Session 4: ADHO Panel
Tue 5 Jun, 16:00-17:30
Kevin Franklin, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Lev Manovich, Catherine Plaisant
I decided with regret to skip Elena Pierazzo’s talk on time-based textual encoding in favor of the ADHO session once I’d read its newly updated description:
This panel will engage in a discussion of work being done in the humanities that is computational but not literary/linguistic, or at least not primarily focused on text. The panel will also discuss the possibilities for collaboration across the different paradigms of humanities computing/new media/visual culture/grid computing/critical studies.
J. Unsworth gave a short overview: various communities have emerged that aren’t strictly text-based or text-oriented, such as HASTAC [see below].
L. Manovich touched upon several examples of visualization software that are, in effect, digital art as well. He cited the journal Vectors as well as some time/space interface work. [It’s the end of the day and I’m not typing as much.] He suggested that we ought to pay more attention to mining and visualizing how forms converge [not Jenkins’s “convergence”]—e.g., journal articles in many disciplines sound very similar; he also noted that scholars have been focusing on very small details, relatively, while most other net users use their massive proliferation. Consider visualizing patterns of Flickr use. . . . It’s a sort of data-driven structuralism: look at a few fairy tales, or a few account users’ patterns, then extrapolate. Consider too that companies that’re doing similar kinds of data-crunching for market purposes are Web 2.0 companies. Big data is sexy, he concluded. 🙂
K. Franklin talked about the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC). Though each member org works on its own projects, some literally collaborative features exist: each pledges to make material available publicly, and costs are shared for attending meetings. They also host training workshops and outreach, since knowing about something doesn’t equate to knowing how to use it well.
M. Kirschenbaum spoke as a representative of the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) and gave an overview. [I’m already familiar and suggest you explore the site; they’re doing and have done lots of cool things, including a directory.] Strengths include people, MITH (current physical host), publications, int’l contacts, audience, and so on. Weaknesses, as a relatively small humanities-based org, include people 😛 (very limited dedicated staff), lack of an endowment or exec director or clear membership structure, lack of an annual conference (or journal or other stable presence)—and lack of an audience, in the sense that electronic literature and the digital arts have been merging somewhat.
C. Plaisant gave an overview of Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory at UMd, which is older than the digital humanities. . . . HCIL goes beyond “user friendly” to what will help you do your job more quickly and efficiently. Plaisant showed some shots from MONK, with keyword-in-context (KWIC) results and the ability to compare the relative frequencies of two words or phrases, which is pretty handy. [Then, no fault of Plaisant’s, my attention wandered a bit.] She drew attention to the problem of too many nodes to visualize well.
Then we went around the room and declared our non-textual interests. 🙂 I am not mentally keen enough to blog the ensuing discussion.