Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Dr. Random podcast. I'm Dr. Sarah, and here's the deal. We don't do boxes here.
[00:00:08] Every episode is different, every conversation has its own flavor, and no topic is off limits. If you're looking for predictable, this isn't it. But if you want real conversations, honest takes, and a touch of intellect in the best way, you're in the right place. This is Dr. Random Podcast.
[00:00:31] Hi, welcome to the Dr. Random Podcast.
[00:00:34] I'm Dr. Sarah, and today I'm actually going to be discussing digital artifacts. And I know some of you out there might be questioning what you think digital artifacts actually are or you might have a misconception of what it is.
[00:00:47] So I'm here to kind of help clarify that and also focus in and share with you my actual study for my dissertation on my doctoral journey, which I took a year off of my career to complete. So this is something that, you know, I had to sacrifice things and lived with my mother while I finished my dissertation. So it was a big deal. And it was a lot of coursework, late nights. I worked full time as a paralegal while completing my doctorate. I went to Pepperdine University, and I highly recommend Pepperdine. I also got my master's in law at Pepperdine, and they're just a great community of professors and education. Yeah, I'm going to kind of dive in. You can kind of see a little corner of the book on the table. That's actually my published dissertation, which you can find on ProQuest. Basically, I did it on the digital artifacts of the paintings of the subject of Jesus Christ. And it was basically, I chose this study because I was at a very large museum, and I want to keep it confidential where this museum was. But the tour guide actually was skipping over all the paintings that were religious or had the subject of Jesus, and I thought that was interesting. And I already kind of had an idea in my head that I wanted to do my study on something having to do to combine art with science. And so I chose this journey of doing digital artifacts. I'm very passionate about art, as I'm sure some of you may know. I'm an artist myself, and I just love art. I love being immersed in art. I love going to galleries and museums since I was a little girl. There is a museum where I grew up called the Hagen Museum, and there was actually a mummy there. And I remember I was so fascinated by that. So I used to love looking at National Geographic. So that's probably my photography, love of photography, too, where that comes from. I used to Immerse myself looking at all my grandparents, National Geographic magazines. And so basically, the problem why I chose this study is because in very currently and recent, my study actually relates to the grand theft that happened in Paris recently of the Royal Jewels. Grand theft is part of the issue of the problem in my study. So it's to prevent religious paintings, art, sculptures, anything. It's to encourage churches, museums, galleries, governments, schools, universities to digitize everything. So let's say there was grand theft or a destruction of war.
[00:03:08] We have this art digitized and saved digitally for future and for heritage purposes and for educational purposes also. Another current event that relates to my study is the Russian Ukraine war. In Ukraine, churches were destroyed by the Russian armies. Unfortunately, there were works in these churches. There were murals, paintings that were destroyed forever. And I know a lot of those were not digitized according to a news reel with 60 minutes that I watched, which I actually cite in my study, which makes this study so relevant to currently. So it's wars, theft, religious importance, environmental effects, and the artwork of the paintings themselves need continuing protection from thieves, war, or environmental effects that could happen. That is why saving artwork digitally is crucial. The artwork can still be viewed even if it happens to be physically destroyed. So organizing and preserving the art of Jesus digitally is critical. And the paintings of Jesus being lost, misplaced, or worse, no longer displayed in museums is why saving everything digitally is so crucial. And digital artifacts through science strengthen the idea that visual learning is a more effective way of making data stick to our memory and knowledge base. And sensory literacy should be as involved in the educational curriculum as computer and textual literacy.
[00:04:37] Visual literacy is the key to sensory literacy.
[00:04:41] And teachers and professors in the academic realm should educate people on sensory literacy as it is vital in enhancing overall education. What does this digital artifacts have to do with all of that in education?
[00:04:54] So the reason why I brought this into my study is because, okay, so you think about you look around the world today and all the teenagers, us as adults, we're addicted to our phones. We can't stop looking at our phones. And so that's a negative part to it. But what we have to do is twist this into a positive and use it in education. Digital artifacts are a way to actually teach and put it in curriculum to keep students attention. My thought is that we start embedding visual literacy in all educational curriculum for schools. It's a way to get students to stop looking at their phone. Instead, they're gonna be more interested in what they're being taught in school. So basically, if you think about if Anybody's gone to the Van Gogh or the Monet experience. I mean, that is amazing. That's basically a digital art show. It's a digital artifacts realm of showcasing that art so that you immerse yourself. It's like an embodiment experience.
[00:05:53] Visual. You're using your sensory literacy to think about embedding in school systems. Just kind of a visual way of learning is key.
[00:06:02] The importance of the Preserving the paintings of Jesus and digital artifacts is a present demand because of their rarity of beauty and art and their uniqueness cannot be recreated in original form but preserved digitally in high quality images. It must be organized for viewing and educational purposes. There was some research done by Muzio in the use of photography and organizational leadership. My doctorate is in educational psychology and organizational leadership. So that pops out sometimes naturally. The research done by Muzio in the use of photography and organizational research concluded that photography could achieve more significant space among researchers, editors, reviewers and readers.
