Doing Digital Art History: a data-mining project on open content

Posted: April 10, 2015 | Author: Allana | Filed under: Art History, Digital Imaging, Technology | Tags: data mining, digital art history, digital humanities | Comments Off

http://blog.martinbellander.com/post/115411125748/the-colors-of-paintings-blue-is-the-new-orange

Here’s a little data-mining project I absolutely love: charting the colours used in paintings throughout history, by analyzing the pixels of digitized artworks hosted online. (The obvious caveat is to make sure you’re sampling from collections digitized with some fidelity, instead of, say, most of these copies … )

The creator put all of his code in R online, so you could query the exact same collection to do similar analyses with no trouble at all (if you were into that sort of thing).

I made a visualization of the change in colors of paintings over time which a friend tweeted. Several people wanted more info on the method used, so I decided to write a detailed description here, also including the (not very pretty) code I used.

Recently I read a couple of very nice blog post on color use in movies, where colors where extracted from either movie posters or the actual frames of trailers.

I decided to try to do something similar but with data for a longer time period than the era of film. I decided to download images of paintings. So there is a bunch of different sites where you can access (photos of) paintings, e.g. BBC, Google Art Project, Wikiart, Wikimedia commons, and various museums. One of my favorites is the BBC:s site where you can browse through over 200K of well organized paintings! An amazing resource. For many of these there is also information on the year they were painted, the artist, etc.

Also, be sure to check out the comment thread for a discussion of the whole “what’s up with all the blue” question — my inkling was about Prussian Blue and other Western colour-fads, too.

Student Project Opportunity: Digital Database Coordinator, HERE Arts Center, NY, NY

Posted: March 10, 2015 | Author: monicakenzie | Filed under: Opportunities: Internships | Tags: digital humanities, internship | Comments Off

Digital Database Coordinator Project Position

HERE Arts Center, located at 145 Spring Street at Dominick in New York City, has embarked on an archival project to organize and access archival holdings for the creation of a visual history of HERE, including work as Tiny Mythic and HOME for Contemporary Theater along with HERE’s many theater programs and the evolution of its location in SOHO. The theater archive of HERE encompasses a date range from the late 1980s to the present.

A graduate archival student with an interest in theater is needed to design, program, and configure a database system to work in conjunction with existing systems at HERE in order to capture digital assets for historical web presentations on the HERE Arts Center website. This is an excellent opportunity for the successful candidate to acquire hands-on digital asset management experience.

The Digital Database Coordinator will:
–Analyze the systems at HERE and recommend a system based on HERE’s cloud-based (Dropbox) storage platform
–Configure the system to meet HERE’s needs
–Instruct HERE’s staff on the maintenance and use of the system
–Work in consult with a Digital Curator of Theater Collections

Salary: $500 stipend available for successful candidate.

https://archivesgig.wordpress.com/2015/03/10/new-york-ny-student-digital-database-coordinator-term-here-arts-center/

Student Research Paper Award from ASIS&T: “What do Information and Technology Mean to the Arts and Humanities?”

Posted: January 14, 2015 | Author: Allana | Filed under: Opportunities: Awards, Opportunities: Conferences | Tags: Digital Curation, digital humanities, student papers | Comments Off

http://ischoolgroups.sjsu.edu/asistsc/studentresearchaward/

The deadline for this award is March 25th, 2015 – it appears to be only open to current students, not recent graduates, although you might want to confirm that via email if you’re interested. The monetary award amount will be announced in February for both the Masters and PhD prizes; winners are invited to present their research during the virtual Symposium in April, and may possibly be invited to present during the ASIS&T Annual Conference in November.

SIG-AH AND SIG-VIS STUDENT RESEARCH PAPER AWARD

Call for Student Papers: “What do Information and Technology Mean to the Arts and Humanities?”

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Wednesday, March 25, 2015

FINALIST NOTIFICATION: Friday, April 10, 2015

FINALIST PRESENTATIONS: Wednesday, April 22 or Thursday, April 23, 2015

The Special Interest Group for Arts and Humanities (SIG-AH) and the Special Interest Group for Visualization, Images, & Sound (SIG-VIS) of the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) are seeking papers for a Master’s and PhD student research paper award. Finalists will be invited to present their research during a virtual Symposium in the spring (April 22 and 23) and two (2) winners will receive a Best Student Paper award and cash prize. Winners may also receive an invitation to present on a possible panel at the 2015 Annual Conference in St. Louis (November 6-10).

