About

Assets are the core of any digital humanities project; they are what is analyzed by the creators of the project and what is seen by the viewers. Many notable digital humanities projects are archival in nature, seeking to display a historical collection or corpus of a specific writer or artist. However, our project is more data-driven, seeking to uncover factors that contribute to the popularity of music.

Our main assets for this digital humanities project are the visualizations we created from the dataset. These visualizations helped us see connections between the different variables we have chosen to focus on, such as genre, location, song length, and song key. We have included several types of graphs and visualizations, including bar graphs, a scatterplot, and a word cloud, to best present the connections we found. Other assets in our project include the timeline video we sourced from YouTube.

We decided to emphasize factors such as song length and key in an attempt to apply formalist thought towards music. Manovich calls for an increase in the study of aesthetics within media studies in Aesthetics, "Formalism," and Media Studies. While his argument primarily addresses visual media, we have applied his new definition of “formalism” towards music by observing how fundamental choices in music composition affects music consumption.

The services level of a digital humanities project is critical as it is the next step for the creator to connect with the user. Services are used to create assets and to display them. The choice of services used also indicates the methodology and lens of the researchers.

The tool we used the most in creating this project’s assets was the programming language Python. The dataset we obtained from the CORGIS database was a Python library, which made the choice of Python techniques for visualizations fairly straightforward. We had to clean the Python data to make use of it effectively, often focusing on categories with the highest frequency. Within the dataset, we used the metadata gathered for each song. Manipulating the data we obtained was a key step in the development of this digital humanities project. More information on the dataset can be found in the Data Critique. We constructed our website using Google Sites, which allowed us to more effectively collaborate with one another. All visualizations were embedded into the website as images.

Our services, especially regarding our data, are an attempt to follow one of the principal tenets of the essay New Data? The Role of Statistics in DH by Arnold and Tilton. The authors assert that graphics are an essential part of digital humanities and should be studied independently. Our project fits into Cleveland's framework as we initially graphed our raw data, but the visualizations used in our project are a result of fitting with cleaned data. We ensured that our graphics remain within the standards suggested by Arnold and Tilton for more effective representation of our data.

The interface of a digital humanities project might be the most important of the three levels. Without a straightforward interface for others to interact with, all of the work done by researchers to curate and analyze the most informative assets is wasted.

As mentioned in the Services section, our website was created using Google Sites, a simple website designer. In Google Sites, we were able to create separate, clearly marked pages for each relevant section of the project, making navigating around our project a simple task. Additionally, when clicked on, each visualization will open in a new tab, enabling zoom functionality that is difficult to create in the website page itself. The layout of the Project page is simple, with the visualizations listed on the webpage from the top to the bottom. Clearly marked labels for each visualization makes the viewer experience convenient. We have also embedded websites and videos into the Data Critique to break up the long text sections.

Our project strongly believes in accessibility in academic work. To achieve this goal, we have attempted to meet the principles of universal design as laid out in Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities by George H. Williams. The reasons he noted in favor of universal design (efficiency, multiple devices, the right thing to do) were all noticed by our group while creating the website. One important feature in our website is alt text, written descriptions of each image. These are especially important for our visualizations, as it allows those who may not be able to see our visualizations to understand why we drew certain conclusions from our data. Captions are also available through YouTube for all audio content.