As Victoria, Jentery, and I discuss elsewhere (based on research we conducted with Danielle and Katherine), Mary Jameson was a key developer of early optophones despite the fact that historical sources diminish her contributions to media history by referring to her as a demonstrator or user. Prototyping the optophone becomes a way to better understand how Jameson (and others like her) may have contributed to the optophone and developed it over time without assuming we can ever inhabit or recover that labour. It also becomes a way to write Jameson into a historical record that contains significant omissions, exaggerations, and distortions. For example, sources written by sighted people—as well as current historical narratives about the optophone—focus on the conversion of text into sound, at the expense of the demanding procedures involved in setting up and navigating the various components of the optophone’s frame.

Photograph of an optophone care of Robert Baker and Blind Veterans UK

Moreover, sources such as The Moon Element, by E.E. Fournier d’Albe (credited as the optophone’s inventor), also tend to reference reading speed as the ultimate measure of success and the means by which all blind people’s problems would be solved. Although historical documents suggest that, after years of practice, Mary Jameson read at a rate of up to sixty-words-per-minute on an optophone, this rate depended tremendously on which reading optophone Jameson was using, when, and in what context. Furthermore, if we read the writing of operators such as Jameson and Harvey Lauer, we might find different measures of success altogether, including how the optophone allowed them to access not only texts previously legible only to sighted people but also materials beyond the conventional print categories that Fournier d’Albe used as a baseline or default. Examples of the latter include using an optophone to check if a pen is working or to read labels on packaged goods in order to relabel them in Braille.

MLab prototype of an optophone frame with an RPi and camera

If we prototype the conversion process itself, then we also get a sense of just how intricate early conversion and interpretation were, despite the fact that sighted people such as Fournier d’Albe suggested they were quite simple. In the MLab, I am currently using a combination of Python, OpenCV (open source computer vision), a Raspberry Pi, and—somewhat ironically—OCR technology to recreate the optophone’s conversion mechanism or “tracer.”

Image of the “tracer” in a 1920 issue of Scientific American

Tracers would scan each line of type with continuous beams of light, producing an analogue stream of noise and silence corresponding with their movement across the page. But since OCR reads each line discretely, character by character, then it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to capture the same degree of fine-grained feedback and control that an operator likely had in the past. Put this way, prototyping points to what we cannot access instead of what is available at hand. Exposing the limitations of current technologies when remaking past ones also disputes the common assumption that innovation always marches in a teleological or straightforward path toward a new and improved future.

Python script for an optophone prototype

From this perspective, prototyping may resist grand historical narratives by stressing the everyday work of incremental development as much in its consideration of the past as it does in present-day praxis. It also highlights differences between then and now and points to absences in the historical record that can be addressed only through conjecture, never entirely proved or disproved. In doing so, it foregrounds how media history is contingent and slippery, and manifests this elusiveness in material form. As a kind of inquiry, prototyping acts with materials even as it works against the grain of written history.

Post by Tiffany Chan, attached to the KitsForCulture and HASTAC project, with the news, physcomp, and fabrication tags. Featured image care of the MLab. Thanks to Robert Baker (Blind Veterans UK), Mara Mills (New York University), and Matthew Rubery (Queen Mary University of London) for their support and feedback on this research.

At UVic on October 10th, participants will gather together at the Maker Lab (TEF 243), watch a live panel of speakers at CUNY, send questions to the panelists, and contribute (if they wish) to open access documents about writing and defending non-traditional or digital dissertations. Chaired by Cathy N. Davidson, the panel will consist of Jade E. Davis (Communications, University of North Carolina), Dwayne Dixon (Cultural Anthropology, Duke University), Gregory T. Donovan (Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University), Amanda Licastro (English, Graduate Center, CUNY), and Nick Sousanis (Teachers College, Columbia University).

