Below is an extensive summary of everything the MLab has been up to since October 2014, including links to additional reading. Thanks to everyone who has supported us along the way! We really appreciate it, and we’re looking forward to 2017.

OCTOBER 2014

Announcement for the “What Is a Dissertation?” Event, to which the MLab Contributed, by HASTAC and the Futures Initiative at CUNY

MLab at Michigan: Jentery visited the University of Michigan for a one-day conference titled, “Data, Social Justice, and the Humanities,” to deliver a talk, “‘The Data Knows You Better Than You Do’ and Other Constructions.” The presentation focused on the Internet of Things (IoT) and its entanglements with social justice and computational culture. During the talk, Jentery mentioned a number of related projects that also engage social justice and the IoT. These projects include Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory, Wyld Collective, Local Autonomy Networks (Autonets), “Circuit Bending Videogames” (by the MLab’s Nina Belojevic), Seattle Attic, Double Union, Free Geek, and Machine Project.

MLab + #remixthediss: We joined HASTAC and The Futures Initiative at CUNY for “What Is a Dissertation? New Models, New Methods, New Media.” In the lab, we had people from various parts of UVic discuss their perspectives on models for the doctoral dissertation, and we considered how those models might be enacted.

MLab on the Cover of Nexus: The MLab was featured in a news story profiling local makerspaces to highlight the growing popularity of DIY cultures in Greater Victoria. The cover story was published in issue 25.4 of Camosun College’s student newspaper, Nexus. In the article, Nina and Jentery offer their perspective on DIY movements and how the MLab offers a unique space for cross-disciplinary collaboration at UVic.

NOVEMBER 2014

Slide from Jentery’s talk at the Scholars’ Lab (University of Virginia)

MLab at “Seeing the Past”: Jentery visited Niagara-on-the-Lake for a conference organized by Kevin Kee, Karen Flindall, and Bill Turkel, titled “Seeing the Past: Augmented Reality and Computer Vision.” At the event, Jentery circulated a draft of his essay, “Bringing Trouvé to Light: Using Computer Vision to Speculate about Victorian Media,” for an edited collection of publications from the conference.

MLab at UVA: Jentery visited the University of Virginia to give a talk, “Remaking Victorian Miniatures: Speculative Stitches Between 2D and 3D,” in which he discussed the MLab’s Kits for Cultural History project and, more specifically, remaking old technologies in the context of Victorian media studies. His presentation took place at the Scholars’ Lab (in Alderman Library), a humanities lab that’s inspired the MLab.

Praxis Award: With the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab, the MLab announced the winners of the 2014-15 Digital Humanities Praxis Innovation Award at the University of Victoria (UVic): Elizabeth Bassett (MA, English) and Nadia Timperio (MA, English).

DECEMBER 2014

Screen grab of the WECS website at UVic

MLab WECS Talk: Nina and Jentery gave a talk for the Women in Engineering and Computer Science (WECS) speaker series at UVic about their experiences working at the MLab.

JANUARY 2015

MLab Process Poster (by Nicole Clouston, Danielle Morgan, and Victoria Murawski) of Modelling and Fabricating a Skull Jewelry Piece (1867)

MLab at MLA 2015: Several members of the MLab team presented at the 2015 Modern Language Association convention in Vancouver. Nina and Shaun contributed to “Critical DH: Interventions in Scholarly Communications and Publishing,” and Jentery presented on the topic of “Transduction Literacies” for the “Making Writing” panel. He also gave a talk titled, “Warped Modernisms,” for the “Making as Method” panel on critical making, literature, and culture. Both of these talks corresponded with the MLab’s research on the intersections of making (broadly understood) with writing and composition.

CFP for Making Humanities Matter: Informed by the MLab’s research, Jentery issued a call for papers for a new volume of Debates in the Digital Humanities (Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein, eds.) titled, Making Humanities Matter, with the University of Minnesota Press. In 2016, the manuscript for the edited collection was completed and submitted to the press for publication.

Structured-Light 3D Scanner Arrives: After the arrival of some new research equipment over the holidays, the MLab started experimenting with an HDI 120 3D Scanner. The scanner, which can digitize objects up to 60 microns in resolution using blue-LED, structured-light technology, has since been put to the task of digitizing wooden models for the MLab’s Early Wearables Kit as well as other materials for various scholarly projects, including MLab collaborations with several memory institutions in Canada.

Dene Grigar at the MLab: Dene Grigar (Creative Media and Digital Culture, Washington State University, Vancouver) dropped by the MLab to talk with us about histories of making in the humanities as well as the practice of preserving electronic literature and new media.

FEBRUARY 2015

Lisa Nakamura Speaking at PACTAC in Collaboration with the MLab and UVic Digital Humanities Committee

UVic Hosts Lisa Nakamura: The Digital Humanities Committee at UVic had the pleasure of hosting a public Lansdowne lecture by Lisa Nakamura; it was titled, “Media Archaeology from the Margins: Race, Gender, and Indigenous Labor.” Also, as part of a collaboration between the MLab, the DH Committee, and the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture (PACTAC), Nakamura conducted a public PACTAC seminar on “The Digital Afterlife of This Bridge Called My Back: Woman of Color Theory and Activism on Social Media.” She also took time to talk with each MLab researcher about their research interests, inspiring us to pursue exciting new directions in media and cultural studies.

MLab Collaborates with CFUV Women’s Collective: In collaboration with the CFUV Radio Women’s Collective, Nina and Shaun conducted an Arduino workshop titled, “Making Media Art as Feminist Practice.” Participants learned to build simple circuits that sense environmental input and translate it into visual output. The workshop aimed to explore feminist media art and practices and their relationship to circuit design; participants also discussed technical practice in women’s histories of technology and computing.

MLab Gets Milling: Among some of the new equipment received by the MLab, the SRM-20 desktop milling machine was a welcome addition. The machine employs subtractive manufacturing with a highly precise mechanical drilling resolution. It turned out to be the perfect tool for cutting jewelry pieces in the Early Wearables Kit.

MLab at University of South Carolina: Jentery visited the University of South Carolina to give a talk on “The Digging Condition” (also the working title of his monograph in progress), in which he discussed various theories of materiality and ephemerality after the so-called “material turn” in media studies. Drawing from a sound studies perspective, his talk emphasized what we can learn from negotiations with materials over time.

MLab in The Nonhuman Turn: Published in February 2015, Richard Grusin‘s edited collection, The Nonhuman Turn, included Rebekah Sheldon’s chapter, “Object-Oriented Ontology and Feminist New Materialism,” which treats the Kits for Cultural History as an alternative to distant reading. Thanks, Rebekah!

MARCH 2015

Sample Computer Vision Work from Jentery’s “Reading Facades” Course with Architect, Andrea Johnson (University of Minnesota School of Architecture, College of Design)

MLab at IdeaFest: Along with five other speakers, MLab researchers participated in a panel titled, “Humanities in a Lab Coat,” during UVic’s IdeaFest event. The panel showcased the MLab as a collaborative humanities research lab, together with other initiatives and spaces on campus: The Humanities Computing and Media Centre, The Electronic Textual Cultures Lab, The Digital Language Learning Lab, The Speech Research Lab, and The Sociolinguistics Research Lab.

MLab Hosts Garnet Hertz: Garnet Hertz visited from Emily Carr University to give a lecture on his studio work in electronic art and industrial design. The lecture was sponsored by the MLab in partnership with PACTAC. The MLab also had the privilege of playing with clay in Hertz’s prototyping workshop.

Programming Workshop: As part of our “Hello World” series with the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, we offered a workshop on programming (in Python 3) for the arts and humanities.

MLab Hosts Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier: Sponsored by the MLab, Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier from UVic’s Department of Anthropology gave a talk on campus discussing her research on alternative networks of music production and circulation in Cuba.

MLab on “Critical Making”: For Roger Whitson‘s webinar lecture series, “Critical Making in Digital Humanities,” Jentery gave a talk titled, “Where Are the Politics?”, on combining critical making with social justice research. Other speakers in the series included Kari Kraus, Lori Emerson, Garnet Hertz, Amaranth Borsuk, and Matt Ratto.

MLab at Minnesota’s School of Architecture: As part of the University of Minnesota’s “Architecture as Catalyst” workshop series, Jentery co-taught a week-long course with architect, Andrea Johnson. It was titled, “Reading Facades: Integrating Human and Computer Vision” (syllabus). While at Minnesota, Jentery also gave a talk in the School of Architecture and College of Design: “Human-Machine Vision: A Post-Cinematic Approach.” At the end of the week, architecture students in Johnson and Jentery’s course presented their work (a combination of models, renderings, prototypes, and vision scripts) during a public exhibition, resulting in some wonderful documentation compiled by Johnson.

APRIL 2015

A Photo from the Digital Fabrication Lab’s First Few Days

Fab Lab Opens Its Doors: In a collaboration between the Departments of English and Visual Arts, the new Digital Fabrication Lab (DFL) officially opened for use as a research facility. The DFL’s opening was a significant announcement; as a computer numerical control (CNC) lab with a base in the humanities, it is the first of its kind in North America. Since April, it has been gradually integrated into collaborative research on media history, material culture studies, sculpture, and experimental art conducted by both the MLab and Visual Arts.

MLab at Waterloo: Drawing from critical theories informing the MLab’s various prototyping methods, Jentery gave the keynote at the University of Waterloo’s Experimental Digital Media (XDM) symposium, “Feedback, Fedback, Feedforward.” The event exhibited student projects exploring the intersections of art and information communication technologies. With faculty such as Beth Coleman, Aimée Morrison, and Marcel O’Gorman, Waterloo’s XDM program has deeply inspired the MLab’s research, and the “Feedback, Fedback, Feedforward” event was a highlight of 2015.

MLab + Shakespeare: Jentery visited Vancouver to give an invited talk at the Shakespeare Association of America‘s annual meeting. He presented during a panel titled, “The Way We Think Now: Shakespearean Studies in the Digital Turn,” which was organized by Ellen MacKay. Pointing to various examples from the MLab’s Kits for Cultural History, Jentery spoke about “Prototyping the Inaccessible.”

MLab at Stanford: Jentery visited Stanford University’s Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages to give a talk titled, “Prototyping and Pedagogy in the Humanities,” where he discussed the role of prototyping in humanities teaching and research. During the talk, he connected the MLab’s methods and culture with changes in his own pedagogy. For instance, the MLab’s prototyping work heavily influenced the design of “What’s in a Game?” (a UVic digital humanities course about prototyping indie games).

