Interpretation555's Blog

The Power of Digital Humanities

interpretation555 — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:55:14 +0000

I would like to comment on Paul’s presentation about his art work, as I found it very interesting and thought-provoking. First, I appreciated his effort to bring his actual painting to class. The contrast he set between the digitized version of his painting and the real one was impressive and points to the power of digital humanities in its ability to represent art. Even as we are fascinated with the digital world and the abilities it creates for artists, we should still maintain that the distinction between a tangible piece of art and a digital one remains. Paul persuasively argued that the power of digital humanities is invaluable: it enables communication, exchange, and discourse with and among diverse artists and scholars in a matter of hours (if not seconds) and opens doors for collaborative work that would be impossible without the tools of digital humanities. At the same time, I maintain a belief that the value of engaging with the actual work of art remains unchangeable and irreplaceable. I believe that the process of viewing the actual painting fosters a kind of intellectual, emotional, and philosophical connection between the painting and the viewer that would not be exactly the same if the process was mediated digitally. Yes, there may be multiple similarities. But to prove my ultimate point I am tempted to draw a comparison between these processes relating it to human interaction. Take, for instance, the connections we form with other humans and compare talking to someone face to face versus talking to someone on skype. While the digital way of communicating on skype aims to be as close to replicating the actual conversation as it could be, it will never be equal to it. While some of our sensory abilities are engaged in the digital conversation, others will remain inactivated. While some emotions may be conveyed, others remain undecipherable. While the power of internet enables communication to happen fast, it still remains impotent in replacing the actual experience, whether it would be a conversation with another person, flipping the pages of a 200-year old book, or viewing a painting. Finally, I admire the digital forms of sharing, exchanging, and transmitting knowledge and art . But I remain fascinated by, faithful to, and enchanted by the ways our actual interaction with a real painting, a real ancient book, a real archival manuscript, and, for instance, a concert musical performance move us when we connect with these forms of art in real time and real place.

Writing Proposals and Receiving Financial Aid for Digital Humanities Innovative Projects

interpretation555 — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:18:11 +0000

In our Digital Humanities class this summer, we have discussed several times the fact that if you are seriously invested into the Digital Humanities world, you will not be alone. Instructor Richard Ross has mentioned that there are organizations ready to offer financing to a serious, knowledgeable, responsible, creative, and devoted digital humanist. This week I discovered that ACLS has a fellowship specifically designed for “digitally based research projects in all disciplines of the humanities and humanities-related social sciences.” It is titled “ACLS DIGITAL INNOVATION FELLOWSHIP” and will fund projects that aim “to pursue intellectually significant projects that deploy digital technologies intensively and innovatively.” The amount of funding for individual projects is as much as $25,000. A year-long stipend would be $60,000.

In the context of considering our own project proposals for our Digital Humanities class, it is useful to consider what this prestigious funding organization expects to see in a proposal for this kind of a fellowship. First, they are looking for a demonstration of scholarly excellence which manifests in the digital context. Second, it is expected that the applicants discuss the intellectual ambitions of the project and its technological underpinnings. Third, proposals should be very specific about how digital technologies constitute value to humanistic study.
I hope that as we are thinking about the objectives, the purpose, and the structure of our own final projects for our Digital Humanities course, taking a look at the ways proposals are to be written and how digital projects could be funded beyond the limits of our class will be helpful (and inspiring).

My citations are taken from (and you may find more detailed information on this fellowship for digital humanists on):

http://www.acls.org/programs/digital/

How Blogging Influences One’s Life and Career

interpretation555 — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:25:50 +0000

After reading the blog on creative choices, blogging, and literature (http://creative-choices.co.uk/blogs/how-blogging-can-help-your-writing-career), I have come to further realize how blogging has changed and will continue influencing our careers and ways of interacting with the world. What is imminent is that in the world so rapidly expanding into internet infinity through blogging and other internet opportunities, we will soon be (perhaps we are already) inapt and obsolete if we don’t master and regularly engage with these ways of communication. Just like e-mail has become essential in today’s world, so will the blogging world continue to grow in its importance and impact on our lives.

Here is some further thought-provoking reflections (I agree with) on how blogging can influence one’s career:

“Blogging – a contracted form of the words ‘web-logging’– is the archetypal internet writing format. It’s become so common that it’s hard to remember that, little more than a decade ago, the concept hadn’t even been invented. The closest format was probably the newspaper diary-style column, in which seasoned journalists would recount their week’s doings, but popular blogs are updated far more frequently than once a week, and can even be a source of daily entertainment or enlightenment.

Blogging is probably the easiest, quickest and cheapest way for most people to get their thoughts out into the online world. Some blogs are essentially online diaries, where the blog creator posts their thoughts, experiences and ideas; these can help with personal development, or just provide a useful place to vent and canvass advice.” For more, see the following link:

http://creative-choices.co.uk/blogs/how-blogging-can-help-your-writing-career

Entering the Blogging World

interpretation555 — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:48:09 +0000

I agree with Sarah’s blog reflections on entering and participating in the blogging world.

