Event Title

A Digital Graveyard; Crafting Digital Content

Presenter Information

Barry Mauer, University of Central FloridaFollow
David Staley
Kirk St. Amant

Location

CB1-107

Start Date

3-11-2017 1:45 PM

End Date

3-11-2017 3:15 PM

Description

A Digital Graveyard and Monument to Lost Data

As our society shifts its archival media from print to digital, an unintended consequence results; we lose a great amount of data. The effects of data loss can be profound; without access to vital data, our access to history may be severely diminished. Data loss threatens to undermine individual lives and major institutions. The project described here — the monument to lost data and its accompanying digital graveyard — is relevant to those cases in which data cannot be recovered and must be considered lost. In these cases, it is appropriate and healthy to embrace mourning, which is the process whereby one achieves a measure of detachment from a lost person or object. The monument to lost data foregrounds critical reflection in the mourning process and to recognize data loss as a collective experience and not just a personal one.

The proposal for this monument recognizes lost data not as an accident, an avoidable mistake, but as an unavoidable loss that we may choose to designate as a sacrifice and that we will see this sacrifice as a price we pay for our collective values and behaviors. We might then choose to reconsider the wisdom of our collective values and behaviors in relation to data storage.

Monumentality does not seek ways to avoid loss, though it has no quarrel with rationalist efforts to reduce or eliminate data loss. Monumentality aims to represent the values for which the losses occurred. Values are determined by the price we are willing to pay to sustain our behaviors. What values might be honored by data loss? A provisional answer: we suffer data loss because our society demands progress, which we define as increased efficiency and storage capacity. Efficiency and capacity are values for which we are willing to pay.

Our roundtable will discuss ways of visualizing lost data, particularly as it affects scholars, in terms of its quantity, its quality, and its impact.

What does data rot look like? Staley is interested in data visualization, and has recently begun to create physical objects that visualize humanistic data (see, for example, FHQ III: a 3-D printed data sculpture of the Florida Historical Quarterly, currently on permanent display at the University of Central Florida). He is at work on a monumental installation called "Leaves of History," a large-scale visualization of the entire run of the American Historical Review. Those projects are monuments to big data: in this panel, Staley will present preliminary designs for a "monument to lost data," a large-scale visualization of patterns of absence in data. If Stephen Ramsay has argued "in praise of pattern" as a key feature of visualization in the digital humanities, the designs presented at this panel will "commemorate data voids."

Crafting Digital Content for Contexts of Use: An Approach to the Digital Humanities in International Contexts

The New Context for DH

Today, digital media allow us to engage in global-level interactions with almost the same speed and ease as speaking with individuals face to face. For the digital humanities (DH), this situation brings with it new possibilities for collaborating internationally on projects to offer a more holistic approach to examining what the humanities are, how works are interpreted, and how ideas are exchanged.

Perhaps the greatest challenge to DH in the age of ready international access involves identifying where communication could break down or miscommunication or offense could occur. This situation involves various interrelated variables including culture, politics, economics, and technologies. Scholars, educator, artists, critics, and performers working in such contexts can thus benefit from frameworks that help them understand and deal with prospective problem areas that could affect online/technology-based discussions of DH in international contexts.

Proposed Frameworks for DH

This presentation would overview two frameworks for mapping the variables affecting communication and comprehension in these emerging international contexts around DH. One focus of this proposed framework is to understand the context in which such exchanges take place and then identify – and map – the variables affecting communication and the use of materials in these international spaces of exchange in DH. This approach involves using script theory to identify the expectations individuals from different cultures bring to DH exchanges. In so doing, script theory helps identify those factors/variables individuals expect to encounter to interact effectively in a given context. By using script theory to guide research on communicating the digital humanities in different contexts, individuals can identify – and address – prospective problem areas that could affect international collaboration on or communication relating to the digital humanities.

Humanities scholars often values obscure paradigms, and some of the most promising research in Digital Humanities involve collaborations across disciplines and across international boundaries. These opportunities also present numerous challenges. We can learn about how to develop effective collaborative strategies by looking at a second approach related to script theory: the pragmatic cognitive framework developed by James Peterson in his study of avant-garde cinema. Peterson's approach puts perception, cognition, and communication into the framework of problem solving, and his strategies for engaging with avant-garde cinema help us to deal with the ill-structured and difficult problems posed by international and cross-disciplinary humanities collaboration. They key to Peterson's strategy is to identify the relevant principles of communication, which include schemas such as prototype, template, and procedural knowledge, and discourse comprehension that includes semantics and pragmatics. Our panel will suggest ways to develop digital content for international contexts using script theory and cognitive theory.