MLab at UCLA: Jentery visited the University of California, Los Angeles to attend “Inertia: A Conference on Sound, Media, and the Digital Humanities,” with keynotes delivered by Jonathan Sterne and Kiri Miller. In the Charles E. Young Research Library, Jentery took part in a panel titled, “Mapping Sound,” alongside Gaye Theresa Johnson, Peter McMurry, and moderator, Tamara Levitz. There, he presented material from the MLab’s Crocodile Cafe Exhibit. During his visit, he also met with several students conducting research in sound studies and ethnomusicology.

MAY 2015

The MLab Appears in The Ring

The Kits and DFL in The Ring: The MLab’s Kits for Cultural History and the new Digital Fabrication Lab appeared in an article written by Tara Sharpe for The Ring, UVic’s community newspaper. The article, “Makerspaces Matter,” was published both online and in print.

MLab at the BC Library Conference: Jentery had the opportunity to discuss the MLab’s humanities infrastructure at the 2015 BC Library Conference in Vancouver. He also fielded a variety of questions about the potential role of makerspaces in libraries.

Sharing Our Inventory: The MLab decided to publish a record of our inventory for public access. In a collective effort, Kat, Danielle, Nina, Shaun, and Jentery organized and compiled an MLab infrastructure list into a pretty handy spreadsheet.

JUNE 2015

Shaun Taking Photographs during the MLab’s 2015 DHSI Course

MLab at DHSI 2015: The MLab team revised their syllabus for “Physical Computing and Fabrication in the Humanities” at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute. The week-long course was taught by Nina, Shaun, Devon, and Jentery, and it concluded with an exhibit of programmable media designed by the students.

MLab at Union College: Union College in Schenectady, New York hosted the Engineering and Liberal Education Symposium, which focused on the intersection of engineering and the liberal arts. For the first session, “Exploring the Aesthetic and Humanistic Dimensions of Maker Culture,” Jentery presented a talk titled “Prototyping as Inquiry” to outline the relationship between the Kits for Cultural History and Fluxkits from the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s.

JULY 2015

Danielle and Jentery’s Initial Experiment with CNC Machine Spindles

MLab Goes to School: At the Port Townsend School of Woodworking in Washington, Danielle and Jentery attended a workshop, “Beginning Digital Design and Fabrication.” During the course they learned about the digital fabrication techniques and software used in a three-way axis CNC router system. They also learned more about how woodworkers, engineers, and other practitioners are using fabrication techniques as part of their work.

MLab in CTheory Books: For the CTheory publication, Conversations in Critical Making, Garnet Hertz interviewed Jentery about the MLab, prototyping, and humanities approaches to science and technology studies. The interview appeared in the book as a chapter titled, “Humanities and Critical Approaches to Technology.” Hertz also interviewed Phoebe Sengers, Natalie Jeremijenko, Matt Ratto, and Alexander Galloway.

How Did They Make That?: Inspired by the work of Miriam Posner (Digital Humanities, UCLA), Tiffany published, “How Did They Make That?: For Undergraduate Projects.” It addressed an important gap in media studies and digital humanities research.

MLab on CFUV: UVic’s radio station, CFUV, interviewed Nina about her media practice and work in the MLab.

SEPTEMBER 2015

Photos of the 2014-15 and 2015-16 MLab Teams

MLab Farewells and Hellos: This year the MLab said goodbye to assistant directors, Nina Belojevic and Shaun McPherson, both of whom were part of the team since the lab’s opening in 2012. With their departures, the MLab welcomed the addition of several new team members: Tiffany Chan, Liam Cline, Victoria Murawski, Nadia Timperio and me (Teddie Brock). Devon Elliott, Katherine Goertz and Danielle Morgan continued with the team from 2014-15.

OCTOBER 2015

Nina and Jentery Participating in Vibrant Lives at Arizona State University (with Stjepan Rajko, front left, and Matt Delmont and Jessica Rajko, front right)

MLab on UVic Homepage and CBC Radio: The MLab’s Kits for Cultural History were featured on UVic’s homepage along with a short article and demonstration video produced by the MLab team. Later in the month, Jentery made a radio appearance on CBC’s All Points West to discuss the Early Wearables Kit with host, Robyn Burns.

MLab Hosts Tanja Carstensen: Tanja Carstensen is a sociologist and post-doctoral researcher with the Work-Gender Technology research group at the Hamburg University of Technology. She visited UVic to present her talk, “Gender, Makerspaces, and Laboratory Culture.” In her lecture, she analysed how makerspaces and digital fabrication labs could potentially renegotiate power and gender relations in regards to technology. She also addressed some ongoing social problems facing makerspaces.

MLab in SRC: In the journal, Scholarly Research and Communication (Issue 6.3, 2015), Jentery published “Why Fabricate?”, which outlines the MLab’s research on the relevance of fabrication techniques to humanities inquiry and cultural criticism.

MLab and Vibrant Lives at ASU: At Arizona State University, Nina and Jentery participated in the interdisciplinary performance, Vibrant Lives, at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts with Jessica Rajko, Jacqueline Wernimont, Eileen Standley, and Stjepan Rajko, among others. The project critically engages with design and movement to explore “data shed” and the connections between bodies, technologies, and information. This trip was a highlight for the MLab team in 2015. It was also a wonderful opportunity for us to collaborate with our amazing colleagues at ASU.

MLab at Brandeis and URI: Hosted by John Unsworth and Deb Sarlin, Jentery visited Brandeis University to deliver a talk about pedagogical practice in academic makerspaces. Immediately after this talk, he also gave a talk at the University of Rhode Island (URI) titled, “Teaching and Learning Across Makerspaces and Classrooms,” on invitation from Karim Boughida (Dean, URI Libraries).

MLab at Rutgers: Danielle had the opportunity to present the Early Wearables Kit at Rutgers University-Camden during the “Kits, Plans, and Schematics” media arts exhibit, curated by Helen J. Burgess, James J. Brown, Jr., Robert A. Emmons, Jr., and David M. Rieder. Throughout the exhibit, participants were encouraged to interact with the artists’ and researchers’ projects. Danielle designed the MLab’s portion of the exhibit and also delivered a brief introduction to the Kit.

NOVEMBER 2015

Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures (Special Issue, “Kits, Plans, Schematics”)

MLab Presents “Prototyping the Past”: Tiffany, Danielle, Kat, Victoria, and Jentery discussed the Early Wearables Kit during a panel at the University of Victoria. Along with the Kit, the team discussed the MLab’s approaches to rapid prototyping and media history.

MLab Goes to Middle School: Kat and Jentery conducted a hands-on workshop for students at Arbutus Middle School. To illustrate objects as both bits and atoms, they had students use laser-cut parts to arrange and build 3D models of animals. They also borrowed material from Hannah Perner-Wilson’s Kit of No Parts to explain the concepts and practices of prototyping.

MLab Launches Early Wearables Repo: The MLab released the Early Wearables Kit repository on Github for public access. The repo contains 3D models of the skull stick-pin, the mechanism, and the box built for the kits as well as historical illustrations, a guide, essays, assembly instructions, and metadata.

MLab in Hyperrhiz: The new media and net art journal, Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, published the Early Wearables Kit in their “Kits, Plans, Schematics” issue, edited by Helen J. Burgess and David M. Rieder. The publication consisted of a critical essay (by Jentery), process posters, a video, a GitHub repository, and an about page.

DECEMBER 2015

Tiffany Programming an Optophone to Turn Text into Audible Tones

MLab at CUNY Graduate Center: On invitation from Patrik Svensson, Jentery attended the “Digging Deep: Ecosystems, Institutions and Processes for Critical Making” event at CUNY Graduate Center, where he contributed to a session with Anne Balsamo, Matt Ratto, Natalie Jeremijenko, Allison Burtch, Cathy Davidson, and Shannon Mattern.

MLab at the Sorbonne: Jentery spoke with students at the University of Paris-Sorbonne about prototyping the past. Katy Masuga‘s students read and responsed to one of Jentery’s manuscripts.

MLab Hosts Artist Lecture: The MLab sponsored a guest artist lecture by Jesse Colin Jackson (Electronic Art and Design at the University of California). His talk, “Pixels in the Material World: From Frank Lloyd Wright to Marching Cubes,” explored unit-based architectural models in digital visualization.

Programming an Optophone: Tiffany started programming a reading optophone to translate text into audible tones for a new kit about Mary Jameson and the history of optical character recognition. This work involved a combination of a Raspberry Pi with Python and OpenCV.

JANUARY 2016

Andrew Stauffer (UVA) Recording on Wire in the Lab with Danielle and Kat

MLab in Visible Language: The design and visual communication journal, Visible Language, published Jentery’s article, “Prototyping The Past” (Volume 49, Issue 3), which draws on the MLab’s Early Wearables Kit to articulate a methodology and case study for combining media history with rapid prototyping techniques.

MLab at MLA 2016: During the 2016 Modern Language Association convention in Austin, Jentery gave a talk titled, “Computer Vision as a Public Act: On Digital Humanities and Algocracy,” and facilitated the panel, “Care and Repair: Designing Digital Scholarship.” These events corresponded with the MLab’s ongoing research on physical computing and maintenance, respectively. In October 2016, Rebecca Ricks (NYU-ITP) responded to Jentery’s computer vision talk with a piece on the “algorithmic gaze.”

MLab at INKE 2016: At the 2016 INKE conference in Whistler, BC, Jentery followed up on “Why Fabricate?” with a paper on how a care and repair paradigm could inform the practice and culture of digital studies. Later in the year, Matthew Huculak and Lisa Goddard followed Jentery’s paper with their article in dh + lib.

Andrew Stauffer at the MLab: While visiting UVic to give an excellent talk on his “Book Traces” project, Andrew Stauffer (English, University of Virginia) dropped by the MLab and gave our magnetic recording kit a try.

Remaking Parts a Scanner: Kat made significant progress with our 3D scanner, demonstrating how it could be combined with CNC techniques to remake parts of old phones, which were central to our research on early magnetic recording.

FEBRUARY 2016

Figure Illustrating the Lab’s Research Process; Presented during Jentery’s Talk for UVic Anthropology; Illustration by Danielle

Web Design Workshop: As part of our “Hello World” series with the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, we offered a free, public workshop on how to make simple websites with Markdown and Git.

