Digital Humanities 2006

Well here I am in Paris where the weather is pleasant, there is always a cafe nearbye, and the food is great. The conference is running smoothly - nice rooms, wireless, and lots of helpful staff. These notes are only on some of the talks I attended and don't represent an overview of the conference.

Why the Digital Humanities Need the Digital Arts

Marcel O'Gorman, Rafael Fajardo and myself gave papers on digital art and humanities. Marcel talked about his Spleen House installation and linked it to thinking about Derrida and design. I surveyed ways in which the digital arts and humanities are different. The discussion after convinced me there is a real interest in fostering the connection, but the question remains, of how to do it. The Electronic Literature Organization which is now housed at Maryland seems a bridge from digital humanities to the digital arts.

Alan Renear, Axiomatizing FRBR: An Exercise in the Formal Ontology of Cultural Objects

Alan talked about how conceptual analysis can be used look at models like FRBR that is a model of the "bibliographic universe". Alan defined conceptual analysis as "identifying the necessary and sufficient constitutive features of a concept and, optionally, relating analyzied concepts one to another with general principles. ... Answers to the 'What is (a) X?' question."

In FRBR some of the elements in the model are works, expressions, manifestations, and items, "works are realized by expressions; expressions are embodied by manifestations; manifestations are exemplified by items." An item can have a stain on it. A work can be a language.

Alan argues that FRBR "is clearly a Platonist ideology" which leads to the typical problems around Platonic forms and art works - ie. when does the concept of a work of art come into existence, if at all? He then gave an interesting tour of alternative models like an Aristotelian model. What was interesting was how he demonstrated the unavoidable implied (and sometimes acknowledged) ontological assertions made in pragmatic and widely used models like FRBR and CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model. The CRM asserts that the concept of a work dissappears when no one remembers the work and all instances (items) dissappear.

Patrick Juola, Killer Applications in Digital Humanities

An interesting paper where Patrick laid out how little impact digital humanists have on the larger community. His data (at least on Canada) seemed suspect, but the point is probably still right, especially about the US where there is little presence of digital humanities in the Ivy league schools. From there he argues for killer applications that would fill/provoke a need in the larger community which would then get buy-in from the larger community.

Why do we have to get buy in from others? Do researchers in established fields feel they need to convert everyone else in the humanities? Do we really need legitimization from others?

He presented some possible killer applications: Back of the Book indexing tool, Annotation tools, Resource Discovery Tool (alternative to Google), and Essay grading tool.

As for Canada we do see digital humanities at the major research universities like U of Alberta, U of Toronto, McMaster, U de Montréal, McGill^? and so on.

Stan Ruecker, Proposing an Affordance Strength Model to study New Interface Tools

Stan looked at interface research models and proposed one based on Gibson's idea of affordances. Some of the models he surveyed that he finds limited are:

• GOMS - Goals, Operators, Methods, and Selection rules
• Winograd and Flores - a phenomenological approach to interface design that doesn't treat us as being goal oriented
• Human Factors - a different tradition of studying how humans interact with products
• Ergonomics - looking at the physical properties of how we interact with objects
• Technology Acceptance Model - used by the business community to see if a product will get acceptance

Gibson proposed affordances as a way to look at usability. Stan is adapting this to a model for usability research in tool design like the work he is doing for NORA. Affordances are opportunities for action. Stand tries, through interviews, to asses their "tacit capacity" and "situated potential." At the same time he tries to assess the people who are the potential users - they have Awareness, Motivation, Preference, Ability, and Agential Support.

-- GeoffreyRockwell - 07 Jul 2006