I was wondering if anyone knew anything about the last workshop on the Day of DH that's supposed to happen next week?

April fools! haha

The official opening of the new Technozone exhibition "data: New ways of seeing the world" at the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology this friday!

This exhibition, supported by NSERC, showcases the digital displays and interactive technologies developed by Dr. Sheelagh Carpendale from the University of Calgary and Dr. Lyn Bartram from Simon Fraser University in Surrey, BC. These technologies encourage the exploration of some of the ways in which data visualization techniques help transform information into knowledge. Support for these projects was provided by NSERC, a federal agency that fosters innovation by funding post-secondary research and education.

*The two researchers will demonstrate and guide you through their technologies and answer questions from the public. Friday, April 4, 2014, 11 a.m. Canada Science and Technology Museum 1867 St Laurent Blvd, Ottawa

Here is the link to Miriam Posner's blog post and my reaction to it on my blog:

http://miriamposner.com/blog/commit-to-dh-people-not-dh-projects/

http://digitalatheart.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/digital-art-history-think-digitally-rather-than-just-doing-for-doings-sake/

Today, our discussion about representing and learning history via video games was a rather interesting one! If we had had the time, I had wanted to bring up the point that video games are a great pedagogical tool regardless of what is being taught. Video games usually contain some kind of overarching narrative that is the basis of the entire game, and this story can be injected with historical truths that do or do not seem obvious to the person playing the game. In this way, I think that some video games don't always have to offer us an in-your-face pedagogical experience where the history is spelled out for us (like in the Morgan's Raid game we saw in class). The learning experience in history-themed games can be much more tacit. By injecting fun into the historical discipline, like through games, I think that learning can become a latent experience that gamers can come to later on. What is important here, is the idea of FUN that the game construct engenders; this is something of which historians should take note. The video game world allows users to explore history in ways where they can sometimes make their own choices that either succeed or fail, which is important in any learning experience.

A few weeks ago in my Digital History class with Shawn Graham we were also talking about video games and different ways to create a digital story. In this class, we were also given the opportunity to make a digital story, and I made one using Tapestry that talked about some of the benefits of digital storytelling. I include it here, because I think it also speaks to some of the ideas that were brought up in class today, like the importance of play and fun in games with regards to understanding.

https://readtapestry.com/s/DfnNBrGU0/
(to read the entire story just keep clicking until you reach the end)

Is there a schedule with information about the day of the conference posted online?

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to let you know that the Art History Grad Conference that I helped organized is this weekend. The theme is Access/Restriction, and it is a one-day interdisciplinary graduate student conference that investigates historical and contemporary issues of accessibility, limitations and control in visual culture. There are a couple papers being presented that have a bit of a DH twist that some of you may be interested in attending:

Session 2: Archives and Retrieving Memory (11:15-12:45)
Emma Hamilton-Hobbs (Carleton), "The Topley Studio Fonds: Accessing Historical Photographs in the Digital Age"

Jessica Jacobson-Konefall (Queens)
"Archiving and Online Exhibitions at Urban Shaman: Contemporary
Aboriginal Art Gallery"

Session 4: Spaces of New Media Art (3:00-4:00pm)
Jessica Kirsh (Concordia)
"Surveillance, Anxiety and Memory: Human versus Machinic Control in the Work of Jim Campbell"

Julie Hollenbach (Queens)
"Youtube as the Realm of Resistance: The 2010 Youtube Play Biennial"

There are also several other interesting panels on identity politics, bodily surveillance, and memory. For a full schedule, please see: http://carleton.ca/arthistory/wp-content/uploads/AccessRestriction-Final-Schedule.pdf

I think it's a good idea too, however I'm not sure how we would implement this this late in the semester. It might be a bit tight to do this kind of peer-review presentation for the visual analysis assignment (unless we postpone the presentations for another week). I think there is one last written assignment due after the group project though? Can't remember what that involves right now though. Thoughts?

