Pacific Pathways: Multiplying Contexts for the Forster ('Cook-Voyage') Collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum
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Grant Holder:
Mr Jeremy Coote
Comprising 185+ artefacts obtained on James Cook’s second voyage of discovery from 1772 to 1775, the Forster Collection is one of the great collections of Pacific ethnography. Between 1995 and 2001, I gathered together in a database all the information held within the Museum about each object in the collection. This work culminated in the launch of a website devoted to the collection at . The present project was concerned with understanding the ways in which the Forster Collection is important today, especially for members of ‘source’ communities. To this end, the project team developed and implemented a facility allowing anyone with access to the web to develop their own commentaries on the collection through creating electronic paths through and beyond the existing website. Pathways were commissioned from a variety of individuals—artists, curators, and scholars—interested in the collection from different perspectives. They were free to research and develop their own paths in their own ways, but taken as a whole they present a variety of perspectives combining words, images, and sound to explore, directly and indirectly, such themes as ‘first contact’, colonialism and postcolonialism, globalization, repatriation, gender, etc. and thus to suggest and demonstrate the collection’s relevance to scholars (historians, anthropologists, museum curators), artists (sculptors, writers, dancers), and members of source communities. The research context is manifold and includes new thinking and developments in collections history and museology; in particular, it contributes to new ways of incorporating indigenous voices into anthropological, art-historical, and museum presentations.
Production of compressed JPEG files from uncompressed TIFF files for web dissemination. Production of HTML through the use of PHP and mysql to extract data from fmpro files.
| Project start date: 2002-05 | Project end date: 2003-09 |
Subject domains:
Era(s):
Country/region(s):
| Methods used | Category |
|---|---|
| 2d Scanning and photography | Data capture |
| Collating | Data analysis |
| Data modelling | Data structuring and enhancement |
| Sound generation | Data capture |
| Sound recording | Data capture |
| Image enhancement | Data structuring and enhancement |
| Text encoding - presentational | Data structuring and enhancement |
| Sound editing | Data structuring and enhancement |
| Sound encoding | Data structuring and enhancement |
| Text recognition | Data capture |
| Use of existing digital data | Data capture |
| Manual input and transcription | Data capture |
Funding sources:
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Content types created:
Dataset/structured data, Sound, Still Image/Graphics, Text
Software tools used:
Javascript, MySQL, PHP, Filemaker Pro
Source material used:
The primary source for the materials on the Forster Collection website is of course the Museum, which has provided the images of the objects and other materials. The commissioned pathmakers, however, have drawn on numerous resources around the world, including their own artworks, photographs, and recordings, as well as other museum, library, and archival collections. Given that the site is now available for enhancement by anyone with access to the internet, the sources from which the digital resource is produced will continue to grow without any theoretical limit.
Digital resource created:
The major form of public output is the new Pacific Pathways section on the Forster Collection web site at . This gives direct access to the paths created by the commissioned pathmakers and to the pathmaking facility that is now available for use by the research community and the wider public. As and when new paths have been approved for addition to the web site, they will also be accessible from this page. In addition, many of the database entries on the Forster Collection website itself have been enhanced and updated with detailed information about their history and significance. More than 70 historical images have also been added to the site and linked to the relevant database entries and other material already on the site. A previously unpublished paper about the Forster collection has been added to the site’s archive section (‘The Significance for Polynesian Ethnohistory of the Reinhold Forster Collection at Oxford’, by Peter Gathercole, edited and introduced by Jeremy Coote). The site bibliography has been extended, enhanced, and updated. In addition, a few minor corrections and amendments have been made to the rest of the site. Further additions and amendments to the site and its databases will be made as and when new information becomes available.
Access to digital resource:
Open Access
Data Formats created:
FileMaker Pro, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Tagged Image File Format (TIFF)
Metadata standards employed:
Dublin Core, qualified (DC), SPECTRUM/MDA
Publications:
Coote, Jeremy. ""From the Islands of the South Seas, 1773–4’: Peter Gathercole’s Special Exhibition at the Pitt Rivers Museum", Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 17 (2005), pp. 8–31.
Gathercole, Peter. "The Significance for Polynesian Ethnohistory of the Reinhold Forster Collection at Oxford University" (edited and introduced by Jeremy Coote), online at http://projects.prm.ox.ac.uk/forster/polynesian.html (January 2004).
Gathercole, Peter. "The Significance for Polynesian Ethnohistory of the Reinhold Forster Collection at Oxford University" (edited and introduced by Jeremy Coote), online at http://projects.prm.ox.ac.uk/forster/polynesian.html (January 2004).
Institutions affiliated with this project:
| UK HE institutions involved: |
|---|
| University of Oxford |
| UK HE institutions involved: |
|---|
| University of Oxford |
Project staff and expertise:
| Principal staff member: | Mr Jeremy Coote |
|---|---|
| Other staff: | Postdoctoral researcher(s) / Research assistant(s) |
| External expertise: |
| Metadata on this arts-humanities.net record | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) of record | Jeremy Coote |
| Title | Pacific Pathways: Multiplying Contexts for the Forster ('Cook-Voyage') Collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum |
| Record created | 2005-11-07 |
| Record updated | 2011-01-14 16:14 |
| URL of record | http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2061 |
| Citation of record | Jeremy Coote: Pacific Pathways: Multiplying Contexts for the Forster ('Cook-Voyage') Collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum. <http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2061> created: 2005-11-07, last updated 2011-01-14 16:14 |