UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

Posted on behalf of Lorna Richardson.

Following on from the success of 2011, we are happy to announce that this year’s ‘Day of Archaeology’, the public archaeology mass blogging project, is scheduled for *June 29, 2012*. Last year’s event, supported by the Centre for Digital Humanities, the Portable Antiquities Scheme, the Archaeology Data Service and L-P Archaeology saw over 400 archaeologists sign up, and almost 450 separate blog posts were created, including lots of photos, video, audio and more. The Day of Archaeology project has been shortlisted top 3 for the British Archaeological Award for the Best Representation of Archaeology in the Media. The award will be presented on the 9th July at the British Museum.

You can read more about the first Day of Archaeology from 2011 on the website. The general hope for the project is that by raising awareness about the truly diverse nature of archaeology, we will also in turn emphasize the vital role that archaeology plays in preserving our past for everyone’s future.

If you would like to find out more, or sign up to write about/film/photograph your archaeological day on the 29th (or as near the day as possible), please email us at dayofarchaeology@gmail.com

The full programme for the annual Digital Classicist & Institute of Classical Studies Seminar series is available on our 2012 seminar page. As always, abstracts are there in advance and the slides and audiocast will appear soon after each seminar. Previous seminars and other Digital Classicist events (conference panels etc) are on the main seminar page.

Looking through, you will see that most, if not all, range far beyond an interest in the ancient world. Each paper must have an innovative digital component and many incorporate Digital Humanities techniques and methodologies. The series seeks to accommodate broader theoretical consideration of the use of digital technology in Classical Studies. The content should be of interest both to classicists, ancient historians, or archaeologists, and to information scientists or digital humanists, as well as having an academic research agenda relevant to at least one of those fields.

All are welcome; these are public events with no need to book.

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?

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

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!

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.

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.

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.