Day 3 Program
Coffee Quarantini (8:45-9:15 PDT)
Whatever time of day it is for you in your time zone, grab a beverage and come have informal conversations with other attendees at the conference!
Session 3.1 (9:30-11:00 PDT): Theories of Digital Collaboration
Chair: Megan Meredith Lobay (Digital Humanities Analyst, Advanced Research Computing, UBC-V)
1. Facilitating Collaboration: The INKE Partnership and the Canadian Humanities and Social Sciences Research Commons
Speakers:
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- Alyssa Arbuckle (Project Manager for INKE)
- Ray Siemens (Director of INKE and Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing, University of Victoria)
Abstract: Open, collaborative, digital scholarship is gaining increasing prominence in Canada and internationally. In our online world, the possibility to co-create and share knowledge across departmental, institutional, and social boundaries is more attainable than ever. The SSHRC-funded Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) Partnership is an international community of multidisciplinary researchers, librarians, publishers, academic-aligned organizations, scholarly associations, training institutes and computer infrastructure groups who have come together to pursue a common goal of facilitating open social scholarship. One of the INKE Partnership’s key endeavours is to collaboratively develop the Canadian Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Commons. The Canadian HSS Commons is a national-scale digital research commons that will connect HSS researchers in order to accelerate research, development, community building, and engagement across the broad spectrum of specialists and active non-specialists in Canada. This talk will introduce the INKE Partnership and its Canadian HSS Commons, with a focus on how the partnership is facilitating open, collaborative, digital scholarship through this project.
2. Press Play: Enabling Creative Undergraduate Participation in Digital Research
Speakers:
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- Ahlam Bavi (PhD Student, English and Cultural Studies, UBC-O)
- Charlotte Tupman (Research Fellow, History and Digital Humanities Lab, University of Exeter)
- Karis Shearer (Associate Professor, English and Cultural Studies, UBC-O)
- Emily Murphy (Associate Professor, English and Cultural Studies, UBC-O)
Abstract: This paper explores the challenges and opportunities involved in enabling undergraduates to undertake digital research with international partner institutions. It draws on our experience of establishing the multi-institutional research collaboration “Press Play!: Research Creation, Arts Entrepreneurship, and the Digital Archive,” a pilot internship exchange program offered by The University of British Columbia (Okanagan), University of Exeter, and Concordia University. “Press Play” gives students agency to pitch and pursue a self-directed research-creation project through engagement with partner-institution project data and digital cultural heritage archives. We discuss the practicalities of facilitating student research with partner institutions, including mentorship, sharing of materials and expertise, and establishing training needs, and address how such a collaboration could be adapted to swiftly changing global circumstances in which in-person exchanges might not always be feasible.
3. The Rhetoric, Science, and Technology of Collaboration for Digital Humanities
Speakers:
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- Ann Hill Duin (Professor, University of Minnesota, University of Ontario Institute of Technology)
- Isabel Pedersen (Canada Research Chair, Digital Life, Media, and Culture and Associate Professor, University of Ontario Institute of Technology)
- Jason Tham (Assistant Professor, University of Ontario Institute of Technology)
Abstract: An ongoing discussion in our fields –– technical communication and digital culture studies ––concentrates on the way that collaboration is multifaceted. These fields study the rhetoric of collaboration and explore the socio-cultural factors influencing collaboration practices, and keeping our collective fingers on the techniques and tools that enable collaboration. However, we have yet to integrate these dimensions of collaboration into a unified framework. In this presentation, we synthesize the rhetoric, science, and technology of collaboration to consolidate a guiding theoretical framework that has facilitated in building an extensive digital humanities project and a means for digital curatorship. Such foundational knowledge is imperative to prepare researchers and practitioners to design and deploy collaborative research, teaching, and creative projects. As part of this presentation, we will showcase an international digital humanities project that features principles for successful and productive interdisciplinary collaboration.
Break (11:00-11:15 PDT)
Session 3.2 (11:15-12:45 PDT): Collaborative Building of Digital Tools for Music Scholarship
Chair: T. Patrick Carrabré (Director of the School of Music, UBC-V)
Speakers:
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- Marcin Konik (Head of the Library, The Fryderyk Chopin Institute, Warsaw, Poland) on Heritage of Polish Music in Open Access
- Emiliano Ricciardi (Assistant Professor, Music History, UMass Amherst) on The Tasso in Music Project
- Craig Sapp (Adjunct Professor, Music, Stanford University)
- Jesse Rodin (Associate Professor, Music, Stanford University) on The Josquin Research Project
- Daniel Shanahan (Associate Professor, Cognitive and Systematic Musicology Lab at Ohio State University)
- Ève Poudrier (Assistant Professor, Rhythm Computation and Cognition Lab at School of Music, UBC-V) on Modeling Polyrhythmic Experience
Abstract: This roundtable session introduces collaborative digital projects that promote the development of open-access research tools for the manipulation and analysis of musical data. The session will provide an overview of four interdisciplinary projects. Each of these projects brings together researchers from diverse fields — from cultural preservation, critical editing and musicology, to computational music theory and analysis, literary studies, and cognitive sciences. Modern digital technologies have made it easier to create web-based research tools for music, resulting in opportunities for academic professionals, researchers, students and the general public to interact with musical data in new and exciting ways. The roundtable discussion will draw from the experience gained by the participants while building these projects and focus on three themes: (1) Community building through cultural preservation and research dissemination; (2) Benefits of research-driven development of digital technologies; and (3) Fostering experiential learning and teaching renewal. These shared experiences testify to the multifaceted nature of collaborative digital tools building and provide insight into how to integrate traditional scholarship with web interfaces that also allow non-experts to interact with the musical and analysis tools for teaching and general music appreciation.
