Author: Alexander Ritchie

[#dhBytes Seminar UPDATE] POSTPONED until further notice | Digital Data Drama in the Humanities

It is with regret that we have decided to call off this DH Bytes seminar and others in the series planned for this semester.

This will probably come as no surprise to most of you, especially given the government and University announcements of Monday and the consequent necessary shifts in our ways of working, teaching, learning and researching.

We hope to revisit the series for Semester 2, and will be in touch when we are able to go ahead.

Take good care in these challenging and unsettling times!

Join us on Thursday 26 March at 1pm for the inaugural dhBytes seminar at 1pm in Seminar Room 6 at the University’s Central Library | Te Iho Mātauranga o Te Whare Wananga o Otago.

The session will feature two presenters from the University Library, Alexander Ritchie and Judy Fisher, who will each speak for 15 minutes on data and drama in the Humanities. Following that we will have some kai, coffee, and discussion. We will also offer an update on DH initiatives at Otago.

Continue reading “[#dhBytes Seminar UPDATE] POSTPONED until further notice | Digital Data Drama in the Humanities”

Announcing DH Bytes – Digital Humanities Seminars this semester

The Otago University Digital Humanities Initiative and OU Library are pleased to announce the DH Bytes seminar series, which follow on from last year’s Open Hours Discussions in the Digital Humanities Hub | Te Pōkapu Matihiko o Te Kete Aronui.

DH Bytes are a series of three, themed, interdisciplinary seminars in semester one 2020, that will happen monthly on Thursdays at 1pm in the Central Library. They will focus on collaboration, conversation, and connection across disciplines, programmes, departments, and projects both critical and generative.

Continue reading “Announcing DH Bytes – Digital Humanities Seminars this semester”

[Open Hours] The End of the Beginning: Wrap-Up & Future Directions

Join us on Friday 5th July for an extended Open Hours discussion between 12 and 2pm at the Digital Humanities Hub | Te Pokapū Matihiko o Te Kete Aronui!

Topic – The End of the Beginning

Join us for this last session in the current iteration of Open Hours, as we reflect on our work so far and think about what comes next. We would like to hear how we have done, and what you would like to see happen in the Hub in the weeks and months to come!

For the last 9 months, Humanities Librarians have been hosting Open Hours presentations, discussions and drop-ins at the Digital Humanities Hub | Te Pōkapu Matihiko o Te Kete Aronui. We sought to offer gentle introductions to digital thinking, tools, methods and projects for humanities research and teaching. Our aim was to create an open forum for asking questions, exchanging ideas and methods, and forming connections with colleagues across ‘Digital’ Humanities and between disciplines at Otago.

Now, as we mark Puaka Matariki and anticipate the beginning of semester two in 2019, this pilot collaboration between the OU Library and the Otago DH group is coming to an end. We would love to hear your perspective, so join us for some collaborative critique, crackers and cake.

In many ways, I think you could turn around and look to the digital humanities not as a sign of the apocalypse but for paths out of this mess. Here’s a field that has been working for years on open access research and publication platforms, on ways to articulate and valorize work done outside of narrow, elite channels, and on how to value scholarship that’s collaborative and interdisciplinary.

The Digital in the Humanities: An Interview with Bethany Nowviskie | Melissa Dinsman interviews Bethany Nowviskie

dh People, Projects, & Presentations

In 2019, we have been privileged to host some fascinating Open Hours discussions covering topics ranging from digital art and 3d modelling, through machine learning and data wrangling, to audiovisual essays and visualisation:

WHEN: 12pm – 2pm, Friday 5th July 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!

CONTACT: Alexander Ritchie alexander [dot] ritchie [at] otago.ac.nz

[Open Hours] Contemporary Artists as Digital Sociologists | Chloe Geoghegan

Join us on Friday 21st June for an Open Hours discussion between 1 and 2pm at the Digital Humanities Hub | Te Pokapū Matihiko o Te Kete Aronui!

Topic – Contemporary Artists as Digital Sociologists | Chloe Geoghegan

Notes & Links from Chloe’s talk [Google Doc]

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.

Reading

Contemporary Art, Daily | Michael Sanchez

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

Photograph of seated person in gallery space watching two widescreen televison screens displaying Duty Free Art (2016) by artist Hito Steyerl
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!

CONTACT: Alexander Ritchie alexander.ritchie@otago.ac.nz

[Open Hours] DH Expo 2018 Keynote | Towards uncertain narratives: data & ‘stories’ | Harkanwal Singh

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.

Viewing

Towards uncertain narratives: data & ‘stories’ – Harkanwal Singh

Projects – Parable of Polygons, The Pudding, Up & Down the Ladder of Abstraction

WHEN: 1pm – 2pm, Friday 14 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!

CONTACT: Alexander Ritchie alexander.ritchie@otago.ac.nz

Open Hours in June & DH Expo 2019

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.

Learn more about Te Pokapū | The Hub 

the place     the people     the machines     the news

[Open Hours Discussion] Generous Interfaces: Delivering Access to Rich Cultural Heritage Collections

Join us on Friday 12 April for an Open Hours discussion between 1 and 2pm at the Digital Humanities Hub | Te Pokapū Matihiko o Te Kete Aronui!