MLab and UVic Anthropology: Jentery presented the MLab’s Early Wearables Kit for UVic Anthropology’s Graduate Colloquium. He also had an opportunity to talk with UVic Anthropology students about their research, including research involving media history and material culture.

MARCH 2016

The Humanities in a Labcoat Team at IdeaFest 2016: Alexandra D’Arcy (Linguistics), in left image, with, from left to right, Stewart Arneil (HCMC), Alyssa Arbuckle (ETCL), Daniel Sondheim (ETCL), Jentery, Alexandra D’Arcy (Linguistics), Sonya Bird (Linguistics), and Catherine Caws (French), in right image

MLab at IdeaFest: The MLab presented at UVic’s annual IdeaFest research festival during a panel titled, “A New Labcoat in the Humanities,” which showcased how the humanities engage in collaborative, hands-on research.

MLab at Cornell: On invitation from the Society for the Humanities, Jentery visited Cornell University to give a public lecture on “Prototyping Absence, Remaking Old Media,” based on the MLab’s Kits for Cultural History project. He also had an opportunity to attend a meeting of 2015-16 Society Fellows with Timothy Murray and many others.

MLab at Syracuse: Following his visit to Cornell, Jentery gave another MLab-based talk, this time at Syracuse (on invitation from Patrick Berry), for Writing, English, Digital Humanities, Composition and Culture, Libraries, and the Humanities Center there. The talk addressed the intersections of writing, prototyping, and pedagogy, drawing on student research at UVic. Here’s an abstract. While at Syracuse, Jentery also conducted a Scalar workshop and visited the amazing Belfer Audio Archive to listen to their collections and have a conversation with Jenny Doctor (Director of the Archive). Patrick Williams (Syracuse University Libraries) followed Jentery’s talk with “Reflecting on Networks,” which also discusses the work of Lori Emerson and Clay Spinuzzi, both of whom recently visited Syracuse, too.

UVic Hosts Julie Flanders: With support from UVic’s Digital Humanities Committee, Julie Flanders (English and Digital Scholarship, Northeastern University) presented a series of Lansdowne lectures at UVic, including a talk titled, “Building Otherwise: Gender, Race, and Otherness in the Digital Humanities.” During her visit, Flanders visited the MLab, and we discussed our various projects with her.

MLab + ETCL Host Daniela Rosner: With the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab at UVic, the MLab hosted Daniela Rosner (Human-Centred Design and Engineering, University of Washington), who gave an inspiring lecture on “Imaginative Interventions: Design as Inquiry.” Her talk walked us through a series of case studies in critical design and making as forms of social inquiry to generate new understandings of design products and practices. Rosner also visited both labs and spoke with researchers there. We were quite excited to have Rosner on campus; she’s inspired the MLab for some time now.

Reading Optophone in the DRC: Tiffany, Victoria, and Jentery wrote “Remaking Optophones: An Exercise in Maintenance Studies” for the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative (DRC) at the University of Michigan. The Reading Optophone Kit is the MLab’s third volume in the Kits for Cultural History series.

APRIL 2016

Jentery on Hawai’i Public Radio Talking about MLab Research with Bytemarks Cafe; from left to right, Burt Lum, Larry Denneau, Ken Dehoff, Richard Wainscoat, Eugene Magnier, Jentery, Ryan Ozawa, Burl Burlingame; image care of Bytemarks Cafe

MLab at SCMS 2016: For the annual Society for Cinema & Media Studies Conference, Jentery presented MLab research in Atlanta on a panel organized by Virginia Kuhn (USC Cinematic Arts). His talk was titled, “From Accessing to Prototyping Media History,” and the panel was about the “Work of Scholarship in the Age of Digital Reproducibility.”

MLab in the A DH Companion: With Kari Kraus, Bethany Nowviskie, William J. Turkel, and Devon Elliott, Jentery published “Between Bits and Atoms: Physical Computing and Desktop Fabrication in the Humanities” as Chapter 1 in A New Blackwell Companion to Digital Humanities, edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth. Several arguments in that chapter correspond with the MLab’s approach to media history and theory, and they also speak to why work by Kraus, Nowviskie, Turkel, and Elliott has so deeply informed the MLab since its opening in 2012.

MLab at Washington State: On invitation from the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation, Jentery visited Washington State University to talk about “Remaking Old Media across the Disciplines” and also discuss the challenges of conducting archival research in Science and Technology Studies. While he was there, he conducted a workshop on low-tech prototyping, or prototyping without digital tools, with support from Kim Christen and Trevor Bond.

MLab at the University of Hawai’i: At the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa, Jentery gave two Dai Ho Chun Distinguished Lectures on prototpying the past and media history, both of which drew from the MLab’s Kits for Cultural History. He also appeared on Hawai’i Public Radio, talking with the hosts of Bytemarks Café about the MLab’s research. The hosts, Burt Lum and Ryan Ozawa, were especially interested in the Lab’s Early Wearables project. While he was on the Hawai’i campus, Jentery visited with faculty, staff, and students in Digital Arts and Humanities, including David Goldberg (American Studies) and Rich Rath (History), who also supported his visit.

MAY 2016

Kat and Danielle’s View of UW’s Undergraduate Research Symposium, Where They Presented MLab Research

MLab for The Lab Book: Darren Wershler interviewed Tiffany and Jentery for the Lab Book project, which Wershler is writing with Lori Emerson and Jussi Parikka. The interview is titled, “Prototyping the Past: The Maker Lab in the Humanities at the University of Victoria,” and it discusses the MLab’s research, projects, and infrastructure.

MLab at HASTAC 2016: Tiffany and Jentery both presented during HASTAC 2016 at Arizona State University (ASU). For her talk, Tiffany discussed the MLab’s research on the optophone, emphasizing how the process of prototyping reveals historical absences and also points to ignored labour practices. For the panel, “Critical Design and Deviant Critique,” with Kim Knight (U. of Texas at Dallas), Padmini Ray Murray (Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology), and Jacqueline Wernimont (ASU), Jentery discussed the relationship between design, labour, and knowledge production in prototyping projects.

MLab at the University of Washington: Kat and Danielle attended the Undergraduate Research Symposium at the University of Washington (UW) to give a talk on the Kits for Cultural History. The title of their talk was “Technology off the Page,” and they presented on a panel with students from Informatics, Near Eastern Studies, Geology, Human Centered Design and Engineering, Linguistics, Theater, and Art History.

Prototyping in an English Graduate Seminar: For English 508: “Prototyping Texts” at UVic, Tiffany demonstrated how prototyping happens in the classroom and applies to historical and cultural research in English. She created a portfolio, titled “Act Natural: Prototyping Autodidactism, Forging the Self.” It performs various critiques of Dale Carnegie and involves experiments with type, print, HTML, and bots. Later in 2016, Annette Vee (English, Pittsburgh) mentioned Tiffany’s persuasive prototyping work in the MLA’s Digital Pedagogy project.

JUNE 2016

Kat and Danielle after Installing “Jacob: Recording on Wire” in the Audain Gallery; Photograph of a Repurposed Wall-Mounted Phone that Played Historical Audio throughout the Exhibition

MLab in UVic’s Audain Gallery: With contributions from Jentery, Tiffany, and me (Teddie), Danielle and Kat installed “Jacob: Recording on Wire” in UVic’s Audain Gallery. The exhibition involved three public demonstrations of early magnetic recording, drawing materials from the MLab’s second volume in the Kits for Cultural History series. It was received with great enthusiasm from many attendees who had the opportunity to impress their own voices onto piano wire suspended across the gallery. The Martlet also covered the exhibition, interviewing Danielle and Jentery about it.

MLab at DHSI 2016: For DHSI 2016, Tiffany, Danielle, Kat, and Jentery developed a new version of their course on Physical Computing + Fabrication, which they co-taught during the second week of the event. The MLab had participants prototype their own projects using a variety of tools and method, including experimental electronics, 3D modelling, laser cutting, photogrammetry, and structured light scanning. At the end of the week, students had the opportunity to showcase their projects to the the rest of the DHSI community. To support the MLab, Agisoft provided all Physical Computing + Fabrication students with temporary licenses to use PhotoScan for their photogrammetry research. After the course, Carrie Schroeder (Religious and Classical Studies, University of the Pacific) published a detailed write-up sharing what she learned. Mark Sample (Digital Studies, Davidson) also published a repo for his Physical Computing + Fabrication project, “Alt_NC_Bathroom.”

Sounding Out the Optophone: As a result of her programming and electronics research on the history of optical character recognition, Tiffany produced a video demonstrating how reading optophones scanned type. This process is very difficult to discern when studying archival materials alone. Tiffany’s video renders it much easier to understand.

JULY 2016

Slide from Tiffany’s Talk at DH 2016: Early Iteration of Our Reading Optophone Prototype

MLab at DH 2016 in Poland: For the annual Digital Humanities conference, Tiffany gave a talk on “Designing for Difficulty” (slides) in Kraków, Poland. It discussed how the MLab prototypes historical absences by combining CNC and 3D modelling techniques with labour studies and media theory. This talk was the MLab’s first long paper on prototyping at the annual DH conference.

MLab Compiles Early Magnetic Recording Repo: The MLab compiled and later released version 1.1 of the Early Magnetic Recording Kit (the second volume in the Kits for Cultural History series) as a public repository on GitHub, with contributions from Kat, Danielle, Jentery, Tiffany, Victoria, and me (Teddie).

MLab Releases the Optophone Repo: The MLab released version 1.1 of the Optophone Kit (the third volume in the Kits for Cultural History series) as a public repository on GitHub, with contributions from Tiffany, Kat, Danielle, Victoria, and Jentery.

Scanner in the Library: With support from UVic Special Collections (especially Matt Huculak), Tiffany experimented with 3D scanning various books, manuscripts, and other materials, including cuneiform from 2150BCE. She later wrote a report on her findings as part of a directed study in UVic English.

AUGUST 2016

One of Danielle’s Early Layout Sketches for An Illustrated Guide to Prototyping the Past

MLab in Doing Digital Humanities: Nicole and Jentery published a chapter, “Fabrication and Research-Creation in the Arts and Humanities,” in Doing Digital Humanities, edited by Constance Crompton, Richard J. Lane, and Ray Siemens. In the chapter, Nicole and Jentery underscore the creative and experimental uses of CNC machines, which are usually treated as technologies for replicating objects or models that already exist in the world.

