New computational techniques and visualisation technologies in the Arts & Humanities

CFP: The Compu­ta­tional Turn



http://www.thecom­pu­ta­tion­al­turn.com/



SWANSEA UNIVER­SITY<http://sites.google.com/site/dmberry/home/loca­tion>

9TH MARCH 2010



Keynote: N. Kath­er­ine Hayles<http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/Liter­at­ure/

faculty/n.hayles> (Professor of Liter­at­ure at Duke Univer­sity).

Keynote: Lev Manovich<http://www.manovich.net/> (Professor, Visual

Arts Depart­ment, UCSD).



The applic­a­tion of new compu­ta­tional tech­niques and visu­al­isa­tion

tech­no­lo­gies in the Arts & Human­it­ies are result­ing in new approaches

and meth­od­o­lo­gies for the study of tradi­tional and new corpuses of

Arts and Human­it­ies mater­i­als. This new 'compu­ta­tional turn’ takes the

meth­ods and tech­niques from computer science to create new ways of

distant and close read­ings of texts (e.g. Moretti). This one-day

work­shop aims to discuss the implic­a­tions and applic­a­tions of what Lev

Manovich has called 'Cultural Analyt­ics’ and the ques­tion of find­ing

patterns using algorthmic tech­niques. Some of the most start­ling

approaches trans­form under­stand­ings of texts by use of network

analysis (e.g. graph theory), data­base/XML encod­ings (which flat­ten

struc­tures), or merely provide new quant­it­at­ive tech­niques for look­ing

at vari­ous media forms, such as media and film, and (re)present­ing

them visu­ally, aurally or haptic­ally. Within this field there are

import­ant debates about the contrast between narrat­ive against

data­base tech­niques, pattern-match­ing versus hermen­eutic read­ing, and

the stat­ist­ical paradigm (using a sample) versus the data mining

paradigm. Addi­tion­ally, new forms of collab­or­a­tion within the Arts and

Human­it­ies are emer­ging which use team-based approaches as opposed to

the tradi­tional lone-scholar. This requires the abil­ity to create and

manage modu­lar Arts and Human­it­ies research teams through the

organ­isa­tional struc­tures provided by tech­no­logy and digital

commu­nic­a­tions (e.g. Big Human­it­ies), together with tech­niques for

collab­or­at­ing in an inter­dis­cip­lin­ary way with other discip­lines such

as computer science (e.g. hard inter­dis­cip­lin­ar­ity versus soft

inter­dis­cip­lin­ar­ity).



Papers are encour­aged in the follow­ing areas:



- Distant versus Close Read­ing

- Data­base Struc­ture versus Argu­ment

- Data mining/Text mining/Patterns

- Pattern as a new epistem­o­lo­gical object

- Hermen­eut­ics and the Data Stream

- Geospa­tial tech­niques

- Big Human­it­ies

- Digital Human­it­ies versus Tradi­tional Human­it­ies

- Tool Build­ing

- Free Culture/Open Source Arts and Human­it­ies

- Collab­or­a­tion, Assemblages and Alli­ances

- Language and Code (soft­ware stud­ies)

- Inform­a­tion visu­al­iz­a­tion in the Human­it­ies

- Philo­soph­ical and theor­et­ical reflec­tions on the compu­ta­tional turn



+ Parti­cip­a­tion Require­ments +



Work­shop parti­cipants are reques­ted to submit a posi­tion paper

(approx. 2000–5000 words) about the compu­ta­tional turn in Arts and

Human­it­ies, philo­soph­ical/theor­et­ical reflec­tions on the compu­ta­tional

turn, research focus or research ques­tions related to compu­ta­tional

approaches, propos­als for academic prac­tice with algorithmic/

visu­al­isa­tion tech­niques, propos­als for new research meth­ods with

regard to Arts and Human­it­ies or specific case stud­ies (if applic­able)

and find­ings to date. Posi­tion papers will be published in a work­shop

PDF and website for discus­sion and some of the parti­cipants will be

invited to present their paper at the work­shop.



