teaching and learning – Digital Humanities Hub

[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

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

[Open Hours] Teaching and Researching with the Audio-Visual Essay | Catherine Fowler

Join us on Friday 22nd February for an Open Hours discussion between 12 noon and 1pm at the Digital Humanities Hub!

Topic – Teaching and Researching with the Audio-Visual essay

Our guest this week is Catherine Fowler from the Media, Film and Communication programme. She will consider the promise and challenge of audio-visual essays as a research, publishing, and teaching tool.

Over roughly the past 5 years Film and Media scholarship has been animated by the idea of the Audio-Visual essay. Increasingly the argument is made that media studies has always been held back by the inability to respond to our objects of study in their language; rather, when we write about the audio-visual we are always inevitably translating, and something is lost in translation. With the DVD came the opportunity to undertake videographic analysis: by stopping, slowing and repeating images students and researchers have been able to interrogate stylistic features and analyse how the art and politics of films come about. Thanks to the increasing availability of digital editing tools videographic analysis has entered another level.

The audio-visual essay has been born as both a form of assessment for students and research for scholars. The introduction of audio-visual essays raises questions familiar to all those working with digital tools: how can they be ‘counted’ as research? How can they be used to create new knowledge? And how can we ensure that audio-visual essays improve and support students’ writing tasks and scholarship rather than putting both in peril?

Reading & Viewing

Dead Time – Catherine Fowler, Claire Perkins, and Andrea Rassell

Explore both the essay and the creators’ statement in this audio-visual essay published in the [in]Transition journal. Co-creators Fowler, Perkins and Rassell seek on one hand “to respond to debates about whether media scholars can discover anything new by using eye tracking methods”, and on the other “to contribute to discussions as to the balance between the expository and the poetic in audiovisual essays….”

Unseen Screens: Eye Tracking, Magic and Misdirection – Tessa Dwyer and Jenny Robinson

Another piece from [in]Transition which gives some useful background to what research on eye tracking screens typically ‘looks like’.

WHEN: 12pm – 1pm, Friday 22nd 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!

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

[Open Hours Week 7] – Form 3 Party this Friday!

Ever wonder how new digital humanities courses are created?

At the University of Otago, all it takes is a Digital Humanities Hub, some imagination, and a mysterious document called a Form 3. For this week’s Open Hours, we invite you to help us dream up and develop DIGI200, a new digital humanities paper in the works for 2020…

Join us for our “Form 3 Party” this Friday 7 Dec from 12 noon to 1pm, as we chart a course called DIGI200: methods and critique, which promises to: develop exciting project-based assessment; cultivate keen critical eyes on our current digital culture; and draw on a wealth of inter-disciplinary and cross-divisional expertise at Otago in the process.

WHEN: 12pm – 1pm, Friday 7 December 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!

HOST: David Ciccoricco