Category: methods and techniques

Free Pop-up Digital Humanities WORKSHOP

We’re pleased to announce the addition of a free pop-up workshop to precede this year’s Digital Humanities Expo:

String Games: getting started with web scraping in Python

WHO: Dr Christopher Thomson (U. Canterbury)
WHEN: 10 – 11:30am, Monday 14th October 2019
WHERE: HR ITS Training & Development Room 1, 270 Leith Walk [map]
HOW: spaces are limited – register here http://tiny.cc/DHPopUp
CONTACT: email alexander[dot]ritchie[at]otago for further information

Still Image of Artist Vera Frenkel's String Games: Improvisations for Inter-City Video (Montreal–Toronto, 1974) featuring a street-scene with artist making a cats cradle shape using their bodies and rope
Vera Frenkel – String Games: Improvisations for Inter-City Video (Montreal–Toronto, 1974)

This free workshop is for anyone who wants to learn how to use simple code to pull text from webpages for their research.

Using programming language Python, we will work from examples to understand the key steps needed to achieve common tasks, such as obtaining a ‘clean’ text from the web to use for further analysis, or selecting pieces of information and organising them in a structured form, such as a spreadsheet. We will introduce some programming concepts along the way, but will focus on the ‘big picture’ – that is, understanding how these techniques can be used in academic contexts, and how to apply them to your own work.

Register here – http://tiny.cc/DHPopUp

Christopher Thomson is Head of Digital Humanities at University of Canterbury and Co-director of the UC Arts Digital Lab

[Open Hours Discussion] Data Wrangling and Digital (in)Security | David Hood

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.

[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 Discussion] Analogue archaeology and the digital toolkit | Dr Tim Thomas

Join us on Friday 7th June as we host another Open Hours session between 1 and 2pm at the Digital Humanities Hub | Te Pokapū Matihiko o Te Kete Aronui!

Topic  – Analogue archaeology and the digital toolkit

Our guest this week is Dr Tim Thomas from the Department of Archaeology at Otago. He will be discussing his experiences in using digital technologies within Archaeology and sharing some of the projects he’s been working on.

Tim’s work is often interdisciplinary and uses multiple sources of data, including archaeological evidence, oral history, and archival records. He has experience in using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and through various research projects has been working with new digital forms of data collection, documentation and dissemination – including the use of a drone to map and 3D model landscapes.

Reading

These readings discuss the importance, and limitations, of preserving cultural monuments and heritage sites around the world (at risk from natural disasters, war, tourism or urbanisation) and how advancing technology such as 3D scans and drones are assisting Archaeologists, Researchers, Libraries, Museums and nonprofit organisations around the world to achieve this.

Google Unveils Incredibly Detailed 3D Models of At-Risk Heritage Sites

Preservationists race to capture cultural monuments with 3D images

Projects

Open Heritage  – Open Heritage is an initiative to provide free access to high resolution 3D data of cultural heritage sites across the world. It is a joint project between CyArk, Historic Environment Scotland and the University of South Florida Libraries. This includes two 3D models and data sets from New Zealand Waitangi Treaty Grounds- Waitangi – Ngātokimatawhaorua and Waitangi – Te Whare Rūnanga.

 

WHEN: 1pm – 2pm, Friday 7th 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: Lisa Chisholm: lisa.chisholm@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

[Open Hours] Transcription, text recognition & cultural heritage computing

Join us on Friday 15th February for a one hour discussion between 12 noon and 1pm at the Digital Humanities Hub for this week’s Open Hours!

Topic – Transcription, text recognition & cultural heritage computing

Dr Steven Mills is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science. His research is in computer vision, using computers to extract useful information from images and videos. He has a particular interest in cultural and heritage applications, including collaborations with archaeologists, archivists, and artists. He will present the results of preliminary work using deep neural networks to recognise letters and words in handwritten documents from the Marsden Online Archive. He will also attempt to explain what deep neural networks are, apart from “very mysterious”.

Lynn Benson is the Researcher Services Manager for Hocken Collections. She will explore some international initiatives and developments that are possible paths for the Library to follow in our goals to improve delivery of our digitised and born-digital collections.

Reading – Here’s How Google Deep Dream Generates Those Trippy Images | Madison Margolin

An introduction to the images produced by Google’s Deep Dream computer vision platform with an excellent video explanation by Dr Mike Pound.

You can even try generating your own images with one of the online Deep Dream generators:  https://deepdreamgenerator.com/

Image of the Otago University Clocktower processed and filtered by the Google's Deep Dream software
A Deep Dream of the Otago University Clocktower

Projects – READ, Visualize the Public Domain, Venice Time Machine, Arabic Scientific Manuscripts, Gravitron

WHEN: 12pm – 1pm, Friday 15th Feburary 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 – Week 2] – A ‘New Modesty’? Reading and analysing texts with computers

Nau Mai Haere Mai ! Join us on Friday 2nd November between 12 and 2pm at the Digital Humanities Hub for the second of our weekly Open Hours!

Topic – Digital Methods and Tools for Analysing Text

Following on from last week’s spirited discussion about what Digital Humanities (DH) could be, this week we will be exploring weird and wonderful possibilities for reading and visualizing texts using quantitative methods and statistical analysis.

Reading – Seven ways humanists are using computers to understand text | Ted Underwood

“In short, there are a lot of new things humanists can do with text, ranging from new versions of things we’ve always done (make literary arguments about diction), to modeling experiments that take us fairly deep into the methodological terrain of the social sciences.”

This 2015 blog post gives a useful, engaged overview of ways in which Humanities scholars are reading and analysing texts in digital realms. The author, Ted Underwood, teaches in both Information Sciences and English Literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in North America. 

Image - Textual Map of different approaches to digital text analysis - Ted Underwood
A few things you might do with text by Ted Underwood

Projects & Tools – QueryPic and VoyantTools

QueryPic – http://dhistory.org/querypic/create/

A tool developed by Tim Sherratt, Associate Professor of Digital Heritage at University of Canberra to offer an additional way of seeing, searching and understanding the digitised newspapers made available by Trove and Papers Past.

VoyantTools – https://voyant-tools.org/ 

VoyantTools is a web-based reading and analysis environment for digital texts, developed and maintained by Stéfan Sinclair & Geoffrey Rockwell. It can be used to model and visualize textual corpora, as in the wordcloud below which uses The LA Review of Books Special Interview Series The Digital in the Humanities to attempt a distant reading definition of ‘Digital Humanities’.

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

WHEN: 12pm – 2pm, Friday 2nd November 2018

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: Chris Seay – christopher.seay@otago.ac.nz, and Lisa Chisholm – lisa.chisholm@otago.ac.nz