Computing In Social Sciences, Arts And Humanities, Professions

Published 5/4/2016: A deconstruction of distant reading and a close reading of Jorge Luis Borges' "On Rigor in Science." The undecidability of the political and conceptual borders of the story challenges the possibility of any absolutist and orientalist cartographic project (such as Moretti's literary mapmaking). Implications for the digital humanities and distant reading are explored.

To share the huge amount of heterogeneous information to the large-scale of heterogeneous users, the Internet on the computing level should be reconstructed since such a crucial infrastructure was designed
without proper understandings. To upgrade, it must consist of five layers from the bottom to the top, including the routing, the multicasting, the persisting, the presenting and the humans. The routing layer is
responsible for establishing the fundamental substrate and finding resources in accordance with social disciplines. The multicasting layer disseminates data in a high performance and low cost way based on the
routing. The persisting layer provides the services of storing and accessing persistent data efficiently with the minimum dedicated resources.

An intrinsic connection exists between humans and the memories they create; they define who we are, where we came from and our accomplishments and failures. However, decades of research has shown how fragile human memory can be. The early linguistic experiments of Elizabeth Loftus demonstrated how through misinformation and suggestibility we could influence and change the memory of others1. More recent work has led to many theories regarding behaviour, and many theories and guidelines are now available to show how human decision making can be influenced by external stimuli2,3. A large volume of research output exists in this field, but the majority of the research work has focused on language (oral and textual) and its ability to influence readers and listeners.

The digital age has brought along an increased multimediality of communication. This concerns the source data in the field of humanities as well as the ways to perform research and represent the results. The creative nature of digital humanities allows researchers to explore, discover and develop new possibilities for data analysis. Visual representation of data significantly enhances the interpretation potential of the artistic, literary, musical and historical corpora. Visualisation methods developed in other disciplines (such as GIS mapping, graphs, charts and computer graphics based representations) have already been used in some branches of the humanities. However, there is a need to reconsider the assumptions that underlie the use of these visualisations based on our ever improving understanding of human psychology, cognition and perception.

As technologies develop, we are seeing the emergence of the use of multiple modalities in our everyday interfaces (often based on natural language processing technology). However, almost all interaction with digital humanities based visualisations rely on vision as the primary means of passing information to the user4. Visual based interfaces have been used on digital devices and displays for many years and their use may be seen as ‘every day’ and having little impact on the viewer.

However, it is perhaps worth considering that this specific form of visual media interaction requires special care and attention due to its inherently persuasive nature, and the undue reliance that the viewer may place on information presented through a (potentially photorealistic) visualisation medium. There are a number of fundamental implications inherent in the analysis of visual interfaces over textual/oral mediums. Their influence on human memory and behaviour cannot be underestimated. It is important that a rigorous investigation and analysis of all the facets of these interfaces is undertaken.

This keynote speech will introduce research undertaken by the author over the past twenty years that has experimented with, and examined a range of visual based presentation technology. Digital humanities based visual presentation systems (including interactive displays, computer generated graphical presentations, animated graphics and immersive virtual environment technology) have already been used in many innovative contexts5. This talk will illustrate research undertaken to assess the effect of visual technology on viewers (in particular their memory and decision making abilities) and describes some of the issues raised by the experimental results. The talk will connect psychological research with human cognitive and perceptual processes, to allow the evaluation and optimisation of digital humanities visual interfaces. The talk will conclude with a discussion of the potential benefits and problems of designing interactive digital humanities displays when considering the impact on human cognition.

1 Loftus, G. R., and Loftus, E. F. (1974). The influence of one memory retrieval on a subsequent memory retrieval. Memory and Cognition, 2(3), 467-471.
2 Young, W., Davis, M., McNeill, I. M., Malhotra, B., Russell, S., Unsworth, K., and Clegg, C. W. (2015). Changing behaviour: successful environmental programmes in the workplace. Business Strategy and the Environment, 24(8), 689-703.
3 Davis, R., Campbell, R., Hildon, Z., Hobbs, L., and Michie, S. (2015). Theories of behaviour and behaviour change across the social and behavioural sciences: a scoping review. Health Psychology Review, 9(3), 323-344.
4 Powers, D. (2006). Vision in HCI: Embodiment, Multimodality and Information Capacity, Proceedings of the Workshop on the Use of Vision in HCI (VisHCI 2006), Canberra, Australia.  Vol. 56.  Australian Computer Society, Inc.
5 Schofield, D. and Mason, S. (2012), Using graphical technology to present evidence, in: Mason, S. (Ed.), Electronic Evidence, 3rd edn, LexisNexis Butterworths, pp. 217 – 253.

In this paper I argue that some of the computational methods and tools adopted by the CMN (Computational Models of Narrative) community can be beneficial for the scholars working in the area of Digital Humanities (in general) and, in particular, for those interested in Literary Criticisms studies. With this goal in mind, I will provide some examples of the methods and techniques coming from CMN and Artificial Intelligence that have been applied to the analysis of literary “texts”. I will use the term “text” or “textual” here in a wide semiotic perspective (Fabbri and Marrone, 2000, pp. 7-11). Therefore also movies, paintings, pictures and not just books o written productions, can be considered as such.

