain the audience and then the former of the dancers themselves. And this is an imperfect spectrum maybe, but empty heuristic, could you position the drone on that spectrum, or is it external and where does that, where does that drone fit in. That's such a great question. Yeah, and it's sort of like because I've been thinking like, well, what tears say about great drawings. Because I feel like there is. We I think we've heard part of their uncanny misses we don't know who's piloting. You know, we don't know who or necessarily what the purpose is over them, but there seems to be sentience there. So, and the public factor here is like, well, what are some of the theatrical met, like methods of triggering me as a viewer to project sentience into this thing that really has no sense. So, I think that that question is amazing. And I think that we're leaning more towards playing with this idea of it. It's character. And certainly, you know, Scotty, as he's basically improvising within certain themes certain frameworks, you know, he's working with a lot of stuff that the drone is producing. Right. So like it's actual physical location space, speed, the wind that it's producing the sort of like the mess of either like the feathers of the water. So there's a lot that he sort of navigating on the fly. Sorry. In terms of like, what is this drone, where did the drones fall, I feel like, because of how he's responded to that factors into my projection of sentience. So I think that the answer to your question has to do with the directivity, you know, and is he how does he respond to that. My sense is that they are more than props. They are more than these sort of inanimate things because they also create states. You know, with dance, it's all about time, space and energy. Those are our resources and if you start cutting those resources off, like when you cut off any resources like things get intense. Right. And so, when you cut off time. That's basically speed, right, and cut off space. Right. And those things are always related. It's time and space. So when Scott, he's like throwing that drone around. He has to move faster than the drone. So it doesn't crash into the wall. Right. And so it's like, we're compressing space and time and all that action. So I think that we're working with a very basic theatrical building blocks of character. Sure. Thank you for the question. John, maybe think about the kind of just an odd parallel, territorial. I was wondering, Marty, if you talk a little bit about how, and I hope you can give us some of that insight into the backstage drama. Do you find any kind of knock down drag down fights about what names going to go with particular look our objects, or do you find that working the digital medium that because you had a search engine that would place all these names in parallel and you didn't really have to have any disputes about territorialness or naming rights or work without them. We have kind of a primary list of terms on the home page that lets you kind of scroll through terms so that you don't have to come up with these on your own so in a way we have established a hierarchy, but we try to look at as much scholarly writing on the form that that's available as possible and we've also reached out to scholars to try to take into account as many people's perspective as possible, also defaulting to the Library of Congress whenever possible so the list of the resources was a hierarchical list in terms of whose terms we are using. But you know that that is indeed the issue is we want this to be a common vocabulary rather than an approved vocabulary, we are seeking approval from the Getty. So we do need to be very specific and we all the nuances that really make an object what an object is we want to capture that. So things can get a little bit I won't say contentious, but Jonathan and I often will argue over semantics quite a bit. And then we have had email exchange with other scholars as well. And I think that once we have input from the public. When we're doing our beta testing that we probably will have people disagree with us and that's healthy and that's what we want. So that also called box really allows for as much inclusivity and diversity as possible and the more we can include there the better the tool will be really. We have decided that English is the primary language for the site but if there aren't good transit translations we use the original language in which the form was developed. German word for everything. You have time for another question. I'm familiar with both of your projects but I've never seen them presented back to back and it may be think of the possibilities of embedding the map in something like an Omeka instance and adding that extra stories and you know special collections in context is that something you thought about at some point taking the map and moving it into a different environment where you can maybe show more contextual information about these places. The native places. Yeah, we have. I think we're still the initial phase of trying to have it be this decolonize Atlas and put in a bunch of data, but there is a lot of potential in the form of story maps and linking to. So our first step was linking citations but we do want to have a lot more information so having bigger blurbs or maybe sections for each group that would have the contemporary group and then the native pronunciation and on these audio files so there is a lot of room for growth outside of the way it looks now. I think part of that is just waiting to hear back from any age grant that's going to be feasible, but it is like on the horizon, it kind of depends on I guess the funny but that that is a I hadn't considered it in relation to the work I've done with with Matt, but it does. So, linking into these archives because the merit has a huge collection as well and that's where I'm getting a lot of these historical maps as well so I think there is potential to like, at least on the like full website have people be able to explore rather than just the interactive map. Yeah, your project such potential for K through 12 curriculum. There's so much to be done there. Yeah, definitely. Part of the dream right is getting curriculum built up. And the funny thing is we don't have to start from scratch and either project as an old World War two curriculum done by K you we are. And then of course, we shall remain this big curriculum project that we did with Mary off back in 2008 or nine. So there's, there's really cool possibilities about linking things up, instead of just having to do all the work again. Yeah. My understanding is that the military is one of the largest bureaucracies in the country. This was the real dream, right and still is World War two is one of the most data rich moments in our nation's history because the government was so huge and there was so many record keepers, which is super exciting as a possibility. So when I saw John present a while ago on those southern monuments, you know that was place based on like we've got just heaps of data. It's in weird form, but about military production or military personnel or whatever. Or, could we geotag that stuff and make it, you know, much more usable and yet make the website one more thing, which is a research database, not just an archive and a curated presentation. I still think it's got really cool possibilities right spatially it's got amazing possibilities because some of you might know but World War two. The government takes over vast swaths of the US West, which has profound implications for environmental issues, social issues, including racism and so on so yeah that's still the hope could be really cool. And for data visualizations of all that stuff. Yeah, I mean it really there's there's a lot out there there's a lot of statistics that we could do some really cool stuff. That's why Tableau is cool because I would put most of that information in Tableau to visualize it differently. Because when you look at it, I think you've seen the visualizing words blocks. When I do like the amount of money that federal government put into Utah, half of it is steel Virginia steel, and like then everything else is broken down so it's interesting ways of like seeing what they were prioritizing. And I'd love to do like a timeline of the federal government taking these tracks of land and then also the population of military base in the US around the world as a timeline, which would be interesting to view throughout the course of World War two and in the aftermath. Yeah, it's all over the place now 16 spots that are highlighted right now or yeah, I mean all over Utah, there's these little pockets clearfield, wherever clearfield is. You know, like all these kind of small places, POW camps, where POWs worked and or we just all over which I think, again, the goal is to make World War two and look different, or not look different, but be kind of a richer, more nuanced experience of that. And having that data where people can play with that data that's