This week, as a group, we ran through a list of selected rebuses organized in a spread sheet, and we rated each on a scale of 1-3, with 3 being the best. Essentially, the rebuses we unanimously voted “3” on are the ones that we’re going to give the most attention fastest. Outside of that, we’ve formally begun writing the pieces we plan on posting to the website. At the moment, I’m working on a condensed version of the heraldic iconography guide, along with some longer-form analysis of some selected works.

With regards to the former, I realized that my expanded iconography guide wasn’t particularly user-friendly. This is in part because I originally created it to be useful as a personal reference for me. I’m currently in the process of elaborating on bits of information those less experienced in heraldry may have trouble understanding, and picking and choosing which icons will actually be relevant to the rebuses on the site.

The title of this post may seem somber, but in reality, this has been quite the week. During our group’s meeting after Thursday’s class, we discussed what was feasible at this stage, and what wasn’t, and I realized that tossing the entire collection of heraldry I had picked was never even in the cards. This week’s remaining work includes looking through a variety of rebuses we’ve narrowed down and collated from multiple origins and rating them on a scale based on quality and usability.

Some time ago I was talking about how I was going through Codex Seraphinianus in search of rebuses in the book’s own languages. For those unaware, the book is not in any known language, constructed or otherwise. At this point though, my time is probably better spent elsewhere (additionally, at second glance, it’s pretty clear that most of what I’ve dredged up from the book isn’t that usable).

As Bianca talks about in her post, we’ve decided to cut down on the length of the essays we will be writing for the project website.

Here’s Part 2 of my walkthrough of the topic modeling process that makes up one part of the Freedom of Speech* project. (Part 1 here.) I’ll cover how I improved the topic model after showing the initial results to my group members.

At this point, I’ve run three topic models with the goal of increasing the clarity and specificity of results each time. The number of topics seems about right, and my main focus was on removing words that didn’t contribute to the topics as knowledge-producing documents. For example, here are the topics from the first model:

It was an exciting start, particularly since topics like 1, 10, and 11 immediately speak to (un)protected speech themes we’ve been talking about for weeks: broadcasting/advertising, obscenity, and communism/McCarthyism. Another part of the fun is also seeing words that expand or clarify our understanding of a topic. It’s not surprising that the words “foreign” and “control” are in the communism topic, or that the sexual/obscenity topic includes the word “children.” It does, however, help to solidify our understanding of the motivations of these battlegrounds: communism in speech matters because the U.S. government cares about the impacts of foreign influence; obscenity in speech matters because the U.S. government cares about protecting the rights (and souls) of children.

On the other hand, topics like 7 and 14 are essentially useless for telling us about themes in the cases, since for the most part they just include high incidence court-related words (“plaintiff”, “justice”, “court”, “district”, etc)  that aren’t on a general purpose stop word list. Topic 15 also includes several Justice’s names: Blackmun, Brennan, and Rehnquist. I took these words out and ran the model again:

These results were better, particularly since every “unhelpful” word we remove from the model makes room for a more interesting one. For a perfect example, I took out the word “statute” and it’s replaced in the obscenity topic (now called V18) with the word “minors,” a much more descriptive word for that topic. Topic 10 distills a clearer picture of the topic about broadcasting regulations, compared to its corresponding Topic 1 in the first model.

New topics also appear: Topic 16 shows a new topic about fraud/soliciting/telemarketing. Topic 17 brings together the words “flag”, “symbol”, “peace” and “group.”

BUT, another limitation of the first and second models arises: Joanne pointed out that Topic 14 contains court-specific language that makes an interesting group of “court verbs” but doesn’t help us with thematic topics. So, one more time! Here are the topics in the third model:

Topic 11 shows us a “libel” topic, an important battleground of free speech that was missing from earlier models. Topic 13 also brings out a new thread with “university”, “students”, “message”, and “viewpoint”.

There are some more words that could be taken out (“John” and “jr”, and what is “FALSE”??), but for now, this is the dataset! Each topic is represented in some percentage (often 0) in every case, so the dataset we’ll use for describing whether a case is about obscenity includes that information. We’ll have to see what the threshold is, i.e., if a case is 30% obscenity topic, does that make it an obscenity case? What about 50%? That’s a task for this week, and one I’m excited to share with our group as well. (Subtext: there is also a boatload of web development work to do and I’m grateful we can share the load of this data work yayyyy)

Meme creation as a way towards understanding Law. 

