By Simon Mahony, on 21 May 2012
One of our PhD students, Greta Franzini, has put together this YouTube playlist of DH videos and made it available. I’ve been looking through and see there are some familiar names there!
This is a good way of collecting together resources – thanks Greta. Do we have any other examples?
By Anne Welsh, on 21 May 2012
Received from the Decoding Digital Humanities London mailing list:
DDH London will be meeting again on
* Wednesday 30 May 18:00 *
at The Plough, 27 Museum Street, London, WC1A 1LH
This month we will be reading:
McCarty, Willard (forthcoming). “The residue of uniqueness”. The Cologne Dialogue on Digital Humanities @ Wahn Manor House, 2012. Historical Social Research – Historische Sozialforschung. [pre-print pdf]
Please feel free to disseminate this announcement.
We look forward to seeing you in The Plough.
Best wishes,
Richard
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Richard Lewis
ISMS, Computing
Goldsmiths, University of London
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Follow announcements for DDH-L via the mailing list – decodingdh@ucl.ac.uk
By Claire Ross, on 17 May 2012
Last night a contingent from UCLDH, CASA and Museums and Public Engagement, headed down to the 10th Anniversary Museums and Heritage Awards.
There were 11 awards in total UCL, were up for three: The move of the Grant Museum for Project on A Limited Budget, the Grant Museum’s QRator project for Innovations and Heritage Without Borders for The International Award.
We are proud to announce that we won the Museum and Heritage Award for Excellence, Innovations award for QRator: Visitor Participation Through Social Interpretation.
QRator is a collaborative project developed jointly by UCL Digital Humanities , Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, and UCL Museums, with funding from the UCL Public Engagement Unit , to develop new kinds of content, co-curated by the public, and museum staff, to enhance museum interpretation, public engagement and meaning making by establishing new connections to museum exhibit content.
There’s a long list of people who need thanking and who were instrumental in creation, development, implementation and the ongoing support of the QRator project.
From UCL Museums and Public Engagement: Mark Carnall who worked with me originally in trialling QR codes in the Grant Museum and who is the most forward thinking curator I have ever met. Jack Ashby who writes the content and designs the displays for QRator, and who has the patience of a saint. Susannah Chan from UCL Museums and Public Engagement for inventing the mounts for the iPads. A big thank you to the UCL Public Engagement Unit for their funding and support of the project, Sally MacDonald Director of UCL Museums and Public Engagement who has been a huge driving force behind the project, it is so refreshing to have Top Down support for digital innovation in the cultural sector.
From UCL CASA: Steve Gray who is an absolutely brilliant developer, and whose skills in usability and interface design are second to none. Andy Hudson Smith, and Ralph and Martin the original team behind Tales of Things from UCL Centre for Advance Spatial Analysis,
From UCLDH: Melissa Terras and Claire Warwick who have been the best support, PhD supervisors I could ever ask for.
Without all of them this project would literally be nothing.
Oh and, a big thank you to the Jar of Moles for being the most discussed specimen!
By Nicolas Gold, on 15 May 2012
The CHIPS project on popular music performance with technology (see previous post) is underway. There is online discussion of the issues getting started here and registration is now open (there is no charge for the event) for the symposium on 7th-8th June. We have a programme of great speakers lined up. If you are interested in coming, please register asap as places are limited by the venue capacity.
By Chris Dillon, on 11 May 2012
Wednesday saw the official launch of the UCL Domain Names Project with a press release and a website.
In March 2009, Dr Anna Clark, then Director of Business Partnerships, first mentioned ICANN’s intention to internationalise the Internet with the greatest expansion of generic Top Level Domains since .com, .org, .net etc. were implemented in 1985. She had the vision to realize that UCL is in a position to play a key role in this exciting new phase, as in co-operation with its Bloomsbury neighbour, the School of Oriental & African Studies, UCL is the world’s leading centre of linguistic expertise. Over 80 languages are taught and researched here, the nearest competitor teaching less than 30. My greatest hope is that this project makes this fact more widely known and attracts similar projects accordingly.
In February 2010, working with InterConnect Communications Ltd, a company with much experience in the field of Internet governance, I lead the UCL part of a three-hour presentation to ICANN in a large pink room with chandeliers in an L.A. hotel. We got to the end of our 50 slides, unlike some of the competitors who, apparently, were shot down by questions they could not answer. We were successful in all three bids:
1. primary panel for String Similarity (is the gTLD similar to an existing or applied-for one?)
2. secondary panel for Geographic Names (is the gTLD a city or region name?)
3. secondary panel for Community Priority (does the gTLD represent a community?)
Further information: http://newgtlds.icann.org
Delays occurred as the political and legal (commercial, security etc.) implications of the change became apparent and as contracts were drawn up. Meanwhile I interviewed and trained linguists to form a team covering all major world languages.
It is wonderful that we are now ready to start work three years after I first heard of this project.
