COCH/COSH 2004 Conference Programme
May 30 - June 1, 2004 - University of Manitoba
| Day 1 (May 30) | |
| 8:30 | Welcome |
| 8:45-10:00 |
Opening Plenary Panel: Presentation of the 2004 COCH/COSH Awards for Outstanding Achievement, Computing in the Arts and Humanities |
| 10:15-11:30 | Reading Game Studies (Carolyn Guertin, chair)
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| 11:45-1:00 | New Technologies and Renaissance Studies 1: Encoding, Building, and Prototyping Electronic Editions (A Joint Session with CSRS; William Bowen, chair)
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| 2:00-3:15 | New Technologies and Renaissance Studies 2: Binary Objects, Moving Parts, and Effective Knowledge Management and Navigation (A Joint Session with CSRS; Ray Siemens, chair)
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| 3:30-4:45 | Playing with Text Analysis (A Joint Session with ACCUTE; Geoffrey Rockwell, chair)
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| 6:30- | Banquet at Cafe Carlo: 243 Lilac St off Corydon Ave (tickets will be available during the conference) |
| Day 2 (May 31) | |
| 8:30 | Welcome |
| 8:45-10:00 | Mapping Content and Modelling Interaction (John Bonnett, chair)
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| 10:15-11:30 | Theory, Practise, and Consultation (Mark Olsen, chair)
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| 11:45-1:00 | Visual Rhetoric, e-Narrative, and Learning Environment (Andrew Mactavish, chair)
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| 2:00-3:30 | Dynamic-Text, -Research and -Remediation (Maximillan van Woudenberg, chair)
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| 5:00-7:00 | Reception at the Fortier's: 789 McMillan Ave |
| Day 3 (June 1) | |
| 8:30 | Welcome |
| 8:45-10:00 | Human Computing in French Studies (William Winder, chair)
|
| 10:15-11:30 | 3D Virtual Environments as Instruments for Representation and Instruction in History (A joint session with the Canadian Committee on History and Computing; Ray Siemens, chair) |
| 11:45-1:00
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Closing Plenary Panel: Realising TAPoR's Research Potential (Ian Lancashire, chair) |
| 2:00-4:00 | Annual General Meeting & COCH/COSH Executive Meeting |
Conference Papers
How can one systematically analyze short, structured texts? Content analysis provides a systematic, replicable technique where validation normally takes the form of triangulation. Such mutual convergence lends credibility to the findings by incorporating multiple sources of data, methods, investigators, or theories. However, this paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of triangulation by comparing data collection methods for long, unstructured texts and short, structured texts. Considering the limitations of traditional triangulation, a multifaceted strategy has been tailored to meet the needs of specific, micro-linguistic analysis of a particular genre of text: preambles of international treaties. In addition, a number of different perspectives to discern the following key elements and the dynamics of treaties have been examined: (1) purpose or overall agenda, (2) agent and his/her social-cultural standpoint, (3) the intended audience, (4) the socio-political context, and (5) most relevant to this paper, the language itself: syntax, semantics, style, rhetoric, and structure. The combination of these elements requires a multifaceted strategy that conventional triangulation often ignores in content analysis.
The wide-spread dissemination of media production software, personal computers, and high-resolution video display technologies will remediate the domestic cinematic experience. Software such as After Effects and Photoshop gives video producers direct access to layered and complicated visual effects. The computer desktop and the Internet have accustomed viewers to a fragmented visual space with multiple cognitive and narrative threads. Emergent large-scale, high-resolution display technologies provide an unprecedented platform for a rich visual experience.
These technologies, combined with advances in recording, playback, and distribution standards, create an entirely new set of production and reception conditions. Cinematic size and quality will be situated within the context of a domestic viewing experience. This will become the catalyst for new forms of video production that incorporate digital expressivity to extend the aesthetics of cinema.
The paper argues for three inter-related effects of this combination of technologies. The first is the resurgence of a pictorial cinema in the context of home viewing. Increased screen size and visual quality re-privilege the wide-shot and cinematic composition-in-depth. Lighting, color palette, camera motion, and visual style will be highly valued in the new aesthetic.
The second effect is the renewal of the use of split-screen narratives and layered visual transitions. Split screen has never penetrated deeply into the cinematic mainstream, and cheap optical transitions fell out of favor long ago. However, both effects have been used effectively as cinematic and televisual devices. The paper connects the history of these forms with the new possibilities enabled through the combination of digital production software and high-definition video display. The domestic practice of repeated viewing adds further impetus to narrative complexity and the use of these hypermediated visual forms.