According to Cathy Davidson, the goal of the workshop is “to showcase, celebrate, and model what it takes to not only produce an innovative dissertation but how to enact the institutional change required to have one approved by your university. That means knowing institutional rules, having the right mentors, being willing to explain yourself in terms of existing structures, goals, and aspirations and how your work moves those along, etc. This session is about success strategies.”

The event’s hashtag is #remixthediss, and details about the UVic gathering are below. If you are at UVic, and you would like to participate in the workshop, then please email maker@uvic.ca by Wednesday, October 8th to register. There is no registration fee, and we especially encourage graduate students to register. Space is limited; participants will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. All involved are encouraged to bring their laptops, if they have them.

What Is a Dissertation? New Models, New Methods, New Media

Friday, October 10th, 1pm – 2:30pm Pacific
Maker Lab in the Humanities (TEF 243)
Event hasthag: #remixthediss
Register for free (by 8 October) via email to maker@uvic.ca
Send any questions to maker@uvic.ca

We’re looking forward to participating in this event with our partners at UVic, CUNY, Duke, and elsewhere. Hope to see you in the MLab on October 10th!

Post by Shaun Macpherson, attached to the HASTAC project, with the news tag. Images for this post care of HASTAC.

The admittedly experimental theme of the popup makerspace was, “Whose Hand Am I Holding Anyway?” We used the space’s temporary infrastructure to draw public attention to the intricate relationships between bodies, data, immediacy, and distance in a “global” digital economy. We first cast hands in plaster and then—with anyone who stumbled upon the space—created silicon proxies of those hands. The proxies were embedded with sensors, and later in the conference we wrote an Arduino sketch to not only log when the sensors were triggered but also display messages via a serial readout. Conference participants could shake hands with these rather defamiliarizing proxies, an often amusing encounter that was immediately confirmed on a screen in the space. The handshake data was then logged so that we’d know, by the conference’s conclusion, how many people the proxies had “met.”

We also used the proxies to teach Arduino-based programming and “hands-on” prototyping, having a bit of fun with the hand as a fetish in maker communities. These creative activities also became opportunities to have some fascinating and lively conversations with people from around the world, including various regions of Peru, about the Internet of Things, data surveillance, the politics of making, material culture, and—more generally—the abstraction of data from bodies and social relations.

In short, our makerspace demonstration sought to provide a simplified example of how—as our behaviours are tracked, logged, and rendered value-productive across “intelligent” networks of communication—our very understanding of bodies and their edges is muddled. This scenario is cause for both fascination and concern.

A proxy together with a printed description of “Whose Hand Am I Holding Anyway?” at HASTAC 2014

Post by Nina Belojevic, Shaun Macpherson, Katie McQueston, and Jentery Sayers, attached to the Makerspace and HASTAC projects, with the news, fabrication, and physcomp tags. Images for this post care of Nina Belojevic, Shaun Macpherson, Katie McQueston, and Jentery Sayers.

As Shaun Macpherson and I argue elsewhere, in “Publish This Kit” Part I and Part II, the kits afford a form of tacit engagement that encourages audiences to reassemble historical technologies using current materials in order to better understand the material relationships between culture and media.

The presentation Jentery and I gave at HASTAC 2014 outlined the content of a typical kit, the principles of the kits project, and an example kit. Each kit will contain a combination of instructions and parts required for assembly. The instructions will not only provide an overview of actions required to reassemble a historical device; they will also describe how specific elements work as well as unpack how those elements are culturally embedded. Furthermore, the kits will contain contextual materials in print and/or digital formats. By developing kits that can be accessible in various formats—as both bits and atoms, if you will—we can circulate them in multiple ways: for example, as web-based scholarship, as physical objects to be delivered by post, and as elaborate kits that could be acquired through GLAM (Gallery, Library, Archive, and Museum) institutions, such as science and technology museums. This variety should also spark an array of counterfactual interpretations and prompt some serious speculation. (Curious about counterfactuals? Check out Kari Kraus’s research.)