Let the Illustrated Guide Begin: Danielle, Jentery, and Tiffany began working on the MLab’s Illustrated Guide to Prototyping the Past, the Lab’s collaborative project for 2016-17. The Lab is aiming to release the Guide in print by September 2017, with contributions from Danielle, Jentery, Tiffany, Kat, Maasa, Evan, and me (Teddie). More from us very soon!

Post by Teddie Brock, attached to the Makerspace project, with the news, physcomp, fabrication, and exhibits tags. Featured image of Katherine Goertz and the “Jacob: Recording on Wire” exhibit care of Danielle Morgan.

Iron filings reveal impressions of sound on piano wire (image by Danielle Morgan)

Research Leads, Contributors, and Support

Since 2013, the following researchers have contributed to the Early Wire Recording Kit: Teddie Brock, Tiffany Chan, Laura Dosky, Katherine Goertz, Danielle Morgan, Victoria Murawski, Jentery Sayers, Zaqir Virani, and William J. Turkel. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund, and the University of Michigan Press supported this research.

“Jacob: Recording on Wire” exhibit at UVic’s Audain Gallery (image by Danielle Morgan)

Project Status

This project was completed in June 2016 with an exhibit, “Jacob: Recording on Wire,” at UVic’s Audain Gallery, based on existing research published in American Literature. The lab also published a public repository containing files related to the experiment. To learn more about the kit, see the stream of posts below. Please do not hesitate to either comment on a post or email maker@uvic.ca with feedback.

Post by Danielle Morgan, attached to the KitsForCulture project, with the fabrication, exhibits, physcomp, and projects tags. Featured image for this post, of Katherine Goertz with the lab’s recording trolley and mechanism, care of Danielle Morgan.

Poulsen’s early magnetic recording experiment (illustrated by Marvin Camras)

To test and share our research, we held our Jacob: Recording on Wire exhibit at the UVic’s Audain Gallery a few weeks ago. Throughout the week, we conducted a series of demonstrations in the gallery and encouraged participants to imitate the experiment by impressing their voices on the piano wire.

Wall-mounted phone in the Jacob exhibit (image care of Danielle Morgan)

Because Poulsen used demanufactured telephone parts to record the name, “Jacob,” repeatedly on wire, we mounted a telephone box on the back wall of the gallery. The box was immediately visible when you entered the room. When visitors picked up the receiver, an audio guide provided historical details and context, with playback via a microcontroller, MP3 audio decoder chip, and amplifier hidden inside the box.  

Trolley and wire recordings in the Jacob exhibit (image care of Danielle Morgan)

The wire strung diagonally on the left side of the room allowed participants to imitate Poulsen’s method of recording on piano wire.

Instructional photos and component parts in the Jacob exhibit (image care of Danielle Morgan)

On the wall behind this wire, we hung a series of seven instructional photographs and provided participants with the parts they would need to imitate the experiment. Participants were able to experiment with recording on the wire by hooking up provided telephone parts to the electromagnet, running alongside the trolley while speaking into the transmitter or listening to the receiver, testing their recording with iron filings, and wiping the wire clean with a permanent magnet.

Participant photographing their filings and impression on piano wire (image care of Danielle Morgan)

The wire on the right side of the room was strung parallel to the ground. Throughout the week, a trolley progressively moved from one side of the room to the other as participants impressed and left their voice on the wire for the remainder of the exhibit. Beside each recording, an attached tag described the content stored on each section of the wire.

Post by Danielle Morgan, attached to the KitsForCulture project, with the fabrication, physcomp, and exhibits tags. Images for this post care of Danielle Morgan and Marvin Camras. Post based on research by Katherine Goertz, Danielle Morgan, Victoria Murawski, and Jentery Sayers (including “Making the Perfect Record”), with contributions from Teddie Brock and Tiffany Chan.

We imitated this experiment and will be exhibiting it on the UVic campus at the Audain Gallery, in the Visual Arts Building, Tuesday, June 14th through Friday, June 17th.

We will be demonstrating the experiment three times that week: Tuesday, June 14th, at 12:30pm; Wednesday, June 15th, at 4:30pm; and Thursday, June 16th, at 4:30pm. Demonstrations will last approximately 30 minutes. If you have any questions about the exhibit, then please email maker@uvic.ca.

Full-size posters: version 1 | version 2

Exhibit by Katherine Goertz, Danielle Morgan, Victoria Murawski, and Jentery Sayers, with contributions from Teddie Brock and Tiffany Chan

Post by Danielle Morgan, attached to the KitsForCulture project, with the fabrication, news, and exhibits tags. Images and posters by Danielle Morgan.

The publication consists of five components: 1) an essay by Jentery that discusses the relation between the Kits for Cultural History and Fluxkits from the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s; 2) a slideshow of posters by Victoria and the MLab team that document our process of making the Early Wearables Kit; 3) an “unboxing” video by Danielle and the MLab team that shows how someone might interact with the Wearables Kit; 4) a Github repository by the entire MLab team that contains the Kit’s core files and components (see our previous announcement for the repo); and 5) a brief “about” page describing the project.

Along with the recent exhibition of the Wearables Kit at Rutgers, the MLab’s appearance in Hyperrhiz demonstrates our multimodal approach to publishing Kits for Cultural History. We hope that this new issue of Hyperrhiz will inspire more, like-minded publishing projects across the arts and humanities.

Post by Tiffany Chan, attached to the KitsForCulture project, with the news, exhibits, and fabrication tags. Image care of the Maker Lab and Hyperrhiz.

To illustrate this early example of magnetic recording, Marvin Camras (1980/1988) sketched Poulsen’s experiment:

Using Camras’s illustration and other historical materials as guides, we created a trolley to run along piano wire attached to walls in the MLab. The trolley will become a core component of our Early Magnetic Recording Kit (Volume 2 in the Kits for Cultural History series), which we hope to exhibit in 2016.

The kit will eventually contain all the components necessary for performing a version of Poulsen’s experiment. Since Poulsen likely used parts of a wall-mounted telephone in the construction of his magnetic wire recorder, the container for the kit is modelled off an old telephone box. Here’s a rough, incomplete prototype:

While the box itself functions as a container (holding all the necessary components of the recorder), when it is disassembled all of its parts are also used to construct the trolley.

In the deconstruction of the kit, the container transforms into content, and a telephone box is reconstructed into a magnetic recording device.

Post by Danielle Morgan, attached to the KitsForCulture project, with the fabrication and exhibits tags. Images for this post care of Danielle Morgan and Marvin Camras.

Post by Danielle Morgan, attached to the KitsForCulture project, with the fabrication, exhibits, and news tags. Images for this post care of Danielle Morgan and the Maker Lab. Thanks to Jim Brown, Helen Burgess, Robert A. Emmons Jr., David Rieder, and everyone at Hyperrhiz and the Digital Studies Center at Rutgers University, Camden.

Image Quality: When visually expressing a process, the quality of the image is as significant as the image’s content. It is important to pay attention to the resolution, exposure, colour, focus, and framing of images. These qualities play a significant role in the persuasiveness of the photograph. For instance, a high-quality image may hold people’s attention, allowing them to appreciate both the appearance of the image and the evidence it is presenting. The intent and attention paid by the photographer translates to the photograph and therefore to audiences. Intent and attention also influence a person’s trust in images. At the same time, experiments with quality (e.g., low-fidelity images) are opportunities for researchers to comment on visual documentation as a form of mediation or construction. Post-production especially accentuates the construction of images. During post-production, many aspects of a photograph can be altered using an editing tool such as Photoshop. These tools modify colour, reframe through cropping, remove dust, and also brighten. “Curves” and “Selective Colour” are two Photoshop tools I use often. “Curves” allows you to brighten or darken an image by dragging anchor points up or down the “Curve” line. “Selective Colour” lets you modify images that have a colour cast (i.e., an often unwanted tint affecting the entire image).

Image care of Nicole Clouston and the MLab

Surroundings: While documenting a process such as prototyping (something we do often in the MLab), try to be aware of everything in the frame. Audiences will consider any object in the image—even objects in the background—a part of the content. Also keep in mind that some contextual objects can be helpful. A prototype beside the tool used to create it, or all composite parts of a prototype laid beside the assembled finished object, can help audiences better understand process. If you are documenting an interactive piece, then a photograph of someone engaging it can provide necessary contextual information about its scale and function.

Image care of Danielle Morgan and the MLab

Design: Image placement shapes the arguments you make with visual media. The design may complement the actual process, or it may represent an ideal process. Scale creates a hierarchy, with larger images typically viewed as more significant. Their position within the design also alters how they are interpreted. For example, a design that depicts a process in a linear grid, with each image the same size, may convey a procedure or chronology while also arguing that each step is equally important. In contrast, a design with the finished prototype in the center, and process images radiating from it, may suggest that the product is more important than the process.

Image care of Nicole Clouston and the MLab

Image care of Nicole Clouston and the MLab

Text: What text is included, not to mention how, are other important considerations. Unless it is an HTML “img alt” attribute describing images for people who listen to the web with screen readers, an in-depth textual explanation of an image is often superfluous. Too much description may stop audiences from investing time trying to understand images for themselves. An alternative strategy is the use of captions (under individual images or under the entire design). Captions provide a concise amount of contextual information to audiences, aiding their understanding of what is being depicted while still encouraging their own investigation (see example below). Your choice of typeface or font also influences the audience’s interpretation. The most convincing font choices allow audiences to focus on the message being communicated rather than the typeface used. The choice of font can be driven by the content of the medium, such as the use of a Victorian-inspired typeface for Victorian era content. This approach can be employed persuasively, but it often distracts audiences from the actual content of the text. In my own experience, I have found that the most effective approach is to choose a simple font that is easily read at the scale the image is being shown. Also, keep in mind that serif fonts are generally easier to read in print, and sans serif can be a better choice for online reading.

The skull model for the Trouvé pin, carved by Nicole Clouston, resting on the servo-driven turntable. The HDI 120 3D scanner uses structured-light, blue-LED technology to take high resolution images of the object as the turntable spins. Image care of the MLab.