Theme

The contest theme “What do Information and Technology Mean to the Arts and Humanities?” is open-ended to invite participation from a variety of theoretical and empirical perspectives on the topic. We encourage graduate-level submissions from a broad range of disciplines including arts, humanities, library and information science, and computer science. Papers should explore the role or application of information and technology in the arts and humanities and may include, but are not limited to, past research, case studies, and current projects in the areas of:

eHumanities/arts and humanities eScience

Digital reference and eResearch discovery platforms

Text/data mining and the use of large-scale corpora

Scholarly communications and digital publishing

Data visualization

The role of information technology in managing images and audiovisual resources

The use of images and audiovisual resources in information practices

Digital Humanities

Technology implementation projects

Research assessment and altmetrics

(The list is meant to be illustrative, not prescriptive.)

Who is Eligible?

Submissions can be made as a single author or a group of authors, including collaborations between students from different institutions. All submitted works should be previously unpublished. Authors do NOT need to be members of ASIS&T. All research is expected to be purely the students’ work. Research undertaken as part of a course, an internship experience, or a thesis project is eligible. Authors are required to secure any necessary permissions related to research findings from internships and thesis projects being used in this research competition.

Requirements & Selection Criteria

While the contest theme and eligibility are open, papers should show an appropriate level of writing and should include an advanced theoretical or empirical discussion, methodology or analysis. Paper submissions must adhere to the following guidelines:

Word .doc or .docx format

10 single-spaced pages or less (approximately 4,000 words), 12 pt. font, and must follow a standard citation style (APA preferred). Tables, graphs, images, etc…may appear within the body of the text.

Author names should not appear anywhere in the main text

Separate cover page with title, author names, institutional affiliations, and abstract of 250 words or less

Submission details should be made via electronic form and final papers emailed by the March 25, 2015 deadline (details below).

Papers will be selected based on the following criteria: relevance of topic to the contest theme, originality of research and approach, and quality of student writing. Papers not meeting these requirements may be excluded from the contest.

Spring 2015 Symposium

Finalists will be invited to present their research during a virtual Symposium on April 22 and 23, 2015. The Symposium will highlight student research projects amidst the larger discussion of the applications and uses of information and technology in the arts and humanities. Finalists will be selected based on the selection criteria above, as well as the possible contribution of the research to the Symposium.

Awards

Two (2) finalist papers may be awarded for Best Master’s/MLIS Student Paper or Best PhD Student Paper, including a monetary prize. Based on the quality of submissions, additional awards may be made for merit-worthy papers.

Award monetary prize amounts will be announced in February.

Winners may be invited to present on a possible panel at the 2015 ASIS&T Annual Conference in St. Louis, MO, November 6-10, 2015 (pending panel acceptance on the Conference schedule).

Submission and Deadline

Authors are invited to submit papers, based on the requirements and selection criteria above, by filling out the form at http://goo.gl/forms/tSFJjckVId and emailing the final paper to ASIST.SIGAH {at} gmail.com before 11:59 pm PST, March 25, 2015.

Please ensure the information submitted on the web form matches the final paper submission cover page. Finalist and Best Paper selections will be made by a panel of judges.

If you have any questions, please email Jeremy McLaughlin at Jeremy.mclaughlin {at} sjsu.edu

Student Research Paper Award details: http://bit.ly/SIGStudentRsrch

Student Research Paper Award Submission Form: http://goo.gl/forms/tSFJjckVId

Notes from the ARLIS/NA-MW Virtual Conference

Posted: November 24, 2013 | Author: ellenjt | Filed under: ARLIS/NA, News | Tags: digital humanities, open access, webinar | 1 Comment

On November 15th, ARLIS/NA-MW hosted the virtual conference Wide Angle: Perspectives on Visual + Media Arts Information. Here are some highlights from two of the talks that were presented.

Nicole Beatty, the Arts & Humanities Librarian at Weber State University, gave the presentation titled Digital Humanities: What is it and what does it mean for scholars and librarians? She noted that while the definition of what constitutes the Digital Humanities is still in flux, it is generally thought to refer to the use of a wide range of technologies to support research and education in the humanities. The technology used can include digitization, data visualization, geo-spatial mapping, cloud computing, social media, and more.

