artist-built tools and slippery standards: a conversation with jon.satrom

artist-built tools and slippery standards:
a conversation with jon.satrom

May 19, Noon
@ HCL 1401 W. Wabansia
Free
RSVP here

HCL’s new monthly Cultural Conversation seriesinvites you to meet some of Chicago’s most innovative and inspirational artists and cultural producers as they share the intimate details of their projects, passions and inspirations. Join us for casual brunch time talks and take part in the dialogues that propel guest artists, scholars and thinkers to investigate their unique perspectives across a diverse range of creative forms.

Jon Satrom is an artist who undermines interfaces, problematizes presets, and playfully bends data.

He spends his days fixing things and making things work. He spends his evenings breaking things and searching for the unique blips inherent to the systems he explores and exploits. His works and warez have been enjoyed on screens of all sizes. His artwork and efforts have been featured in glowing-rectangles and on dead-trees. Collaboratively, Satrom performs with I ♥ PRESETS & PoxParty and co-organizes the GLI.TC/H conference/festival/gathering.

Satrom will share some of his favorite artist-built tools and discuss some of his own current projects.

http://highconceptlabs.ticketleap.com/jon-satrom/

WGBH Media Library and Archives

From: Allison Pekel <allison_pekel@wgbh.org>
Date: Wed, May 1, 2013 at 12:04 PM

I am working with a project that I thought might be of interest to the
American History Community.

I work for WGBH, Boston in the Media Library and Archive and the Archive
has been funded by the Mellon Foundation to work with academic scholars who
have interest in utilizing our moving image and sound materials through the
course of their research. We hope to increase public awareness of the vast
collections that digital repositories hold by publishing our entire
archival catalogue online, for open access and use.

Placing the catalogue online however is only the first step, as records may
be incomplete or misleading. To help enhance the quality of our records, we
are inviting scholars, teachers and students to research our catalogue and
contribute their own discoveries and findings back to us. There are even
limited opportunities there to catalogue and curate an online collection
specific to your field of research as part of Open Vault (
http://openvault.wgbh.org<http://openvault.wgbh.org/>). Final products
could include essays on your topic, streaming public access to one
selection of media in your collection, supplying metadata for the items in
your collection and/or presenting your findings at a conference.

As a producer of Frontline and Boston Local News, we have quite a few
materials in the American History genre, so if you have an ongoing research
project and would consider utilizing moving image and sound materials in
your work, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Allison Pekel
WGBH Media Library and Archives
Allison_Pekel@WGBH.org

Damon Horowitz, Google “In-House Philosopher” Speaks @ NU

NU News Press Release:

Damon Horowitz to deliver Contemporary Thought Speakers Lecture April 30

April 29, 2013 | by Wendy Leopold

EVANSTON, Ill. – Damon Horowitz, director of engineering and “in-house philosopher” at Google, will speak at Northwestern University Tuesday, April 30, as part of the University’s Contemporary Thought Speaker Series.

Horowitz, whose work explores what is possible at the boundaries of technology and the humanities, will speak at 6 p.m. in Ryan Auditorium in the Technological Institute, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston campus. His lecture is free and open to the public.

A “serial entrepreneur,” Horowitz was cofounder and chief technology officer of Aardvark, a popular social search engine acquired in 2010 by Google. He has taught courses in philosophy, cognitive science and computer science at institutions including Stanford University, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania and San Quentin State Prison.

Horowitz’s work has been featured in popular media outlets from The New York Times to the Discovery Channel, and in TechCrunch, a web publication that provides technology news and analysis along with profiles of startup companies, products and websites. With a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a Ph.D. in philosophy, Horowitz advocates for the importance and integration of both subjects in today’s world.

The Contemporary Thought Speaker Series brings leading intellectuals to Northwestern to foster community-wide discussions on important subjects of the day. The series dates back to the 1920s and 1930s and, over the years, has brought Jane Addams, Frank Lloyd Wright, Clarence Darrow, W.E.B. DuBois, Carl Sandburg, Bertrand Russell and other notable figures to campus.