Attribution: When presenting images it is important to include attribution. Who made it? Who is pictured? How is it licensed (e.g., Creative Commons license)? You should also get signed releases or permissions for images, where applicable. One strategy for presenting attributions in a manner that works with, rather than against, the design is to incorporate them in a manner similar to the rest of the textual information. In the poster below, information was given in text blocks with headings. Following this design, attributions fall seamlessly under the heading, “Team.” When presenting images individually, a caption is often an effective way to give attribution. If the image is circulated via a website or repository, then the domain itself may have licensing and attribution information that applies to all content.

Image Care of Nina Belojevic, Shaun Macpherson, and the MLab

Medium: Among many options, visual documentation can be posted on a website, published in a booklet, and printed on a poster. Each of these media has particular strengths and connotations. Of course, people often combine approaches. Consider how you want audiences to experience the images and ultimately how your images function in relation to the process, product, and project. Odds are you will want your choice of media to complement the process depicted as well as the context in which the materials are displayed. Below are more details for using the web, posters, and booklets as visual media.

Online: Presenting images online via a blog or open repository may give viewers insight into your process as you are working on it. This form of documentation and circulation allows people to follow what is happening over time. Images online may also be accessible to a large audience who may not see the work in person. Online circulation may also increase the odds of people serendipitously discovering your work. If you publish your images online, consider whether you want to publish high-resolution versions. The resolution of your images may correspond with not only how you want others to use them but also what you are saying about the current status and applications of your research. Depending on the project, you may also want to consider restricting online access to your images, or keeping (some of) them offline altogether.

Poster: In tactile form, a poster brings digital images off the screen, allowing them to be presented alongside exhibited work. Showing audiences how the piece came to be, together with information about the decision-making process, will shape how they encounter your research. The way the poster is displayed may also complement the work. Here, you might want to construct relationships between the poster, the scale of the piece, its shape, and how the various elements came together. For example, a poster for a modular piece could be composed of articulated print elements, mimicking the way that piece became a cohesive whole. Also, if you are making a poster for a specific space, then—where possible—visit that space prior to mounting or installing the poster. This way you can get a sense of the space’s layout, acoustics, lighting, and capacity, all of which may affect how people interpret the poster.

Booklet: For many audiences, a booklet presented with a piece may be the most intimate and accessible experience of images. This approach may be especially appropriate if you are hoping to include sections of text or research alongside the images. In contrast to reading a poster (which can be awkward), a booklet is an approachable format to read. Audiences may also spend more time with it, and it may be placed with the piece, making it something people will likely experience after the piece itself. Booklets are often printed in multiples. Presenting more than one booklet with the piece allows several audience members to experience the documentation at once. The booklets can also be take-away items, or they could be mailed out, allowing for broader dissemination. The number of booklets that should be printed will depend on how you plan on using them. In my experience, when presenting in an exhibition context it is ideal to print fifty booklets if they are being given away and ten if they are not. Having extra copies to archive or replace damaged booklets is also useful, but I would caution against over-printing. Having a large stack of copies may prompt the audience to treat the booklet as disposable or insignificant.

Image care of Danielle Morgan and the MLab

By being attentive to decisions made along the way, visual media can be a very persuasive approach to expressing your research, giving audiences a rich understanding of the composition process and supporting the argument you are making.

Post by Nicole Clouston, attached to the KitsForCulture project, with the fabrication, physcomp, exhibits, and versioning tags.

When people hear about the Kits for Cultural History project at the Maker Lab (MLab), they often ask how remaking old technologies (such as Gustave Trouvé’s “flash jewelry”) informs our research and writing in science, technology, and media studies. In short, the question is: How is remaking scholarship? Given the fact that my dissertation was a cultural history of magnetic recording, my response to this question usually begins with a comparison to methods I used during graduate school. Although my dissertation focused on the materiality and procedures of magnetic recording, for it I did not remake a telegraphone, wire recorder, or tape recorder. As such, the Kits project has really underscored what I overlooked, underemphasized, or got wrong while writing the diss. And these observations have helped me identify the relevance of remaking to science, technology, and media studies research, broadly understood.

Contrary to popular perception, remaking historical objects need not assume the exact replication of artifacts, an investment in high fidelity reproduction, appeals to authenticity, nostalgic fantasies of “being there,” uncritical hobbyism, escapist immersion, an obsession with control, or a fetish for the analog. But I do think remaking is prompting many scholars to not only reconsider immersion (in combination with “critical distance”) but also rethink claims that the practice of history is (or should be) all exteriorities. In fact, for those of us in the Maker Lab, remaking is most often about what isn’t at hand, or what we don’t know, or what we’re willing to conjecture. In this sense it borrows heavily from traditions in cultural criticism and echoes recent publications in digital humanities, including Lauren Klein’s compelling American Literature article, “The Image of Absence.”

Below are some questions we’ve been asking while remaking old technologies in the MLab, together with brief explanations of their motivations, effects, and relations to the Kits project. To organize and communicate them (in no particular order), I’ve framed them as various “matters” that speak to the relevance of remaking to humanities research, or at least to the research we’re conducting here at UVic. To be sure, these perspectives have emerged from our own biases and laboratory culture. They are also largely matters of emphasis (e.g., what issues and problems are foregrounded by particular techniques) and therefore not unique to remaking. Moreover, they are most applicable to research about technologies that no longer exist, never existed, are no longer accessible, or no longer work as they once did.

Matters of Composition

From what materials was it made? In the MLab, an interest in remaking historical artifacts has prompted us to take materials—such as wood, plastic, foam, jewels, and metals—more seriously in our research. Once we started asking questions about what materials were involved in the sourcing and construction of a technology, we also started asking questions about what materials we should use for fabrication, where those materials ultimately go, and how we should think proactively about waste and repurposing (e.g., how we can reuse “dead” electronics and “obsolete” parts in our research infrastructure). Ontologically speaking, the question of composition also highlights what little we actually know about the technologies we inherit, while extending our schematics beyond known component parts and putting some pressure on conditions of manufacturing. In this regard, matters of composition are neatly tied to studies of trade, labor, colonialism, and empire, or how and what materials are acquired in the name of scientific and technological innovation. With the Kits, matters of composition thus imply not only accounting for the intersections of capitalism and mechanical reproduction during the Victorian period but also explaining how the European acquisition of jewels, or—for instance—their cultural function in England and France, was by no means innocent.

Matters of Assembly

Through what processes was it made? An interest in process is often an interest in what cannot be recovered from the historical materials at hand. For the work we’re doing, attempts to reassemble historical artifacts (such as Trouvé’s skull stickpin) are necessarily studies of embodied activities that never happen the same way twice. There were always be disparities between the lived experiences of past and present. We cannot listen, see, smell, or otherwise perceive the world exactly like anyone did before us. Still, remaking old technologies reminds us that the processes involved cannot be reduced to mere concepts or abstractions, even if extant representations of process (e.g., patents, photographs, lab notes, models, code, and fictions) may give us that impression. What’s more, reassembly helps us identify where, how, and when people have excluded (purposefully or not) key procedures from the historical documentation at hand. In the Kits project, these identifications lead us to questions such as: Did flash jewelry really work as described? Did it work at all? Was it vaporware? A stunt? Beyond the recognized “inventor” and those named in patents, who was involved in the research? How, if at all, were they credited or mentioned? What technological processes were masked or exaggerated by Trouvé and others? Why? These questions frame technologies as processes, not products frozen in time. They also understand that archived representations of technologies were constructed, often quite consciously, by their makers.

Matters of Interface

Through what types of interactions was it made, used, and circulated? Echoing Wendy Chun, Alexander Galloway, and others, interfaces are always in between, in the middle. Any attempt to recover an interface is always partial. As such, when we reconstruct a “dead” or “obsolete” technology in the MLab, interfaces assert themselves. For instance, while remaking some of Trouve’s flash jewelry, we’ve become struck by what little we know about how that jewelry was worn by women performing on stage. To our knowledge, these accounts were not documented in writing or any other media. But—without the hubris of supposing we can inhabit other people’s positions—we imagine that interfacing with the jewelry was a delicate process, involved a high risk of superficial burns (given how the batteries were made), and caused not a small degree of discomfort. Although we can only imagine (and thus never inhabit) these experiences, conjecturing allows us to reframe normative histories of science, engineering, and technology that typically privilege the perspective of the lone white male inventor. They also allow us to stress when and why devices required intervention or assistance from their users, demystifying assumptions about the degree to which transduction was automated. Here, the impulse is to investigate how and when technologies failed, not just when they automagically converted this into that. (For more on transduction, see the work of Tara Rodgers, Jonathan Sterne, and William J. Turkel.)

Matters of Failure

Through what measures was it deemed a success? In technology studies, success is frequently articulated in value-laden, economic terms. A technology failed because it didn’t gain traction on the market, or there wasn’t sufficient demand. By this measure, failed technologies don’t have significant social or cultural “impact.” But that doesn’t mean they fail to spark the interests of historians and theorists. In fact, remaking failed technologies can tell us a lot about the social expectations and economic investments of a given period. It also points us to how history could have unfolded differently, along alternate lines, without privileging progress or profit as our measure. While this sort of research can certainly be done without any remaking, doing so arguably increases an awareness of technologies through their component parts, source materials, and production processes (as opposed to treating them as objects archived intact). In the case of the Kits, this approach has surfaced how—during certain historical moments—the use of specific mechanisms (e.g., electromagnets) gained traction in some settings (e.g., telegraphy) but not in others (e.g., fashion and stage performance). As we come to such conclusions, we start reimagining how histories of science, technology, and media are structured in the first place. Around what subjects and objects? In what settings? Through what systems, parts, and types of relations? Under what assumptions about where technologies begin and end? Perhaps most important, remaking has encouraged us to think of technologies in terms of change and iteration instead of invention, distribution, repair, and obsolescence. This shift reconfigures our very notion of history, or how knowledge emerges through messy recombinations of ideals and materials that are difficult (if not impossible) to stabilize or capture.

