EASS Digital Humanities Symposium
A memory garden as an alchemical representation
imagesource:http://www.telesterion.com/artofmem.htmaccessed 28/11/2017in Francis A. Yates,The Art of Memory. London: Routledge 1966
Ways of Seeing: Critical, Digital, Spatial
16 February 20188.30am-5.00pm
Bradley Forum, Hawke Building,
The University of South Australia, Adelaide.
This symposium aims to investigate the opportunities “critical digital humanities” might offer for the fields of architecture, design and the spatial humanities. Degrees of criticality could occur around the terms themselves–for example, “digital” presents opportunities to revisit ways of “seeing” knowledge through software and computational tools–or through the design of the interface for access to discovering, searching, as well as sustaining and disseminating information. What new research questions may be conceived through multi-modal forms of engagement with research data? How can we open up our understanding of the spatial through the application of digital tools, platforms and datasets?
Ways of seeing and representing knowledge using datasets of multi-modal forms can be seen as a knowledge building initiative. This way of seeing the world as a “direct experience of reality” is mostly a multi-sensorial response. It also prompts the “inadvertent gaze” or ineffable which involves the mind attempting to have new experiences, therefore the rational mind and the inadvertent gaze are interdependent.
The premise here is that virtual immersion presupposes another way of interrogating the research subject/object. Research questions in qualitative research in the social sciences come from multiple sources and motivations, visual analyses/observations represent some of them. Visual observations may also translate to investigating non-tangible aspects of a particular environment and culture. The visual is therefore essential in “knowing” the subject matter and how to investigate it. How is the digitisation and dissemination of multiple knowledges impacting creative industries, cultural and research institutions and socio-cultural practices? Is digitisation offering new opportunities?
Keynotes:
Dr Andrew Yip
Dr Rachel Hendery
University Western Sydney
This symposium revisits digitisation processes to inviteabstractproposalsfor10minute panel presentations from digital humanities researchers to consider the following 3 main themes:
Spatial Practice [conceptual, virtual + material]: interactions with knowledge sets as having, or requiring, spatial practice. The virtual environment leads to particular ways of thinking. How might we release knowledge from the paradigm of static databases to dynamic and interactive fields of relations which prompt new ways of seeing, discovering, accessing an ontological understanding of the humanities to influence and impact upon the diversity of worldviews? What new strengths and innovative questions might be realised through the re-structuring of, or rethinking research databases and Boolean search engines? What breadth of possibilities lie in collating and linking different and sometimes disparate information which is not always located together in the same research database? How might digitally immersive and virtual environments change the way we interrogate knowledge? Does finding alternative ways of “seeing” and “knowing” subject matter motivate different types of research questions?
Critical digital humanities [theoretical + philosophical]:This concept has been proposed in a recent publication by David Mark Berry et al.2017“Computation is a historical phenomenon and can be traced and periodised through historicisation, but more work is needed here. Ignoring the hegemony of computational concepts and methods leads to a dangerous assumption, as it is a short step towards new forms of control, myth and limited forms of computational rationality.” A discussion of these ideas is proposed to consider what critical digital humanities conceptually offers as a field of scholarship and a mapping of the challenges involved? What are the intersections between the digital as a concept and humanist scholarship now? To what extent can the revisiting of the field present new possibilities and new knowledge building opportunities and impact in a post-digital world?
Maintaining and sustaining [operational + structural]:Emphasis in the digital humanities is sometimes placed on the conceptualisation of the field of research, its impact as a part of the academy, rather than on the maintenance of digital systems/platforms/databases/projects over time. How might we consider long-term strategies around the maintenance of digital humanities projects? How are these initiatives valued in cultural and research institutions from investment and policy perspectives? How does working between analogue and digital representations create a coherent form of knowledge building?
Audio Recording
Creative Works Abstracts
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Michael Geissler
B. 3/11/53. London.Lecturer
Interior Architecture.
