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+--- Thread: The Textual Work of August Walla, mentally disabled artist (/thread-3123.html)
RE: The Textual Work of August Walla, mentally disabled artist - RenegadeHealer - 16-03-2020
(14-03-2020, 08:45 PM)Ben Trovato Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(10-03-2020, 04:42 PM)Ben Trovato Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It is actually the goal of this thread to find out if there is interest for a project like this.... but unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case.
I'll help you with this, Ben. I apologize for taking so long to express my interest in your project. Promising things I'm not certain I can deliver is not my style, and given the upheaval the pandemic has had on both my professional and home lives, I had to really think about where I was going to find the time and energy for a non-professional research project. But I found it, and I'm in.I have access to a number of different databases of medical literature. What length(s) of text specimen would be most helpful? Do you care if the specimens were originally written or typed by the author, as opposed to spoken speech transcribed by a human, robot, or some combination? Does it matter to you if the texts were edited for clarity, partially redacted, or translated from a language other than English? I imagine the most valuable specimens would be verbatim copies of lengthy manuscripts, not edited in any way, but you tell me what would be helpful for your project. I only mention this because I foresee this type of specimen being among the hardest to find.
I'll give you a citation for each text specimen I find, and try to include as much data as I can find about the author's mental health history, demographics, and how the text was produced and transcribed.
RE: The Textual Work of August Walla, mentally disabled artist - Ben Trovato - 16-03-2020
Thank you for the encouragement and your commitment! But as I said, the problem is not mainly the text sample - which I would happily compile - but its analysis. Here I would would like to have a commitment from a person competent in computational analysis. Then I would go to work and create the Walla file.
If there is more textual sources you can supply, great! But I'd say let's approach this project step by step. I have no idea on how to include more (and different) text, methodologically. And then, oh, the Corona situation. My wife is running a pharmacy, so the next weeks could be tough for us. Nevertheless I like to keep this in my head...
RE: The Textual Work of August Walla, mentally disabled artist - Alin_J - 17-03-2020
(16-03-2020, 11:48 PM)Ben Trovato Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thank you for the encouragement and your commitment! But as I said, the problem is not mainly the text sample - which I would happily compile - but its analysis. Here I would would like to have a commitment from a person competent in computational analysis. Then I would go to work and create the Walla file.
If there is more textual sources you can supply, great! But I'd say let's approach this project step by step. I have no idea on how to include more (and different) text, methodologically. And then, oh, the Corona situation. My wife is running a pharmacy, so the next weeks could be tough for us. Nevertheless I like to keep this in my head...
I would definitely be very committed to analyzing such samples and comparing the analyses with those of other texts if the samples were available.
RE: The Textual Work of August Walla, mentally disabled artist - Ben Trovato - 17-03-2020
That sounds very promising, thank you!
I would also need some advice on how to prepare the data. Is capitalization important? Should line breaks be included? Should voids in the lines (due to the structure of the painting) be marked? Which kind of metadata should be provided? That's what I would think of, but there's probably more...
RE: The Textual Work of August Walla, mentally disabled artist - Alin_J - 17-03-2020
(17-03-2020, 12:18 PM)Ben Trovato Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That sounds very promising, thank you!
I would also need some advice on how to prepare the data. Is capitalization important? Should line breaks be included? Should voids in the lines (due to the structure of the painting) be marked? Which kind of metadata should be provided? That's what I would think of, but there's probably more...
I think that the transliteration should be kept to keep as much of the original character layout as possible. So, yes capitalization is important. Regarding spaces either certain, or uncertain (if the spacing is dubious) would suffice for me. But line breaks are important. If drawings are inside the text It would also help to know location markers for them, to be able to determine what text they are near, and to clearly separate them from the text itself.
RE: The Textual Work of August Walla, mentally disabled artist - RenegadeHealer - 17-03-2020
(16-03-2020, 11:48 PM)Ben Trovato Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thank you for the encouragement and your commitment! But as I said, the problem is not mainly the text sample - which I would happily compile - but its analysis. Here I would would like to have a commitment from a person competent in computational analysis. Then I would go to work and create the Walla file.
If there is more textual sources you can supply, great! But I'd say let's approach this project step by step. I have no idea on how to include more (and different) text, methodologically. And then, oh, the Corona situation. My wife is running a pharmacy, so the next weeks could be tough for us. Nevertheless I like to keep this in my head...
Sounds like a plan. I'm not much help on the computational analysis end of things, but I am closely following this project to see what you guys find. If I come across any writings that I think would be of interest to you, I'll post them here.
