ONLINE: DH Fair
This 2020, we will be hosting the DH Fair online. Please join us!
The DH Fair is an annual event that offers the UC Berkeley community the opportunity to share projects at various stages of development, receive invaluable feedback from peers, and reflect on the field more broadly.
April 13th-16th, 2020
Join the DH Listserv to stay in the loop!
Workshop: Gale Digital Scholar Lab
Lecture: Teaching Machines to Draw
DH Fair: Celebration and Poster Session
Workshop: HTML/CSS Toolkit
Lecture: Art & AI
WORKSHOP: GALE DIGITAL SCHOLAR LAB
Monday, April 13, 1:00pm-3:30pm
Wendy Perla Kurtz, PhD, Digital Humanities Specialist
Sarah Ketchley, PhD / Lecturer, University of Washington, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, Digital Humanities Specialist, Gale
Online
Join us for two online sessions on text data mining with Gale's extensive primary resource collections in a web-based platform called Digital Scholar Lab. The first session will provide an overview of the platform; the second session will provide hands-on practice with two of the Digital Scholar Lab's tools. Participants are invited to join for one or both sessions. There will be a 15 minute break between the sessions.
Session 1: Computational Text Analysis in the Cloud: The Digital Scholar Lab
1:00pm-2:00pm
This session introduces you to the Digital Scholar Lab, a cloud-based research platform created by the Gale publishing company, through which you can build custom-curated datasets for computational text analysis. After compiling and cleaning text corpora from primary source documents available through the Library's subscriptions to Gale databases, you can then perform 6 types of computational text analyses using cloud-based tools. Export visualizations, tabular data, and up to 5,000 documents of OCR text.
We’ll walk through how to search, curate, and manage datasets; use analysis tools; and review resulting visualizations. After attending this session you'll feel comfortable building and cleaning datasets, and you'll understand what kinds of analyses are possible in the Digital Scholar Lab.
Session 2: Ngrams and Topic Modeling in The Digital Scholar Lab
2:15pm-3:30pm
You can analyze content in the Digital Scholar Lab using 6 quantitative and qualitative analysis methods. In this session, we’ll explore one quantitative tool (Ngrams) and one qualitative tool (Topic Modeling). We’ll cover what the tools do, how they work, how setting configurations change your outputs, and how they can be used to address research and text cleaning questions. This will be a hands-on workshop, so bring your laptop if possible. No prior experience with text analysis necessary. Consider attending Session 1 before this workshop.
LECTURE: NEURAL ABSTRACTIONS
Monday, April 13, 6:30pm-8:00pm
Tom White, Victoria University of Wellington School of Design
Art, Technology, and Culture Lecture
Online
How do machines perceive the world? Tom White has investigated enabling computer vision systems to draw their own visual abstractions through the creation of abstract ink print artworks. Though these artificial vision systems are trained only on real world images, when forced to express themselves abstractly they are able to create simpler forms that match their internal representations. These prints are also understood universally across most AI systems trained to recognise the same objects. It’s art by AI, for AI. By giving the algorithms the ability to express themselves directly, we are better able to see the world through the eyes of a machine. Visit the ATC website for other events.
No registration required. Join here.
DH FAIR: CELEBRATION AND POSTER SESSION
Tuesday, April 14th, 1:00pm-3:30pm
Online
James Smithies, Director of King’s Digital Lab in London, will first speak on the topic of Applying AI to storytelling. Then, learn about recent and current Digital Humanities work at UC Berkeley and beyond through our virtual poster session. We're currently seeking presenters -- propose your project here.
Applied Research in the Arts & Humanities: The Applying AI to Storytelling Project
The UK government is promoting collaboration between the creative industries and universities, through the £33m Audiences of the Future programme and the £80m Creative Clusters programme. The initiatives enable what Etzkowitz et al would refer to as the ‘triple helix’ between universities, government and industry, with an emphasis on next-generation entertainment and arts production. Transferring knowledge from universities into the creative industries is a key part of the policy. This paper describes a project that analysed and improved cross-sector collaboration using Digital Humanities (DH) methods in combination with narrative theory. The project was developed by To Play For, a pioneer in interactive storytelling, and a DH ‘research software engineering’ (RSE) team at King’s Digital Lab. The goal was to improve the innovative potential of To Play For’s Charisma.ai immersive story-telling and game development engine. The primary result was a demo based on an award-winning immersive theatre piece that showcased Charisma’s ability to ‘remember’ user input and adapt the story experience accordingly, and a publishable collaborative model. The project sits at the intersection of DH, engineering, and the creative industries, demonstrating that meaningful knowledge transfer across these three domains is possible.
Registration is required to receive the Zoom link. Register here.
WORKSHOP: HTML/CSS TOOLKIT
Wednesday, April 15th, 11:10am-12:30pm
Online
If you've tinkered in WordPress, Google Sites, or other web publishing tools, chances are you've wanted more control over the placement and appearance of your content. With a little HTML and CSS under your belt, you'll know how to edit "under the hood" so you can place an image exactly where you want it, customize the formatting of text, or troubleshoot copy & paste issues. By the end of this workshop, interested learners will be well prepared for a deeper dive into the world of web design. This workshop will be hands-on and online.
LECTURE: ART & AI
Thursday, April 16, 5:00pm-6:30pm
Christiane Paul, Chief Curator / Director of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Professor at The New School and Adjunct Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art
Response by Claudia Shmuckli
Online
In 1920, Karl Capek coined the term "robot" in a play about mechanical workers organizing a rebellion to defeat their human overlords. A century later, increasing popularism, inequality, and xenophobia require us to reconsider our assumptions about labor, trade, political stability, and community. At the same time, advances in artificial intelligence and robotics, fueled by corporations and venture capital, challenge our assumptions about the distinctions between humans and machines. To explore potential linkages between these trends, the term "Robo-Exoticism" characterizes a range of human responses to AI and robots that exaggerate both their negative and positive attributes and reinforce fears, fantasies, and stereotypes.
No registration required. Join here.
PRESENT A POSTER AT THE DH FAIR POSTER SESSION!
- We welcome all Digital Humanities and Computational Text Analysis projects.
- All members of the UC Berkeley community are invited to participate.
- Projects can be completed or in progress.
- Poster Session will be online.
- Poster format is flexible.
- Deadline for poster submissions: Friday, April 10th by 11:59pm.
- Submit your proposal here.
SPONSORS
Arts Research Center
Berkeley Center for New Media
DH Working Group (Townsend Center)
D-Lab
The Library
V-Lab