Exploring the Intersection of Craft and Knowledge
The Making and Knowing Project
A digital-humanities case study spanning more than four months of regular work with the Making and Knowing Project in Spring 2019—across manuscript analysis, laboratory and working-group activity, digital-edition research, and interface design—followed by occasional later contributions and continued engagement.
My contribution
Digital humanities · textual analysis · UI/UX research
I worked regularly with the Making and Knowing Project for more than four months in Spring 2019 through Columbia’s Transforming Texts: Textual Analysis, Literary Modeling, and Visualization course and its associated lab and project activity around BnF Ms. Fr. 640. The collaborative final project with Sandra Goldstein Lehnert and Gregory Houser was one capstone within that broader period of work, not the full extent of my involvement. I also remained an occasional contributor and participant after the intensive spring period.
- Worked repeatedly with the manuscript and developing digital edition through textual, linguistic, structural, material, and digital-analysis exercises.
- Participated in laboratory and working-group activity and engaged directly with project staff, editorial resources, conservation questions, and the Project’s collaborative research process.
- Explored how digital representation changes what readers can notice about transcription, translation, page structure, material features, chronology, and scholarly interpretation.
- For the final Epistemic Design group project, contributed co-presentation, visual and time-lapse technical knowledge, epistemic design/wireframing, co-program management, creative ideation, and textual insight.
AR measurement concept: historically meaningful units
A separate April 2019 concept explored how augmented reality could connect physical lab space with historically meaningful measurement systems. I proposed combining a phone-camera measurement tool with the Project’s space-mapping work so a user could understand dimensions through comparative early modern units—for example, how many cannonballs wide or pans long an object or space might be—and suggested that the concept could later connect with other AR lab tools, including annotations. Tianna Uchacz explicitly recognized the proposal as an AR measurement tool for converting to early modern units.
Evidence boundary: the surviving record verifies my proposal and its intended connection to space mapping and AR annotations. It does not currently establish that I built or tested the annotation system itself.
Scope note: the interface-design proposal documented below was a proposed prototype and research/design exercise. I do not present it as software I deployed or as the sole basis of the final Digital Critical Edition.
Project context
The Making and Knowing Project is an innovative educational initiative that combines historical research with practical experimentation. By reconstructing 16th-century artisanal techniques, the project aims to deepen understanding of historical practices and their relevance today. This approach not only enriches historical knowledge but also enhances pedagogical methods, offering students a unique, immersive learning experience that connects academic inquiry with tangible skills.
Key components of my work
Regular lab & manuscript work
Recurring course and lab work used Ms. Fr. 640 as a shared research object for close reading, linguistic and structural analysis, digital methods, and material-text questions.
Working groups & project research
I worked within the Project’s collaborative research model, participating in lab and working-group activity and engaging with project staff, editorial resources, conservation questions, and interdisciplinary methods.
Epistemic design capstone
With Sandra Goldstein Lehnert and Gregory Houser, I helped develop a proposed material-page interface using wireframes and a possible genetic or time-based view. This was one capstone project within my broader Making and Knowing work.
My 2019 project-engagement timeline
My intensive involvement ran across the Spring 2019 term and extended beyond the final group project. The milestones below describe my work and participation—not the full institutional history of the Making and Knowing Project.
Jan–Feb
Manuscript & project immersion
I entered the Project’s research environment through Transforming Texts and began sustained work with BnF Ms. Fr. 640, its developing Digital Critical Edition, and the Project’s interdisciplinary methods.
Mar
Textual & digital analysis
Across the term I worked through recurring manuscript-analysis problems involving language, syntax, translation, structure, material evidence, digital representation, and computational or interface-mediated reading.
Apr–May
Epistemic design capstone
In April–May, the Epistemic Design group developed and presented a proposed interface for examining material qualities of manuscript pages, including wireframed regions and a possible genetic/time-lapse view.
After
Continued engagement
After the intensive spring period, I remained connected to the Project and contributed or participated occasionally rather than ending my involvement with the final presentation.
Contributions
I joined the Making and Knowing Project through ENGL84031/HISTGU4031/
2019 Epistemic Design Capstone
Explore the surviving design proposal as one documented output of the Spring 2019 work. It records a collaborative prototype concept; it should not be read as evidence that our proposed interface was deployed in the final edition.
Meet Our Dedicated Team
The Making and Knowing Team
Dr. Pamela H. Smith
Project Director
Professor Pamela H. Smith founded the Making and Knowing Project at Columbia University in 2014. She is Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University and Founding Director of the Center for Science and Society at Columbia. At Columbia, she teaches history of early modern Europe and the history of science. She is the author of The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton 1994; 1995 Pfizer Prize), and The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago 2004; 2005 Leo Gershoy Prize). Her work on alchemy, artisans, and the making of vernacular and scientific knowledge has been supported by fellowships at the Wissenschafts-Kolleg, as a Guggenheim Fellow, a Getty Scholar, a Samuel Kress Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts in Washington, DC, and by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the National Science Foundation. Her current research focuses on attitudes to nature in early modern Europe and the Scientific Revolution, with particular attention to craft knowledge and historical techniques.
Contact: ps2270@columbia.edu
Naomi Rosenkranz
Associate Director
Naomi Rosenkranz is the Associate Director of the Center for Science and Society and its research cluster, the Making and Knowing Project. She oversees the development and administration of the Center and its research clusters, Scholars, grant programs, activities, and events. For the Making and Knowing Project, she serves as the main administrative liaison between the various research, editorial, and digital activities of the Project staff, collaborators, and participants. She supports the historical reconstruction research, oversees the Project’s chemical laboratory, and maintains the digital collaboration systems. She studied physics at Barnard College (class of 2015), concentrating her research experiences in materials science and engineering (including synthesis and characterization of superconductors and photoconductive properties of organic nanorods). In 2014-15, she served as the inaugural Science Resident in Conservation with Columbia’s Ancient Ink Lab, identifying and characterizing ancient carbon-based inks. She continued her investigation of inks at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, working with the departments of Scientific Research and Paper Conservation to examine medieval iron-tannate black inks through recipe reconstructions and spectral analysis of museum objects.
Contact: njr2128@columbia.edu
What Collaborators Say
“Participating in The Making and Knowing Project was a transformative experience that deepened my understanding of historical practices.”
S. Goldstein
Graduate Researcher
“The project’s innovative approach to blending history and technology is truly inspiring. It has opened new avenues for research and collaboration.”
L.E. Hand
Graduate Researcher
“BnF Ms. Fr. 640 offers a unique glimpse […] Most period sources, such as guild regulations, court documents, commissions, and inventories, provide only hints about the materials, techniques, cultural experience, and tacit knowledge that clearly once existed. A more vivid picture emerges from Ms. Fr. 640, which is discussed in this [resource] alongside surviving objects.”
Jonathan Tavares
Associate Curator of Arms, Armor and European Decorative Arts before 1700, Art Institute of Chicago
