Digital Humanities: an abridged definition
At first glance, what the Digital Humanities appear to be is one movement spurred on by the Information Age, through which the physical aggregation of humanistic inquiry can be transferred into digital format using varying presentation formats to support interdisciplinary understanding of formerly analog content and sire more efficient and adaptable content preservation.
Upon closer inspection – that is, understanding how people have
been furthering this movement – the goals of the Digital Humanities involve a
lot more than these two alone. The inquiry that can be undertaken in digital formats
characteristic of the Digital Humanities is saliently nested in various tools
of analysis not previously available to researchers in the Humanities.
These tools of analysis might be third-party proprietary services,
such as Agisoft Metashape for photogrammetry or GIS for mapping, or it might be
quantitative analysis in the form of statistical or geometrical models created in
other third-party platforms, usually for free.
Scholars in the Digital Humanities often want freer access to
applications with which to do this research (and presentation), so this is a core
principle for the movement, as it were. The online space should be freer and
cheaper than the in-person space. This is a consistent theme throughout the DH
Manifesto 2.0, but there is no one true authority on the DH.
Through the creative possibility of humanistic scholarship (including
free publication) in the digital realm, a clearer picture of existing knowledge
can be painted, suited for better learning and future content workability, but more
importantly, lines of inquiry not before possible can more easily than before be
drawn and worked.
Two examples that I would consider Digital Humanities work
are the following, the first of which is my work in collaboration with the VRC Lab
at UNH for a class in Spring 2023, and the second is a GIS map I found online.
The first is taking an art piece, scanning it, modeling the scan with more
shapes, 3D-printing the re-creation, and talking about its history and
especially the history of its polychromy. The second is archaeological sites in
Sri Lanka which I found on ArcGIS.
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ReplyDeleteI find it very interesting that GIS maps are incorporated with digital humanities. This shows us how something that was once analog can get digitized. And that this is how most projects in digital humanities get started.
ReplyDeleteI agree, and especially with regard to opening up new avenues for mapping that just weren't feasible in pre-Information Era cartography.
DeleteOhhh, what class did you do the VRC project with? Looks great! And so many great map projects. Having, as you state, "no one true authority on the DH" (Drucker included) gives it room for growth, sharing, and creative transformation. And these conversations here.
ReplyDeleteI had an ETC discovery class called "From Digging to Digital" last Spring with Professor Ivo van der Graaff and Otto Luna. Really engaging stuff and this final project was fun to put together.
ReplyDeleteThat's great! They are doing really cool stuff in DH!
DeleteFrom Victoria: I like how everything was split into simple short paragraphs,
ReplyDeletewhich definitely makes it easier to read. And out of all the blogs for this subject I think this one
explains DH the best, even including views from Scholars
and specific examples of proprietary services
It is important that you emphasized the movement's aim to bring content to scholars for free. This factor has allowed for DH to reach an expansive audience. I also appreciated the examples you gave because they demonstrate the breadth of the field.
ReplyDelete