1619: The Placement of Eyes on a Riverine Path.

• In Event: Technology and Communication Then and Now

Description for Program

Life occurs in paths.

In reading many historical passages since 1619, there remains a need to propel one’s eyes across the barriers of time and space, to retrieve the untold presence of Africa.

We present a case-study demonstrating how a Cartographic-Library can serve as a ‘Lesson-Companion’. The digital-lens works by expanding our immediate senses. By sharpening focus, a map opens the surrounding context to situate history. Our case springs from a curious word 'Ndongo', buried within certain historical texts, but now realized as an actual inhabited ‘place’, that existed precisely here [*Map 1391] on the Quanza River in Angola. Here, specific individuals were bound on a path into history. Here we apply the vector of ‘placement’. The observer’s eyes directly lock into the space, lifting it from a lost page, with the new found force of awareness (‘where-ness’) as to the riverine paths of untold Africans spanning 400 years.

With a firm basis in the 2014 Nobel-Prize for the discovery of ‘Place-Cells’, we know tracing is deeply natural. The observation of terrain becomes a biologic ‘placement’ directly into the temporal-lobe of any curious mind. The use of precision Oculometry reveals the intensity of eye-movements; OCR/Optical-Character-Recognition finds scattered toponyms anywhere on a cache of original sheets; and a Geo-referenced database stores and layers the vital game of matching. With full access, the journey to verify and modify rides on a wave of graphic comparisons. These repeatable pan & zoom kinetics are what distinguish spatial activities from other learning methods. Viewers engage, both outside the representation and enveloped by it.

Here, a proof-of-concept becomes a call-to-action. Digital-Humanities can activate eye-movements, register experiences, collaborate disciplines, and finally achieve outcomes that reach all the way from aptitude to attitude; marking a memorable path that thoroughly embodies Africa.

Author

• Gerald Rizzo