[00:06:46] And according to researchers, photography is more accurate than an interview as a data source. My data source in my study is actually these photographs I took. I captured digital images of the religious paintings of Jesus and art can help connect humans to God and reflect faith. And religious art communicates religious beliefs, traditions and customs through iconography. The depictions of Christ's body and paintings that tell his life story.
[00:07:16] The importance of preserving art in general and saving it digitally as best one can. First, one needs to understand fully the history and life of Jesus and how significant his life was to the point where he changed the world not only in the past, but still today.
[00:07:32] And of course, images of Jesus in art, whether a painting or a sculpture, create a spiritual connection for those who believe and follow the Christian faith. Whether viewers are Christian or not, preserving and protecting these art pieces are crucial for future generations to ensure the preservation of the history and heritage of the followers of the faith and the generations to come. So you might be thinking, okay, what are the goals of my research? Right now I'm just kind of referencing my talking notes from actually my presentations and defenses for my research. And the research had the goal of helping to preserve the imagery of Jesus and viewing art work and icons, portraying his life as a way to commence Jesus life, a way to accomplish this through digital artifacts. And another goal in this research is to to discover ways to teach digital pedagogy in the classroom. The subject of digital artifacts and the theory and importance of teaching students in our digital world. A focus on adequately communicating art, media and other topics visually.
[00:08:33] So I had to break down and focus on things that strengthened my study.
[00:08:38] So basically, the conceptual framework of my study was iconography, ancient Christian history, theology, visual culture, critical digital pedagogy and digital artifacts. So the conceptual framework of my study, I had to focus on particular things that would strengthen what I was trying to study here and explore. And so I had to dive into iconography, ancient Christian history, theology, visual culture, critical digital pedagogy and digital artifacts. And this was a qualitative study that employs digital artifacts to explore paintings of Jesus Christ through the iconography, semiotic analysis, visual culture, visual studies, ancient Christian history, and the importance of digital pedagogy. And digital preservation of the artwork of Jesus, thereby digitally preserves the Eastern Western culture of the religious culture of Jesus as a transformational leader. You might be thinking, okay, well, what's iconography? We think of icons in our society, of course, but iconography in itself, Christian doctrine and is the point of portrayal and the iconographic study lens used when assessing the images of Christ. Iconography is specifically for Christian sacred art. Natural and symbolic icons raise the soul and mind to the spirit realm. So in the 19th century, iconography emerged again. In past century, works of art, including the present, occupy a special place in history and visual studies. The relationship between the visual and cultural as two adjectives are entirely meshed and the visual understood only through the cultural meaning making process. A picture of Christ on a wood panel is an icon and focuses on the relationships outside the work. An icon is traditionally associated with portrait style images centralized around the image of Jesus or Mary generated among Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and particular Catholic churches. The context of the images is essential in ancient, medieval and Renaissance art. For example, a lamb represents Christ and the art from the era of the Renaissance Empire. And the dove represents the Holy Spirit in the Christian religion. According to St. Luke. Iconography is one of the essential parts of the study of digital artifacts and the images of Jesus in the original paintings. Iconography distinguishes and defines configurations by portraying the meaning behind a painting or art piece. And iconographers claim that the significance created the image, but the image did not determine the importance of the icon. Iconography is really interesting. If you've gone to museums, you've been in Italy, France, even here in the US at the National Gallery of Art. You're going to see a lot of iconography. It's some of the most moving pieces of art that people are drawn towards. You can almost in a way think of the Mona Lisa and iconography because it's. People are so drawn to it. It is a person, she has become an icon. So Mona Lisa Is considered an icon. And in the church, if you look at stained glass, it also centralizes around Jesus. So we have iconography even in stained glass. And then focusing on the theology in my study, of course, I had to reiterate the life of Jesus so that we would understand, while analyzing the paintings, the story behind the paintings. So in order to analyze a painting, you need to understand what was going on behind it. So I dove into the theology of the life of Jesus. And I did that by citing actually the Bible itself. And I also like to point out, like, say, somebody's Buddhist and they want to focus on the paintings with Buddha, they would need to do the same thing. They would have to understand the theology behind Buddha.
[00:12:15] You could say, in a way. And then ancient Christian history, which is so interesting. I love ancient Christian history. You know, we just. There was just that whole series that everybody loved called, you know, the bible and all of that. And everybody loved it. The chosen are very popular. So ancient Christian history is just so interesting to me.