By Melissa Terras, on 10 May 2012
On Tuesday 29th May, between 1 and 2pm, I’ll be hosting a Pop-Up exhibition at UCL Art Museum, looking at Computer generated art held in the UCL Art Museum Collection.
Pop-Up displays at UCL Art Museum are held throughout the year. By becoming a guest curator for one day, anyone at UCL can select works from the vast art collection. They can share their choices with students, colleagues and the general public in the informal setting of a free lunchtime exhibition in the museum.
Given my background in computing and the arts and humanities, I thought it would be really fun to try and see what computer generated art there was in the collection. UCL has an interesting history of this – there was a lot of experimental computer art going on with the aid of the engineering faculty in the 1970s, and the Slade School of Fine Art (part of UCL) established an “Experimental and Computing Department” in the 1970s, and The Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art in 1995. What interesting art works that started their life on a computer now lurk in the UCL Art Museum archives?
Do come by on Tuesday 29th May, 1-2pm. Free entry. It would be great to see you there.
By Claire Warwick, on 25 April 2012
The UCL Centre for Digital Humanities would like to make it clear that it is not, and has never been, endowed by any outside bodies. UCLDH is funded solely by UCL itself. Any statements you may have seen to the contrary are wholly inaccurate.
Claire Warwick and Melissa Terras: Co-Directors, UCLDH
By Oliver Duke-Williams, on 17 April 2012
Decoding Digitial Humanities (London) returns on April 25, to discuss the paper:
Elaine G. Toms, Heather L. O’Brien, (2008) “Understanding the information and communication technology needs of the e-humanist”, Journal of Documentation, vol. 64(1), pp. 102 – 130. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1657905
We will meet at The Plough, 27 Museum Street, London, WC1A 1LH <http://g.co/maps/vftpw>
All are welcome,so please circulate this message!
For more information, please see the DDH-L website.
By Nicolas Gold, on 28 March 2012
As part of our expanding programme of research and teaching in computational musicology and computer music at UCL, we are pleased to announce a new AHRC-funded project (prospective PhD and MA/MSc Digital Humanities students may like to note this activity, particularly the COMPGC20 Computer Music module available as an option on the DH degree).
The Computer-Human Interactive Performance Symposium (CHIPS) project is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) through the Digital Transformations programme. The project runs from February to August 2012.
The aim is to explore the likely performance practices (and problems) that would result from having easily deployable, robust, creative, and reliable artificial music performers in mixed human-computer ensembles playing popular music. There are many systems that go some way to solving the technical problems of computer participation in this kind of music (e.g. beat trackers, chord estimators, interactive improvisers) but as yet no complete systems that can be deployed by non-expert users into common practice performance contexts and be relied upon to underpin the performances of popular music ensembles.
Popular music (e.g. folk, rock, music theatre) plays a central role in the lives of millions of people. Musicians of all standards from amateur to professional produce music that is heard on radios and televisions, and performed in concert halls and theatres. Teenagers are motivated to learn instruments and play in bands to emulate their professional idols, serious amateurs play and sing together at open-mike nights, charity concerts, and in churches, and professionals perform in clubs, theatres, and spectacular multimedia shows like Cirque du Soleil and the Blue Man Group. To learn, rehearse, and perform popular music often requires a musician to be part of an ensemble yet forming such a group can be challenging, particularly for amateur musicians. Even in established communities such as churches, the demands of everyday life mean that musicians cannot always attend rehearsals or play regularly together. In professional ensembles, illness can cause the absence of key musicians in rehearsal or performance. Computer music technology offers the potential to substitute for musicians in these situations, yet reliable, robust, and simple systems that can be quickly set up, and that play musically and creatively do not yet exist.
The project aims to develop the future research agenda for both technical and non technical music computing research in this area, by learning from the issues and experiences of technological adoption in other relevant performance contexts, understanding the technological state of the art in relation to popular music performance, imagining future performance practices incorporating computer “musicians”, and thinking about how to study musicians (human and computer) in this context.
We hope to develop a network of interest around this symposium, beginning with some online discussion ahead of the face to face event on 7th-8th June 2012 and followed by further online activity and follow-up events. For information, the programme, and registration for the main symposium (presented as part of the CREST Open Workshop (COW) programme), please see the COW web-page here.
By Anne Welsh, on 28 March 2012
Yesterday was the Day of Digital Humanities. This project, running since 2009, aims to “bring together digital humanists from around the world to document what they do on one day, March 27th this year. The goal of the project is to create a web site that weaves together the journals of the participants into a picture that answers the question, “Just what do computing humanists really do?” Participants will document their day through photographs and commentary in a blog-like journal.” (Day of DH 2012 Wiki)
Naturally, most of UCLDH took part, so, ever the librarian, I thought it would be useful to collate the links to our pages here:
As usual on Day of DH there are a few people who have signed up but not filled in their day yet. If you are one of those people and you are a member of UCLDH, drop me an email when you’re done and I’ll add you into the list here.
© UCL 1999–2009