Some interesting examples of geo-spatial mapping include SFMOMA’s ArtScope and Mapping Gothic France. This blog shows some of the interesting possibilities when using data visualization to explore the collection of the Tate Galleries.

If you’re wondering where to find the tools for creating these projects, Beatty recommends Bamboo Dirt as a great place to start. This site lists a registry of digital research tools, and can help scholars find the software that fits their needs. If funding is an issue, as it often is, the National Endowment for the Humanities provides grants for those interested in pursuing projects in the digital humanities. We will likely see the number of projects in the digital humanities increase in the future, as Beatty explains that including these kinds of multi-media resources in instruction can help students to engage with the material in new ways.

Mapping Gothic France homepage

Another presentation, titled From Commons to Open Content: New Perspectives on Visual Resources in the Public Trust, was given by Allana Mayer, MLIS Candidate from McGill University. She discussed the concept of Open Access, referring to content that may be used, reused and redistributed, often with certain restrictions.

One project Mayer discussed was the Library of Congress photostream on Flickr, a collection of images with no known copyright restrictions. The project started with 3,000 images, with 50 added every week, and approximately 75 institutions contributing since 2008. These images are suitable for reuse on websites and the like, but are not sufficiently high-quality to be used in a larger format. The Library of Congress invited Flickr users to tag and comment on photos, thereby learning more about images that formerly had little metadata associated with them. The project has stopped accepting new institutions, and is not currently expanding.

Another is the open content offered by the Rijksmuseum, which began with 125,000 images. These are high-quality images, but are offered under a non-commercial copyright restriction. The Rijksmuseum has also launched apps for creating content using their images. The Getty’s Open Content Program is another exciting recent initiative, with over 10,000 images available, requesting only that attribution be given to the Getty when an image is reproduced. NGA Images of The National Gallery of Art is a third excellent source of open access images, with over 29,000 images available for non-commercial use.

While there are legal issues to take into consideration when launching initiatives such as these, Mayer notes that many museum curators believe in the importance of sharing high-quality images of works of art with as wide an audience as possible.

Library of Congress Flickr Photostream

The above links and more will be collected on ArLiSNAP’s pinterest page. For other useful links about digital humanities projects, follow our Technology pinboard; for open content links, have a look on the Open Access Images pinboard.

Defining the Digital Humanities event at Columbia University

Posted: March 31, 2011 | Author: rosemary k. j. davis | Filed under: Academic Librarianship, Lectures, Libraries: Academic Art & Architecture, News, Opportunities: Professional Development, Technology, Workshops, [ ArLiSNAP ] | Tags: columbia university, digital humanities, Lectures, scholarly communication | 1 Comment

What do digital humanities scholars see as the potential of this interdisciplinary field?

Find out.

Defining the Digital Humanities
Wednesday, April 6, 2011, 12:00-2:00 PM
555 Lerner Hall, Morningside

Guests who do not have a Columbia University ID must RSVP to kp2002@columbia.edu by Tuesday, April 5.

Panelists include Dan Cohen, Director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University; Federica Frabetti, Senior Lecturer in the Communication, Media and Culture Program at Oxford Brookes University, UK; and Dino Buzzetti, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Bologna. More information.

RESEARCH WITHOUT BORDERS EVENT SERIES
The Scholarly Communication Program at CU Libraries/Information Services presents a speaker series for the 2010-11 academic year on today’s pivotal issues in scholarly communication.

Join us for the third year of events exploring changes in how scholars and researchers create, share, reuse, and preserve new knowledge. The series is free and open to the public.

For more info, email Kathryn Pope at kp2002@columbia.edu, or visit http://scholcomm.columbia.edu.

Follow the events remotely on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ScholarlyComm.

PhD required?

