Shifts in thinking: DH definitions

Beginning of class: Digital Humanities is a field established within academic institutions that extend methods and practices for research, archive, pedagogy, etc. that takes place on a digital platform.

The functionalities of DH that interested me the most during the course of the class discussion was its possibility to add layers to text and academic discourse. In a grant report I was preparing, about MoMA’s own experimental platform, post.at.moma.org, I found myself discussing its aim to encourage networked learning, and allow multiple voices to be added to a single essay, or any presentations on the site. Though the design is not exactly effectively conveying these goals (needs improvement) but our main interest in building this site, I hope, will continue to grow and encourage a new way of writing/discussing art histories.

Another aspects of DH I found appealing was some project’s aim to provide accessibility to knowledge making and resources, and mode of work, which is collaboration. I recently realized that while it is very important to think about preservation and of vulnerable Japanese experimental film and video is urgent, providing access to researchers (say though an online platform) is the end-goal of the effort at large. By providing access, there may be new scholarship that emerge, which could lead to exhibitions, screenings, conferences, etc. The emergence of interest (currently there is not much research being done on Japanese early video), there could be opportunity for fund-raising for preservation of works. My thinking in the past couple weeks has been reversed: from preservation–> accessibility, to accessibility–>preservation.

Post-class definition: Digital Humanities is a current development in academia in which disciplines are extending their research methods, aided by new technology, to include among other characteristics, a collaborative mode of working, layered knowledge making, and opening accessibility to research data as well as systems of knowledge making.

 

 

1 thought on “Shifts in thinking: DH definitions

  1. Eileen Clancy

    Your thinking about access to the archive leading to preservation of materials is on the right track. Access is the primary vehicle for collections to create a sustainable context for their materials. Rick Prelinger, one of the smartest people in the moving image archives field, has written the definitive article on access. He argues: “While preservation may have been archives’ original raison d’être, access is their connection with the world. Access is more than simply providing user services. It’s a formative practice without a logical endpoint, merging the internal activity of the archives with scholarship, historical awareness, cultural production, and public discourse.”

    Prelinger, Rick. “Points of Origin: Discovering Ourselves through Access.” The Moving Image 9.2 (2009): 164–175. Print.

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