Paris 1909 TripAdvisor
The project intends to recreate the cultural geography of Paris in the Belle Époque, immersing a user into the world of cabarets, balls, theatres, the universe described by Zola and Proust, and painted by Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec. In order to give a new perspective on how this legendary world was actually structured and perceived, we are going to digitize the authentic Plan des plaisirs et attractions de Paris created in 1909 and augment it with the pieces of evidence and descriptions from the Guide des plaisirs à Paris: timetables, advice and guidance on what to wear, what to say, and where to go.
Historical introduction
Plan des plaisirs et attractions de Paris traces the cultural geography of Paris at the end of the 1900s mapping the hand-picked theatres, restaurants, concerts, public balls and other amusements of the period. This sketch map was drawn by the bureau Le Natur to illustrate the Pleasure Guide to Paris (Guide des plaisirs à Paris) published in 1909. The Guide was reissued on multiple occasions (according to the catalog of the BNF, it had at least twelve editions appeared between 1899 and 1931) and was translated into several languages (notably, there were at least two English editions brought out in 1903 and 1925).
The map and the Guide constitute the historical grounds of the project, providing both a complex, richly detailed narrative and a spatial view of Paris in the Belle Époque. Issued at the dawn of the era of global tourism, those documents reflect the image of the city as it was created for the glance of a foreigner (primarily, a man) of that time. Notably, one will hardly find any historical sights on the map and typical accounts of them in the Guide. Instead, the Guide proposes a kind of anthropological introduction into the Parisian nightlife combining everyday recommendations on how to dress up and what to say with the descriptions of such «curious» and «piquant» places as working-class balls, small artistic inns, exotic cabarets of Montmartre, amusements of «the worst parts of Paris» («Dessous de Paris»), etc. Interestingly enough, the document reflects the spirit of the time when «marginal» artistic communities as well as «exotic» culture of «lower classes» began to be recognized as a source of pleasure and desire. At the turn of the century, similar guidebooks representing early forms of mass culture were written for other European capitals [1], which may be considered for the potential extension of the Paris 1909 TripAdvisor project.
Project Plan and Milestones
Milestone 1: Concept (up to 4 Nov)
- First brainstorming and first sketch of ideas
- Exploring the map and the sources
- Developing the overall concept of the project
Milestone 2: Data extraction (9 Nov)
- Selecting the types of data to be extracted
- 20% of the data extracted and annotated
- Verifying the data quality
- Searching for missing data and additional data (e.g. posters and photos)
- Scheduling and drawing up the project plan
Milestone 3: Design and Data Processing (14 Nov)
- Designing the prototype on paper (wireframes)
- Selecting the features of the application
- Searching for the best technical way to show clickable points corresponding to the places on the map
- Preparing the midterm presentation
Milestone 4: Database implementation (28 Nov)
- Developing a web app for entering the data:
- Initialization of Django application
- Design and implementation of the database in SQL
- Deploying the first version of the web application: the website will be deployed on a public URL and team members will have access to input extracted information to the database.
- Extracting the rest of the data
- Adding new data to the app database
- Making the improvement of the map
Milestone 5: Development of the platform (14 Dec)
- Designing the entry story
- Implementing the services of the app:
- Displaying the map and the project description
- Implementing the UI to explore the map and the places
- Adding search and filter functionalities
- Displaying the annotation of each place
- Displaying additional data and tutorial pop-ups
- Adding the recommendations page
- Refactoring the github repository to submit
Milestone 6: Presenting the Results (19 Dec)
- Preparing the final presentation
- Writing the report
- Deploying the final version of the web application for public usage
Extraction methods
Georeferencing
Text extraction
A large part of the work consisted in dealing with the text extraction. We had at our disposal two digitized versions of the Guide: the French edition of 1909 digitized by Gallica and the English edition of 1925 found on the web. The French edition is an authentic one, the one for which the map was intended. However, the quality of its digitization is rather bad (66% according to Gallica): large pieces of text are non-recognized, hence requiring to be retyped by hand. As all members of the team are not francophones, this might result not only in many hours of work, but also in a poor quality of texts. The English digital version is of a better quality, but as it was brought out 16 years after the French one, it lacks some pieces of information and reflects the Parisian cultural life of the mid-1920s. After long hesitation, we decided to base on the English edition, having taken into account that the English language would have made the application accessible for many more users.
The data were extracted manually (retyping and copying when possible). All the precise pieces of data: prices, working hours, phone numbers, menus – were still derived from the French edition of the Guide in order to keep the authenticity of the created image of the past. All the English descriptions were compared with the French ones in order to bring to light historical inconsistencies and eliminate them.
Quantitive analysis of the performances of extraction
Services Provided
Code
https://github.com/MrymZakani/Paris1909TripAdvisor
Team
- Alina, Maryam, and Paola
- ↑ See, for example, Little, Charles. London Pleasure Guide. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1898.