Posted: January 28, 2009 | Author: mmacken | Filed under: Opportunities: Job Postings | Tags: digital humanities, education, PhDs | Comments Off

Here’s a job for a Digital Collections Specialist that requires a PhD with Digital Humanities/Libraries specialization (see UNC’s new program), but the requirements don’t go too far beyond the average Digital Projects/Systems Librarian:

http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/jobweb/JobDetails.php?JobID=28093

Call for Papers: Chicago Digital Humanities Colloquium

Posted: April 30, 2008 | Author: mmacken | Filed under: Opportunities: Calls for Papers | Tags: digital humanities, digitization, MOMA | Comments Off

Dear Friends,

The Call for Papers for the Chicago Digital Humanities/Computer Science Colloquium ( Nov 1st-3rd, 2008 ) has now been published on the Colloquium website (http://dhcs.uchicago.edu). On behalf of the organizing committee, I would like to encourage you to submit proposals for the 2008 DHCS and look forward to seeing you again in Chicago!

with best regards,

Arno Bosse
Senior Director of Technology
Division of the Humanities
University of Chicago
1115 E. 58th St., Walker Room 001B
Chicago, IL 60637
Phone: 773-702-6177
Fax: 773-834-5867

———–

Call for Papers: 2008 Chicago Digital Humanities/Computer Science Colloquium

Sponsored by the Humanities Division, the Computational Institute, NSIT Academic Technologies and the University Library at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University and the College of Science and Letters at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

DHCS Colloquium, November 1st – 3rd, 2008 Submission Deadline: August 31st, 2008

The goal of the annual Chicago Digital Humanities/Computer Science (DHCS) Colloquium is to bring together researchers and scholars in the Humanities and Computer Sciences to examine the current state of Digital Humanities as a field of intellectual inquiry and to identify and explore new directions and perspectives for future research. In 2006, the first DHCS Colloquium examined the challenges and opportunities posed by the “million books” digitization projects. The second DHCS Colloquium in 2007 focused on searching and querying as tools and methodologies.

The theme of the third Chicago DHCS Colloquium is “Making Sense”- an exploration of how meaning is created and apprehended at the transition of the digital and the analog.

We encourage submissions from scholars and researchers on all topics that intersect current theory and practice in the Humanities and Computer Science.

Website:

http://dhcs.uchicago.edu

Location:

The University of Chicago
Ida Noyes Hall
1212 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637

Keynote Speakers:

Oren Etzioni is Director of the Turing Center and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Washington where his current research interests include fundamental problems in the study of artificial intelligence, web search, machine reading, and machine learning. Etzioni was the founder of Farecast, a company that utilizes data mining techniques to anticipate airfare fluctuations, and the KnowItAll project, which is is building domain-independent systems to extract information from the Web in an autonomous, scalable manner. Etzioni has published extensively in his field and served as an Associate Editor of the ACM Transactions on the Web and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, amongst others.

Stephen Downie is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include the design and evaluation of IR systems, including multimedia music information retrieval, the political economy of inter-networked communication systems, database design and web-based technologies. Downie is the principal investigator of the International Music Information Retrieval Systems Evaluation Laboratory (IMIRSEL), which is working on producing a large, secure corpus of audio and symbolic music data accessible to the music information retrieval (MIR) community.

Martin Wattenberg is a computer scientist and new media artist whose work focuses on the visual explorations of culturally significant data (http://www.bewitched.com). He is the founding manager of IBM’s Visual Communication Lab, which researches new forms of visualization and how they can enable better collaboration. The lab’s latest project is Many Eyes, an experiment in open, public data visualization and analysis. Wattenberg is also known for his visualization-based artwork, which has been exhibited in venues such as the London Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the New York Museum of Modern Art.

Program Committee:

* Shlomo Argamon, Computer Science Department, Illinois Institute of Technology * Helma Dik, Department of Classics, University of Chicago
* John Goldsmith, Department of Linguistics, Computer Science, Computation Institute, University of Chicago
* Catherine Mardikes, Bibliographer for Classics, the Ancient Near East, and General Humanities, University of Chicago Library
* Robert Morrissey, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Director of the ARTFL Project, University of Chicago
* Martin Mueller, Department of English and Classics, Northwestern University
* Mark Olsen, Associate Director of the ARTFL Project, University of Chicago
* Jason Salavon, Department of Visual Arts, Computation Institute, University of Chicago
* Kotoka Suzuki, Department of Music, Visual Arts, University of Chicago

Call for Participation:

Participation in the colloquium is open to all. We welcome submissions for:

* Paper presentations (20 minute maximum)
* Poster sessions
* Software demonstrations
* Performances