Projects in the field of digital humanities tend to vary in\ntheir methodology, scope, and execution. Although there are many interesting\nprojects, the Vincent van Gogh Letters intrigued me the most. Led by the Van Gogh\nMuseum and Huygens ING with main editors Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, and Nienke\nBaker, this project\u2019s goal was to digitize the surviving letters written by or for\nVincent van Gogh. They decided to translate, edit, and annotate each letter for\nthe centennial of the artist\u2019s death and create a website to display all their\nwork. This extensive venture took fifteen years to complete and was intended\nfor Van Gogh specialists, art historians, literary scholars, and anyone with an\nacademic background. The project argues that Vincent van Gogh\u2019s letters are\nworth preserving and deserve an honored spot in art historical scholarship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The project\u2019s\nsources were the artist\u2019s original letters. The letters were first compiled by\nthe Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, Vincent\u2019s sister-in-law, who published the first Dutch\ncompilation in 1914, which were then expanded and translated into English in\n1954. This edition was translated into several languages, including English and\nled to an increased interest in Vincent\u2019s work. However, the English\ntranslation was full of inaccuracies, so rather than using the previous\ncompilations from 1914 and 1954, the Van Gogh Museum decided to manually\ntranscribe the original letters and use the 1954 edition to fill in the blanks.\nMany of the letters were owned by the museum itself or available in public\narchives, but some letters in the hands of private owners had to be borrowed\nfor the project. Once the sources were assembled, the processing stage of the\nproject was ready to commence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A team of\ninterns and researchers spent the first five years of the project transcribing\nthe original documents and reviewing secondary literature of the prolific\nartist. An XML file was created for each of the letters; the letters were\ntagged using the TEI guidelines in order to make the documents easier to\norganize and search. The next five years was spent translating the letters into\nEnglish in order to provide an accurate translation for an international\naudience. They also gathered material for the annotations that would accompany\neach letter. The last phase, which took place from 2000 to 2005 involved\nediting the translations, writing introductory chapters, assembling the\nannotations, and formatting the material online. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Researchers created\nvangoghletters.org to present their fifteen years of hard work. The letters are\narranged by correspondent, by period, and by place. To view a letter, one must\nsimply click on one of the links. A two-column display enables the user to\ncompare two of the following categories at the same time: the original text,\nthe translated text, a facsimile of the original letter, any research that was\ndone for this letter or the time period, and a list of associated artworks. The\nwebsite was created using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. They used the Ruby\nprogramming language to draft most of their site. They also used the Lucene\nsearch engine program for the search index and ImageMagick software to create\nthe feature that enables users to zoom in on the facsimile of the original\nletter. The final product is easy to navigate and useful for students\nresearching Vincent van Gogh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although there were no distinct conclusions\nfrom the project, it successfully provided research material for the art\nhistory community. The scholarly primitives of annotation and comparison were\nused most heavily as seen with the notes on each letter and the side-by-side\nanalysis tool. Even though the project\u2019s outdated webpage from 2005 can be\nconsidered a weakness, the simplicity of the site makes it extremely user-friendly\nand helpful for an audience that wants to access information easily. The\nVincent van Gogh Letters project is a beneficial technological tool that helps\nto further humanities-based research. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Projects in the field of digital humanities tend to vary in their methodology, scope, and execution. Although there are many interesting projects, the Vincent van Gogh Letters intrigued me the most. Led by the Van Gogh Museum and Huygens ING with main editors Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, and Nienke Baker, this project\u2019s goal was to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dh-project-report"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paATg6-7j","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/w19dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/w19dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/w19dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/w19dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/w19dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/w19dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":454,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/w19dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions\/454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/w19dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/w19dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/w19dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}