Digital Humanities / Art History

This project, by an aspiring art historian and digital humanist, aims to study how digitalisation is affecting the humanities. My main focus is on the field of art history. By SN

[the-digital-turn]

Visual literacy?

Whereas the turn to empirical research in the age of enlightenment led to the visualization in an attempt to create universal scientific data, visualization today is more complicated. The scientific visualization today might aim to condense large amounts of data which would lose its comprehensibility if just written down, or it might aim to create more accurate depictions made possible by the ever-advancing technological tools. The latter was exemplified by José van Dijck, in his text The Transparent Body: A Cultural Analysis of Medical Imaging (2005), where he in the first chapter gives examples how medicine has benefitted from new imaging technology but also discusses how the presentation and reliability on visual data has affected our view on our health.

    Lorraine Daston’s article On Scientific Observation (2008) supports this view by writing not only the subjectivity of the party who chose to visualize information but also stressing the subjectivity of the interpreter of the image. Though it is sometimes easy to think that image is worth a thousand words and anyone who sees it, sees the same thing. This could not be further from the truth. Visual interpretation can require years of rigorous learning and many images can truly be understood by experts in the fields. Using the example by van Dijck, though layperson can understand the general content of an x-ray image only trained doctors and nurses can see the crucial details which inform them of their patients’ health.

         Digitalization has changed the creation and presentation of visual information. Though visual interpretation should in most cases be intuitive, it is important to provide, and demand description of data depicted and, in some cases, even instructions on how to interpret it to ensure understanding of the given information. To finish with the reminder of van Dijck’s notion of the subjectivity of presentation as well as interpretation it is important to remain critical towards how and why, is visualized information provided.

Articles mentioned in the text:

- Daston, Lorraine: “On Scientific Observation.” Isis 99.1 (2008): 97–110. Online. Internet. 31 May. 2012.

- Dijck, José van: The transparent body: a cultural analysis of medical imaging. Seattle, Wash: University of Washington Press, 2005. (Chapter 1: Mediated Bodies and the Ideal of Transparency, p. 3-19.)

[the-digital-turn]

Distant vs close reading

    Close reading is a familiar concept to anyone who has ever studied in the field of humanities (and to be honest in any specialized field). Now some scholars are challenging the practice by moving towards distant reading. A technique relies on quantitative data in the discovery of new patterns and individual outliers. A technique best supported by the increasing digitalization of information because, as Moretti points out in his text The Slaughterhouse of literature (2000), the capacity of humans to absorb and analyze data is limited.

    Moretti uses the example of the 19th-century literary canon and, more to the point, what is left outside of it. To understand the literature of the period one would have to have read everything or at least a large portion (which according to tens of thousands book in England alone) of it to begin to understand what was written and why only some remain today. No human could ever read such an amount of books word by word and then make sense of them in literary theory. Some of Moretti’s distant reading theory is summarized by Kathryn Schultz in The New York Times, in which she notes Moretti’s aim to fully replace close reading with distant reading instead of supporting one with the other.

    Where Moretti’s text and examples are clearly applicable to historical data, an alternative focus is introduced by Lev Manovich, who in his text Cultural Analytics, Social Computing and Digital Humanities (2017), gives examples more relating to data collected and often generated in the digital environment. In his case the quantities of data, as an example that created daily in social media, as simply too large to study case by case. Manovich does not imply that distant reading should replace close reading, but it should simply be an additional method. He writes, “However, ideally the analysis of the larger patterns will also lead us to individual cases, such as individual creators, their particular creations or cultural behaviors. For instance, the computational analysis of all photos made by a photographer during her long career may lead us to the outliers – the photos that are most different from all the rest. Similarly, we may analyze millions of Instagram images shared in multiple cities to discover the types of images unique to each city.” In other words, as I wrote earlier, using distant reading in order to find new patterns and distinguish outliers of the earlier assumed whole. It would make sense to assume that to analyze large amounts of digital data one would use digital tools, however in one of his studies the Selfiecity he explains their process being largely manual labor done by (outsourced) human workers. The study is clearly not his best example to demonstrate new distant reading techniques, since though it analyses sizable data it does not provide meaningful answers, but rather screens and categorizes data for further research.

           Where Moretti’s idea to replace close reading sounds too ambitious and Manovich’s still unrefined example of using the technique proves it too ambitious, the method is worth noticing but clearly as an addition to existing research methods to answer new questions instead of replacing them.

