This week, I decided to critique “The Garden of Earthly Delights” which is an example project for Storymap JS. The project offers background and interpretation on the painting it details, “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch. It can be found at https://storymap.knightlab.com/examples/bosch-garden/.
Something unique and appealing about this particular story map is that the “map” platform it uses is an image, rather than a traditional geographical map. Because it’s a large image, it is sorted into Storymap’s gigapixel collection, which is created for large, detailed, images. By moving around, the storymap brings the image to life and draws the user’s attention to the most important and distinguishing features of the image. As such, the learning is more interactive than if a user were to read about it in a textbook. However, the site has the potential to be even more interactive by integrating more media sources than just text. The text that is included as a part of the project is simple enough for the average user to understand, while still being useful and informative.
One of the drawbacks of this project is that it does not feature an about page for the project. A link in the introduction takes the use to a Wikipedia page about the time period the piece was created in, which is helpful but not necessarily reliable. However, the project is clearly made on Storymap JS. A link at the bottom left of the site takes the user to the Storymap JS website which has information about how to make and use Storymap. The metadata on the image is provided in the introduction to the website and includes the title of the piece, the artist, the date it was created, and the place where it is housed.
Given that the website does not have an about page and is hosted on the Storymap JS site, it appears that the intended audience is people who are interested in see what a project using a gigapixel image on Storymap JS would look like. If this were to be a more fully-fleshed DH project, it would need to have more of a sense of community by including and about page and contact page, and increasing interactivity by incorporating more forms of media.
Good thoughts, and yes, if this was really a fleshed-out DH project, it would be contextualized in a larger site, and perhaps alongside several other maps. https://tuinderlusten-jheronimusbosch.ntr.nl/en is probably a better realization of this, from a DH project perspective, anyway.