The paper argues for a final aesthetic direction: the development of ambient video. The flatscreen video displays will become living paintings, rich visual experiences that play in the domestic background.
Co-presenters: Gary Kelly, Department of English, University of Alberta; Matthew Ogle, Design Team, Humanities Computing Studio, University of Alberta
This presentation describes the development of a specific project aimed at creating new communities of research by using digital technology and media. This project uses the resources of the CFI-funded Canada Research Chair Humanities Computing Studio at the University of Alberta to create a web-based Program for Study of Women Writing and Reading <www.womenwritingreading.org>. Deliberately polyphonic and triangulated, our presentation itself reflects the accretive, incremental, overlapping exchanges with which the project came into being. The Program is based on the guiding principles of accessibility, collaboration, practicality, and engagement. Gary Kelly addresses the opportunities which the Studio provides for taking our research to diverse communities within and beyond the academy. Patricia Demers outlines the roles of timing, serendipity, and conversation in creating links between what is available and what might be. Matthew Ogle, representing the Design Team in the Studio, discusses the concept and construction of web programs which have made our plans for an interactive, integrated, international network a reality. By using digital technology and media, WWR can bring together university researchers and those in other public institutions, schools and colleges, the wider community, local research networks with global ones, recuperative research with promotion of new writing, familiar forms of research reporting with new ones, and make research available as an interactive experience for a wide range of users. At the same time, by managing the WWR program website through a pro-active site curator, and making user forums instrumental in each aspect of the program, connected through the website, the program itself will be constantly reaching out in new directions, and constantly renewing itself.
Following the general theme of this year's congress, this paper talks about the notion of confluence as it relates to the editing of electronic texts.
To this point, very little theoretical work has been done on the hermeneutics of electronic text. With so much work to be done digitizing and preserving cultural artefacts, computing humanists have been focused on doing what they do, rather than talking about what they are doing. Perhaps we should ask if theory has any place at all within the COCH-COSH group. Certainly, an overly abstract analysis might drain energies or distract from meaningful work. However, I would like to suggest that by following the old carpenter's maxim that one should "measure twice and cut once" we can actually use theory to help save time over the long run.
Theories of productivity are often popular features of new disciplines as scholars share the trials and tribulations of their explorations. This type of physical confluence provides one example of the way in which networks of information might be considered meaningful. Many theories of electronic text focus on the potential of links that lead away from an initial point, connecting to vast fields of information. Less attention has been given to the confluence of information - of the ways in which new unities can be uncovered in the digital realm. It is my hope to demonstrate, that by focusing on theories of convergence we may be able to uncover some useful heuristics for the creation, use and maintenance of electronic texts.
In one of the many satyrical passages of his novel La Nausée, Jean-Paul Sartre has his narrator describe the historian's craft: "Dans notre partie, nous n'avons affaire qu'B des sentiments entiers sur lesquels on met des noms génériques comme Ambition, IntérLt" ["In our area, we deal only with uncomplicated feelings on which we stick generic names like Ambition, Interest" my translation] (Sartre, 1938, p. 8). This same temptation to over-simplify can be identified in computer-aided studies of literature. We deal in the statistics of spelled forms: after all, grouping words, particularly in a language like French, under their dictionary forms would cause a lot of extra work, and we can always claim that any upgrading introduces human error. This paper describes progress in a large-scale project which accepts the possibility of human coding error to deal with semantically and morphologically complex sets of words designating phenomena of interest, in spite of the added complexity at the computing and data processing level.
The quest for intelligent tools has been the driving force behind innovations as diverse as social movements and industrial design — from slavery to educational toys to robotics. One of the most pervasive searches in our time is for tools that make the visual indexing or conceptual mapping of information possible. The goals of engines performing these functions are different, but their originary impulses were the same: to find ways of capturing a large body of information and to render it navigable in an aesthetic form. This is not a new impulse. Sacred, mnemonic and mathematical models have always tried to make sense of the infinite and to render it conceptually for its adherents. But, where the ancients drew these models as circles nested within circles, our spatial models are able to realize these shapes in such astounding complexity that they not only aim for aesthetic affects but exhibit ‘tool intelligence’ as well. In the historical context of our insatiable impulse to categorize information, I will explore how several contemporary engines function both aesthetically and as tools, and examine the implications of these technologies for the future.