Matters of Abstraction

Through what media was it expressed, and how? While we might think of abstractions of technologies in terms of forms, models, and schematics, we can also understand them as ways of articulating correspondences between two or more historical agents. For scholars of science, technology, and media, this gesture is significant because it refrains from assuming that all copies, recordings, or documents are always at a loss—that they lack something the original does not. After all, imagery, audio, text, and video also are also additive means of reproduction. Or more precisely, they always effect change, even if that change is difficult to perceive. Despite longstanding investments in fidelity, media enrich or complicate representation, too, hence the language of “correspondences” above. That is, when remaking something such as a skull stickpin or a Victorian trinket box, those of us in the MLab approach historical media as crafted arguments, not perfect replicas or copies of originals. What “came first” may not always matter, either. A patent corresponds with a photograph corresponds with a sketch corresponds with an advertisement corresponds with a lab notebook corresponds with an object in a museum. Each of these arguments abstracts multiple dimensions, positions, and perspectives, translating the relations between them into something communicable, interpretable, and archivable (e.g., the official record). Remaking a device is haunted by abstracted relations, reminding us that we cannot fully recuperate embodied processes while giving us a granular sense of what those processes might have entailed. Methodologically speaking, it therefore posits “what if” in place of a truth claim (e.g., what if we consider flash jewelry an early form of wearables?). Remaking is thus an attempt to better understand history without presuming we can reenact the past.

Matters of Instrumentalism

Through what standards was it found, constructed, and archived? A significant chunk of remaking involves finding parts and materials, which typically follow industry standards. This process entails moving across disciplines and collections to gather details about a technology’s composition and then acquiring parts from vendors such as Digi-Key. Parts are assigned numbers by their manufacturers, and they are categorized, catalogued, and searched accordingly. This way, people are confident about specifications; they know they are getting the part they need. Manuals for assembly tend to follow this approach to parts. A bill of materials is provided, and consumers are given step-by-step instructions to put them together. While quite practical and often rather user-friendly, this paradigm situates most technologies in a field of instrumentalism: parts are manufactured to be found, instructions are written to be followed, and technologies are meant to be means. For those of us interested not only in how technologies are standardized but also in how to intervene in this naturalization through remaking, instrumentalism poses several challenges, especially where scholarly communication is concerned. For the Kits project, we plan to circulate the work we’re doing online and by post, as a collection of unassembled physical objects. Our hope is to prompt others to compile these objects and learn more about a specific technology in the process. But should we simply provide instructions? Or should we encourage more exploratory approaches? Also, how and through what standards should the Kits be peer-reviewed (if at all)? More generally speaking, how do we work within legacies of instrumentalism in science, technology, and media studies to expose it, critique it, and afford alternative (e.g., creative, reflexive, diffractive, not positivist) modes of expression? How do we make these alternatives accessible as well as discoverable both on- and offline?

Matters of Speculation

What’s not known? What’s not at hand? These are perhaps the two most common questions in the MLab. Often our worry is that a speculative approach to the Kits could appear too relative or whimsical: “Well, we didn’t know, so we just guessed.” Consequently, we tend to operate somewhere between subjective and strict adherence to historical conditions. As work by Bethany Nowviskie, Kari Kraus, and Johanna Drucker (among others) demonstrates, speculation is not a license for interpretive abandon. (See Elliott et al.) It can be accompanied by a scholarly apparatus, or the reasons for it can be articulated, shared, and even rendered systematic. In the case of remaking, speculation frequently manifests through trial and error. For instance, as we’re remaking Trouvé’s skull stickpin in the MLab, we’ve been speculating how exactly the jaw was animated. Since there is only one extant instance of the stickpin, no working Victorian flash jewelry exists (to our knowledge), and we’ve found no documentation in the archives, we’ve been building and testing a variety of possibilities, comparing them with what was available or popular at the time, and determining what’s feasible for circulation. This comparative, trial-and-error approach allows us to better understand the science and engineering cultures in which Trouvé’s work was embedded while also giving us opportunities to better explain—for example—why we think the stickpin used a electromagnetic mechanism (based on a telegraph sounder) and not a gear drive.

I hope these various questions and examples communicate the relevance of remaking to humanities scholarship, and I imagine the MLab will be both refining and expanding them over time. In the meantime, I’ll publish part two of this piece before 2015 arrives.

Post by Jentery Sayers, attached to the KitsForCulture project, with the news, physcomp, fabrication, and exhibits tags. Featured image for this post care of Shaun Macpherson and Jentery Sayers.

September 2012

View of the Maker Lab from outside its front door

The MLab Opens Its Doors: When the MLab first opened in September 2012, there was already a burgeoning team, including lab director, Jentery Sayers; MVP Director, Stephen Ross; and HASTAC scholars, Alex Christie, Mikka Jacobsen, Shaun Macpherson, Jana Millar Usiskin, and Katie Tanigawa. These members brought their diverse skills and research backgrounds to the MLab, and all were committed to expanding not only the work of the MLab itself, but also the idea of a space for collaborative humanities work.

October 2012

Shaun and Mikka working on the Crocodile Cafe Exhibit in the MLab

Projects Begin: October marked the beginning of many of the MLab’s major projects for the 2012–13 academic year, including the Audrey Alexandra Brown Exhibit, the Year of Ulysses project (with the Modernist Versions Project), and The Crocodile Cafe Exhibit. In the best possible way, these projects differed significantly, sparking some exciting interdisciplinary research in the MLab.

November 2012

Shaun at the “Hello World” workshop on visual programming

“Hello World” Series Launches: As an extension of the Digital Humanities Summer Institute and with support from the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab, the MLab launched a series of educational workshops, starting with Shaun’s “Max/MSP: An Introduction to Visual Programming,” followed closely by “Collating Your Texts: Using Juxta to Identify Textual Variants,” which was facilitated by Stephen Ross and Matt Huculak. From the start, these workshops brought people from across campus into the MLab to see what we were doing and how. Given its success, this series has continued into the 2014-15 academic year.

December 2012

In the MLab, a poster for the “Long-Term Thinking” panel

MLab Co-Organizes Panel with George Dyson: With the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab, the MLab co-organized a panel on “Long-Term Thinking with Technologies,” which speculated about how technologies, new media, and culture might change in the future. The panel featured notable science historian, George Dyson, together with Barbara Bordalejo (English, U. of Saskatchewan), Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier (Anthropology), Jeffrey Foss (Philosophy), David Leach (Writing), Victoria Wyatt (History in Art), and Jentery. During his visit to Victoria, Dyson also received an Honorary Doctor of Laws and gave the President’s Distinguished Lecture.

January 2013

Tweet from Aaron Mauro, announcing the ETCL’s HASTAC panel

HASTAC Scholars Panel Brown Bag Speakers Series: Alex and Jana participated in the Electronic Textual Cultures Laboratory‘s Brown Bag Speaker Series, discussing their research as graduate students working in humanities lab environments.

MLab at MLA: Jentery travelled to Boston for the 2013 Modern Language Association‘s annual convention. There, building upon some MLab projects for example material, he facilitated “Digital Scholarly Composition with Scalar” for the “Get Started in Digital Humanities” workshop. He also presented “Linked Open Data for New Modernist Studies” during the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) panel titled, “Open Sesame.” This talk was based on research he was conducting with Stephen Ross and the Modernist Versions Project. Travis Brown (Maryland), Johanna Drucker (UCLA), Eric Rochester (UVa), Geoffrey Rockwell (Alberta), and Susan Schreibman (Trinity College, Dublin) also presented on the ACH panel, with Susan Brown (Guelph) presiding.

February 2013

Katie Tanigawa facilitates a “Hello World” workshop in the MLab

“Hello World” Workshops Continue: The “Hello World” workshops continued in the new year with “How to Data Model an Object,” facilitated by Jana in January, and “Visualizing Data Using XML and the Mandala Browser,” by Katie T. in February.

MLab Mentioned in Watters’s ELI Keynote: With a focus on campus makerspaces, educational technology researcher, Audrey Watters, mentioned the MLab in her keynote at the Educause Learning Initiative Annual Meeting.

March 2013

In the MLab, posters for March 2013 talks by Tanya Clement and Bethany Nowviskie at UVic

Tanya Clement’s “Hello World” Workshop: The fifth of seven workshops in the 2012-13 “Hello World” series, titled “Distant Listening: Discovering Sound Patterns with ProseVis,” was facilitated by visiting scholar, Tanya Clement (Assistant Professor, University of Texas at Austin). Clement also gave an outstanding talk on campus that day.

Bethany Nowviskie Visits UVic: As a part of UVic’s Lansdowne Lecture series, and hosted in conjunction with the University’s Digital Humanities Committee, Bethany Nowviskie (Director of Digital Research and Scholarship, University of Virginia Library’s Scholars’ Lab) gave a compelling talk, “Praxis Makes Perfect: New Models for Learning in the Humanities.” She also facilitated the sixth 2012-13 “Hello World” workshop in McPherson Library, where she guided a packed room through Neatline, an exhibit-building tool developed at the Scholars’ Lab.

April 2013

Nina and Alex presenting at HASTAC 2013 in Toronto

HASTAC Presentations: A number of MLab members, including Nina, Alex, Jentery, and Katie, presented at the HASTAC conference at York University (the first HASTAC conference in Canada), giving papers as well as co-organizing a pop-up makerspace with the Ontario Augmented Reality Network (OARN) and Western University’s Lab for Humanistic Fabrication.

MLab CFUV Interviews: Jentery was invited to speak on “Post Everything,” a program on UVic’s campus radio station, CFUV. During the interview, he talked about 3D printing, physical computing, and other forms of fabrication and how they open up new avenues of inquiry in humanities research. Meanwhile, Shaun was invited to speak about his graduate research on the intersections of maker culture, critical theory, and the cultural construction of interfaces on CFUV’s “Beyond the Jargon.”

MLab participates in Day of DH 2013: Several MLab members participated in Day of DH 2013, an annual event in which DH practitioners from around the world offer a snapshot of the DH-related projects they are working on. Shaun blogged about desktop fabrication and planning a popup makerspace at HASTAC 2013; Katie T. wrote about working with Alex to create geo-temporal maps of James Joyce’s Dublin; Nina wrote about her Hyperlit prototype and creating a project portfolio; Arthur wrote about 3D modelling a stereoscope; Jana wrote about tagging the poems of Audrey Alexandra Brown; and Jentery wrote about planning the HASTAC trip, organizing a Public Humanities lecture series with Nina, and prepping for his upcoming photogrammetry workshop.

Final “Hello World” Workshop: The “Hello World” workshop series ended on a high note with “Stitching 2D into 3D: An Introduction to Photogrammetry,” which Jentery facilitated. This session explored the possibilities of 3D modeling and printing for historical research.