RE: The Textual Work of August Walla, mentally disabled artist - Ben Trovato - 22-03-2020
So I was thinking about how to prepare the text sample. To demonstrate the scheme, I take the "SAÄRILL"-picture posted above. The text file would look like this:
[1-Np98#163-????-G0]
Walla August.!
[@]BIN DER HEILIGE
GOTT SAÄRILL.!
[@]GOTT,
SAÄRILL.!
[@]I 1[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][@]II 2[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][@]I 1[/font][/font][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][@]III 3[/font][/font][/font]
[@]Sonne hinterm
Berg Bisasmberg
in den Bezirk
Korneuburg an
der Donau?
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][@]KPÖ[/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][@]GOTT[/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]ALLAH.[/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][@] SARARILL[/font][/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]UND, ALLAH.![/font][/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]Line 1: squared brackets are not used in Walla's work, so I can take them to indicate metadata: here, a consecutive number, source (book/page/figure number), the year of origin, ???? unknown in this case, and the "genre". I would propose to have the "genres" of "understandable" text (like this one), fake languages (like "Turkish" and "latin" in the samples in my initial post, samples #7 and #8) and plain gibberish (sample #6). My goal would be to collect text from the last two genres.[/font][/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]The transcription moves from top-left to bottom-right. Line breaks are line breaks. [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][@] indicates that the text is interrupted by parts of the drawings, while [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][@] plus a line break means that the text is from a different area in the picture. (@ is just another symbol Walla did not happen to know...)[/font][/font][/font][/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]Then I would simply type this into a text file, one after another...[/font][/font][/font][/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]@Alin_J, does that sound reasonable for you, or should things be done differently? (And what about the other mighty wizards of computational science?) [/font][/font][/font][/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]I hope I get some books next week, so I could start working on this...[/font][/font][/font][/font][/font]
RE: The Textual Work of August Walla, mentally disabled artist - Alin_J - 23-03-2020
(22-03-2020, 07:22 PM)Ben Trovato Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So I was thinking about how to prepare the text sample. To demonstrate the scheme, I take the "SAÄRILL"-picture posted above. The text file would look like this:
[1-Np98#163-????-G0]
Walla August.!
[@]BIN DER HEILIGE
GOTT SAÄRILL.!
[@]GOTT,
SAÄRILL.!
[@]I 1[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][@]II 2[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][@]I 1[/font][/font][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][@]III 3[/font][/font][/font]
[@]Sonne hinterm
Berg Bisasmberg
in den Bezirk
Korneuburg an
der Donau?
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][@]KPÖ[/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][@]GOTT[/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]ALLAH.[/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][@] SARARILL[/font][/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]UND, ALLAH.![/font][/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]Line 1: squared brackets are not used in Walla's work, so I can take them to indicate metadata: here, a consecutive number, source (book/page/figure number), the year of origin, ???? unknown in this case, and the "genre". I would propose to have the "genres" of "understandable" text (like this one), fake languages (like "Turkish" and "latin" in the samples in my initial post, samples #7 and #8) and plain gibberish (sample #6). My goal would be to collect text from the last two genres.[/font][/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]The transcription moves from top-left to bottom-right. Line breaks are line breaks. [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][@] indicates that the text is interrupted by parts of the drawings, while [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][@] plus a line break means that the text is from a different area in the picture. (@ is just another symbol Walla did not happen to know...)[/font][/font][/font][/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]Then I would simply type this into a text file, one after another...[/font][/font][/font][/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]@Alin_J, does that sound reasonable for you, or should things be done differently? (And what about the other mighty wizards of computational science?) [/font][/font][/font][/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]I hope I get some books next week, so I could start working on this...[/font][/font][/font][/font][/font]
This looks like a good approach to me
Looking forwards to your results.
RE: The Textual Work of August Walla, mentally disabled artist - Tobias - 26-03-2020
Regarding the black/white picture I read the word "Russloch" or "Rüssloch" at least 3 times.
I also think there is a swastika in the bottom right??
RE: The Textual Work of August Walla, mentally disabled artist - Ben Trovato - 26-03-2020
Walla was a child during the second world war. He was often dressed up as a girl by his mother, to protect him from being taken in by the HJ. When the soviet Red Army liberated the eastern part of Austria, he was no longer "forced" to wear girl's clothes. Thus, the swastika and Nazi symbols became feminine symbols to Walla, while everything "communist" became a male symbol (cf. the "KPÖ" writing on the erected cannon on the tank in the other picture).
Walla could well have been murdered, being mentally affected, by the T4 program of the Nazis. In fact, he was once examined in an institution affiliated with the T4 project. He was lucky to survive.