Being (digital) Humans

The line between ‘digital’ and ‘human’ worlds is becoming increasingly blurred. In the age of Facebook, Twitter, smartphones and hand-held computers we are all, in a sense, ‘digital humans’. While this offers almost unlimited access to new spheres of knowledge and data, and empowers millions of people as producers of knowledge and culture, it also raises questions about how we make knowledge and how we interact with one another and with the arts, humanities, and scientific and technical disciplines.

In this panel, four ‘digital humanists’ will introduce their work and explain how research in the digital humanities is affecting everything from how we engage with culture in museums, to how we navigate the cities around us. How does using the web as a platform for experiencing the humanities affect our perception of history and culture?

How should the humanities contribute debates about visualisation, linking data, and adaptive technology development? What kind of ethical questions are raised in creating large-scale digital archives, information management systems, and data visualisations? Could humanists imagine new types of presentation software beyond PowerPoint? Can motion be knowledge? How are digital approaches influencing and altering knowledge production? How do we develop a more critical approach to the digital humanities that will enrich the human experience online?

Come along and find out!

The event is followed by a rare opportunity to see Professor Eric Jarosinski, #failedintellectual and founder of @NeinQuarterly, the internet’s leading ‘compendium of utopian negation’.

Presenters

Professor Lorna Hughes , an expert on digital cultural heritage, will discuss how digital access and use of museum, archive and library content changes our understanding of, and interaction with, primary historical sources. As more and more of our heritage is put online, what do we gain and what do we lose? Does digital access enable a richer experience of the past? How is user engagement with digital heritage understood and measured?

Professor Sally-Jane Norman will look at how artists are using computing machines and code to extend our sense of liveness, and explore new kinds of embodiment and reach. The arts give us unique ways to make sense of our increasingly digital environments, but can they help us to make sense of ’being human’ in a digital age?

Professor Todd Presner teaches intellectual history, media studies, urban humanities, and digital humanities at the University of California Los Angeles. He will draw on examples ranging from the digitisation of Holocaust testimony to social media mapping using Twitter feeds, to inquire about the place of ‘the ethical’ in the digital humanities.

Professor Patrik Svensson builds academic spaces and writes about screens, knowledge infrastructure and the field of digital humanities. He will reveal what happens when you tell conference presenters PowerPoint is not allowed, and how humanists can help imagine new types of presentation software and spaces.

As our Festival events are free, not everyone who asks for tickets comes to our events. To make sure we have a full house we allocate more tickets than there are seats. We do our best to get the numbers right, but unfortunately we occasionally have to disappoint people. Admission is on a first come, first served basis, so please arrive in good time for the start of the event.