Our decisions to assemble the kits this way are based on several key principles. We want to create scholarship that expands beyond more academically established forms of communication (such as writing) and uses the very materials, objects, and media it discusses to make a scholarly argument. By encouraging hands-on engagement with these materials, we hope that audiences will develop a material understanding of how certain mechanisms work and how their functionality is culturally significant. By situating the materiality of these devices in a historical context, the kits offer a way to politicize the role of forensics and archaeology in media studies, prompting audiences to better understand how the evidentiary value of objects is imbued with social and cultural significance. Here, the question is not what is inherently stored in a given device or medium, but rather how it got there in the first place and under what assumptions.

As an example of what such a kit might look like, at HASTAC 2014 we described our early wearables kit, which is based on the electronic jewellery pieces created by the nineteenth-century French engineer, physician, chemist, and scientific instrument maker, Gustave Trouvé. Trouvé designed intricate jewellery pieces that ranged from a light-up bird hairpin to a soldier beating a drum, a skull gnashing its teeth, a rabbit playing on a bell with drumsticks, and many more. The trick that set the movement going was no switch or button; it was simply turning the battery on its side or upside down. The skull and rabbit stick-pins worked for nine hours every day over six months and were still going even then. However, only a few of these pieces survive, since Trouvé was unable to find craftsmen who could make such small objects with the precision required and thus only created a small number of prototypes.

The early wearables kit replicates—but does not restore—these mechanisms by using materials and technologies readily available today. This year we have been working on a simple light-up filigree hairpin and a gnashing skull, which are being designed as 3D models to be fabricated using CNC milling machines, 3D printers, and laser cutters at UVic. These models and objects, together with other necessary components (e.g., LEDs, wires, and motors), will be included in an early wearables kit. While not wholly accurate in terms of its historical specificity, this approach in many ways makes possible what wasn’t in the nineteenth century, including the possibility of designing intricate jewellery through digital design and computer-controlled precision machinery.

The kits’ components will also explore the cultural contexts and discursive elements of early wearables. These materials work in a pedagogical manner by helping audiences assemble a circuit or mechanism while situating the wearable in history. For instance, a description of electrical current may also explain how the “hard” and “soft” distinctions between electricity and the materials that conduct it are informed by late nineteenth-century gender politics. The construction of the circuit may also make note of “male” and “female” connector pieces and other gendered terminology, and the design of the jewellery piece itself could speak to how the original devices were engineered to be exhibited on women’s bodies, rendering these bodies display objects for male innovation. Such instructions invite audiences to closely read the different materials and consciously work through the kit. In other words, the kits employ a humanities approach to technical literacy (or tinkering) that promotes reflexive building.

Post by Nina Belojevic, attached to the KitsForCulture and HASTAC projects, with the news, physcomp, and fabrication tags. Images for this post care of Nina Belojevic and Jentery Sayers.

Thank you to the Modernist Versions Project (MVP), Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for supporting our participation in the conference. Maureen Engel and Caitlin Fisher did a wonderful job as conference organizers.

Made Realities: A Popup Makerspace
Devon Elliott (University of Western Ontario), Kevin Kee (Brock University), Shaun Macpherson (University of Victoria), Jentery Sayers (University of Victoria) and William J. Turkel (University of Western Ontario) in collaboration with the Maker Lab in the Humanities, the Ontario Augmented Reality Network (OARN), and the Lab for Humanistic Fabrication

Abstract: Exploring the intersections of and tensions between augmented reality and desktop fabrication, the space will be outfitted with various tools and equipment, including 3D printers, microcontrollers, Kinects, webcams, sensors, actuators, hand tools, and other resources for making. Participants will contribute their unique perspectives and expertise toward experimentation with desktop fabrication and augmented reality, broadly construed. The makerspace will provide the infrastructure and time for that creative collaboration, and it will bring together scholars, artists, and technologists who are already involved in maker communities. It will also be a place for others to experience maker culture and explore ways that they might apply maker-based approaches to their own work. Questions explored by the makerspace include: In what ways can augmented reality be materialized through fabrication techniques? What types of things do we want our realities to be augmented with? And how should our realities change, under what assumptions, and to what effects? In principle and design, the makerspace will be very similar to the hackathon format: provide a space with tools and resources to create toward a common theme, and the results are often productive and surprising.