Hey everyone,
I posted the slides from mypresentation from today on slideshare if you want them:
http://www.slideshare.net/DanutaSierhuis/digh-5000-data-visualization-analysis-presentation#

Hm, one of the problems I have with the federalist article is that the author seems to be writing about the notion of "the expert" from a scientific point of view. What I mean by scientific is that he thinks that expert knowledge is based on reason and facts alone, and that the people with this expert knowledge should have an authority that is privileged. For example, he says,
"To reject the notion of expertise, and to replace it with a sanctimonious insistence that every person has a right to his or her own opinion, is silly. Worse, it's dangerous. The death of expertise is a rejection not only of knowledge, but of the ways in which we gain knowledge and learn about things. Fundamentally, it's a rejection of science and rationality, which are the foundations of Western civilization itself."
I find that this is overly dramatic, and marginalizes the voices of many intelligent individuals that are not considered to be "experts." The democratization of knowledge does not mean that EVERYONE will have expert knowledge, which is something that he acknowledges towards the end of his article. The biggest thing that I think he has a problem with are the internet trolls and people who post just because they can. He uses the example of online newspaper forums, but I think this example misses the point, because newspapers are already for public consumption so why should the comment section be limited in this scenario? Most of these public forums are somewhat already moderated in ways that remove offensive comments. Can we really limit the conversation here? The author is bothered by the lack of "knowledge" that laypeople have about issues that they are writing about online, however can we not say that through interaction with an expert in a forum they will not learn something and actually gain knowledge

I don't have a paper, but I'll be there for sure!

So, this talk might of some interest to some Dhers in 5000, so thought I'd post it.

for more info, see the FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/208666409333356/?previousaction=join&source=1

When Christina mentioned that the article she was looking for on Hacking the Academy archive no longer existed, I thought about the issues that digital preservation programs in archives and museums face. As we all know, digital access is not always synonymous with digital sustainability. Digitization is a technology that entirely relies on software to read the data and a playback device to project the data. I know this from personal experience as I have lost all of my files/pictures/music on my computer twice due to software/tech malfunctions. This dependence on technology and software also raises the issue of the obsolescence of digital formats. CMS systems are not always reliable to ensure data protection. For example, during the DH workshop last week, Professor Graham mentioned that his version of Omeka automatically upgraded and he lost part of the project he was working on. As of right now, there is no sure way to back-up any kind of digital media. In a way, digital media is more susceptible to being lost or damaged than a physical object.

Any long-term preservation can be quite the contentious topic for archivists. A simple preservation suggestion would be to back up the image, but this would only last until the backup medium is supplanted by newer technology. At that point, which could be only a few years, the file would then need to be migrated to the newer medium. However, with each time that this happens, there is the possibility of fundamentally changing or damaging the file, which also raises the question of the integrity and authenticity of the digital representation of a physical artifact.

I really like the notion of collective memory that comes up in DH, because DH is such an interdisciplinary, collaborative and community driven field. In a couple of the posts above, there has been some questioning of the word 'community' and its use in relation to DH.

There are potential restrictions to the idea of a "community"--which both Jordon and Ridha alluded to in their posts--but I'm not sure that I have a problem with using the word community to talk about the group of DHers as a whole. It is more of an umbrella term to refer to the individuals working within the field, and of course not everyone will work in this field and some people might not want to at all. To borrow what Benedict Anderson says in his book "Imagined Communities," the idea of the "community" is a socially constructed notion based on shared affinities that certain individuals possess. Of course this won't include everyone, because there will always be people who are interested in different things. No matter what kind of language we use in-lieu of the word 'community' we imply that there are others who are not participants or members. For example, 'group,' 'collective,' 'club,' 'discipline,' etc. So if not "community" what word can we use to describe DHers as a whole? Because-at least at this point-not everyone is doing DH research. As I see it, the DH community is incredibly inclusive, and anyone who is interested can learn about it and/or participate in DH projects. It only takes on that restrictive connotation if we think about in the setting of the academic institution and in disciplinary terms. For example, Carleton's DH program connotes a certain degree of restriction, because only so many people are allowed to take the specialization per academic year; however this is simply the way that academia works. (Perhaps we should also think about the individuals who practice DH research and where they are coming from in our effort to find a word to encompass the whole of DH research.)

To go back to the idea of collective memory in DH, Ridha's idea in his post regarding digitally published research: "Once, a contribution appears in the digital format, it becomes part of the collective memory of humanity and should not remain the property and associated to a single individual or a community of individuals." This seems to be a digital extension and an advancement of the ideas in Barthes essay, "The Death of the Author." Barthes posits that the key to a text is not to be found in its "origin" but in its "destination", and the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author. DH takes this notion further by arguing for open access and sharing research publicly; it is not so much about who wrote an article, but what it says that is important and the reader can comment or suggest things at their leisure (crowdsourcing and open-access FTW).

Perhaps by sharing Digital Humanities research in ways that are openly accessible and we can avoid the restrictions that come from the notions of "community" and "academic research." Once it has been published digitally, our research does become a part of the collective memory of humanity--however, at this point, it is up to humanity to decide whether or not they will read it.