In fact, this week I discovered the blogging world as a useful tool not only to brainstorm different ideas, start the writing process, and get valuable feedback from the blog readers, but also as a forum from which I can draw extremely valuable information regarding my immediate interests and needs. For example, introducing myself to different blogs led me to discover the CGU blog on dissertating. This blog posts relevant and enlightening information on the process of writing one’s dissertation. It is a space where different students can communicate about their immediate concerns and progress. It is a space that effectively eliminates the feeling of lonesomeness that at times the scholarly writing process entails. I have also discovered blogs by scholarly journals, which are invaluable and enable one to be up to date with the latest without much effort.

Before I had entered the blogging world, I perceived it as a time consuming endeavor to communicate ideas. Now I see it as a time saving experience to both communicate ideas and gather (as well as share) useful information.

Joining the Conversation about the Digital World

interpretation555 — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:21:39 +0000

I learned about an exciting upcoming event relevant to the digital world: this call for papers for the conference on “The Future of the Forum: Internet Communities and the Public Interest” at UC Berkeley may be of interest to some of us. This one-day symposium will explore the following questions: “How are Internet communities re-configuring and re-constituting common conceptions of the public, the public good, the public interest, and civic responsibility? What new forms of dialogue are emerging with our new media? When do the pleasures of interacting with digital technologies coincide with, and facilitate, progressive social action?”

Even if we can’t present at this conference, it might be useful to attend. I was especially intrigued by the following issues the conference invites the presenters to address:

“Issues of reputation and representation. The importance of authorship, authority, and identity in Internet communities, the uncertainties of ascertaining who is “speaking” online, and whether open dialogue and trust between strangers is possible on the Internet (e.g., the anonymity of participation permitting flaming and censorship in Internet exchanges, plagiarism from online sources).

Isolation, passivity, apathy, and disengagement amongst new media users. Do virtual relationships replace or displace face-to-face relationships? Is online activism a poor substitute for “real-world” activism? Are people more or less invested in social and political issues in an age of interactive and narrowcast media than they were in the era of print and broadcast media?

Mobility and the public interest. How mobile and handheld devices, and mobile-specific applications, alter and shape users’ interfaces with civic life (e.g., mass transit, traffic, schools, non-profits, elections). How space, place, geography, and mapping change or are changed by new media, and how digital locatability relates to the public good.

New forms of public personae, public performance, and public broadcasting being founded via new media, and whether or how they provide the kind of entertainment-based “social glue” that mass broadcast media used to offer (e.g., “best-of-craigslist” posts, Yelp recommendations, Perez Hilton, Howcast.com).”

This citation is taken from (and you may find more useful information on):

http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=169751

Reflections on the Infinite Internet Archive

interpretation555 — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:33:20 +0000

After reading these three insightful and enlightening articles on the infinite archive of digital humanities, I am fascinated with the paradoxical aspects of the digital archive. Indeed, digital humanities at once opens a wide range of opportunities for accessing, collecting, and analyzing records of the human past and creates a set of daunting threats of getting lost in the infinite availability of archival materials. Moreover, the digital world is not secure from the potential instantaneous loss of digital documents precisely because of the speedy technological advancement. I was intrigued by one professor’s observation in the article titled “Interchange,” wherein he suggests that the abundance and availability of constantly growing scholarship poses challenges to producing valid academic work based on close readings. The problem that this critic sees primarily lies in the overwhelming number of scholarly opinions that contradict each other and therefore, cancel each other. While this might be viewed as a fundamental problem in producing definitive scholarship, I see it as a reinforcement of what professional scholarship, especially in humanities, is all about — a continuous debate over interpretations of facts, events, and realities of the past.
I was also intrigued by the article’s discussion of and concern with the question of the audience: some argue that with the rapidly widening accessibility of digital history, it becomes difficult to determine the range of various audiences that will be interested in particular materials on the web. I do think that while it is a big advantage that the digital world opens up opportunities for scholars, students, and laymen to access the digital materials, the writer or the creator of the website has to face the dilemma of how to present the materials for such a diverse audience.

I also believe that besides enabling us, humanists, to access, explore, manipulate, interpret, and collaborate on different kinds of materials, the digital world essentially breaks barriers in the hierarchy of the academic world. If original historical and cultural documents in print could be available only to advanced scholars at elite universities’ special library collections, the same materials in digital form will be accessible to a much wider audience, liberated from strict hierarchical measures. By being able to access singular manuscripts or rare documents digitally, young scholars and students who are at the start of their academic careers are given opportunities to think about original materials and produce original scholarship at a much earlier stage in their academic life. Yes, digital archives open up new opportunities for original scholarship. But again, precisely because of the infinite and infinitely available digital web of information, our ability to test, collect, and comprehensively approach a particular issue might be problematized, complicated, and overwhelmed.

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interpretation555 — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:02:31 +0000

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