Category Archives: Uncategorized

DigiHuman Lab: art project demo or talk

Art project demo or talk on the DigiHuman Lab: I am a sculptor, professor of fine art and an advisor at the DigiHuman Lab at Rutgers University. This newly created laboratory is in the Department of Computer Science is currently accepting applications for project-based works that need technical support in the field of computer vision.

I will be attending THATCamp on Tuesday 2/10 and would be happy to do an art project demo or talk on the work currently taking place at the lab. In 2014, the lab participated in a large study comparing digitally archived paintings, successfully documenting unknown connections between individual works and artists: hyperallergic.com/145584/seeing-art-history-with-machine-eyes/

The lab and I are currently co-authoring multiple artworks. One of these projects, titled Listening Stations for Birds that Play Human Music, entails programming a sort of Pandora Radio for birds. This artwork seeks to consider what type of human produced music is most favored by our avian co-habitants. The DigiHuman lab is also supporting the computer vision component ofThe IndaPlant Project: An Act of Trans-Species Giving. This artwork has produced floraborgs, which are light-sensing robotic supports for houseplants. These entities utilize machine learning to allow potted plants to roam freely in a domestic environment, in search of sunlight and water (vimeo.com/90457796). The DigiHuman Lab can be found at sites.google.com/site/digihumanlab

All my best, Eliz Demaray

TALK session: A DH syllabus for art history

In trying to design my own DH course, I’ve found both a lot to look at and not enough that is geared directly to art historians and the art history student. In particular, I would like to discuss what kind or readings and projects others are using, especially in a small, liberal arts college context. I’d certainly also love to hear about what a big school can provide faculty and students, if only as something to shoot for!

Talk session: Evaluating Digital Scholarship

This session will start with an online tour of Digital Karnak, a 3D Virtual Reality model of an ancient Egyptian site built in VSim to be a pedagogical tool and database of information. It will be presented by Lisa Snyder and Elaine Sullivan. The collaborative project has been in development at UCLA, and its creators have been actively involved in leading discussions about the publication, peer review, and dispersion of their work. You can get a glimpse of Digital Karnak here, and more information about VSim here.

After “touring” Karnak with Lisa and Elaine, I’d like to lead a discussion of THATCamp attendees around the topic of evaluating digital projects of all types. For instance, how can digital scholars facilitate the acceptance of our work toward promotion and tenure? What tactics have worked for digital scholars in the past? What challenges do digital scholars face in making sure our work is peer reviewed effectively?

The CAA and SAH have created a Mellon-supported digital task force whose mission is to develop guidelines for evaluating digital scholarship. As both a digital scholar and a researcher for the task force, I hope we can contribute to the ongoing dialogue toward supporting digital work—at all levels of academia and public scholarship—by effectively evaluating it and facilitating its inclusion in promotion and tenure portfolios.

 

TEACH session proposal: mobile 3D scanning

I would like to propose a TEACH session for mobile 3D scanning.  Using a laptop and inexpensive software, a Kinect sensor can be made to function as an inexpensive and portable 3D scanner. Using a Structure Sensor Scanner, an iPad Air and several free apps, a range of people, objects and spaces can be 3D scanned without electronic tethers.  3D scans produced by these devices can be readily manipulated in widely available 3D software.  I would like to teach a small group of curious colleagues how to capture 3D scans using mobile technology.

I am using these technologies in my studio practice and am interested to share and swap techniques with other artists who may also be exploring these tools.  I would like to effectively teach these skills to students in the context of studio art courses.  A brainstorming session to produce ideas for studio art assignments that incorporate 3D scanning techniques will end this session.

Darren Douglas Floyd will teach this session.  A small group of participants will learn these techniques using my own equipment.