Dead­line for Posi­tion papers: Febru­ary 10, 2010

Submit papers to: http://www.easy­chair.org/confer­ences/?conf=tct2010



Work­shop funded by The Callaghan Centre for the Study of Conflict,

Power, Empire<http://www.swansea.ac.uk/human­it­ies/Research­Centres/

Callaghan­Centre­fortheStudy­of­Con­flict/>, Swansea Univer­sity.

TheR­esearch Insti­tute in the Arts and Human­it­ies<http://

www.swansea.ac.uk/artsandhu­man­it­ies/riah/> (RIAH) at Swansea

Univer­sity.



+ Refer­ences +



Clem­ent, Tanya E. (2008) ‘A thing not begin­ning and not ending’: using

digital tools to distant-read Gertrude Stein’s The Making of

Amer­ic­ans. Liter­ary and Linguistic Comput­ing. 23.3 (2008): 361.



Clem­ent, Tanya, Steger, Sara, Unsworth, John, Uszkalo, Kirsten (2008)

How Not to Read a Million Books. Retrieved 10/11/09 from

http://www3.isrl.illinois.edu/~unsworth/hownot2read.html



Coun­cil on Library and Inform­a­tion Resources and The National

Endow­ment for the Human­it­ies (2009) Work­ing Together or Apart:

Promot­ing the Next Gener­a­tion of Digital Schol­ar­ship. Retrieved

10/11/09 from http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub145/pub145.pdf



Hayles, N. Kath­er­ine (2009) RFID: Human Agency and Mean­ing in

Inform­a­tion-Intens­ive Envir­on­ments. Theory, Culture and Soci­ety 26.2/3

(2009): 1–24.



Hayles, N. Kath­er­ine (2009) How We Think: The Trans­form­ing Power of

Digital Tech­no­lo­gies. Retrieved 10/11/09 from http://hdl.handle.net/1853/27680



Kittler, Fredrich (1997) Liter­at­ure, Media, Inform­a­tion Systems.

London: Rout­ledge.



Krakauer, David C. (2007) The Quest for Patterns in Meta-History.

Santa Fe Insti­tute Bulletin. Winter 2007. Retrieved 10/11/09 from

http://www.intel­ros.ru/pdf/SFI_Bulletin/Quest.pdf



Latour, Bruno (2007) Reas­sembling the Social. London: Oxford

Univer­sity Press.



Manovich, Lev (2002) The Language of New Media. MIT Press.



Manovich, Lev (2007) White paper: Cultural Analyt­ics: Analysis and

Visu­al­iz­a­tions of Large Cultural Data Sets, May 2007. Retrieved

10/11/09 from http://soft­ware­stud­ies.com/cultural_analyt­ics/cultural_analyt­ics_2008.doc



McLemee, Scott (2006) Liter­at­ure to Infin­ity. Inside Higher Ed.

Retrieved 10/11/09 from http://www.inside­highered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee193



Moretti, Franco (2005) Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a

Liter­ary History. London: Verso.



Robin­son, Peter (2006) Elec­tronic Textual Edit­ing: The Canter­bury

Tales and other Medi­eval Texts. Elec­tronic Textual Edit­ing. Modern

Language Asso­ci­ation of Amer­ica. Retrieved 10/11/09 from

http://www.tei-c.org/About/Archive_new/ETE/Preview/robin­son.xml



Schreib­man, Susan, Siemens, Ray & Unsworth, John (2007) A Compan­ion to

Digital Human­it­ies. London: Wiley­Black­well.













Organ­ised by Dr David M. Berry<http://www.swan.ac.uk/staff/academic/

Arts/berryd/>, Depart­ment of Polit­ical and Cultural Stud­ies, Swansea

Univer­sity. d [ punto ] m [ punto ] berryswansea [ punto ] ac [ punto ] uk (d[dot]m[dot]berry[at]swansea[dot]ac[dot]uk)<

mailto:d [ punto ] m [ punto ] berryswansea [ punto ] ac [ punto ] uk (d[dot]m[dot]berry[at]swansea[dot]ac[dot]uk)?

subject=The%20Com­pu­ta­tional%20Turn>









-—



Dr David M. Berry

Depart­ment of Polit­ical and Cultural Stud­ies

School of Arts and Human­it­ies

Swansea Univer­sity.

Swansea

SA2 8PP

Wales, UK



Tel: 01792 602633

Web: http://www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/academic/Arts/berryd/