May 2013

SSHRC Storytellers from left to right: Shaun, Adèle, Katie T., and Arthur (top row), Mikka and Jana (bottom row)

MLab Team Wins SSHRC Video Contest: MLab team members Adèle, Nina, Alex, Arthur, Mikka, Shaun, Jana, and Katie T. won the SSHRC “Research for a Better Life: The Storytellers” contest with their video, “Recovering the Local: A Digital Literary Exhibit on Audrey Alexandra Brown.” The SSHRC video contest included a prize of $3,000 per winning team.

The Long Now of Ulysses Launch: After months of development, the Long Now of Ulysses exhibit began. With support from the MLab, the Modernist Versions Project, the University of Victoria Library, and the University of Victoria Art Collections, graduate students from Stephen’s English 560 seminar on the modernist novel and Jentery’s English 507 seminar on digital literary studies developed and launched the exhibit online and at the Maltwood Gallery in McPherson Library. For Editing Modernism in Canada, Amanda Hansen published a short piece on the exhibit, and several local news outlets covered the event.

The MLab’s Website Goes Live: After months of writing, organizing, editing, backing-up, re-editing, re-backing up, and arguing about web design, the Maker Lab site went live at last! Since its launch, the site has been visited by people in over 100 different countries, with thousands of pageviews per month.

IJLM Publication: Jentery, the MLab, and seven students from the 2012 English 507 graduate seminar on digital literary studies saw their co-authored Scalar article, “Teaching and Learning Multimodal Communications,” published by MIT Press in the peer-reviewed venue, International Journal of Learning and Media (IJLM). The piece demonstrated how Scalar can be used as both a multimodal pedagogical tool and a research platform, and it included commentary and analysis written by all the authors.

June 2013

Edward Jones-Imhotep (center) and Jacqueline Wernimont (right) building a 3D printer at DHSI

MLab Participates in DHSI 2013: Many MLab members participated in workshops at the annual Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI), hosted by UVic every year. Jentery co-taught the “Physical Computing and Desktop Fabrication” course with William J. Turkel and Devon Elliott.

MLab Presents at Congress 2013: Adèle, Nina, Alex, Jana, Stephen, Jentery, and Katie T. presented during the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, “Canada’s largest academic gathering,” held at UVic during the first week of June.

MLab Gets Mentions: The MLab was mentioned on several notable websites: Maker Bridges mentioned it in a post on “Makerspaces in Academia;” Steven E. Jones mentioned the MLab and embedded an MLab video on the website for his book, The Emergence of the Digital Humanities; and ProfHacker mentioned Jentery’s presentation, “Portable, Tacit, Temporary: Popup Makerspaces in the Humanities,” which he gave at the “DH Innovations: Lab Based Environments in the Humanities” symposium at Vancouver Island University.

July 2013

Photograph of Brian Croxall taken during the “From 2D to 3D” workshop at DH 2013 in Nebraska

MLab at DH 2013: At the annual Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations’ conference in Lincoln, Nebraska, Jentery presented a paper (“Made to Make: Expanding Digital Humanities through Desktop Fabrication”) and facilitated a workshop (“From 2D to 3D: An Introduction to Desktop Fabrication”). Both featured the MLab’s desktop fabrication research and were conducted in collaboration with Devon Elliott (Western University) and Jeremy Boggs (University of Virginia).

Rhetoric Society of America Interviews Jentery: Focusing on the topic of makerspaces, John W. Pell with the Rhetoric Society of Amercia interviewed Jentery about the MLab and its “collaborative, embodied work” for The Blogora.

August 2013

Slide from Jentery’s TEMiC 2013 talk at UBCO

MLab at TEMiC 2013: Jentery gave a talk titled, “Editing, Annotating, and Discovering Historical Audio,” at the Textual Editing and Modernism in Canada (TEMiC) 2013 meeting hosted by the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. This talk was based in part on some of the MLab’s scholarly exhibit research, including its work with historical audio.

September 2013

Image from Belojevic and Johnson’s HyperLit project, which was awarded the 2012-13 Praxis Award

MLab Team Members Win Praxis Awards: Nina, Alex, Jon, and Katie T. each received the Digital Humanities Praxis Innovation Award for demonstrating “scholarly innovation through digital humanities research, teaching, learning, and communication” with their collaborative projects, “HyperLit: A Gameful Design Model for a Social Edition” (Nina and Jon) and “Dislocating Ulysses“ (Alex and Katie).

MLab Welcomes New Team Members: The MLab’s second year welcomed the addition of several new team members, while many previous members remained. The new members were Patrick Close, Laura Dosky, Jon Johnson, Stefan Krescy, Nancy McWhirter, Katie McQueston, Keddy Pavlik, Zaqir Virani, and Karly Wilson.

MLab at the University of Kansas: Jentery was one of the keynote speakers at the Digital Humanities Forum 2013 hosted by the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Kansas. He gave a talk titled, “Fabrications, or How to Lie with Computer Vision.” During the talk, he walked audiences through the MLab’s Z-Axis research with Implementing New Knowledge Environments and the Modernist Versions Project.

Alex and Katie Present at MSA: Alex and Katie T. presented at the Modernist Studies Association conference in Brighton during a roundtable session on modernism and interdisciplinarity.

MLab Hosts merritt kopas: As a part of the “Building Public Humanities” project, and with support from the Electronic Textual Cultures Laboratory, merritt kopas came to UVic to give a talk and workshop. Both the workshop and the talk were full of interested students and profs from across the disciplines.

MLab Awarded SSHRC Insight Grant: In perhaps the biggest news of the year for the MLab, Jentery Sayers, in collaboration with William J. Turkel (Western University), received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant. The Grant was awarded to fund “Humanities Physical Computing and Fabrication for Cultural History” for four years (2013-17). Work began almost immediately on the Kits for Cultural History, the primary project supported by the grant.

Nina and Jentery Present at INKE NYU: Nina and Jentery traveled to New York University to present their paper, “Prototyping Personas for Open, Networked Peer Review,” at the Implementing New Knowledge Environments conference. A revised and developed version of this talk was later published in The Journal of Electronic Publishing. 

MLab Video Included in North Carolina State Syllabus: A video project led by Shaun and produced with other members of the MLab was included in the course syllabus (under the section “Making”) for Paul Fyfe’s Fall 2013 ENG582-003 course (“Studies in Digital Humanities”) at North Carolina State University.

MLab Mentioned in Prince George Citizen: In an article about the Two Rivers Gallery, the Prince George Citizen cited the MLab as an example of a growing “global movement” of labs and spaces devoted to research projects and explorations that utilize a maker approach.

October 2013

“Tinkering with Scholarship” piece in the Times Colonist

MLab in the Times Colonist: The MLab was featured in a Times Colonist article titled, “Tinkering With Scholarship.” The article was part of a series of pieces written on UVic research; it describes how the MLab blends humanities research with the collaborative makerspace model.

MLab Team Members Start Working on NANO Special Issue: MLab team members Adèle, Alex, Jana, Stephen, Jentery, and Katie T. were invited by New American Notes Online (or NANO) to be the guest editors of a special issue on digital humanities and public humanities.

Jentery Presents in Seattle: Jentery traveled to Seattle as the keynote speaker for the TYCA-PNW & Pacific Northwest Writing Center Association Joint Annual Conference. His talk, “Why Do Makerspaces Matter for the Humanities? For Writing Centers?,” discussed the practicalities and appeal of maker culture beyond its trendy status.

MLab Inspires UWGB Course: Taking the MLab’s Kits for Cultural History project as the “inspiration” for a project called “Cultural History Kit,” Chuck Rybak developed an assignment for a class he taught through the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay’s Commons for the Digital and Public Humanities.

Laura Publishes “Digital Publishing in Analog” with MediaCommons: In this piece, Laura describes the importance of maintaining an awareness of the “analog” materials that underscore much digital scholarship and research, including the MLab’s work on scholarly exhibits.

November 2013

Nina and Shaun presenting during the WHA conference at UC San Diego

Nina and Shaun Present at WHA Conference: Nina and Shaun travelled to the University of California, San Diego for the Western Humanities Alliance (WHA) Annual Meeting, where they gave a lightning presentation that featured an electronic poster and early prototype of the Kits for Cultural History Early Wearables project.

UVic Torch Mentions Maker Lab: UVic’s alumni magazine, Torch, mentioned the MLab in their Autumn 2013 issue. The article features the Victoria Makerspace and the MLab showing how the maker ethos can be applied to academia.

Sayers and Dietrich Published in Digital Studies: The online journal, Digital Studies / Le champ numérique, published “After the Document Model for Scholarly Communication: Some Considerations for Authoring with Rich Media,” an article by Jentery and Craig Dietrich (Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California). The article discusses the platforms, ThoughtMesh and Scalar, and how each can be utilized for digital communications that expand our understanding of scholarship.

MLab Hosts Lynne Siemens: For the second part of the “Building Public Humanities” series, presented by the MLab in conjunction with the Electronic Textual Cultures Laboratory, Lynne Siemens gave a workshop on “Public Humanities Project Management.” It was well-attended by graduate students interested in gaining insight into what it takes to develop, define, plan, and manage public projects.

More Nods for MLab Projects: The Z-Axis research was mentioned in Whitney Trettien’s blog post “Towards a Prototype of Digital Harmony” on the relation of digital editions to maps, and Ryan Hunt mentioned the MLab’s Kits for Cultural History in “An Introduction to Maker Culture for Historians,” as an example of the effective applications of maker culture in academic settings.

December 2013

A warped map, by Katie and Alex, from the Z-Axis project

Katie T.’s “Mudbox” Post Selected by DHNow: Katie T.’s piece, “Warping the City: Joyce in a Mudbox,” which describes the Z-Axis project, received an Editors’ Choice at Digital Humanities Now.

MLab in “Faces of UVic” Video: Jentery was invited to speak about his research and the MLab’s projects in UVic’s YouTube series, “Faces of UVic Research.” In the video, Jentery discusses the ways that the explorations of technology undertaken in the MLab help to further historical research.

January 2014

Nicole, Alex, Karly, Stefan, Zaqir, Emma, Laura, and Nina at the Paper Speaker workshop

Katie M. Conducts a Paper Speaker Workshop: During the MLab’s “Hello World” series, Katie M.’s “DIY Paper Speaker” workshop guided participants through how to build a speaker out of paper and copper coil, as well as a simple amplifier circuit. Using her well-designed instruction manual, workshop participants were soon filling the room with the tinny sounds of paper-amplified tunes.

