oulu-e-science methods in arts and humanities

e-Science in the Arts and Humanities:

A methodological perspective

Tobias Blanke, Stuart Dunn, Lorna Hughes, Mark Hedges

Centre for e-Research, King’s College London

Digital Humanities 2008, Oulu

• A&H e-Science: where we are now

• + activities to date in the e-Science Theme (Edinburgh)

• + AHRC-JISC-EPSRC research projects

= a specific methodological agenda in arts and humanities e-Science [which] has been developing over the last two years, and which justifies further investigations

What is e-Science?

• "e-Science is about global collaboration in key areas of science and the next generation of

infrastructure that will enable it." - Sir John Taylor, Former Director General of Research Councils, 2000

• “the development and deployment of a networked infrastructure and culture through which resources – (…) – can be shared in a secure environment, and in which new forms of collaboration can emerge, and new and advanced methodologies explored.” (http://www.ahessc.ac.uk/scoping-survey)

- Sheila Anderson, Director, Centre for e-Research, King’s College London, 2007

“[n]ot only [to] provide unprecedented access to a variety of cultural artifacts but also [to] make it possible to see these artifacts in completely new ways … digital technology [that] can offer us new ways of seeing art, new ways of bearing witness to history, new ways of hearing and remembering human languages, new ways of reading texts, ancient and modern.’

- ‘Our Cultural Commonwealth, ACLS, 2006

Arts and Humanities e-Science Theme

- Hosted by e-Science Institute, Edinburgh

- Facilitates (and funds) a range of activities to scope and develop A&H e-Science

- April ‘07 - November ‘08

http://wiki.esi.ac.uk/E-Science_in_the_Arts_and_Humanities

Theme Led by

Digital images Peter Ainsworth (French)

Sound and moving image Dorothy Ker & Adrian Moore (Music), Andrew Prescott (HRI)

Electronic texts & databases

David Shepherd (HRI; PI)

VR, visualisation and representation

Mark Greengrass (History & HRI)

Theme: Methods and Technologies for Enabling Virtual Research Communities

Theme: Methods and Technologies for Enabling Virtual Research Communities

All workshopsBristolLancasterSheffieldUniversity College London (SLAIS)

Some workshopsBangorBergenCanterbury (New Zealand)GlasgowInstitute of Historical Research (London)King’s College LondonLeedsManchesterWestern Australia

Theme: Methods and Technologies for Enabling Virtual Research Communities

Theme: Application of ontologies in the humanities

Theme: Application of ontologies in the humanities

Some questions from Tuesday

- How can ontological structuring enable humanists to pick and choose their information from the mass available?

- Parallel between the article or book as a source of information, and other people as sources of information

- Mapping/representing domains across languages

- Humanists don't use a database to get knowledge about a topic; they use a book'

http://www.arts-humanities.net/

e.g. roads, rivers

e.g. places

e.g. countries, territories etc

Geographical Information Systems: (vector) GIS

Theme: Geospatial computing

Theme: Geospatial computing

Theme: Geospatial computing

Scoping new applications of GIS GDS

Theme: Future activities

* International Expert Seminar (Nov)

* Workshop on biology and text analysis (Oct)

* Expert seminar and publication on e-science methods and prosopography (Dec)

e-Science projects

•Helen Bailey: Relocating Choreographic Process: The impact of Grid technologies and collaborative memory on the documentation of practice-led research in dance

•Alan Bowman: Image, Text, Interpretation: e-Science, Technology and Documents

•Tim Crawford: Purcell Plus: Exploring an eScience Methodology for Musicologists

•Vincent Gaffney: Medieval Warfare on the Grid: The Case of Manzikert

•Sally MacDonald, E-Curator: 3D colour scans for remote object identification and assessment

•Julian Richards, Archaeotools: Data mining, facetted classification and E-archaeology

•monica schraefel, musicSpace: Using and Evaluating e-Science Design Methods and Technologies to Improve Access to Heterogeneous Music Resources for Musicology

http://www.ahessc.ac.uk/research-projects

e-Science projects: e-Dance

e-Science projects: e-Dance

Battle of Manzikert - 1071 AD

e-Science projects: The Case of Manzikert

Geospatial methods and agent-based approach

e-Science projects: The Case of Manzikert

e-Science projects: VWSAD

An example view from a colour 3D data set, image courtesy of Arius 3D and the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada.

e-Science projects: e-Curator

e-Science methods and next steps

* Artifacts and representation: from text to beyond text

* Data: from data deluge to ‘complexity deluge’

* Collaboration: from talking about stuff to doing stuff

* Interdisciplinarity: new kinds of relationships between disciplines (e.g. dance and archaeology)

* Interpretation: employment of high-end technologies (e.g. HPC) to reach new interpretations of our data