Lunch Break (12:45-1:45 PDT)
Session 3.3 (1:45-3:15 PDT): Digital Exhibitions
Chair: Kevin Fisher (Assistant Professor, Classical and Near Eastern and Religious Studies, UBC-V)
1. Developing a Computationally Minimalist Exhibit – ‘Slippages’: An Interdisciplinary Project in the Arts and Humanities
Speakers:
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- Kevin Madill (Librarian, Music Library, UBC-V)
- Eka Grguric (Digital Scholarship Librarian, UBC-V)
- Evan Thornberry (Geographic Information Systems Librarian, UBC-V)
Abstract: This talk discusses an interdisciplinary project to create a digital exhibit highlighting the work of Canadian composer Deborah Carruthers’ project “Slippages”. The work to showcase ‘Slippages’ is intensely interdisciplinary, bringing together many units at UBC and beyond. We will address the logistics of communicating between many stakeholders, upskilling and project management strategies, and tools used to make the project happen. The project unfolded in three phases: Collection development, Digitization, and finally training towards and development of an exhibit, using Wax, a tool for developing digital exhibits with limited resources. Wax uses Github and Github Pages, follows minimal computing principles, and is designed to work with the International Image Interoperability Framework. As a result, ‘slippages’ provides an example of how to bring science and the humanities together in creative, interdisciplinary work – particularly in response to environmental concerns.
2. A Holistic Approach to DH Projects: Collaboration between Students and GLAMS
Speakers:
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- Christina Hilburger (Research and Information Literacy Services Librarian, State University of New York at Fredonia)
- Donna Langille (Community Engagement Librarian, UBC-O)
- Melissa Nelson (Independent Scholar)
Abstract: This paper focuses on collaboration between students and galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMS). We argue that a collaborative and holistic approach to project design between students and GLAMS can provide an opportune experience for students to apply theoretical concepts learned in the classroom to practical problems. This experience, especially for library and information studies students, is often necessary for achieving employment after graduation. In return, GLAMs are given the opportunity to collaborate with future colleagues and provided with high-quality digitization and digital exhibits that can increase access to their collections. We provide strategies for building mutual partnerships between GLAMs informed by our own experience creating a digital exhibit for the Redpath Museum at Montréal’s McGill University.
3. Shadows, Strings, and Other Things: Digitizing and Extending the Exhibition Experience
Speakers:
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- Erika Balcombe (PhD Student, Anthropology, UBC-V)
- Nicola Levell (Associate Professor, Anthropology, UBC-V)
- Anna Nielsen (Curatorial Research Assistant, Anthropology, UBC-V)
Abstract: How can we emulate the exploration of a museum exhibit through a digital site and how can we increase access to museums educational resources? These questions were the drivers for the creation of the website and virtual exhibition experience for Shadows, Strings, and Other Things, an exhibition at UBC-V’s Museum of Anthropology. The global pandemic that closed museums and schools and kept families inside was the catalyst that both accelerated the timeline itself and signalled the need for this digital content. What started as an archival scan of an exhibition resulted in the base point for an innovative digital platform that allows virtual exploration, extends its longevity beyond the physical run, and contextualizes its knowledge. This paper explores the current field of virtual exhibits within museum studies and demonstrates their opportunities for public engagement and access while also discussing our own collaborative process and the myriad of challenges we faced.
4. Untitled Vignettes (Soundscapes of Loss): Multisensory Encounter and Community Building in Contemporary Audiovisual Works of Taiwan
Speaker: Ellen Chang (PhD Candidate, Cinema & Media Studies, University of Washington)
Abstract: Conceived from a diasporic perspective, “Untitled Vignettes (Soundscapes of Loss)” traces the interactions between ongoing social movements in Taiwan and contemporaneous cultural productions in the forms of cinema, video art/installation, and music albums. Its attention to the different ways in which audiovisual works can be approached, discussed, and experienced in the humanities explores how contemporary multimedia artists and their audiences converge and potentially shape an artistic mode of resistance that collectively commits to social engagement and activism. This project expands the emerging scholarly form of digital humanities and multimodal research arts with its integration of audio walk with audiovisual book comprised of a series of videographic essays to auratically resonate with the various modes of encounter among the Taiwanese artists, their works, the social movements from which they emerge, and their audience-turned public. Through the embodied, multisensory experience, (virtual) audio-walking becomes an artistic performative act that moves towards a more engaged understanding of how contemporary multimedia arts reflect and shape the (re-)occurring themes of everyday politics across international geographies.