Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is a precious part of human culture. Due to its unique mode of existence, it can be difficult for us to remember and pass down every aspect of ICH. Inspired by the intangible cultural heritage visualization chart created by UNESCO, I chose to research the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in China to make a cultural heritage visualization chart for our Chinese ICH. Through the research, I explored the form of data expression and cultural heritage in Guangxi. The final project is a well-structured data visualization chart that includes information about the intangible cultural heritage of Guangxi, such as the region, nationalities, and inheritors.
This project is a data visualization project about the local intangible cultural heritage list in Guangxi. It contains information about the names and detailed introductions of intangible cultural heritage, the types of intangible cultural heritage they belong to, their provenances with pictures, and bearers associated with them. As an online data visualization project, users can easily view the map of the relationship between the source and type of intangible cultural heritage as a whole, or further focus on only one type or ethnicity of cultural heritage through mouse movements and interactions. They can also click on the points representing intangible cultural heritage to learn more about the ICH’s introductions.
This project is inspired by the World Intangible Cultural Heritage Data Visualization Project offered by UNESCO. It chooses a similar representation and incorporates more local elements specific to China, such as specific provenances and related ethnic minorities, which were not included in the UNESCO project. At the same time, this project failed to include hyperlinks to the relevant video news for each intangible cultural heritage. It only included textual information, which is a direction that can be further developed.
https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/12793449/
https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/13104975/
https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/12860879/
During winter vacation, one of my relatives introduced me to the field of Digital Humanities. This area of scholarly activity lies at the intersection of computing or digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. "It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanities, as well as the analysis of their application."[1] I found this field very interesting and would like to work on a project related to digital humanities.
Based on my research, there is still no official digital humanities website in the intangible cultural heritage field in China. The official China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network lacks both interactive and convenient elements, not to mention the local website. Since intangible cultural heritage is a precious part of both human and a country's culture, I think it is important to explore different ways and techniques to revive the vitality of these cultural heritages. Data visualization, as a useful and important tool in every field nowadays, is my first choice for recording and presenting intangible cultural heritage. "The importance of data visualization is simple: it helps people see, interact with, and better understand data. Whether simple or complex, the right visualization can bring everyone on the same page, regardless of their level of expertise."[2]
Since my initial goal is to create a China cultural map, I chose Guangxi as the main focus of the project. Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region is a city that combines various histories and nationalities, making it a place filled with intangible cultural heritage. Currently, Guangxi has 70 intangible cultural heritages in the national dictionary, such as singing and dance performances, food making, festivals, etc. Even though Guangxi is a challenging place for me to research and summarize information and transfer it into digital form, it is convenient for me to explore different formats of data visualization with small amounts of data but enough variety. This will help me build a solid foundation for the next steps of the project.
The initial idea of the project required the use of JavaScript programming techniques with the d3.js library. However, during the mentoring session, Prof. Leon denied the idea that I wanted to use JavaScript because it was too difficult and would easily cause bad results for I don’t have any JavaScript programming foundation. Therefore, although I made the initial design sketch, I did not use it in the end.
Instead, after I researched various data visualization tools, I finally confirmed to use the website Flourish as my auxiliary tool to implement my project. It was a very user-friendly platform as it provided various data visualization templates, and all I needed to do was to populate the data and explore its related features and use them to achieve the results I wanted.
