Technology Enhances Perceptions at Vanderbilt Libraries Exhibition

A new exhibition at Vanderbilt Libraries invites the community to expand its perceptions of the universe and locations closer to home with the help of digital technology. “Picturing Our World,” with displays ranging from three-dimensional views of Nashville to a telescope used by E.E. Barnard, Vanderbilt’s first astronomer, is open to the public through July 2016.

Clifford Anderson, director for scholarly communications, said there’s a “twist” with a large display of postcards that opera singer Enrico Caruso sent during his many travels abroad. “These postcards are, in a sense, the essence of the places that people wanted to share with others at a time when there wasn’t Instagram or Twitter,” Anderson said. “At the library, we wanted to give viewers a sense of how extensive Caruso’s collection was. Therefore, we used a technology to visualize all of the photographs at one time, relating them to each other by their saturation level and hue. That’s taking a modern digitization and visualization technique and juxtaposing it with a 19th-century technique.” Read more …