vra 2013 digital humanities, taormina

Digital Technologies and the Visual Arts

Reconfiguring Knowledge in the Digital Age

John J. Taormina • Duke University

VRA 2013



Colloquium 2009-10, 2010-11

6 Original Co-conveners:

• Rachel Brady (computer science: visualization)

• Caroline Bruzelius (art and architectural history: medieval)

• Sheila Dillon (art history/archaeology: classical)

• Mark Olson (visual studies: new media)

• Raquel Salvatella de Prada (visual arts: computer graphics)

• John Taormina (visual resources: image management)



Colloquium 2009-10, 2010-11

Mission of Colloquium:

Expand and develop our collaborations, conversations, and reflections on the implication of new technologies for the field of material culture. The colloquium theme would focus on rethinking teaching with new technologies in both undergraduate and graduate programs.



Logistics

• Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI) Discussion Group Grants

• Group met every two weeks at lunchtime

• University faculty, staff, and students were often invited

• Outside speakers for public lectures and group discussions

• A number of themes for discussion were decided early on



Invited Guests

• Faculty and graduate students from Art, Art History & Visual

Studies and Classical Studies

• Deputy director of IT in Duke Libraries

• Fine arts librarian, GIS librarian

• Scholarly communication officer in Duke Libraries



Invited Guests

• University’s digital strategist

• Computer scientists from Visualization Technology Group

• Editor of Duke Press

• Faculty from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, NC State

University, and NC Central University



Public Lectures

Maurizio Forte, University of California-Merced (now at Duke)

“Experiencing the Past: Cyber-Heritage, Research and Education”



Public Lectures

Arnie Flatten, Coastal Carolina University

“Pixels, Paint and Pylons: Integrating Teaching, Technology and

Training in Art History”



Spring 2009: Wired! New Representational Technologies for Historical Materials

• Precipitated application

for FHI Discussion Group Grant



Wired! Visualizing the Past

2009 Course Project: Classical (Instr: Sheila Dillon)

“Reconstructing the Past: The Statue Landscape of the Hadrianic Baths at Aphrodisias”

—Elizabeth Baltes, Umberto Plaja, Akara Lee, Catherine Stanley




2009 Course Project: Medieval (Instr: Caroline Bruzelius)

“San Francesco a Folloni, Campania, Italy”

—Michal Kosinski and Rebecca Wood



Technologies + Humanities

• Training and assumptions about how knowledge is organized

and taught are being shattered by the possibilities of new

technologies

• The evolution of a site/building could be represented over time

• Topics could be taught in new and more effective ways

• Potential of new technologies to communicate scholarly

research



Technologies + Humanities

• Student acquire new technical skills while engaging with

primary research materials to create new interpretations of

the data

• By engaging in hands-on reconstructions of a site/building,

students become active rather than passive learners



Duke Visual Studies Initiative (2007-2012)

“Visual Studies at Duke operates at the interface of science, social sciences, and the humanities.”



Topics Considered for Discussion

• Digital literacy

• Pedagogical practices

• Spatial history (movement through time)

• Evidence and attribution

• Learning the technical tools

• Participatory learning



Topics Considered for Discussion (continued)

• Public colloquia

• Entertainment vs. scholarship

• Collaborative teaching and research vs. single engagement

• Presentation of the product

• Scholarly validity and viability



Year 1: Final Topics for Discussion

• Digital literacy (fall)

• Pedagogy (winter)

• Scholarly viability (spring)



Digital Literacy

In attendance:

• Co-conveners

• Computer science faculty who teach in Information Science +

Information Studies (ISIS) Program

• Deputy director of IT in Duke Libraries



Digital Literacy (continued)

• What level of competence and/or understanding of theories

behind the tools is required?

• Is there a specific set of skills we can identify that we want

students to have?



Digital Literacy (continued)

• Mapping: Google Maps, Google Earth

• Timeline: Flash, Final Cut, AfterEffect

• 2D: layer-based software, Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch-Up,

coloring and modeling softare

• 3D: SecondLife, Croquet, VirTour, Sketch-Up, Maya, AutoCad,

Foto-3D



Pedagogy

In attendance:

• Co-conveners

• Faculty and students from Art, Art History & Visual Studies and

Classical Studies

• Scholarly communication officer from Libraries

• Fine arts librarian



Pedagogy (continued)

• The “transparency of digital constructions”

• What is the evidence? How can it be displayed?

• What are the aesthetic issues?

• Citation and the nature of evidence and display

• Spatial history and archaeography: transparent, documented, and

scholarly viable new medium

• Building in interactivity and its implications




Working with different media requires different tools:

• Sculpture, in situ or displaced (placement, modeling, coloration)

• Architecture (reconstruction, depicting change over time)

• Painting (in situ frescoes, altarpieces)

• Cities/urbanism/urban spaces (mapping)




• How to solve training issues:

—Baseline set of IT skills and literacy

—Build an online repository of discipline-specific tutorials that

integrate with other training modules such as Lynda.com

—Public workshops

• Equilibrium between traditional learning (chronology, style, theory)

and what is possible with new media technologies



Scholarly Viability

In attendance:

• Co-conveners

• Other faculty and students (from Duke, UNC-CH, NCSU, NCCU)

• University’s digital strategist

• Editor of Duke Press

• Scholarly communication officer from Libraries



Scholarly Viability (continued)

• Can digital projects be considered for tenure and promotion?

• Is there an expectation that they are ancillary to the written

document?

• What is a “good” product?

• Issues around “collaborative work” for tenure and promotion

• Scholarly communication and new media journals



2013: Wired! Visualizing the Past

www.dukewired.org

Original Wired! Group:Rachel Brady, Caroline Bruzelius, Sheila Dillon, Raquel Salvatella de Prada, Mark Olson




“On with Their Heads: Creation, Destruction and

Recontextualization”

—Iara Dundas, Elizabeth Narkin, Tim Prizer




The Wired! Group is committed to engaging digital technologies in courses and long-term research initiatives, training students at all levels in order to ask research questions about material culture in the man-made environment. Our courses fuse technologies with the study of sculpture, architecture, urbanism, and painting in order to prepare our students for the 21st century.




Wired! is also committed to communicating research knowledge to a broad public. Our integration of visualization technologies into the regular curriculum represents structural and systemic change in the way knowledge is interrogated in teaching and research.




Wired! projects fuse questions in the Humanities (as traditionally construed) with social, economic, and political issues. Our work engages the viewer in novel ways that revolutionize the role of learning in relation to the public. We are committed to making scholarship available and engaging to a broad audience.


Digital Technologies and the Visual ArtsThe Wired! Lab

• Half million dollar grant from the

Office of the Provost

• Lab, hardware and software,

one IT support staff person

• Opened November 2011


Digital Technologies and the Visual ArtsThe Wired! Lab



John J. Taormina • Duke University

VRA 2013

vra 2013 digital humanities, taormina

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