Consultation is an important feature of research and, increasingly, researchers are required to work in partnership with stakeholders to increase the impact of their work. Our aim is to demonstrate what can be learned from the scholarship on, and practice of, member checking to facilitate productive knowledge exchange. Using dialogical analysis we explore three member check interactions from three different qualitative psychology projects focusing our analysis on difficult moments between researchers and participants conceptualised here as ‘sore spots’. We identify two major genres in these sequences: participant ambivalence and participant challenge. We then consider passages that allow us to explore a more theoretical understanding of these two genres in terms of the metaphor of portraits and mirrors. Overall, we outline how implicit epistemologies and theories of subjectivity (uncomplicated, blank, and complex) may be linked to the way in which stakeholders approach research. We also provide a map with regard to the theories within which member checks can be undertaken, associated research practices in terms of a range of researcher responses to stakeholder ambivalence and challenge, and implications of these moments for knowledge exchange for qualitative research but also for psychological science as a whole. We conclude that sore spots in knowledge exchange process can be productive opportunities of transformational validity.

Keywords: member check; knowledge exchange; research impact; dialogical analysis; participant validation

(1) This semester-long project requires each student to write one entry that will be compiled with their classmates’ entries into an argumentative dictionary and published as an eBook. By “argumentative dictionary,” I mean a book that defines terms, and argues about how they rhetorically function. (2) By writing argumentative dictionary entries that include definitions, historical contextualization, and mini rhetorical analyses, students will learn the fundamentals of rhetorical studies, including the rhetoric of definitions, persuasive writing, argumentation, rhetorical criticism, and discourse analysis, as well as ePublishing. (3) Learning how to write for a public, open-access audience is emphasized.

In this article, I discuss the fact that doing “anthropology at home” involves the same core anthropological methodology as undertaking research abroad. This implies that while doing anthropology at home may have some advantages concerning field practicalities but is equally challenging. There are certain ethical and methodological essentials involved in every anthropological research undertaking. Through my personal experiences of conducting ethnography in Pakistan, I explain that doing anthropology at home does not make exceptions for the researcher in terms of these ethical and methodological aspects.

In these last years the amount of digital images of inscriptions increased very quickly: we do not need accurate textual descriptions of the so-called anaglypha, because we can directly see them. But we have to build a search-by-image, using photos and drawings but also tagging them with standardized-and shared-labels. The issue of the " illustrated inscriptions " brings us to consider more broadly all the visual features of inscriptions, that were conceived as objects to see, not only to read.

L'art comme objet d'étude reçoit ses titres de noblesse en France à la fin du xix e siècle, lorsque sont posés les fondements scientifiques et historiques d'un champ d'étude devenu désormais une discipline : l'histoire de l'art. Cette dernière s'impose progressivement parmi les autres disciplines scientifiques mais avant même qu'elle s'institutionnalise dans des lieux de formation spécialisés, à l'université et au musée, l'art avait déjà établi des liens avec d'autres savoirs, il avait aussi fondé ses qualités sur la maîtrise d'oeuvre et la technique. Histoire de l'art propose dans ce numéro une approche audacieuse des interactions entre art, science et technologie, et se veut résolument tournée vers l'avenir en explorant les facettes du croisement entre les disciplines artistiques et scientifiques (histoire de l'art, histoire naturelle, météorologie, physique, etc.), positionnant de manière pertinente l'art entre le sensible et le pragmatique, entre l'esthétique et le pédagogique, entre l'innovation et la performance technologique. Insuffisamment exploré à ce jour mais constituant un nouveau champ d'étude en devenir dans les départements d'histoire de l'art, ce thème dont nous avions précédemment offert un échantillon à travers la publication d'un article sur l'art cinétique 1 , réunit ici des travaux menés par des chercheurs issus de disciplines variées (histoire de l'art et patrimoine, philosophie, esthétique, arts visuels, arts plastiques et sciences de l'art, histoire des techniques, épistémologie des sciences, sciences de l'ingénieur), et couvre la période allant du Moyen Âge jusqu'au contemporain récent 2. Les formes et champs de l'expérience Si on dénombrait les expériences menées ces dernières années entre scientifiques et artistes, on en relèverait d'intéressantes passées inaperçues ou connues des seuls spécialistes versés dans la question. L'exposition itinérante récente Design4Science, unique dans son genre, consacrée aux représentations artistiques de la biologie moléculaire 3 , a permis d'apprécier le vaste champ des croisements possibles entre les mondes de l'art et de la science. Celle installée entre février et août 2008 au Nobel Museet de Stockholm, lieu emblématique de la consécration scientifique et intellectuelle et institution promouvant l'innovation, accueillait spatialement le visiteur à l'intérieur de ce croisement à travers une oeuvre graphique en néon (fig. 1) du designer Andy Altmann, fondateur du groupe Why not Associates, empruntant au peintre, graveur et poète visionnaire William Blake la phrase What is now proven was once imagined. Il n'y a pas meilleur emprunt que celui finalement de situer l'imagination – qui ne relève pas de l'irrationnel tel que souvent prétendu – comme démarche commune de l'artiste et du scientifique : l'un l'adoptant au profit de la création, l'autre pour dépasser les limites de sa discipline – mathématiques, biologie, physique, etc. Albert Einstein en a d'ailleurs exhorté le recours afin de repousser les frontières de la connaissance : « L'imagination est plus importante que la connaissance. Alors que cette dernière est limitée à ce que nous savons et comprenons, l'imagination embrasse le monde entier, stimulant le progrès, suscitant l'évolution 4. » Voilà donc naturellement réunis artistes et scientifiques qui, grâce à l'imagination féconde, innovent dans l'exposition Design4Science qui a rendu visible ce qui était invisible à l'oeil. Atomes,