Comedy can create understanding by elevating the everyday or simplifying the incomprehensible. For example: there is a laugh of recognition when the pedestrian woes of our lives are laid out in all their purposelessness, the things we worry about discussed in a line or two as not worth the emphasis we place on them. Alternatively the complex can be broken down in a skit so that we giggle along with the understanding that the preciousness and strain of topics beyond us may not deserve their gravity. This is also a useful way to emphasize crucial points of a complex topic. 

The latest Meme I created is an attempt not at explanation, though that will be a focus for future posts, instead I thought to point at the hilarity of previously grave situations and how they are reflected in contemporary pop culture moments. 

The point is not to laugh at law, but to perhaps laugh at the graveness with which burning one’s personal property was once held in. Of course the burning of draft cards is destruction of government property which is fundamentally different from burning purchased goods. The act of burning the draft card was also taken as a vote of no confidence regarding the American involvement in foreign war. 

Part and parcel of our approach is to make memes which bring loft legal language into easily understood language. We are doing this through infographics which summarize cases and the website will offer brief colloquial explanations of what Freedom of Speech activity was at the center of the case; which is something that can get lost in all the deliberation over it. Offering contemporary, but sometimes trivial examples, allow the viewer to form a connection with the case law, and ultimately invites them to study it further.

Helping out the rest of the team wherever I can has afforded me the opportunity to work on two small projects that are slowly introducing me to the world of legal language and case studies. The first is reading summaries of cases on Justia, the Supreme Court website for case details, and deciding if it fits with then scope of our “freedom of speech” theme. 

This part of the process involves manually looking at 1st Amendment cases not directly tied to “speech” cases and seeing if they fit. For example there are categories of: campaign spending (cf. governmental corruption), protest demonstrations (other than as pertains to sit-in demonstrations), and free exercise of religion among a dozen others. In each of these may be the odd edge case which requires the group to take a closer look at. Some of these invoice judgements which include terminology like “the free exercise of speech”, “praying”, “making speeches in the park”, or “substantial speech interests”.

What is the most difficult to contend with, however, is how to interpret actions as speech acts. Of course there are two field of Philosophy which contend with this problem: Philosophy of Action and Philosophy of Language. Intentionality, also borrowed from Philosophy, is crucial to deliberating on these issues. What has emerged as clear, and to borrow the Legal-thinking for a moment, have set precedent: Burning cards is seen as an action under “freedom of speech”, so is writing language on clothing. What is not as clear however is praying in schools, gathering in the park which involves chanting, and “a banner that reads ‘SEASONS GREETINGS,’ a creche or Nativity scene, which has been part of this annual display for 40 years or more”. 

During the course of this project I wonder to myself how many non-speech acts will fall under “freedom of speech”. How many other instances of human behavior which the government can “censor” or “interfere” with, will need to go before the court? These non-verbal ways of communication provide interesting edge cases through which lawyers must interpret Causation and Responsibility as well, making for an interesting discussion of Metaphysics. But that isn’t the end, since there is a value judgement placed on these actions which determine the potential harm to society or to oneself. Lawyers and Judges must make a call based on Ethics as well. This should strike anyone who understands the history of Law as a series of cultural touchstones as unsurprising.

Since my last posting (March 30) I have,

Researched more context to PWP’s verbal rebuses, particularly in the British West Indies.

The intersection of rebus poems and enslavement announcements in colonial newspapers suggests the complex nexus of publication in which PWP’s printed rebuses might have been read, including the use of initials to create an open secret disclosing puzzle makers and at the same time to serve as an identifying mark for “absented” or “lost” self-emancipated men and women.

Had a fruitful and spirited discussion with Micki about possible digital tools that might expand the D side of this aspect of our DH rebus project;

Returned and been guided to readings on Black Digital Humanities (Jessica Marie Johnson’s “Marked Bodies,” Kim Gallon’s “Making the Case for Black Digital Humanities,” Katherine McKittrick, “Mathematics Black Life” Saidya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts”) while participating in a seminar on Pre Modern Race and DH at the annual SAA conference;

Begun to compare what can be known about PWP from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Data Base to that in other knowledge corpuses or archives.

Subsequently, sworn off more research on PWP and verbal rebuses for now, turning to finding what information I can for an essay on the material and publication history of visual rebuses in the period and languages on which we are focusing.

Lastly, started looking through the holdings of regional rare book collections that are reopening, to see if it might be worth going in person to examine undigitized rebuses from the 18^th & 19^th centuries (specifically Yale, Columbia, Morgan Library, NYPL), Princeton) and at the same time collecting digitized rebuses to add to our archive.

