Interdisciplining Digital Humanities: Boundary Work in an Emerging Field

The first book to test the claim that the emerging field of Digital Humanities is interdisciplinary and also examines the boundary work of establishing and sustaining a new field of stud

Speaking about things: oral history as context

‘Speaking About Things: Oral History as Context’ draws on life history interviews conducted under the auspices of two oral history projects: the Life Story Collection at The British Library National Sound Archive [2003-4] [LSC], and the Voices in the Visual Arts [VIVA] project based at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London [2005-]. Oral histories, while focusing on the singularity of individual testimony, are here understood as creating ‘a vital document to the construction of consciousness, emphasising both the variety of experience in any social group, and also how each individual draws on a common culture: a defiance of the rigid categorisation of private and public just as of memory and reality’ (Samuel & Thompson, 1990: 2). The paper, therefore, addresses the value of life stories (sections within the overall life history) to demonstrate the ways in which interviews with designers offer a ‘thick description’ of the networks in which designers are situated as subjects. How designers talk, rather than write, about their work, and designed objects, in oral history interviews reveals their visual and embodied memories in everyday practice in which designed objects are not autonomous productions but are recollected as arising in a web of recollected images and references which all contribute to the meaning of ‘design’ and the identity of a designer

Digital humanities

Digital technologies continue to entangle themselves more deeply in our everyday lives in various ways; however, two key aspects can be seen as particularly dominant: an increasing recognition of the materiality of the digital and the role of ‘big data’ in controlling—indeed, structuring—us. The emergence of ubiquitous computing in the form of the Internet of Things that connects devices and their users physically within cybernetic networks can be seen through the increasing popularity of wearable devices and ‘smart’ home technologies. Meanwhile, the operations of big data reconfigure human subjects into ‘users’, defined by quantification and shaped by algorithmic processes. Undergoing such datafication, we are interpellated—often voluntarily, occasionally through coercion—into systems that leave us prone to surveillance by corporations, governmental agencies and cybercriminals. Recent macro-events—the crippling cyberattack on the UK’s National Health Service (May 2017), the catastrophic outage of British Airways’ IT infrastructure (May 2017) and the shadowy role played by data mining/analysis companies in the US Presidential Election and Brexit Referendum in the second half of 2016—have demonstrated how vulnerable today’s digital citizens are. This chapter considers seven publications from 2016 that reflect these concerns with materiality and datafication in various ways, first surveying three major essay collections that seek to explore longstanding issues or stimulate new reflections on our immersions within digital culture. Discussion then moves to examine ‘media archaeological’ approaches to computing, in Matthew Kirschenbaum’s literary history of the word processor and Tung-Hui Hu’s prehistory of the cloud—both offering new insights into everyday computational technologies that provoke a reconsideration of our interactions with them. The chapter then turns to quantification, by examining Deborah Lupton’s analysis into the ways in which digital self-tracking has coalesced around the Quantified Self movement, and to the risks to our lives and liberties through the increasing dominance of big data in analysing and controlling social policy interrogated by Cathy O’Neil

Digital Humanities and Information Systems: Innovating Two Research Traditions

According to the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey the scope of the humanities is the experience of the world, the expression of these experiences and the understanding of these expressions. The Information Systems (IS) discipline deals with human experiences of computer systems as much as with the expressions of the world in the digital media and, therefore, can be seen as the humanities of the digital realm. Hence, it appears to be very fruitful to promote a closer cooperation between the two evolving disciplines of IS and the Digital Humanities, which aims to include the digital world in the humanities. The only barrier to such a collaboration lies in the relative unawareness of each other. This paper wants to make a contribution to change this. It postulates that both research traditions can be innovated by moving closer to each other and by collaborating on an interdisciplinary level

Information Resources in Digital Humanities

Trabajo de Fin de Grado de Información y Documentación, curso 2019-2020.El campo de las Humanidades Digitales ha experimentado un amplio crecimiento en los últimos años. Fruto de este desarrollo, el número de fuentes de información relativas a los temas tratados en la disciplina también ha aumentado proporcionalmente. En este trabajo, partiendo de una definición amplia de fuentes de información, se enumeran diferentes recursos de este tipo relacionados con las temáticas que se abordan en la disciplina. La metodología empleada para recuperarlas ha consistido en la búsqueda de los recursos en diferentes bases de datos y páginas web que tienen relación con el campo. La clasificación utilizada para dividirlas ha consistido, por un lado, en una enumeración de fuentes primarias y secundarias de carácter bibliográfico y, por otro, de recursos web accesibles a través de Internet. Se concluye que el número de fuentes de información relativa a las Humanidades Digitales es muy amplio, por lo que el interesado en la disciplina dispone de un gran abanico de recursos que le permiten tener una perspectiva del campo y conocerlo.The field of the Digital Humanities has experienced extensive growth in recent years. As a result of this development, the applied number of sources of information in the discipline has also increased proportionally. This paper, based on a broad definition of information sources, lists different sources of information related to the topics addressed in the discipline. The methodology used to retrieve them has consisted of searching for the resources in different databases and web pages that are related to the field. The classification used to divide them has consisted, on the one hand, of a list of primary and secondary sources of a bibliographic nature and, on the other hand, of web resources accessible through the Internet. It is concluded that the number of sources of information related to Digital Humanities is very wide, so the person interested in the discipline has a wide range of resources that allow him to have a perspective of the field and to get to know it