Articles mentioned in the text:

- Franco Moretti, "The Slaughterhouse of literature" (originally published in:  MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly 61.1 (2000) 207-227

- Lev Manovich, "Cultural Analytics, Social Computing and Digital Humanities",   The Datafied Society Studying Culture through Data Edited by Mirko Tobias Schäfer & Karin van Es, pp. 56-69.

- What Is Distant Reading?, Kathryn Schulz, June 24, 2011, The New York Times Sunday Book Review |  THE MECHANIC MUSE

[the-digital-turn]

Digital tools for digital humanities

    Two things came to my mind when reading about the digital tool development for the humanities. Is digital tool making simply a solution to questions we know to ask now and are the new questions they enable us to ask simply a secondary benefit, and expectations and requirements of digital literacy.

        Dennis Tenen writes “…the university is an unfit place to develop “big” software. We are much better poised to remain agile, to tinker, and to experiment.”. Later in his text, he also suggests that digital tools users should build the tools they need themselves to better understand how they function. In my mind this implies both to having a question, that new digital tools should be developed by scholars as they come up with questions, they don’t yet have tools to answer. On the other hand, to have had developed a tool themselves and understanding the full potential of a tool might enable researchers to take their question to the next level and open new applications of a digital tool. For the ideal future solution, as a result of increasing digital literacy, researchers could innovate and initiate the building of necessary digital tools and the ideas would be successfully communicated to specialized digital tools developers in order to perfect the tool.

In an article Building Better Digital Humanities Tools: Toward broader audiences and user-centred designs (Gibbs & Owens, 2012) the writers refer to a study from 2010, in which it was discovered that roughly half of digital tool developers did consider the amount of users as an indication of success. The article further concludes that part of the problem with low usage of a tool might be partly result of the mistaken expectations by the developers, “that people who are really interested in using the tool will figure out how to make the tool relevant to their own work.”. This suggests a certain level of lack of communication between developers and users, also referred to by Dennis Tenen. The lack of communication leads to users not understanding how to use the tools. Furthermore, I think that the lack of communication between the digital tools development field and for example the humanities field lead to a misconception of the digital abilities of each group. The developers, “digitally able”, might form the idea of a more digitally literate group of users than actually exists. Digital literacy increases each generation; however, we are still at the turning point where its need is acknowledged, but not yet acquired by most. Many countries have recognized the need and importance of digital literacy and have begun to incorporate into their educational systems at all age levels. Whereas additional digital skills now are an advantage, in maybe already 10-15 years they are a requirement. As a result, the transparency and intuitive interfaces demanded by users now might be unnecessary in a decade as the new generations of humanities scholars can see the functions, structure and application of a tool directly from its code or be able to create their own tools. For now, digital humanities scholars should function as a bridge between the two still separate fields.

Articles mentioned in the text:

- Tenen, D. (2012). Blunt Instrumentalism: on tools and methods.

- Gibbs, F., & Owens, T. (2012). Building better digital humanities tools. DH Quarterly, 6(2).

[the-digital-turn]

Interdisciplinary trading zones in digital humanities

    When one thinks of art history, it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that it is the result of two fields merging together. In all honesty before today I had not thought of the origins of art history as an academic field and it wasn’t until having read about interdisciplinary and trading zones, terms which I will come back to in a bit, in an article by Collins et al. in 2007, that I started to think how those phrases connect to my current studies. After a quick web search, I came onto two conclusions on the topic, the birth of art history is a complicated matter, which seems to originate from earlier times when scholars where more multidisciplinary and having been redefined over time. Secondly, it is easier to deduce the origins of newer interdisciplinary fields resulting from trading zones. For the past 100 years, it seems as though we have aimed to be experts in the specific field thus creating clearer definitions and confines to each discipline thus making it clearer to identify the originating sources when borders between different fields begin to blur.

        The article mentioned above introduces a concept and charts of the ways concepts or boundary objects interact and sometimes even fuse together thus creating interdisciplinary fields. Though the article strictly focusses on the explanation of different types of concepts, Collins also refers to another text, by Susan Star from 2010, which looks deeper into the issues on interaction and communication between concepts/fields and further explains the notion of boundary objects.

As mentioned earlier the concepts of these texts, in connection to art history still requires further research, thus I’d like to draw the attention to digital humanities. Collins lists four categories of trading zones: inter-language trading zone, subversive trading, enforced trading zone and fractionated trading zone. Digital humanities are difficult to pinpoint on the chart, as it is so keen to declare itself as an independent field, yet it’s connections to fields in humanities create dependence. Aspects of digital humanities could position the field into three of the categories. The fractionated definition would emphasize the independence of the fields it aims to connect with and their heterogeneous relationship. On the other hand features of subversive corner of the diagram can be recognized in the growing demand for digitalization in doing, accessing as well as publishing research in the fields of humanities. Many fields of humanities thus having to accept the need for digital humanities in guiding and connecting them in the modern world. The final, inter-language category is not really yet here but is visible in the future. It is difficult to say how the final version of digital humanities manifests itself in connection to different fields of humanities in the future. Perhaps as a multidisciplinary field collaborating cross fields effortlessly, or as an umbrella concept with specialized fields connected by common tools though still independent in their renewed definitions, or something else which is of yet unforeseeable.

