Introduction to Imaging Place: GIS Databases in Digital Humanities

Abstract

One could read this essay as an introduction to the work of Greg Ulmer and to the Imaging Place research contained in this volume. One could read this essay as an introduction to geographic information systems (GIS) for cultural problem solving, including future paths for digital humanities (the translation of data into humanities knowledge). The first title of this essay contains little information, but with its eventual publication, it will find a place in indexes, word searches, and databases linked to keywords. One might argue that this essay represents the print-based or logocentric description of the Imaging Place Project. The second title contains layers of information but is poetically coded to the point that it resembles an inside joke. The first title works on an infrastructural level to literally connect to the current mood of the times, while the second title describes and performs that mood. One could describe the second title as heuretic. The goal of the research in this volume is to insinuate the heuretic into the current discourses and keywords and, therefore, this essay needs two titles: one to link to existing search engines and databases and express the rational justification and value of the Imaging Place Project, the other to perform the epistemological potential of those databases. One could also read this volume as the third part of a series that began with two earlier anthologies on related topics.