Co-presenters: Kim Peacock, Graduate student, University of Alberta
Teacher educators are beginning to use technology in their teaching, but this is occurring far too slowly. All teacher educators need to figure out how to prepare their students to be able to integrate computer technology into their own classrooms. Preservice education students need to know what technologies are available, acquire skill in using those technologies, and understand how to effectively integrate those tools into their teaching. The challenge for teacher educators is to design courses that engage preservice teachers in experiences that help them to rethink traditional teacher-centred, didactic instruction and that encourage them to inquire into alternate ways of envisioning teaching and learning (Crocco, 2001). Preservice students can particularly benefit from opportunities to examine ways that technology can be used to support a more student centered, inquiry oriented approach to teaching (Jonassen, 1996). Albion and Gibson (1998) suggest that one way to encourage technology integration is through individual faculty sharing innovative teaching methods to encourage others as "examples of effective practice with technologies may assist teachers to acquire the insights which will enable them to adapt their own practice" (p. 1).
This paper will report on a project that is currently underway in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta. The main objective for this project is to provide a professional development model for faculty that includes practical resources for faculty seeking ways to make effective use of learning technologies. The model, which includes a suite of online tools and resources, integrates ideas both from people in the faculty and from other Education institutions as to different ways to enhance teaching and learning. Faculty members have opportunities to engage in hands-on learning about active student-centred learning approaches as well as learning about effective use of technology for transforming their courses along these lines.
References:
Albion, P. & Gibson, I. (1998). Designing problem-based learning multimedia for teacher education. Technology and Teacher Education Annua.l [On-line]. Available: http://www.coe.uh.edu/insite/elec_pub/HTML1998/th_albi.htm
Crocco, M. (2001). Leveraging constructivist learning in the social studies classroom. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education , 1 ( 3). [On-line]. Available: http://www.citejournal.org/vol1/iss3/currentissues/social studies/article2.htm.
Jonassen, D. (1996). Computers in the classroom: Mindtools for critical thinking. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc.
Co-presenter: Radu Luchianov
Building an Internet resource for the Cree language for the last three years has been full of challenges and rewards. We will report on the educational, ethical and technical challenges we had to meet. The East Cree language website operates in four languages: English, French, East Cree Southern and East Cree Northern, the latter two using a syllabics writing system. The site contains several sections that exploit the possibilities of current information technology. By adopting a participatory approach, we are designing a resource that not only meets the need of teachers and speakers of the language, but also generates a positive interest for the Cree language amongst younger people who are most affected by language loss. We report here on the two new web databases we designed in consultation with the Cree Programs staff in 2002-2003: the Publication Catalogue and the Oral Stories Web Database, where book descriptions, and oral stories and their descriptions are classified and stored. Stories can be heard and downloaded from the web. Maintenance of the database is done through the web, by speakers of the nine East Cree communities who can work together at a distance. We also report on the successful use of more traditional web resources like downloadable PDF files, and on current developments like our read-along and sing-along Cree on-line lessons.
It is well documented that men and women use informal language, such as conversation and correspondence, in rather different ways, reflecting a wide variety of cultural forces and practices. Until recently, however, there have been relatively few attempts to examine gender differences in more formal, published writing.Using an extensive sample of works by French women, this paper systematically examines male and female use of words that strongly correlated with one gender or the other. Differing patterns of word use between male and female writers in France in the past several centuries suggests that women writers were consciously making a public space for their voices, by selecting and treating themes in markedly distinct ways. It is less certain whether they modified the meanings of the words they used or simply used the words in the same way as male writers. This is an important distinction as it bears upon the degree to which language is gendered, reflecting prevailing power relations, and mechanisms by which gender marking in language is both preserved and overturned.
Since it is technically easy and relatively inexpensive to build a web page, the number of commercial, educational, political, or religious groups with a presence on the World Wide Web has been growing (Enos, 2001). How, among this large quantity of online information, do we know what to believe? How can we determine what resources are authoritative and trustworthy, especially in such areas as student-run business ventures? Doubts about credibility of web sources create an obvious problem for individuals, groups, and corporations who wish to promote ideas or sell services and products on the Web.
Little formal research has been done to investigate what makes people believe information on the Web. According to some researchers, people assess web sites through visual design alone rather than the quality of content (Fogg, 2000). The overall visual appeal of web sites is, therefore, an important factor in attracting and keeping visitors online (Fogg, 2000). Solid, professional appearance and clear navigation convey respect for customers and an implied promise of good service, while poor design, typos or difficult navigation communicate disregard for users (Fogg, 2000; Nielsen, 1999). Thus, it is important to recognize that web designers and their clients face increasing pressure to create web sites that are highly credible and visually pleasing at the same time.
