Overview

To practice what I learned about Digital Humanities projects from Miriam Posner’s video, I looked at Terrastories, an application created with the goal of recording and sharing Indigenous stories and histories in mind. The project is free and open-source, allowing users to either make their own accounts or log in with a demo account if they simply want to look around, which is what I did. It is very easy to navigate, and the website offers much helpful direction on how to use it.

Sources

The project involves video and audio recordings of Indigenous stories, which are often shared orally, as well as images and map locations of the places where they are most prominent. Translations of stories are widely available in many languages, and users with accounts with editing privileges can even add their own stories to the map if they so choose.

Processes

The team worked alongside the Amazon Conservation Team to conduct in-person interviews, during which they made audio and video recordings of each story using audiovisual kits. Sometimes, the audio and video components were recorded separately; in that case, they used programs like Adobe Premiere to edit the clips together. Additionally, they ran the stories though the SayMore software to organize, transcribe, and translate the stories for users to access. As for the map content, the team documented the locations where they held interviews, then uploaded this information to the Mapbox Studio where they were then able to design the map digitally for the Terrastories application.

Presentation

The team then built the main application using Ruby on Rails, React, and a Postgres database to make the information web accessible. They presented it in an interactive way, featuring a map with pop up markers denoting the stories associated with the place. A sidebar is also available to easily read, filter, and sort through the stories and their respective recordings.

Final thoughts

This project was really fun to explore overall. However, as I was looking through it, I wondered what the procedure might be for integrating user submitted content into the application. Does it have to be approved, or go through an editing process? I would also like to learn more about how the interviews were conducted; what were those conversations like?