Jentery Publishes “Making the Perfect Record” in American Literature: With support from Duke University Press, Jentery published “Making the Perfect Record” (open access) in the journal, American Literature. The article draws from his research on early magnetic recording, and it was part of a special issue on new media and literature. It was authored and published in Scalar, and it ultimately influenced how the MLab approached its various Scalar projects.

February 2014

Photograph taken by Alex during the MLab’s trip to INKE Whistler

MLab Researchers Present at INKE Whistler Conference: Nina, Alex, Stephen, Jentery, and our colleagues at the ETCL all traveled to beautiful Whistler, BC, for the annual INKE gathering, where everyone also gave a talk. The title of this year’s gathering was “Building Partnerships to Transform Scholarly Publishing.”

MLab Co-Hosts Doran Larson: As a part of the “Building Public Humanities” project, and with help from the Electronic Textual Cultures Laboratory, Hamilton College’s Doran Larson came to UVic to deliver his presentation, “Bearing Digital Witness: The Humanities and the American Prison Complex.” The talk centred on social justice issues in the U.S. prison system and described his book project, an edited collection of 71 essays written by inmates in the American prison system.

“Hello World” Series Welcomes Ed Chang: Drew University’s Edmond Y. Chang was sponsored by both the Electronic Textual Cultures Laboratory and the MLab to give a talk titled, “Queer Games, Straight Design,” as well as a workshop on “Close Playing Race, Gender, Sexuality,” which explored strategies for using video games in the classroom to talk about race, sexuality, gender, and power. Both the talk and workshop featured fascinating and engaging discussions.

Davidson and Jagoda Mention the MLab: With Patrick Jagoda (University of Chicago), Cathy N. Davidson (Graduate Center, CUNY)—who is a co-founder of HASTAC and member of President Obama’s National Humanities Council—mentioned the MLab while discussing digital humanities innovations. In particular, Jagoda and Davidson cited the MLab as an example of how the “lab” model has led to “renewed public interest—and confidence—in the academic humanities.”

March 2014

Katie M., Keddy, and Heather at IdeaFest 2014

“Book Nerds in a Lab”: MLab Does Ideafest: Taking the opportunity to connect with people across campus and the larger Victoria community, MLab participated in Ideafest 2014, UVic’s annual “festival of research.” Team members from the MLab’s different research projects—Z-Axis, Kits for Cultural History, and the Year of Ulysses (YoU)—displayed their work and discussed it with some of the 4,000+ attendees of the week-long event.

MLab Receives CFI/FCI Support: March 2014 was brimming with good news. From the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) / Fondation canadienne pour l’innovation (FCI)’s  John R. Evans Leaders Fund, the MLab received support for its research proposal, “The Makerspace for Desktop Fabrication and Physical Computing in the Humanities.” This proposal was created in partnership with the Department of English at UVic and the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington.

Kits for Cultural History at SCMS: Jentery traveled to Seattle for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ (SCMS) annual conference, where he gave a paper titled, “Kits for Cultural History: Applied Approaches to Old Media and Mechanisms,” and participated in a panel (with Anne Balsamo, Shannon Mattern, Paulina Mickiewicz, and Patrik Svensson) titled, “From Libraries to Labs: Spaces of Media Access, Making, and Learning.”

 April 2014

Nina, Shaun, and Katie in the Barranco District of Lima

MLab team at HASTAC 2014 in Lima: Nina, Katie M., Shaun, and Jentery traveled to Lima, Peru, for the sixth annual HASTAC conference in Lima, Peru. Fun was had, ceviche was consumed, and the team hosted a popup makerspace, “Whose Hand am I Holding, Anyway?” Nina and Jentery also presented a paper, “Making a Kit for Cultural History,” in which they discussed the conceptual framework for the Early Wearables Kit.

MLab Featured in University Affairs: University Affairs (UA), Canada’s leading journal providing information “about and for Canada’s universities,” published a feature article about the MLab in both its print and online editions. The piece, “Exploring the Humanities Through Unique Makerspaces,” describes the lab as a pioneer in the “blending [of] ‘makerspace ethos’ with the humanities.”

Nina and Shaun’s CFUV Interview: Nina and Shaun were invited for an interview with CFUV’s show, “Doers, Makers, Thinkers.” In the interview, they discussed how their graduate research was shaped by their work at the MLab.

MLab Referenced by SUNYIT: SUNYIT at Utica/Rome’s MakeIT initiative listed the MLab in a list of resources of “Making Across Disciplines.” The MLab is listed alongside the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and the California College of the Arts, among others.

May 2014

In 2014, the MLab received support from the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund

MLab Receives BCKDF Support: More good news! The MLab was awarded a British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund grant for “The Makerspace for Desktop Fabrication and Physical Computing in the Humanities.” As with the CFI/FCI award, the proposal was created in partnership with the Department of English at UVic and the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington.

June 2014

Visual summary of Jentery’s ETUG keynote by Jason Toal and Tracy Kelly

MLab at ETUG: Traveling to Langara College in Vancouver for the Educational Technology Users Group (ETUG) spring workshop, Jentery gave the keynote, “Make, Not Brand: DIY Making after Big Data.” The well-attended talk discussed the concept of “make” beyond the brand, including its origins in DIY culture.

Devon, Jentery, and Bill Teach at DHSI: For the second year, Devon, Jentery, and Bill taught the week-long course, “Physical Computing and Desktop Fabrication for Humanists,” at the 2014 Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) at the University of Victoria. Participants in the course gained knowledge and hands-on experience with 3D printing, Max/MSP, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and other physical computing tools and technologies. The class even built a MAME cabinet! At the end of the course, Nina and Shaun were invited to join Devon and Jentery to teach physical computing at DHSI 2015.

July 2014

Screen grab of the “Around DH in 80 Days” project, which features the MLab

MLab Gets Mentioned in “Around DH”: The MLab team was absolutely honoured to be featured as Day 27 of “Around DH in 80 Days.” Edited by Alex Gil, the post describes how the MLab “affords its team of graduate students and faculty opportunities to build projects through various modes of knowing by doing.”

Alex Presents at DH 2014 in Switzerland: Alex traveled to Lausanne, Switzerland for DH 2014, where he presented a paper co-written with the INKE-MVP research team. The paper was titled, “Modeling How Modernists Wrote the City.”

MLab Team Publishes Special Issue of NANO: New American Notes Online (NANO) invited members of the MLab to act as guest editors of a special issue: “Digital Humanities, Public Humanities.” Adèle, Alex, Jana, Jentery, and Katie T. all participated in circulating the CFP, selecting from the submissions, providing feedback, editing, and writing the special issue’s introduction. Additionally, Nina’s essay, “Circuit Bending Videogame Consoles as a Form of Applied Media Studies,” was selected for publication in the issue.

Year of Ulysses E-Book Published on UVicSpace: Stefan—MLab team member and lead researcher on the Year of Ulysses (YoU) project with the Modernist Versions Project—edited the Twitter conversations around the online, serialized release of Joyce’s Ulysses into an elegant e-book. In total, the book (licensed with Creative Commons) represents over thirteen thousand tweets organized into conversations around each chapter of Joyce’s novel.

August 2014

Materials from the MLab’s prototyping space, including anodized aluminum laser cut with the MLab logo

MLab Makes Room for More Machines: As the MLab entered its third year, it began the process of expanding operations on the Kits for Cultural History project, which included new CNC equipment for prototyping and production. (More details on this front soon!)

September 2014

From the MLab’s Trouvé repo, an image of an illuminated fish experiment

Gustave Trouvé Gets Github: As part of the Kits for Cultural History, Danielle Morgan and the MLab team created a public Github repository of images cropped from Georges Barral’s 1891 biography of Trouvé, Histoire D’Un Inventeur. Danielle also translated the image captions from the original French into English.

Nina and Shaun Named Assistant Directors of the MLab: Congratulations to MLab team members, Nina and Shaun, who were named Assistant Directors of the MLab! Also, a special welcome to new team members, Nicole Clouston, Katherine Goertz, and Danielle Morgan, all of whom are working on the Kits for Cultural History.

Stephen and Jentery Published in Literature Compass: Stephen and Jentery’s article, “Modernism Meets Digital Humanities,” was published in Literature Compass. The article surveys digital humanities approaches to modernism and includes references to the Z-Axis project.

CUNY Mentions Nina’s Publication: In its announcement of the publication of the special issue of New American Notes Online (NANO), City Tech’s website draws specific attention to Nina’s essay, “Circuit Bending Videogame Consoles as a Form of Applied Media Studies.” Calling Nina’s essay a “highlight” of the issue, the post writes that she “hacks into Nintendo Entertainment Systems to try to reconfigure play potential.”

MLab Included in Growing List of Syllabi and Resource Lists: As the new school year rolled around, many instructors around the world included the MLab’s website and the work of MLab researchers in their course syllabi and resource lists. These included mentions by Steven E. Jones, for his Media and Culture course at Loyola; Ashley Blacquiere, for his History of Videogame Design course at UVic; Melissa Bailar, for her Introduction to Digital Humanities graduate seminar at Rice; and Steph Ceraso, for her Introduction to Digital Humanities course at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Additionally, UCSB’s Alan Liu listed work done by Alex, Katie T., Jana, Stephen, and Jentery in his DH Toybox for students.

Nina and Jentery Published in JEP: Nina and Jentery’s article, “Peer Review Personas,” was published in The Journal of Electronic Publishing (JEP). The article presents a prototype that is currently under development by Implementing New Knowledge Environments.

The “Hello World” Series Continues: At the month’s end, the MLab announced it will be conducting a weekend workshop, “Introduction to Programming and Python 3 in the Arts and Humanities,” with support from the Digital Humanities Summer Institute and the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab. The workshop will take place during the first weekend of March 2015.

Today

This piece is the 120th piece published at maker.uvic.ca since its launch during our first year. Here’s to 100+ more! Thanks, everyone.

Post by Shaun Macpherson and Karly Wilson, attached to the Makerspace project, with the news, physcomp, fabrication, versioning, and exhibits tags. Featured image of Katherine Goertz, Danielle Morgan, and Shaun Macpherson care of the Maker Lab.