Musica Universalis : the pursuit of pure abstraction

The thesis exhibition, Musica Universalis, is a multi-sensory exhibition comprised of experimental weavings on deconstructed found pianos, systematic drawings, and paper scroll music boxes. The music boxes allow the viewer to hear the voice part represented on the weaving, or the notes of a systematic drawing, in isolation; a recording of a choral composition transcribed from the first systematic drawing of circles plays from the gallery speakers. The viewer can hear the individual's "song" and simultaneously hear the collective performance. The performance of the collective music box composition varies depending on the level of viewer engagement. I create system-based abstractions drawing from my understanding of structure within music and weaving, as well as analog and digital technologies, to achieve a purer abstraction. For the purposes of this paper, I define abstraction as artwork that reshapes the natural world for expressive purposes, interpreting expressive as relating to intuition, emotions and the subconscious. Therefore, I characterize pure abstraction as work that directly resonates within the viewer's soul or subconscious, having meaning that reaches beyond what is visible. I look to Wassily Kandinsky's Compositions and Paul Klee's Rhythmisches as case studies for the pursuit of pure abstraction, in which they drew from the formal qualities and conventions of Western music aesthetics to inform their visual abstractions. My response to their projects is to present work in which the visual and aural elements are of equal importance. This thesis briefly visits the projects of Kandinsky and Klee as they influenced the development of the immersive exhibition and documents the many facets to the viewer's experience within Musica Universalis.by Erin Kathleen KingIncludes bibliographical reference

Panther - May 1981 - Vol. LV No. 19

https://digitalcommons.pvamu.edu/pv-panther-newspapers/1868/thumbnail.jp

The middle school: A review of current literature

Education in the United States has presented many patterns of school organization. Separate junior and senior high schools were suggested in the early 1900 1 s, but the grade levels and ages for distinguishing these divisions were unclear (Wiles & Bondi, 1981). The junior high was designed to bridge the gap between elementary and high school. It usually included grades 7-8-9. An alternative to the junior high school, the middle school, began to emerge in the late 1950 1 s. The middle school was designed to facilitate grades 6-7-8. Its development was primarily to relieve overcrowding and to provide an educational environment to effectively educate young teens (Wiles & Bondi, 1981). Many experts in the field of education support the middle school concept as a means to better meet the educational and developmental needs of adolescents. The middle school concept can concisely be defined as an educational environment created to meet the unique needs and characteristics of emerging adolescents

Investigating how South African humanities researchers engage with digital archives

OBJECTIVE: Despite technological developments in the Digital Humanities space, it is unclear that the facilities offered by digital archives support the needs of Humanities researchers in developing countries. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how South African Humanities scholars use digital archives in their research as well as in teaching and other academic activities. METHODS: This thesis utilizes non-random convenience sampling. A feature determination study provided the sampling frame, defined the scope for the survey tool, and was used to uncover trends in digital archives development in South Africa. A self-administered online survey was conducted with Humanities researchers in South Africa to answer the research question. The thesis utilises basic descriptive statistics in its attempt to study and interpret the responses of participating researchers. RESULTS: 102 participants responded to the online survey. Despite many South African digital archives having the functionality to discover, browse and search collections, they are missing the features for collaboration, accessing and managing resources. Only 20% of the survey respondents are satisfied with South African digital archives' process of making content easy to find and accessible, whereas 48% of the respondents consider themselves users of complex digital resources, 44% have the knowledge and experience for using Digital Humanities tools and services, and more than 70% find technology to be useful for learning and teaching. CONCLUSIONS: The usage of archives and their functionalities vary widely. Users have stronger preferences for tools that support basic discovery and personal and collaborative research, but many consider existing support for basic features to be inadequate. In terms of advanced functionalities for managing digital resources, users are interested in these to varying levels, but the inadequate support means that these are still somewhat speculative

All along the watchtower: intersectional diversity as a core intellectual value in digital humanities

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