The series was revived last year when the Office of the President and Office of the Provost agreed to support an undergraduate initiative to reinstate the lecture series.

Tickets are not required but can be reserved online through the Norris University Center Box Office. For more about the Contemporary Thought Speaker Series, email Ellie Graham at jegraham@u.northwestern.edu.

http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2013/04/google-in-house-philosopher-and-director-of-engineering-to-speak.html

UIC Digital Humanities Working Group

The Institute for the Humanities

and the UIC Digital Humanities Working Group

 

present

 

UIC faculty, staff, and Graduate Student Presentations

 

Wednesday, May 1, 2013 from 3 – 5 pm

Institute for the Humanities, Lower Level, Stevenson Hall, 701 South Morgan

 

Presentations by:

Joe Tabbi, English Dept

Tim Soriano, History Dept

Tracy Seneca & Sandy DeGroote, Digital Humanities Task Force, Library

Jim Sosnoski, Communication Dept, Emeritus

 

Light refreshments will be served.

If you need disability accommodations or for more information, please contact huminst@uic.edu or 312-996-6354.

 

 

NU GIS Working Group Opportunity

From Ian Saxine:

Hello colleagues,

Ann Aler, the GIS specialist at the library, has agreed to host several training workshops for interested history grad students and faculty in the fall quarter of 2013. GIS (Geographic Information System) is a program that allows you to present and manage geographic data. Useful for everything from creating a customized map, to more complex tasks like categorizing, organizing, and presenting research findings (such as shifts in criminal activity in a city over time, economic patterns, etc.), GIS familiarity can enhance your dissertation or monograph. If people are interested in participating in several GIS workshops next fall (scheduling TBD) we have an opportunity to secure funding for them. The workshops would teach you to use the GIS lab technology in the library on your own in the future.

 

If you would like to participate, please send a brief response to iansaxine2014@u.northwestern.edu. The level of interest will influence the success of our funding proposal.

 

Regards,

Ian Saxine

Talk Today, 4/22: Sarah Igo, Tracking the ‘Surveillance Society’

DH-relevant talk today over at the Program in Science in Human Culture:

SARAH IGO (Vanderbilt)

“Tracking the ‘Surveillance Society’”

Description: This talk explores the cultural effects of new ways of housing and accessing personal data in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s. It was in this period that citizens first mobilized around what they had known, in low-grade fashion, since at least the 1930s: that many agencies, public and private, were collecting information about them. New suspicions attended the mundane data-gathering operations of agencies like the Internal Revenue Service and Census Bureau, while hidden monitoring devices, vast warehouses of private information, and menacing bureaucracies loop through the cultural and political texts of the period. Faster computers, larger bureaucracies, and expanding databanks, I will argue, generated novel claims and claimants for the protection of “private” information. They also led to a distinctive understanding of the postindustrial U.S. as a “surveillance society,” which depended on the collection of personal data for its very operation.

Hagstrum Room (University Hall Room 201) on Mondays from 4pm-5:30pm.

http://www.shc.northwestern.edu/klopsteg/index.html

Fascinating and DH-relevant article by Igo: Sarah Igo, “Knowing Citizens,” Sensate Journal.

Today, 5pm: Pedagogy in the Digital Age

The Searle Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning is hosting a workshop for graduate TAs and instructors, “Pedagogy in the Digital Age,” on April 18th, 5:00-7:00pm. Come learn about how to incorporate new technologies and tools into your classroom teaching! Panelists include NUDHL conveners, Michael Kramer and Jillana Enteen, as well as Josh Honn (Digital Scholarship Fellow, NU Library) and Beth Corzo-Duchardt (Gender Studies TA and HASTAC Scholar).  For registration and further information, please visit the Searle Center workshops website:

http://www.northwestern.edu/searle/calendar/index.html#tab3

Looking forward to seeing everyone there!