The Key to All Ontologies?: The Long Now of Linked Data
Adèle Barclay (University of Victoria), Susan Brown (Universities of Alberta and Guelph), Jentery Sayers (University of Victoria), and the INKE and MVP Research Teams

Abstract: Digital scholarly communications are increasingly dynamic, collaboratively-­produced texts that emphasize interlinkages across unique, distributed resources. The now popular Resource Description Framework (RDF) offers considerable potential for supporting these aspects of digital scholarly production through the creation, publication, and harvesting of public RDF in the form of Linked Data. However, RDF and Linked Data have been mobilized largely in the sciences, and very little humanities research has been conducted on either. As such, this INKE paper asks what the humanities have to learn from RDF and Linked Data, and—more specifically—how each may allow scholars to explore “the kinds of humanistic phenomena” that “appear only at scale” (Liu 2012). This paper surveys an array of existing humanities projects involving RDF, organizing them into the following categories: 1) domain-­centric projects, which build upon previously established preservation projects and extend them online; 2) aggregator projects, which gather contextual information from disparate sites around the web and afford access to millions of scholarly materials, often through advanced visualization techniques; and 3) tools, which leverage the synergistic integrations promised by the growth of semantic web activities in the humanities and help scholars navigate, describe, and interpret large sums of data.

Based on this survey, the INKE Research Team has concluded that humanities applications of RDF and Linked Data generally differ from those in the sciences. Whereas science-­based applications tend to privilege a single structure or ontology, humanities applications focus on user-­based knowledge creation and customized ontologies and approaches. Yet this conclusion also acts as a cautionary tale for the future of RDF and Linked Data in humanities projects, namely because customized ontologies and approaches pose a number of difficulties where accessibility and interoperability are concerned. Transparency of knowledge representation and ease of use will have a major influence on how effectively Linked Data will help humanities scholars explore phenomena that appear only at scale. As such, this paper ultimately recommends that digital humanities practitioners consider the “long now” of their RDF and Linked Data projects (Eno 2003). A form of long-­term thinking and responsibility, working in the long now involves designing, building, and maintaining domain-­centric collections, aggregation projects, and tools that think seriously about the audiences, developers, and archivists who are well off in the distance, in 2023 and beyond.

Gaming the Edition: Play, Collaboration, and Shared Tacit Knowledge in the Editorial Process
Nina Belojevic (University of Victoria), Alex Christie (University of Victoria), Jentery Sayers (University of Victoria), and the INKE and MVP Research Teams

Abstract: During the last few years, the integration of games into learning processes has been the subject of significant and often heated debate. From Ian Bogost’s quibbles with “gamification” to the widely popular “Badges for Lifelong Learning” competition, the challenge remains: how do we build gaming environments that encourage self­‐reflexivity and meta‐critical awareness? In response to this challenge, members of INKE (inke.ca)’s Modelling & Prototyping team are developing ways to “game” digital scholarly editions, with an emphasis on helping new editors learn more about the processes of scholarly editing. The team’s research is motivated by the assumption that scholarly editors can and often do act as game players, whose conditions of possibility afford a small degree of flexibility. Working within these conditions allows both editors and game players to acutely attend to the parameters, procedures, and workarounds that shape decision-­‐making. Gaming the edition thus involves foregrounding the overlaps between gaming and editing, and then—in the case of INKE’s working model—constructing an environment where new editors develop competencies through play, collaboration, and shared tacit knowledge (i.e., learning by doing). This paper will not only unpack the INKE team’s framework for play, collaboration, and shared tacit knowledge in digital editing environments; it will also deliver its model for gaming the edition (including schematic diagrams). Among other game-­‐like features, the model underscores the importance of challenge, reward, procedural rhetoric, and non-­‐linear, dynamic narratives in the future of scholarly editing. Although the team has not yet built the prototype, we will show audiences why it is needed now.

