Through my experience in looking for an object to complete the four views project I feel like there were a couple of challenges that were faced. The biggest challenge for me was the amount of detail I was able to fit into the project. The descriptions were researched on the library page, but there is only so much information on an object that we discovered from previous eras of time. We do not know much about the creator of the object, only inferences based on how it was made and the craftsmanship put into it. The other challenge I faced was finding images that contrasted each other enough to allow for the interpretation of the piece from four different views. I specifically chose a saddle from the Naz Perce tribe of the pacific northwest. Fortunately the saddle was unique and highly detailed so it gave me more talking points, but the collection of photos on the object was still not very thorough. I think that this is the BIGGEST difference in looking at a piece digitally versus physically. When you get to experience being there and seeing something in person made so long ago, you get to not only feel a sense of deeper appreciation for the item, you can also see any angle that you want. In a project like this especially, that is a value that became eye opening as I was scouring for a piece to work on. If I were able to feel the piece or see it from another perspective that the internet will not allow me to, I would be able to talk about the piece in a much more appreciative and thorough manner, going into more detail about it, and how the pieces come together to create the final product. There were pieces I wanted to talk about, but did not get an appropriate angle or detail to accompany it. One resource I utilized to help was the reading on the two objects of the Siksika Nation. By reading about these historical pieces I was able to better formulate descriptions of my images. It allowed me to open up on the project and figure out what information might be important when looking at a piece of history in this way.
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Hi Judson, thank you for sharing these thoughts! It can be very challenging finding historical sources online, and our experience with these sources is very different from interacting with their physical versions. We can use search options to better refine our results, but there is also so much information simply *not* available online. As we increasingly interact with history in a digital age, the way that we produce, preserve, and present historical work is rapidly changing!