This exploratory study will investigate the factors designers need to consider when creating credible web sites for student-run consulting services. Since studies that apply rhetoric to web design are limited (Winn, 2000), and because our basic understanding of credibility has its roots in rhetorical theory (Fogg, 2002), the study will review three visual modes of persuasion (rational, ethical and emotional) borrowed from traditional theories of logos, ethos, pathos, and examine how these can be applied in designing credible web sites. The main objective of this study is to investigate whether visual appeal is the primary factor in accessing the perceived credibility of student-run consulting services web sites.
With the advent of miniaturization and mass data storage, it becomes possible to collect relatively large amounts of data based on aspects of everyday life. With data sets placed in flexible, organized database contexts, it becomes possible to explore those sets in unique and interesting ways. In this presentation I will discuss my new media art works based on a data set I am building called oh, those everyday spaces (OTES). Data is collected while cycling with one image being captured each minute, GPS (Global Positioning System) position about three times each minute, and local weather conditions downloaded from Environment Canada each hour. OTES currently contains about 25,000 images. This data set is the basis for exploring ideas of place through art interfaces to that data.
To illuminate the variety of approaches I am using to explore place, I will discuss three works based on OTES. Variations / Variantes <http://dataspace.finearts.yorku.ca/variations/> uses a familiar Photoshop interface to facilitate weaving one?s way through OTES along paths based on position, wind, speed, and temperature. 10-second OTES <http://dataspace.finearts.yorku.ca/10secondOTES/> is a collection of nine short videos exploring specific locations in OTES. OTES sonification, in-progress, generates sound based on various aspects of the data.
Co-presenters: Karin Armstrong, Research Assistant, Malaspina University-College
Humanists working with electronic or dynamic texts (Siemens) are faced with an apparent contradiction with implications for the design and functionality of their scholarly editions. The original manuscript or first edition codex is often treated as a fetish object, the authentic progenitor of all subsequent editions. As a fetish object, it commands attention through its analogue physicality and relative proximity to the authorial source. Binding, heft, dimensions, paper, typography, layout, odour, and tactility embody the physical attributes of the codex, which is often carefully preserved to protect these attributes.
The humanities scholar working with such a fetish codex must make a number of decisions in the translation of the original into a new edition, either in print or digital form. The emerging capacity of extensible mark-up language and text analysis tools to provide readers of the dynamic text with varying degrees of functionality pose design challenges; namely, how to integrate functionality without compromising the codex fetish. Will the promises of functionality subsume or enhance the original codex? What principles might be advanced to act as protocols for the dynamic codex?
Topics:
- The Dynamic Text: electronic edition, electronic text, or digital facsimile or impression .
- Codex Fetish: paper texture and colour, printing conventions, abbreviations, annotations, marginalia, extra-textual elements, scribal deletions, archival identifiers (numbers, stamps?). Example: Muir?s edition of Wyatt
- Standards and Other Constraints: usability, accessibility, standards, mark-up schema, image quality, TEI, Dublin Core etc.
- Component Applications and Embedded Tools: pop-ups, notes, navigation, console design, Hyperpo etc.
- Examples: Internet Shakespeare Editions: http://web.uvic.ca/shakespeare/; Devonshire Manuscript; Caxton?s Chaucer; Graves Project: http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/graves/; Gutenberg Bible: http://prodigi.bl.uk/gutenbg/default.asp; Blake Archives
- Elements of User Experience: Jessie James Garrett?s schema for integrating hypertext and online applications. (http://www.jjg.net/ia/elements.pdf)
- Protocols for the Dynamic Codex
Co-presenters: Michael Nixon, Research Assistant, Malaspina University-College
This presentation will demonstrate a java virtual machine--the juxtaposition engine, or J-engine--to explore the possibilities of non-linear methods of knowledge generation. The J-engine randomly selects image files from a source directory and displays them on a computer screen for variable amounts of time. If the images are similar in size, the juxtaposition engine places them in four quadrants with their leading edges forming a centered cross-shaped configuration. Variations in image size result in unpredictable alignments and overlappings.
The resulting screen display reveals the powerful effect of surprising recombinations and chance juxtapositions. Folders of thematically related images displayed through the J-engine reveal both embedded commonalities and new suggestions for decoding meaning. The lesson of the J-engine is a visceral confirmation that alternate paradigms for narrative, knowledge organization, and analysis should be considered in the development of humanities computing applications.
The J-Engine asks the questions: Can random juxtapositions be incorporated into the tools of analysis to yield a broader range of possibilities? Do we have the cognitive skills to "read" these new organizations of material?
