The Institute for American Indian Arts Digital Curation Project

FAIN: AD-50036-12

Institute of American Indian and Alaska Native Culture (Santa Fe, NM 87508-1300)
J. Carlos Peinado (Project Director: November 2011 to March 2013)
Jessie Ryker-Crawford (Project Director: March 2013 to September 2014)
Jessie Ryker-Crawford (Co Project Director: December 2011 to March 2013)
Joseph Craig Tompkins (Co Project Director: March 2013 to September 2014)

An eighteen-month project to create digital resources using the Institute of American Indian Arts' Collection of Contemporary Native American Art, develop two new interdisciplinary digital humanities courses, and enable faculty members to use digital humanities resources to enhance their teaching.

"The IAIA Digital Curation Project" is an eighteen-month endeavor to create digital resources using the Institute of American Indian Arts' Collection of Contemporary Native American Art, to develop two new interdisciplinary digital humanities courses, and to enable faculty members to use digital humanities resources to enhance their teaching. The program explores digital technology for cultural heritage preservation through faculty symposia, curriculum development, and the production of new digital resources, engaging with the ways that these innovations can be used to sustain, to grow, and to share Native culture and wisdom. Building on the advanced technological capacity of the institution's New Media Arts program and its Museum Studies program, which uniquely specializes in tribal museum management and collections care, project directors J. Carlos Peinado (new media arts) and Jessie Ryker-Crawford (museum studies) lead IAIA faculty in examining the use of digital technologies in the research, preservation, interpretation, and representation of cultural heritage. Under their guidance, a team of "Student Technology Scholars" create high-definition 3D scans of pottery, sculpture, and other material culture objects from the IAIA Collection of Contemporary Native American Art (one of the largest collections of contemporary Native American art in the country) and create educational material contextualizing each scanned object, yielding an interactive online archive where scholars can view, manipulate, and learn about these Native American cultural objects. Two symposia bring IAIA faculty together with members of the project's advisory council to address digital humanities resources and issues for Native American-serving institutions and collections. These council members represent a wide range of collaborating institutions, including the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, Dartmouth College Native American Studies Department and Hood Museum, Los Alamos Visual Analytics (LAVA), the University of New Mexico Art, Research, and Technology and Science (ARTS) Lab, and Fort Collins Museum. Two cross-disciplinary digital humanities courses, Software Applications for the Digital Humanities and Cultural Representation in the Digital Humanities, are also developed.

Associated Products

conference session - Technologies for the Digital Humanities: Applications and Concerns in 3-Dimensional Scanning of Cultural Heritage (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: conference session - Technologies for the Digital Humanities: Applications and Concerns in 3-Dimensional Scanning of Cultural Heritage
Author: Jessie Ryker-Crawford
Author: J. Craig Thompkins
Abstract: The Institute of American Indian Arts was awarded a grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which culminated in two multi-disciplinary courses for both the Museum Studies and New Media Arts departments. These courses teach students how to 3-D scan cultural objects with laser scanning and photogrammetry techniques. The possibilities through the application of these two techniques for tribal institutions and communities are amazing and ground-breaking, and should be embraced with some care and diligence. For although it will allow our objects to "return" to the communities from which they emerged in order to be utilized in a variety of educational and cultural ways, the dissemination of this data must be carefully guarded as well. This panel will first present the amazing work that the IAIA students have done in scanning the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts' collection pieces, and then will move into a heart-felt discussion on the issues and concerns on how these and other technologies could have upon our cultural property rights. We look forward to fully sharing the 3D scanning techniques in a pre-conference workshop at the IAIA campus, and then we hope to dialogue together in order to be prepared to utilize technology within our own uniquely strong and knowledgeable culturally-based philosophies and ethics.
Date Range: June 10-13, 2013
Location: Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico
Primary URL: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xrzdgsr89yy65uf/2013%20ATALM%20Conference%20NEH.pdf
Primary URL Description: 2013 International Conference of Indigenous Archives, Libraries, and Museums conference program

MUSM370 Software Applications for the Digital Humanities (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: MUSM370 Software Applications for the Digital Humanities
Author: J. Craig Tompkins
Author: Jessie Ryker-Crawford
Abstract: Course Description: Digital technologies are cultural constructs and therefore can be purposefully used to transform our methods of relating and transmitting humanities content and culture to our audiences and to future generations. Instead of allowing digital technologies to shape our cultures and identity, we can shape our digital tools to better preserve, present, inform, and sustain our cultural heritages...the Software Applications for the Digital Humanities Special Topics course will introduce students to the use of emerging digital technologies in the archiving and presentation/display of cultural, visual, material, and intellectual property. Students will explore innovative ways in which digital technologies can be adapted to interact with cultural objects, such as creating condition reports of the objects. This course will engage key humanities content areas, including conservation, archives, Native American studies, and museum history.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: https://www.dropbox.com/s/w9628865bxbqe2h/Software%20Applications%20Fall%202012%20Syllabus.pdf
Primary URL Description: Syllabus - MUSM370 Software Applications for the Digital Humanities
Audience: K - 12
Audience: Undergraduate

MUSM370d Cultural Representation in the Digital Humanities (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: MUSM370d Cultural Representation in the Digital Humanities
Author: Jessie Ryker-Crawford
Author: J. Craig Tompkins
Abstract: Through a review of current trends in public accessible cultural property database systems and websites, students will critique the pros and cons of emerging digital technologies utilized in the archiving, presentation and display of culturally-based visual, material and intellectual property.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: https://www.dropbox.com/s/68k4nnqs9welqg4/Cultural%20Representation%202013%20Spring%20Syllabus.pdf
Primary URL Description: Syllabus - Cultural Representation in the Digital Humanities
Audience: K - 12

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