In keeping with Internet speed and the social media style for minimal-text and high-impact visuals, here are a couple of moments and experiences of the world from other perspectives to share during the break.

https://twitter.com/supremehadid/status/1370855805327704064?s=20

?Artwork published in the “Mera Panna'' section of the Chakmak Kids Magazine by @eklavya_pitara .?

Rupali, a 14 year old student of the Dance Junior class of Manzil drew this artwork, showing how she has been learning dance from Manzil during the Pandemic. #artwork #education pic.twitter.com/wi8DjIqX7u

— Manzil (@ManzilNews) March 31, 2021

No me queda nada más que admirar a Violeta y a su profesora. Clases virtuales de Educación Física a pesar de los pesares bajo pandemia. La vida y la salud de las niñas y los niños están primero. @ColegioProfes
#VivanLosEstudiantes #FuerzaProfes pic.twitter.com/7LgbFNjCel

— Víctor Gómez L. (@OLORaAZUFRE) March 30, 2021

What is becoming clear as the Coronavirus Chronicles take shape is the power and significance of young voices when they come together for a common purpose.  In sharing their highly original and creative works, Isabelle, Sarah, and Elise forge a courageous path alongside a growing number of young artists and activists, including Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg and Pakistani Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai.  Through their bravery in sharing their direct presence and unencumbered spontaneity, they demonstrate the wisdom of T.D. Suzuki’s famous mantra “Zen mind, Beginner’s mind”.  Through these inspiring works, we learn how the human heart and the human being are at their core vessels of caring, empathy, and joy.

If anything is certain, the impact of the pandemic will be felt for decades to come.  And if the past is any predictor of the future, we might well consider what came after the Black Death of the mid-14th century.  Both the Italian Renaissance and the genocidal conquest of a continent followed on the heals of arguably the most terrible bubonic plague in global history.  What is certainly different this time is the capability of technology to capture and disseminate voices from and throughout the world, most importantly those traditionally unheard and underrepresented.  With these chronicles, we can directly experience the promise and potential to break with the darker patterns of the past.

Five original works have been graciously donated to the Corona Chronicles archive: a video recitation of a free verse lyric poem accompanied by a pictorial watercolor; a video recording of an auto-biographical reflection accompanied by a self-portrait photograph; and a video short combining music, textual narrative, and choreography.

In the untitled lyric poem by Sarah, the poet evocatively describes a series of vivid moments that make up a day in the life of the poet. Setting the stage that verges on synaesthesia with laughter, music, cake, wind, berries, cream, old paper, dried ink, lights, stars, a lake, and the sun, the poet’s attention turns to dreams, another world, and a different fate.  After the night falls and the sun rises, the poet addresses the listener with an exhortation to remember how each of us walks the Earth sharing “life and death, “peace and conflict”, “excitement and sorrow”, ending in a rhythmic crescendo:

“Every footstep on land carries tears and laughter you will never know.
Every breath of fresh air has new hope for tomorrow.”

The accompanying watercolor depicts a girl walking high across a suspension bridge situated above a column of building blocks labeled with letters that together spell “COVID”.  We imagine a world in which life is an adventurous journey, while at the same time we overcome life’s trials and tribulations.

Beginning immediately with a tone of realism and an acknowledgement of lost loved ones and lost old family friends, Isabelle, as the narrator of an auto-biographical video testimonial, recounts the adversities brought on by the pandemic.  Through a brave and vulnerable confession of fallen school excellence, the narrator reaches out to selflessly identify with other viewers in the same predicament after giving thanks to the unconditional love and support from friends and family.  The testimonial ends with a direct statement of support for the viewer:

“Even if I don’t know you personally, I can empathize in the fact that you’re not doing okay. And that’s okay!  There’s a lot of pressure to stay positive in times like these.  But it’s not always easy, and it’s not always possible to stay happy.”

Accompanying the video is a self-portrait of the photographer in an empty school room with the caption “yay class < 3”, thus evoking the celebration of health and safety.

In an expertly edited music video by Elise, introductory text sets the stage for a rock climbing choreography entitled “Reach for the Sky”.  As the rock climber effortlessly glides across the wall to the sound of an up-tempo dance loop, the climber’s agility evokes a creative confidence that leaves no doubt about the limitless possibilities despite being restricted by the pandemic.  Layered meanings emerge of “climbing the walls” as a result of the pandemic, yet eventually overcoming gravitational limitations.  The pandemic may well have pushed us indoors, but the human spirit nevertheless finds a way to “reach for the sky”.

“I would be climbing outside or in a climbing gym more often if it weren’t for Covid…
But I’m stuck at home.
So my dad built this climbing wall in our basement.
The climb I’m about to do is called Reach for the Sky.”