Join us on Friday 28th June as we host another Open Hours session between 1 and 2pm at the Digital Humanities Hub | Te Pokapū Matihiko o Te Kete Aronui!
This week’s discussion is with David Hood who works in Human Resources as an Adviser in IT Training and Development. In this position he is responsible for training students and staff in a variety of software applications, and included in this are classes on how to stay safe in the digital environment. However, in his spare time, David is a digital activist, using publicly available data to highlight or unravel misconceptions in social and political issues in the media.
David will discuss some of his data discoveries – including his findings when the alt-right Canadian speakers Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern’s visit to New Zealand caused havoc in the Twittersphere.
Our guest this week is Chloe Geoghegan, Art curator at Te Uare Taoka o Hākena | Hocken Collections. Join us as she presents some of her favourite digital art works by contemporary artists, and hear how an Honours paper in digital humanities at UC helped her with her curatorial education.
Artists are hypersensitive to social shifts. They have an innate ability to pick up on trends before they become the norm and highlight them, often by creating art that holds a mirror up to society, asking us to look again with a more self-critical, self-reflective eye. In today’s art world, where mass production, mass consumption and an impending sense of doom follow the most conscious around, artists are taking note, and using the screen as a mirror to force those who take the time to take a closer look.
Sanchez, Michael: “Contemporary Art, Daily.” In Art and Subjecthood: The Return of the Human Figure in Semiocapitalism, edited by Daniel Birnbaum, Isabelle Graw, and Nikolaus Hirsch, 52–61. Berlin: Sternberg, 2011.
The competitive image ecology of Contemporary Art Daily is a reflection of economic competition. With a record number of art students graduating from prestigious graduate programs in a market with less money to purchase their work, competition is more intense than ever. And although art since the recession arguably looks more friendly and less strategic, it is, in fact, strategic to the point of paranoia, since it must compete within an increasingly rapid and invasive system of image distribution joined with a system of social surveillance and exchange.
Works.Exhibitions – Duty Free Art, Merge Nodes
Hito Steyerl, Duty Free Art (2016)
Duty Free Art | Hito Steyerl – These works from 2014, exhibited in 2016, strike deep into art’s social function. Free-trade zones, where speculative art commodities are bought and sold invisibly and tax free, are, like civil wars, an important backbone of the international art business. Both facilitate the redistribution of public property into private hands, and are catalysts of global inequality.
Merge Nodes | Joe Hamilton – Hamilton makes use of technology and found materials to create intricate and complex compositions online, offline and in between. The term ‘merge nodes’ refers to the collapsing of multiple geographical locations into one frame. ‘Merge node’ is also the name of a tool used to merge two digital image or video files.
WHEN: 1pm – 2pm, Friday 21 June 2019
WHERE: Digital Humanities Hub, Room 1W3, First Floor, Arts Building
WHO: Anyone in the University community – there’s no advance registration required, but we always appreciate knowing in advance if you are planning to come along!
Join us on Friday 14th June for an Open Hours viewing and discussion between 1 and 2pm at the Digital Humanities Hub | Te Pokapū Matihiko o Te Kete Aronui!
DH Expo 2018 Keynote – Harkanwal Singh
This week we will be viewing and discussing the keynote from last year’s DH Expo.
Harkanwal Singh was the first full-time data journalist working in the Aotearoa NZ media, and was Data Editor at the New Zealand Herald Newspaper until mid-2017. He is currently Founder and Principal at Elements Data Studio, which produces, consults on, and trains people in data visualisation.
His talk is an engaging, wryly-humorous discussion of visualisation, interpretation, narrative and design, which includes some practical suggestions for techniques, tools, and languages to try, and some stellar examples of possibilities.
WHERE: Digital Humanities Hub, Room 1W3, First Floor, Arts Building
WHO: Anyone in the University community – there’s no advance registration required, but we always appreciate knowing in advance if you are planning to come along!
As semester one teaching ends, exams begin, and Puaka Matariki approaches, we thought it a good time to update you about upcoming Digital Humanities happenings in Te Pokapū | the DH Hub.
Open Hours @ Te Pokapū
Open Hours are informal sessions where staff and postgraduate researchers, teachers and librarians can explore digital projects, demonstrate digital research tools, and critically discuss the context and politics of the digital in the Humanities. These are informal discussions, hosted by a librarian, academic or postgraduate student presenting on a Digital Humanities (DH) topic, and all voices (and people belonging to them) are welcome.
On Fridays in June at 1pm, we will be hosting critical discussion and viewing sessions on topics including archaeology, data ‘stories’, digital art practice, digital security, and a wrap-up of the year so far:
Te Pokapū | The Hub will also be open from 12 – 1pm on Fridays for the hour before these discussions. You are very welcome to stop by and check out the space, or chat to a Humanities Librarian about your research or teaching.
More details about the Open Hours and Drop-In Sessions can be found on the news section.
Otago Digital Humanities Expo 2019
This year’s Digital Humanities Expo will take place on 14th October in the Burns / Arts Building – watch the new OU Digital Humanities Expo pages for more details and updates over the coming months. Programme details and videos (where available) from past Expos are also now available on those same pages.
The OU DH Expo is an annual event organised by the Digital Humanities Working Group to showcase Otago University’s digital humanities scholarship alongside national and international speakers and projects.
