The phrase “turn” emphasizes the revolutionary change in history. By “Spatial turn” we mean an intellectual movement that mainly focuses on place and space in humanities and social science. Instead of physical background, and stage of human life, ‘space’ is a more important thing to new historians as they described it as a “complex social formation – part of a dynamic process”.
Using technological tools such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) opens a new way to apply it to fundamental theoretical issues. The use of computer science, cognitive science, physics, non-Euclidean geometry, neutral computing, and fractal geometry widens the concept of space and this new conjunction of methods raises new questions. This spatial analysis in Digital Humanities often needs collaboration with scholars and technicians. It is not only producing the analysis using maps but also creating new evidence for research, generating new aspects of thinking, and raising questions.
Generally, history focuses on interpretation, narrative, and a singular subject rather than generalization and model. The study of place or space leads historians to a new horizon that explores human movement. The use of time-lapse photography for creating a cinematic map is really impressive. Cindy Bukach, a cognitive neuroscientist points out that “our perceptual system is not designed to perceive the passage of time, but it is designed to see the movement of objects through space.” So, by converting time to motion, historians visualize the passage of time.
We found the representation of text and map in the context of history in Charles Joseph Minard’s project that describes the losses suffered by Napoleon’s army during the 1821 Russian Campaign. The map is mainly focused on five aspects: the volume of the French army, the time period, the distance covered by the army, the temperature on the different dates, and the army’s geographical location. Nowadays, historians are using new technologies such as GIS to compare two things that are created in the exact location during different courses of time.
“Mapping Ararat: An Imaginary Jewish Homelands Project” is a collaborative digital art and humanities project that uses digital media technology such as augmented reality (AR), historical research, and artistic creation of images to make Mordecai Noah’s 1825 plan to transform Grand Island, New York, into Ararat, a city of refuge for the Jews. This project builds a virtual world through AR, virtual cartography, and other cultural artifacts based on historical resources and fictionalized texts.
Thus, Spatial turn is the new frontier of the humanities. The concept of space is changing from a mere geographical space to a symbolic space and an abstract social field. It highlights the quantitative studies of humanities such as literature, history, and cartography and uses it as a source of a large amounts of data for analysis of culture, region, place, and history.
Wow, I hadn’t considered time-lapse photography as a way to create a cinematic map! Getting to trace movement through photographs as a way to analyze the passage of time is so brilliant. Also, I totally agree with your final point on how the ways that we, as scholars, conceptualize space is totally changing to encapsulate social relations. I myself am thoroughly fascinated by the qualitative intricacies of social networks and tracing them through digital tools, so I was completely enthralled with your blog this week.