Curating a Transcontinental Collection
In 1953, Lydia Luhman Pederson, a resident of Caledonia, Illinois, traveled from Cape Town, South Africa to Cairo.
Along her transcontinental journey, Pederson shot movies, crafted a photo album scrapbook, and collected one-of-a-kind objects that are currently housed in the Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University. The Herskovits Library seeks to create a digital exhibition integrating emerging and engaging technologies to animate these objects and media.
For this Knight Lab Studio project, students will partner with the Herskovits Library and NUIT’s Media & Technology Innovation group to curate this special collection for public and academic audiences. The project provides the opportunity explore digital curation and information design approaches to create a clear and engaging guide to the collection. It also offers the opportunity to investigate and operationalize immersive storytelling techniques such as 3d photogrammetry, virtual reality and GIS mapmaking. Within this early stage of project development, student groups will be encouraged to highlight the themes that they find most captivating, such as: postcolonialism, environmental ethics, globalization, virtual materiality, 20th century capitalism, fashion and design, and technology.
At the conclusion of the course, students will present prototypes for a digital presentation of the Cape to Cairo collection. Some participating students may be invited to continue developing the project with Media & Technology Innovation.
For this continuing Knight Lab x Media & Technology Innovation (MTI) project, students will build on the proposal of the previous quarter to research and curate the Pedersen collection for public and academic audiences.
At the conclusion of the course, students will present a prototype or minimum viable product for inclusion in the Cape to Cairo exhibition. Some participating students may be selected to continue developing the project with MTI and the Herskovits.