Empty Tags and Dis-contents: Strategies for Challenging Markup Teleologies
Katie Tanigawa (University of Victoria), Jana Millar Usiskin (University of Victoria), and the MVP Research Team

Abstract: The TEI (Textual Encoding Initiative) guidelines ensure that the academic community remains consistent in their methods for encoding texts. However, as a tool constructed, implemented, and used extensively by scholars in the digital humanities, we must critically examine the TEI for how it may implicitly dis-content issues of gender and marginalized groups. Through an exploration of two digital encoding projects, this paper argues that TEI potentially dis-contents texts in two ways: [1] by excluding certain characters and spaces as viable data; and [2] by structurally privileging empirical data sets over interpretive ones. Building on the body of work by Wendy Chun, Tara McPherson, and Alan Liu, who all investigate the ways digital tools and spaces (under)represent marginalized groups, as well as Desmond Schmidt’s critique of TEI as an effective markup language, we argue that while strategies exist within the TEI to represent these marginalized characters and their spaces, the TEI structure fails to adequately privilege these strategies and thus re-inscribes both the racial and gendered hierarchies already at work within certain texts. What we recommend is a more self-reflexive use of TEI in combination with procedural transparency and a community that enables ongoing dialogue about best-practices in order to remind humanities scholars that the violent fixity imposed by markup is untenable in literary critical analysis. Such use will challenge the assumption that our tools are ideologically neutral and force us to examine the cultural, political, and technical forces affecting literary production online.

Problematizing Literature with Digital Methods: He Do the Police in Different Voices and The Brown Stocking
Adam Hammond (University of Victoria), with support from the MVP

Abstract: My talk argues that the future of digital literary analysis lies not in solving apparent interpretive cruxes, but rather (if you will forgive the awkwardness of the construction) in exploring the cruxishness of these cruxes. It’s about using digital resources to “problematize” literature—or simply to elucidate (qualitatively and quantitatively) how problematic it already is. My talk will begin with some familiar statements about the perceived cultural split between humanities approaches (which value problems, cruxes, irresolvable quandaries) and scientific approaches (which seek solution, resolution, and definite answers). I’ll next focus on two projects I’m currently leading, both of which are aimed at demonstrating the “problematic” nature of particular modernist literary texts—and also in engaging reading in the active exploration of their mysteries. The first is He Do the Police in Different Voices (hedothepolice.org), a website I developed collaboratively with Computational Linguist Julian Brooke and the 200 students of the Fall 2011 section of “The Digital Text,” the course I teach at the University of Toronto. The site provides users with resources for exploring the “dialogism” or multi- voicedness of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, the working title for which was “He Do the Police in Different Voices.” I will next look at The Brown Stocking, an ongoing project I am producing with Julian and the 320 students enrolled in this year’s sections of “The Digital Text.” The aim of this project is to develop a quantitative measure for describing novelistic “dialogism.” Its starting point is a richly-annotated TEI edition of Virginia Woolf ’s To the Lighthouse, tagged by my students for direct, indirect, and free indirect discourse. The aim of this project is to see whether, by using techniques of machine learning, we can develop an algorithm that can automatically detect free indirect discourse—instances where it simply doesn’t know who is speaking. We’re interested in seeing if we can teach an algorithm to behave like a reader of modernist literature, and learn to accept uncertainty.