[00:12:35] And I've always loved, you know, Greek mythology and the Greek icons and Alexander the Great. And that actually plays a huge role into this. In ancient Christian history. Citizens of that time, they had questions about what this messiah would look like. What would be remarkable about the coming messiah. And moreover, what would he fulfill for us? Will the coming of the messiah be like the leaders of that day, Such as Caesar Augustus or Alexander the Great, Either a great warrior and leader or king.
[00:13:05] But Jesus defies all of this questioning. Through time in history, Alexander the Great spread Greek philosophy and then knowledge on how to use Greek culture with Christianity. And before that, Greco Romans believe Greek superiority existed. When comparing their gods and philosophers of Lagos to the Christian God of the universe in the Greco Roman mind in the ancient history, one could not comprehend that God would have emotions that he would come to this earth and the form as lowly as a human man. And on top of that, in that time in ancient history, they could not believe that God would come out of the womb of a woman. Jesus was born under the rule of Caesar Augustus. And during that time of history, the Romans were very religious. And in addition, is essential essential to understand that the male leaders of this time were very powerful and physically strong. A time when, in contrast, Jesus was a male baby born in the first century, not of wealth or title. And during this time, persons of significance and power were strong and powerful impressive men like Caesar Augustus, who put a system in place to make the senate feel like they were part of a larger, more significant cause. And among other Several other significant accomplishments. Caesar crafted for example, what he called the princeps the first citizen and point of honor. And Caesar Augustus unified the Roman Empire and brought security, peace and well being to the country from the reign of Caesar Augustus up until the reign of emperor Diocletian in 284. Historians refer to this as the Principet era. Caesar Augustus takes, takes among other titles, an old title from the Roman Republic, Pontifeus Maximus. And if you're curious, a lot of this information I got from a book in my study called from Stevenson and Friend. It was called the. That's the author and it's a very good book. Always share the name of the titles of books or you can look up my dissertation if you're curious about my sources for my study. The office where the Pontifex Maximus is the one who oversees the religious activities of the Roman Empire.
[00:15:04] And another critical element to understand is that the Romans were not irreligious or atheists. They were very religious. The Romans believed in the gods that had created the Roman Empire and they believed that the Roman Empire depended upon the gods for its very existence. The Roman Empire in the world when Jesus was born was a time when Caesar was seen as the savior of the empire and on bringing peace after a hundred year civil war and was praised as a Roman savior or son of God as in the Bible. But in contrast to how Jesus is thought of in the gospels, if you think about, you know, Jesus, he's coming during this time in history when people thought of, you know, these strong mighty leaders like Alexander the Great, you know, think of muscles and a man. I maybe would have liked to meet Alexander the Great, but.
[00:15:50] But you know, Jesus came in a manger. He came as a baby boy. And that is part of my study that I find so interesting is something that has been kind of a hot topic lately is human embodiment. Because of our digital world, we think about how we're not.
[00:16:06] We're so used to looking at our phones and this ties into the whole visual culture. You know, we're staring at these screens and we're isolating ourselves and we're not having human touch, human contact or some people aren't even really leaving their house as much as they used to. If you think about human touch and vulnerability even as adults. But think about a baby boy, a child being coming into this world as a vulnerable baby boy. God who created this whole universe came vulnerable as a baby boy. And this is what makes Mary so special. He chose Mary out of everybody. He came dependent and vulnerable in her arms as a mother. To me, when you are really studying and looking at all the paintings of Mary with baby Jesus and you are thinking about that embodiment experience and that vulnerability that God had to come here on this earth in human form, it's quite moving. And especially with Christmas time coming up, I feel like talking about this. Maybe you'll look at a couple things around Christmas a little different. When you see the images of Mary with Jesus, think about that embodiment and how he came vulnerable as a baby boy and how it makes these art pieces so significant and so powerful that, you know, it really is a connection and a portal, in my opinion, to the spiritual realm and connecting with God. When you view, view these pieces of works, if you're like me, I get very moved by art. And especially in church, when you're hearing the beautiful music and you're just surrounded by these beautiful works of art, or if you're in a museum or a gallery and you see these works, they're powerful and they're something that needs to be preserved and saved, whether you're a Christian or not. They're part of heritage, they're part of history. And, you know, this is real history. So this is a scientific study. You know, I just found this so interesting and moving. And, you know, I came into this with a bias, of course, which I talk about, and because I myself am a Christian, but, you know, I still came in this with an open lens and thing to, you know, open mind to study all of these works and apply real semiotics and symbolism to each piece. Went through, collected all my digital artifacts, my photographs of the religious arts, compiled them together and did my analysis.
[00:18:26] And I had over 500 collected and I had to narrow it down to just 60. This took so much time.