Studio, furniture, installation.Exhibitions
Tokyo, Los Angeles, Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide.Work
Interior, furniture, stage, theatre, exhibition, drawing, model making.Adelaide
Queens Theatre, Jam Factory, SASA Gallery. -
Rotation and Dissipation – Weather Work Nine
Michael Geissler, Lecturer, Interior Architecture, School of Art, Architecture and Design, University of South Australia.
This work – ongoing research into weather, patterns and formations. Past works re-examined and reinterpreted through new forms and materials, acts of making and collaborations.
Blocks echoing meteorology as word play and weather systems, tornado phenomena, pencils acting as points/section through rotation – vortex funnel.
Table: American White Oak.
Top: 6mm solid welded plastic, polished.
Blocks: 32x32x32mm American White Oak, flat-bed printed six sides.
Pencils: well used.
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Dr Russell Fewster
School of Creative Industiries
Walter Benjamin: A Life in Translation
Video Except from creative work
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“Walter Benjamin: A Life in Translation”
The approach of the artists to this creative work is best defined under the notion of intermediality: the play between different media. In this instance media not only encompasses technologies such as digital software and projection and lighting but also the actor’s body, movement, words and the accompanying musical score. How these media interact with each other determined the shape and feel of this work. Intermediality in this context refers to the impact of multiple new media on performance while acknowledging how contemporary artists draw on modernist practices for constructing theatrical narrative through means such as montage (juxtaposition of images and sounds) and Brecht’s Epic Theatre, with its propensity to disrupt conventional storytelling via projections and the actor breaking the fourth wall (See Chapple & Kattenbelt 2006 Intermediality in Theatre and Performance, New York: Rodopi.). The work sought to draw on these modernist practices, but from a post-modern perspective, through the play between a single actor and new media technologies. The process of creative development questioned how interactive technology and narrative theatre might or might not work together. The solution arrived at was a circular overarching framework that gave a sense of the character’s journeys via their literary outputs, be that in a lecture format, reflective, direct casual address or via their interaction with voice to text and motion tracking software. The performer moved in and out of this interactive technological system to alternatively bring the performer from a distant to a closer spatial proximity to the audience. Questions of the body and liveness came to the fore provoking an exploration that mirrors contemporary theories of dissolution of self and articulation of presence within a technological system. In turn this reflects the creative tension between abstract and narrative pathways that dance and theatre offer when working with new media technologies.
Excerpt from Creative Development Hartley Playhouse UniSA Magill Campus 21/7/16.
Director/Dramaturg: Russell Fewster; Actor: Glenn Rafferty; New Media Artist: Simon Biggs; Lighting Designer: Nic Mollison; Pianist: Rick Chew; Technical Support: Peter Nielsen, Justin McGuinness; Student Placement James Wilson.
This performance combined 20th Century Philosopher Walter Benjamin’s writings with voice to text projection. In this excerpt Benjamin explores the effects of hashish . His writings become enthused with the effects of the narcotic before he quotes 19th Century Philospher Charles Baudelaire’s experiences of the same drug. ‘The possibility of all things which have taken place in this room is perceived simultaneously’ Benjamin, Walter Protocol II , 1929.Effects
As the actor speaks their words are projected onto scrim in front of the stage and the cyclorama at the rear. The unique voice to text software allows the projected words to create sentences that move with the actor and create new textual combinations enhancing the enduring quality and translations of Benjamin’s thoughts.
Benjamin’s ideas on art, theatre, film, mass media, popular culture, consumerism, fascism and war
remain influential today. His life ended tragically, denied asylum on the Spanish border during WW II. In itself this resonates with contemporary debates on refugees. Benjamin is a complex figure: at the forefront of modernism while passionate in his exploration of gambling, hashish and prostitution. The performance sought to explore these contradictions between a man of ideals and earthly passions.
he
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Ian Gwilt
University of South Australia
School of Art, Architecture and Design
Ph: 0431 533 176
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Data-objects: Visualising the Experience, Expression and Description of Chronic Pain
Key words: data objects, visualisation design, pain management
Explaining and quantifying the feeling and experience of living with chronic pain presents a particularly challenging task. This project uses co-creation methods, digital design and fabrication technologies to create data-objects that enable teenagers and young adults to explore their own pain makeup, capture this understanding, and use it communicate with others.
