[Air-L] CFP Workshop: The Computational Turn

David M. Berry D.M.Berry at swansea.ac.uk
Sat Dec 19 01:19:41 PST 2009


The Computational Turn in Arts and Humanities
======================================

SWANSEA UNIVERSITY
9TH MARCH 2010

David Berry, Department of Political and Cultural Studies, Swansea  
University.
d.m.berry at swansea.ac.uk

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 'computation 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)
- Philosophical and theoretical reflections on the computational turn

Participation Requirements

Workshop participants are requested to submit a position paper 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. Please ensure you put 'The Computational Turn' in the  
subject line of the email submission.

Deadline for Position papers: February 10, 2010
Email papers to: d.m.berry at swansea.ac.uk

Workshop funded by The Callaghan Centre for the Study of Conflict,  
Power, Empire, Swansea University. The Research Institute in the Arts  
and Humanities (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.




---

Dr. David M. Berry
Department of Political and Cultural Studies
Room KH029
Keir Hardie Building
Swansea University
Singleton Campus
Swansea
SA2 8PP

Tel: 01792 602633

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












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