Make Session: #BlackLivesMatter Teach-In: Dismantling Anti-Black Racism in Visual Culture

Session leaders – La Tanya S. Autry (@artstuffmatters), Charles Eppley (@eppleyca) 

The recent protests in Ferguson and other cities against police brutality demand close analysis and collective action. In particular, the role of visual culture associated with these events and within the #BlackLivesMatter movement is of immediate concern. We have designed this session for those whose interests focus on  visual culture, art history, studio art practice, art museums, material culture, and social justice. Working together in small,  topic-based groups, we will collectively address the interplay of visual culture and racialization. We will also identify resources (books, articles, videos, exhibitions, works of art, interviews, etc) and design active learning based activities to address these issues in the classroom, museum, and otherwise social or communal settings.

Possible discussion topics include: visual culture as evidence; the visual field as a racialized site; images as resistance; the blackface stereotype; and post-blackness. Identified visual culture focus will include:

  • The 2014 fatal assault on Eric Garner – video recording and non-indictment
  • Rodney King – 1991 videotaped beating, police acquitted in 1st trial
  • Trayvon Martin – hoodies symbol; skittles and iced tea; Instagram; Zimmerman paintings
  • Eric Garner – protest signs – eyes; “I Can’t Breathe”
  • Mike Brown – “Hands Up! Don’t Shoot!”
  • #BlackLivesMatter and #hashtag visual culture
  • Visual rhetoric of pro-police protests; “I Am Darren Wilson”

Examples of active learning activities: producing blogs; designing exhibitions and websites; Wikipedia edit-a-thons; and creating photo stories, videos, and films.

We will collect and share our findings on a publicly accessible Google doc. Participants are encouraged to live-tweet the teach-in (#CAA2015, #BlackLivesMatters, #thatcamp).
Facebook page – #BlackLivesMatter at CAA 2015

Talk Session: Usability Testing and User Experience Design

I’d like to lead an open and informal discussion that allows both artists and art historians to share their experience creating digital projects. Specifically, I’d like to discuss participants’ challenges and successes creating intuitive interfaces that appeal to targeted audiences. Here are some questions to consider:

  • At what point or points did you do user interviews or testing for your project?
  • Did your target audience determine certain aspects of your project’s content and interface?
  • Is there more you wish you’d done (or would like to do) to increase your project’s utility and visibility?

The underlying theme of this talk session is to examine the importance of User Experience design and question how we can incorporate and customize certain commercial strategies to digital projects within the humanities.

The Public Domain Artwork Reproduction and Its Metadata: Access, Dissemination, and Use

The Public Domain Artwork Reproduction and Its Metadata: Access, Dissemination, and Use

Co-Chairs: Christine Sundt, Editor, Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation  and Anne Collins Goodyear, Co-Director, Bowdoin College Museum of Art and Past President, College Art Association

This proposed session looks at the question of how scholars use and access reproductions of public domain works of art  in print, online, and elsewhere. While works in the public domain are no longer under copyright , questions persist about how to take advantage of them. A related question is the subject of the metadata that documents the image and often accompanies reproductions, which has the potential to serve as a rich data mine for digital  scholars. Our hope is to have a frank discussion of what’s working for scholars, archivists, curators,  and artists and what points of confusion or uncertainty persist in order to help make these resources more broadly available.

Session Proposal: What are online resources good for?

This is an this as an open discussion of how users make use of (or don’t make use of) online art resources. What are online art resources good for? Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of online content providers, tools and resources for research and learning. Specifically: how do people use public online platforms for artwork search? What audiences do these platforms serve now, and why do we need them? What are the key challenges facing engagement with art online, and what do these emergent platforms need to grapple with in terms of accessibility, content, or structure?

Ellen Tani (Standford graduate student/Artsy) and I (also of Artsy) are proposing this and a few other sessions together. For this session, we’d love to interact with others involved in artwork search (in whatever capacity).

Workshop session proposal: Controlled Vocabularies and their applications in the classroom

How might the day-to-day considerations of creating and maintaining a controlled vocabulary translate to activities in the classroom? What might students learn from such exercises? On The Art Genome Project, we have a few activities we use in developing our own controlled vocabulary that we can share with participants, and would be interested to workshop other ideas.

Ellen Tani (Stanford graduate student/Art History instructor/Artsy Contributor) and I (also of Artsy) are proposing this session together.