Individually designed objects are used to describe the pain profiles for young adults suffering with chronic-pain. Patients can create a visualisation of their own pain through a software interface and a computer-generated visualisation is then produced as a physical object using a 3d printing process.
The data-objects are part of a larger project that brings together re-searchers and pain management clinicians at Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust and design research specialists in the Art and Design Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University, in a pilot study that explores how the use of creative activities might assist young people in describing and communicating what it is to have chronic pain.
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Dan McLean
Dan McLean is an Industrial Designer with experience in the fields of automotive design, consumer electronics with a passion for product visualisation. Dan is the Program Director of Product Design at the University of South Australia where he teaches courses including Product Design Studios, product styling, branding, human factors, human centred design and design for manufacture, 3D modelling and visualisation. Dan teaches courses in design drawing, teaching students the techniques required to develop and communicate 3d objects through hand drawing.
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Digital Simulating Analogue.
Some might question why analogue 3d drawing skills are taught in the digital age. The digital time-lapse drawing simulates the analogue and communicates the techniques to imagine and build objects in 3d from one’s minds eye. It engages, entertains and inspires the viewer as the story of the drawing unfolds. The drawing is built from elemental beginnings and quickly morphs into a representation of a 3d object, communicating space and materiality. For the creator, the drawing can be worked on at a level of detail not achievable using traditional mediums. For the viewer the drawing can be replayed, paused and zoomed.
Design drawing; analogue drawing; design communication; visual narrative
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Tim McGinley
Tim McGinley completed his Architecture studies and Engineering doctorate in the UK, and joined UniSA in April 2014. He has worked in professional practice in the UK (Foster + Partners, 2007-9) and in The Netherlands (ONL [Oosterhuis_Lénárd] 2006-7). He has recent experiences of designing buildings in fully digital environments including the concept development for Apple HQ in Cupertino and the development of parametric models for a 720m tower, from concept through to detail design. Tim is currently Lecturer in architecture (digital) and director of the digital experience group.
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Contemporary architectural education requires a mix of semester long studios and short intensive workshops to develop digital skills and design skills in parallel. Rebecca O’brien extends the traditionally static drawings and models of architectural studios through dynamic digital enhancements. Rebecca’s approach actively extends the time and space it takes for us to absorb the work by encouraging us to consider quirky ideas such as falling down the page. In a workshop format, the Croser pavilion prototype represents an alternative compression of time in terms of the design process through the implementation of agile design methods from computational science into design.
Keywords
Architecture; agile design methods; computational science; augmented reality
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Peter Walker
Peter Walker gained an MFA Degree from the School of Art, University of Tasmania. He worked in his own studio for 14 years in Tasmania, moving to Adelaide to Head the Furniture Design Studio at the JamFactory Craft and Design Centre in the late 90’s. Peter spent five years as Design Consultant for Chiswell Furniture, Sydney and 10 years as Associate Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, USA. Peter has won design awards in Australia and the USA. His work is represented in significant collections, including Australian Parliament House and Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, USA.
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“Twigonometry”
“Twigonometry” is a study of geometry in the natural world, investigating the informative relationship between science, art and design. The use of organic material to build geometric structures reveals possibilities the natural order has for influencing perceptions of the world and the potential for informing constructed environments.
Composed as a continuous proportional line, the structure references a branch of mathematics known as trigonometry, used in the study of acoustics, physics, biology and surveying. The “chalky” painted surface evokes historical black board investigation of mathematical equations while also alluding to extruded 3D printing processes used to create complex forms.