Topic  – Generous Interfaces: Delivering Access to Rich Cultural Heritage Collections

Our guest this week is Lynn Benson, Researcher Services Manager at Te Uare Taoka o Hākena | Hocken Collections. She will explore international initiatives that offer possible paths to follow, as OU Libraries seek to provide ever better access to their digitised and born-digital collections for teaching and research. Lynn is particularly interested in the different ways institutions are experimenting with how to present digital collections to support different searching methodologies for these particular kinds of research collections.

Viewing

The Goldfinch: a bird’s-eye view | Mauritshuis

Still image with text" A little piece of nothing ... but very good" from the website The Goldfinch: a bird's-eye view | Mauritshuis
Frame from The Goldfinch: a bird’s-eye view | Mauritshuis

Discover the story behind The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius (1654), and explore the exquisite possibilities of generous multimedia access to one of Mauritshuis’ astounding collection of Dutch paintings from the Golden Age. This collection also includes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp by Rembrandt, and The Bull by Potter.

Projects – Time Machine, Visualize the Public Domain, Gravitron

  • The Time Machine Project – Self-described as “by far the most ambitious and far-reaching project ever undertaken using Big Data of the Past”, this EU-funded internationally-collaborative project is building a map of European history that spans thousands of years.
    Visualize the Public Domain | New York Public Library – an experiment by NYPL Labs to help patrons understand and explore the more than 180,000 images released by NYPL into the Public Domain.
  • Gravitron – the work and thoughts of Geoff Hinchcliffe, senior Design lecturer at ANU, about design, data, computation and interface aesthetics.

WHEN: 1pm – 2pm, Friday 12 April 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!

CONTACT: Alexander Ritchie alexander.ritchie@otago.ac.nz

[Open Hours Demonstration] Virtual “Reality”: an experiential introduction

Join us on Friday 29th March as we host another Open Hours session between 1 and 2pm at the Digital Humanities Hub | Te Pokapū Matihiko o Te Kete Aronui!

Topic  – Virtual “Reality” : an  experiential introduction to the real, the unreal, and the just plain cool of VR technology

Our guest this week is Brandon Couch from the English and Linguistics Programme, who will be demonstrating the VR capability in our Creative Media suite and introducing some of its (non)fictional worlds of virtual possibility. Join us as we explore and discuss!

Virtual reality (VR) – the futuristic, far-off technology humanity has dreamt of since we first learned to put images on an electronic screen, is undeniably ‘here’. From the leisure and fun of the Holodeck in Star Trek to the dystopian prison of The Matrix, the concept of a fully engrossing virtual world in which the imagination is the only limit has captured human wonder, curiosity, and anxiety for decades.

Today, the technologies of virtual reality and its counterpart, augmented reality – the overlay of digital features onto the world we see around us – have rapidly advanced, and we have virtual environments which allow participants to engross themselves in worlds both fictional and factual. These include: a virtual reality participant can find themselves face to face with a dragon in the VR adaptation of The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, then moments later soar above a digitalised copy of the Grand Canyon in Google Earth VR. They can meditate, train, or dance with people from across the planet in Altspace VR, or experience another dimension – literally – of painting and visual art in the 3D VR art program Tilt Brush.

VR technology has near-boundless potential, and with the virtual experiences available to us now, it’s certainly exciting to consider what the future may hold.

Samsung’s Virtual Reality MWC 2016 Press Conference | Wikimedia Commons

Reading & Viewing

Virtual Reality – Chris Woodward | Explain That Stuff!

An intelligent medium-density overview of VR for the non-technically minded.

Why Virtual Reality is about the change the world – Joel Stein | Time Magazine

A feature article from 2015 outlining the changes that VR headsets could  bring.

I spent a week in a VR headset, here’s what happened – Jak Wilmot | Disrupt

WHEN: 1pm – 2pm, Friday 29th March 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!

CONTACT: Alexander Ritchie alexander.ritchie@otago.ac.nz

Te Pōkapu Matihiko o Te Kete Aronui | the Digital Humanities Hub: Coming up in 2019

 

Heard about the digital in the Humanities, but wondering what all the fuss is about?

2019 will be a busy and exciting year at Te Pōkapu Matihiko o Te Kete Aronui | the Divisional Digital Humanities Hub as we explore local.global projects, demonstrate tools, and critique thinking and practice in the digital realms.

Continue reading “Te Pōkapu Matihiko o Te Kete Aronui | the Digital Humanities Hub: Coming up in 2019”

[Open Hours 2019] What Could Digital Humanities Be (Redux)

Join us this Friday 1st February between 12 and 1pm at the Digital Humanities Hub for our first Open Hours for 2019!

Topic – Possibilities for the digital with/in Humanities

We are starting the year by reposing our guiding question: What could Digital Humanities be?

Reading – What DH Could Be | Stewart Varner

Our first reading, and the inspiration for this approach, is a 2016 blogpost by Stewart Varner, Librarian and Managing Director of the Price Lab for Digital Humanities, entitled What DH Could Be. His musings were inspired by Élika Ortega, scholar at NULab for Texts, Maps and Networks at Northeastern University in Massachussetts, USA. She was in turn inspired by the twitter hashtag #WhatifDH2016 – an digital intervention to suggest improvements for the annual Digital Humanities conference.

Projects – Bomb Sight, William Blake Archive & Invisible Australians

To accompany the questions and possibilities that Varner traverses, we propose three projects to explore:

Join us in the Hub to explore, enquire and discuss!

WHEN: 12pm – 1pm, Friday 1st February 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!

LIBRARIANS: Judy Fisher judy.fisher@otago.ac.nz & Lisa Chisholm lisa.chisholm@otago.ac.nz