 

MediaCommons CFR: Media Studies vs. Digital Humanities

The MediaCommons Front Page Collective is looking for responses to the survey question: What are the differentiations and intersections of media studies and the digital humanities?

The term Digital Humanities is notoriously difficult to define. Often, it is conflated with media studies, especially new media studies. But, is this the best way to think about the digital humanities? What is the difference between the umbrella term digital humanities where media studies often falls and what is referred to as the capital DH, which deals with using new tools and archives? With this survey, we want to extend opportunities to scholars to discuss how media studies and the digital humanities do and do not intersect. This project will run on the front page of the site from April 15 to May 10.

Responses may include but are not limited to:

  • – Textual studies and the Digital Humanities
  • – Whether new media studies necessarily intersect with digital humanities
  • – How definitions of digital humanities determine its intersections with media studies
  • – Whether or no digital humanities purely a reflexive field that talks about itself or is it one that discusses content as well as form

Responses are 300-400 words and typically focus on introducing an idea. Proposals may be brief (a few sentences) and should state your topic and approach. Submit proposals to <mediacommons.odu@gmail.com> by *April 5* to be considered for inclusion into this project.

In case you are unfamiliar with *MediaCommons*, we are an experimental project created in 2006 by Drs. Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Avi Santo, seeking to envision how a born-digital scholarly press might re-conceptualize both the processes and end-products of scholarship. MediaCommons was initially developed in collaboration with the Institute for the Future of the Book through a grant from the MacArthur Foundation and is currently supported by New York University’s Digital Library Technology Services through funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/

NUDHLConnections Grant

The NUDHLConnections Grant supports graduate student travel to symposia, conferences, workshops, and other events related to digital humanities taking place outside the Chicagoland area. Students who receive funding to attend these events are required to present the knowledge they have gained at a future NUHDL meeting. The purpose of this grant is to support graduate student education, deepen digital humanities expertise and knowledge within the Northwestern community, and forge connections to other institutions.

First round of applications are due 4/12/13 for immediate use. For summer or fall 2014, applications are due 5/24/13. Email your application to mjk@northwestern.edu and j-enteen@northwestern.edu.

To be eligible for funding up to $500 (in addition to research stipends of $300 for HASTAC@NUDHL Fellows), applicants should submit:

1. Application Form (see below).

2. A current CV.

3. A statement not more than two pages, single-spaced, that details the nature of the event that you wishes to attend, how it relates to your research, teaching, or scholarly activity as well as what its value may be to digital humanities knowledge and learning at Northwestern more broadly.

4. Documentation (pdfs, screen shots, links, etc.) of your participation at NUDHL meetings, on the NUDHL blog (www.nudhl.net), and/or HASTAC (hastac.org), and/or similar spaces of digital humanities scholarly discussion.

5. Any supporting materials (pdfs, screen shots, links, etc.) that document your current digital humanities research.

6. Supporting materials from the event organizers: explanation of the event, cfp, advertising, or other relevant documents.

NUDHLCONNECTIONS GRANT APPLICATION FORM:

NAME:

DEPT:

DATE STARTED GRADUATE SCHOOL AT NORTHWESTERN:

STATUS of GRADUATE WORK (in coursework; ABD; final year, etc):

EMAIL:

PHONE:

ADDRESS:

—-

EVENT FOR WHICH STUDENT WISHES TO RECEIVE FUNDING:

MANNER OF PARTICIPATION (i.e. attending, participating as student, presenting, etc.)

DATES OF EVENT:

LOCATION OF EVENT:

SPONSOR OF EVENT:

OVERALL BUDGET FOR ATTENDING EVENT (Registration fees, travel, hotel, etc.):

POSSIBLE DATES (MONTH, YEAR) FOR NUDHLCONNECTIONS PRESENTATION:

—-

First round of applications are due 4/12/13 for immediate use. For summer or fall 2014, applications are due 5/24/13.

Email your application to mjk@northwestern.edu and j-enteen@northwestern.edu.