Keywords
Material, spatial, knowledge, mathematics, organic.
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Benjamin Keane
A 3rd year architecture student with previous experience in audiovisual, multimedia, and web design, Ben is interested in how architecture and digital technology can be synthesised to generate meaningful and positive outcomes in people’s everyday lives.
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Adelaide City 3D Model (Digital)
Freshly completed as part of the Uni SA summer scholarship program, the Adelaide City 3D Model provides a package of digital resources for research and collaboration. Initially conceived for use in Uni SA’s Hyve3D Lab, the model will serve as an open canvas for visualisation, simulation and design. The model encompasses Adelaide City, North Adelaide and the Parklands, and comes in two flavours, textured (using aerial imagery) and whitebox (plain white).
Bringing together data from local government, GIS and architectural sources, the model is now available for use in teaching and research around the university. Please contact Professor Ning Gu for further information.
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Stephen Nova
Born in Perth, Western Australia
Currently residing in Adelaide, South Australia -
Being Through Drawing and the Technical Support of Digital Media
The embodied act of Imaginative drawing involves a cognitive process of thinking through making to engage, represent and re-envisage material culture. The experience that stems from the act of drawing brings to light something that is not always immediately visible but sensed through the embodied experience of drawing. The process of ‘being through drawing’ utilizing on site immersive drawing methods in combination with digital media such as photography brings together two elements. A record of the experience and information captured through digital photography and the metaphor that arises from the act of drawing that stimulates the imagination. These two elements bring together associations of space and time connected to the memories and lived experiences of a place.
The digital photograph not only provides a pragmatic reference for the material and information gathered on-site but it can also be incorporated as a tool alongside imaginative drawing to generate new understandings of spatial relationships and concepts about the living and built environment. The digital photograph can be a critical component when integrated into the drawing process which moves away from something that is simply referred too. When I created the graphite drawing of the Vitrum factory in Empoli, Italy, the imaginative component of the drawing was introduced when working in the studio from the notes, drawings and digital photographs. This involved drawing back over the print of the digital photographic image; cropping, resizing and re-establishing the perspective until the digital image initially used to document and record information on-site was now an artefact that expressed the immersive experience of engaging with the living and built environment. Combing drawing with digital photography invites the opportunity to experience space from multiple viewpoints and to think and imagine in three dimensions. The process offers a way to see beyond the surface of things to engage and re-envisage living and built cultural heritage. The forms, shapes and patterns that emerge from the experience of being through drawing invoke metaphorical accents and articulations to provide points of reference for the stories and memories of a place.
Keywords: Built Cultural Heritage, Drawing, Digital Photography, Imagination, Immersive.
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Belinda MacGill
Belinda MacGill is a lecturer, artist and researcher at University of South Australia. Belinda won several teaching awards including the Student Choice Excellent Teacher Award (UniSA), Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Teaching (National award) and Excellence in Teaching Award (Flinders University). Her primary research interests draw on the fields of Indigenous education, postcolonial theory, visual methodologies and critical race theory. Her theoretical work is informed by Indigenous knowledges (Nakata, 2004; Smith 1999), Giroux’s border pedagogy (1995) and place based pedagogy (Carter, 2009; Somerville, 2011). She has published in a broad range of articles concerned with postcolonial receptivity, teaching in the contact zone and feminist art theory. -
Epistemology and Entropy: re-reading the world in uncomfortable silence.
Key words: epistemology, spiral methodology, listening, entropy, nature art
These works address the ways in which western epistemology produces knowledge through binaries and the tensions that occur through the intersectionality with non-western knowledges systems. The texts examine how knowledge systems sit uncomfortably with each other through a semiotic reading of the spatial relationships found in the composition. These images demonstrate how knowledge and learning comes to us in ‘moments’ and learning to listen to space (metaphorically) allows us to hear the messages that are gifts that we routinely ignore in pursuit of facts alone.
These two images will be printed on plywood and will be A2.