[00:18:34] So just to give you guys an idea for a dissertation study, what it takes in your doctoral journey, you have to make sacrifices. I moved in with my mother. I didn't work. And my dissertation portion of it, I. When I was doing my coursework, I did work full time, but we had to go in person every other month, almost three years. Every other month. I had to go down to campus at Pepperdine and spend about four days there in person, and then the rest of everything else was online constantly. It's a big process, but I'm so glad that I chose this study and so glad I did it, and it was so amazing and that I was able to apply my love of art and apply just this cool science behind everything with semiotic analysis. And it was a non human subjects research and just the methodologies applied and because if you look in my chapter four of my study, you can see the images of the digital artifacts that I chose to go with and then the analysis of each of those. And it really is a powerful study. I'm glad I did it. It's unique, it's different. And I'm not sure people understand this either. When you are doing your study for your dissertation, it has to be something that's never been done before, has to be unique. So you actually have to search for that. You have to make sure that what you're doing, you're contributing to academia. It has to be something that is unique to your, to you, to your study, something that has not been done before. And so it is quite the process because sometimes somebody will want to do something, but it's already been done. I was very excited when I was able to move forward with what I chose to do it on. I think all in all, what I would like to say is, you know, visual culture and visual studies, it's so important and so key. And even me just being on this podcast, doing the video, that that's a portion of visual studies, visual culture. When I was in Paris, there's fashion museums, which is really cool. So you can actually go to fashion museums now. You can look at clothes. I mean, we are just immersed every day in like visual culture. Even like, you know, I talked about in the past podcast how my dad passed, like he loves Star wars and he was such a nerd about all this techie stuff. And I think like, oh my gosh, if he could see what they were doing today, he would be like, blown away. So just to think about how we've progressed even in a short amount of time with technology and what we're seeing every day, it's truly amazing. I think that we need to twist what's going on into a positive, especially in academia, because we don't want to dumb down right now. We want to keep all of our future generation of kids, we don't want to dumb them down, them blankly staring at their phones and getting addicted. We want to immerse them in education and powerful knowledge that will help educate them and keep it interesting. And the way we're going to do this is by, you know, applying digital artifacts in the classroom, applying visual semiotics, applying digital critical pedagogy in the classroom. You know, I'm excited. I would love to have the opportunity to get into academia. I would love to teach just this course on non human subjects, research and digital artifacts. And it's fun because students, you know, I chose paintings with the subject of Jesus. Somebody could choose the paintings of Monet or the paintings of Van Gogh, or they could choose. They want to choose paintings with the subject of Buddha. You know, it's open. And I think that that's what's so awesome. You can take the same study I did and apply it to other subjects, which is so fun and so interesting. And you could do it on Chihuahuas.
[00:22:09] I don't know. It's just, you know, you can make learning fun and education fun. And I think that's the whole point. With the technology coming out and with this boom in AI, I think we need to integrate it with visual culture and visual studies and semiotics, symbolism, critical digital pedagogy and all of this together. And I think that iconography is so interesting.
[00:22:32] And just the whole ancient Christian history I find so interesting. I also recently visited the Bible Museum in dc.
[00:22:40] I didn't even know it existed.
[00:22:42] I went there and I was like, blown away. I was like, wow, this is so interesting. It's funny because after I started looking into it, this was after I went, I guess there was some controversy with the museum. I'm not sure, but I'm not going to get into that. I just find all the ancient Egyptology, you know, when you're reading the Bible and you're reading, you know, Genesis and Exodus, the really ancient, you know, books in the Bible, how it ties into Egyptology, I find so interesting. But yeah, if you're kind of a little, you know, nerd like me on artifacts or you love Indiana Jones. I kind of think of this as like in Indiana Jones, but exploring in the digital world, but choosing to focus on paintings. You know, it's fun. It's like exploratory. And that's what I did basically. And I want to keep doing that. I want to keep exploring. And my hopes are to, you know, maybe get a grant for research or do something to continue this study that I've done. You know, we'll see what happens. But, you know, I even have my National Geographic bag here today. How I love photography. I don't know. I have so many goals and so many things I want to do. I wanted to share this with all of you. Kind of my passion for why I chose this subject and how it can kind of dive into other areas. Kind of a nerd in that way. But I kind of like to think of myself as the Dr. Jones, Indiana Jones in the digital world, but the female, you know, but it's. It's fun. But, yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. And if you're more interested in diving into my study, I think you can access on ProQuest, if you have access. Yeah. But I hope next time you go to a gallery or a museum or a church, maybe you'll, you know, want to capture it digitally to save it and just start thinking about the importance of this, especially, you know, whether you're a government, a school, a university. You know, how we really need to start thinking about digitally preserving, especially in the religious realm, because we are subject to grand theft war or the ravages of time or just, you know, issues with people not wanting to display it for whatever reason, even if it's political. So I think it's important to save for heritage and cultural purposes and to think about how important it is to digitally preserve and digitize everything and how cool photography is and how, you know, it's just an awesome thing. Anyways, thank you for listening to the Dr. Random podcast today, and I'm signing out, so ciao, Dr. Sarah.