Post by Jentery Sayers, attached to the HASTAC, ModVers, and Makerspace projects, with the news, fabrication, versioning, and phys comp tags. All featured images for this post images by Jentery Sayers, taken at HASTAC 2013. Image 1 of the “Made Realities” makerspace, Image 2 of Alex Christie and Nina Belojevic, Image 3 of Shaun Macpherson, and Image 4 of Devon Elliott, Simone Browne, and others.

On Thursday, 10 January, from 12 until 1 p.m., the University of Victoria’s own HASTAC Scholars (a group of graduate students in the humanities working on the digital humanities and affiliated with HASTAC) will be delivering a panel presentation on their research and their experiences as graduate students working in the digital humanities. Details are below. Please share this announcement with anyone who might be interested in attending.

HASTAC Scholars Panel

Thursday, January 10th, 12 – 1 p.m. | Clearihue C109

The University of Victoria’s own graduate student HASTAC Scholars will deliver several short presentations about their research and their experiences as graduate students working in the digital humanities. Featuring Trish Baer, Alex Christie (@axchristie), Cameron Butt (@CamButt), Daniel Powell (@djp2025), and Jana Millar Usiskin (@Jana_Mu), the panel will be organized as a Pecha Kucha style event. The panel will be moderated by Jentery Sayers (Assistant Professor at UVic, Director of the Maker Lab, and current Member of HASTAC’s Steering Committee, @jenterysayers). Conversation and questions will follow. Bring your lunch and join us to discuss digital technologies and research in our community! This 2012-13 Brown Bag Speaker Series is facilitated by Aaron Mauro.

Post by Katie Tanigawa, attached to the HASTAC project, with the news tag. Featured images for this post care of Twitter.

HASTAC (“haystack”) is a network of individuals and institutions inspired by the intersections between new technologies, learning, teaching, communicating, creating, and community organizing. HASTAC Scholars share what’s happening on their campuses with an international audience by networking with their local communities and the online HASTAC community. They also orchestrate a regular discussion forum on the HASTAC website. Looking forward to a great 2012-13 year!

Post by Jentery Sayers, attached to the HASTAC project, with the news tag. The featured image for this post, care of hastac.org, is a network visualization based on HASTAC communications.

From 2011 forward, a cohort of HASTAC Scholars has been active at the University of Victoria, and—after opening its doors in September 2012—the MLab committed to supporting those Scholars. Support assumes the form of not only research training and education in digital methods but also opportunities for professionalization, including opportunities to present research at UVic and the annual HASTAC conference. Importantly, in 2013 the HASTAC Conference took place—for the first time—in Canada (at York University, with Maureen Engel and Caitlin Fisher acting as lead organizers).

Contributors, Support, and Partnerships

Aside from partnering with HASTAC Central, the MLab collaborates with other groups on the UVic campus—including the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab and the Department of English—to support our HASTAC Scholar cohorts. Additionally, English Department faculty members, Janelle Jenstad, Stephen Ross, and Ray Siemens, have acted as HASTAC mentors for undergraduate and graduate students at the University. Since the MLab’s principal investigator, Jentery Sayers, was actively involved in the HASTAC Scholars program as a graduate student (from 2008 until 2011), he is especially invested in extending the HASTAC experience to students at UVic. He also serves on HASTAC’s Steering Committee, of which he was the first graduate student member.

Project Status

Six student cohorts (2011-12, 2012-13, 2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16, and 2016-17), totalling seventeen HASTAC Scholars, have received support at UVic. MLab members also presented at HASTAC 2013 (York University), 2014 (Lima), and 2016 (Arizona State University). The MLab plans to continue its support of and involvement in HASTAC.

HASTAC Scholar, Alex Christie, presenting his research on gameful design with Nina Belojevic at the annual HASTAC conference. Image care of Jentery Sayers.

Post by Jentery Sayers, attached to the HASTAC project, with the projects tag. Featured image for this post from hastac.org, care of HASTAC. (This post was updated on 16 October 2016.)