WR 121 - Selecting an Artifact

So what exactly is an artifact, let’s break it down. The word artifact comes from the Latin “arte” meaning “by skill or art” and “factum” which means “something made”. Artifacts are things made by people, they are things that can be seen, read, heard, or felt. In this course and in most of the humanities, artifact is synonymous with text, understood

as anything that can be read analytically and interpreted. Here, text refers to more than words on a page. We use artifact in conjunction with text to emphasize that in analysis you’re not limited to things that are only comprised of words. For example, an artifact or text can be a photograph, an essay, or a movie scene.

Paintings, presidential speeches, and even cereal boxes are also artifacts that can be analyzed to see how they communicate meaning. Music videos, poems, and plastic action figures are artifacts. They are texts that can be read and interpreted. Public service announcements, car commercials, environmental movement posters, restaurant menus, TED talks, bumper stickers, government policy proposals.

All of these are made intentionally by humans and they communicate meaning about the culture in which they are created, who created them. And they tell us something about the audience for, and users of, the artifacts. As you can see there are a lot of options to choose from. Your instructor will set some parameters on what types of artifacts may be selected, but

given the wide variety of cultural texts available for you to analyze, the challenge is often picking one out of many which is why we now want to talk about what makes a great artifact for this project. Here are a few core characteristics of a quality artifact. One, it provokes genuine interest, wonder, and curiosity in you.