Articles mentioned in the text:

(links in the text)

- Collins, H., Evans, R., & Gorman, M. (2007). Trading zones and interactional expertise.   Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A,   38(4), 657–666.

- Leigh Star, S. (2010). This is not a boundary object: Reflections on the origin of a concept. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 35(5), 601-617. 

[the-digital-turn]

A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai), 1993 by Jeff Wall

I chose this image as one of ten images I used to visualise my field of study, art history. It depicts people in an exhibition observing an artwork by Jeff Wall. I chose the image as I wanted to remind of the importance of exhibitions and the interaction between the artist, art work and the viewer, which are important phenomenons which art historian study. I chose this particular image and art work because I was impressed by an article I read last year which described how images by Jeff Wall were among the first to be accepted into museums as “high art”. 

Image from:

https://www.knowledge.ca/program/jeff-wall-order-make-picture

[the-digital-turn]

Inde page of Le vite de' piu eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori (Florence, 1568), by Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574), Gift of E. J. Rousuck

I chose this image as one of ten images I used to visualise my field of study, art history. It is an image in an index page of book know to all art historians. The lives of the artist, sculptors and architects by Giorgio Vasari, who for this book collected biographies of the most successful artists known in his time. I chose this image as the book is still considered a valuable contemporary description of artists in the 16th century Italy, the book is referred to and studied, I’d imagine, in every art history program in the western world. 

Image from:

https://www.nga.gov/features/slideshows/Rare-collection-highlights.html

[the-digital-turn]

Grapes, 2014, by Ai Weiwei

I chose this image as one of ten images I used to visualise my field of study, art history. It is an image of a sculpture I saw in the Ai Weiwei @ Helsinki exhibition in the HAM (Helsinki Art Museum) in 2016. 

Image from:

https://www.ts.fi/kulttuuri/kuvataide/818736/Kaikki+on+taidetta+kaikki+on+politiikkaa

[the-digital-turn]

Week 2 - Art History vs. Digital Humanities

How do digital humanities change the way we see and study art history? Digitization of literature, and in this case more importantly of artworks, has changed the way we can study art history. The digitization off literature that enables more efficient research as search engines provide the most accurate texts to our immediate questions is not an advantage only in the field of humanities but of all research. However, the digitization of artworks into images accessible to a large audience, scholars and art enthusiast alike, has changed the game permanently. Low quality, images in art books are still a common day occurrence, and the further back we look at the quality of depiction of art in printed media only declines. You would have had to travel to see a specific work, assuming it was on display at the moment, hoping that the crowd in the museum would allow you close enough and give you time truly to look. Of course, that will never go away, but with modern technology anyone anywhere can access innumerable images of artworks many so high quality that we can observe even the faintest brush strokes in paintings and see the finest details of different artworks. This is enabled by the digitization done by all major museums, and even many collectors and auction houses, which worldwide are archiving their collections and sharing it on their own websites as well as independent platforms online.

           Until the end of the 20thcentury, the canons and views in art history as we know it today have been viewed largely from the western perspective. An issue which is not truly tackled even today, however, the access to cultural, historical and artistic data through the internet may have slowly begun to change the situation. Aside from research, the internet provides platforms for artists to be inspired, to connect, to exhibit and even to create their art in ways unlike never before. It creates a new perspective for art historians to study contemporary, taking into consideration how technology and connectedness influence art created in the present world.

           Until recent years, it feels as though digital humanities has concentrated on creating new tools for all the other fields of humanities, except for art history. However, in the past few years the new tools for image recognition and advances in AI, in analyzing and creating art, have been of great interest to many. Though it is still difficult to see how they will affect the study of art history. They will create change, but it left to see if the effects will be as fundamental as the digitization of archives during the first wave of digital humanities.

           Digital skills are proving to be more and more necessary in almost all fields of life and in my opinion also in art history. I’ll be interested to see whether the field will change and advance step by step adopting new tools as they are developed or persist to stay in its current ways until it is forced to take a giant leap to keep its relevance in the rapidly evolving world.