The J-Engine is based on principles familiar to anyone working in humanities computing. The literary use of analogy trades on the often surprising similarities between ostensibly dissimilar subjects. Synchronicity, coincidence, and happenstance are staples of literary narratives. Stream-of-consciousness, fragmentation, repetition, and varieties of literary cut-up suggest the spontaneity and unpredictability of life's own stories. Cultural theorists from Walter Benjamin to Marshall McLuhan employed strategies of juxtaposition to generate original insights.
Juxtaposition has become subtly prevalent in the computing world: the windows computer interface allows any variety of programs to alternate in space or time. Hypertext allows the juxtaposition of diverse ideas, developing new relationships in their unorthodox placement. This presentation will review some of those precursors.
Watching the J-Engine perform its operations on a selection of images reveals that there are many ways to tell our stories, just as there are many ways to organize our knowledge. Equally so, there should be many ways to interrogate our texts for meaning. If, as is often claimed in post-structuralist criticism, the logocentrism of traditional discourse is frequently inadequate to the task of generating new insights, then surely humanities scholars should be seeking new ways to interrogate their texts.
This paper raises a series of questions and concerns about the collection of Internet-based communication content.
The author discusses how Internet-based communication challenges some of the traditional assumptions underlying content methodologies. Because this new class of media has been primarily defined in terms of delivery protocol, and not in terms of the end product of the communication process, it has been confusing for researchers to produce discourse about its communication process.
Furthermore, the author identifies and discusses key differences in the structural attributes of Internet-based communication formats and concludes with suggestions concerning future directions for new media content research.
As information technologies are increasingly being incorporated into classroom teaching, many predictions are being made about the role of computer-mediated learning in the university classroom. Increasingly, the model of a fully-wired university commonly referenced as a laptop university, or notebook university, such as Acadia University (Wolfville, Nova Scotia; for a perspective of these universities please visit the respective websites: Acadia University: <http://www.acadiau.ca>, and; University of Denver: <http://www.du.edu>) and the University of Denver (Denver, Colorado) is cited as the ideal learning network for the twenty-first century.
Kevin Kelly has argued, that the plurality of a network structure, provides an ideal participatory learning environment.
The only organization capable of unprejudiced growth, or learning, is a network. All other topologies limit what can happen .In fact, a plurality of truly divergent components can only remain coherent in a network. No other arrangement chain, pyramid, tree, circle, hub can contain true diversity working as a whole. (Kelly, 26)
According to Kelly's definition, the network is perhaps the only arrangement in which there is no immediate limitation upon learning activity. For computing in the Humanities, the network of a notebook university promises to be the ideal learning environment for individuality, diversity, and creativity.
In actuality, however, such promises of Kelly's characterization of learning in our network society have not been fully realized in our pedagogical structures at the level of the notebook university. In fact, while the marketing rhetoric of the notebook university anticipates the twenty-first century, most pedagogical and institutional structures of notebook universities still adhere to principles of centrality. The formal essay remains the central criteria for assessment and evaluation limiting the student's interaction with images, sound, and information technology to theoretical readings and written papers instead of an interaction with images and sound.
This paper argues that only within the discipline of humanities computing are theories of technical-pedagogy emerging. Drawing on the principles of humanities computing, this paper will amalgamate pedagogical structures at the notebook and traditional university levels in proposing fundamental principles for a technical-pedagogical. First, the paper will outline the advantages and disadvantages of learning in a fully-wired, smart, and/or traditional classroom. Secondly, I will argue that pedagogy within the discipline of humanities computing has a fundamental role in developing new dialogues about technological learning objectives in order to produce new strategies for researchers, instructors, and students alike. Drawing on student multimedia projects and assignments I will demonstrate how the traditional structure of the formal critical essay can be combined with multimedia projects and information technologies without foregoing the integrity of traditional skill-sets. In conclusion, I outline the fundamental principles of a technical curricula that will foster a learning network for pedagogy in wired universities in the twentieth-century.
References:
- Kelly, Kevin. Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-Biological Civilization. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994.
Outlines are bi-dimensional texts that can be situated on a coordinate plane such that each heading node has a column and row position. Legal-style heading numbering partially captures this structure. For example, a node numbered 3.2.1.2. indicates that it is in the fourth column of the outline, since each period of the heading number marks an absolute column division. This is the depth of that particular node. The node number gives as well some vague information about the row position: the number of a given column is a count of the nodes preceding it in that column. Thus 3.2.1.2 indicates that there are two other headings in the first column (1. and 2.), one in the second (3.1.), etc. This is the (relative) height of the node.
We will define a stratified outline as having two properties:
- It is column regular: all branches have the same depth. For example, if an stratified outline has a node labelled 3.2.1.2, then there is likewise at least 2.1.1.1 and 1.1.1.1. In other words, all paths from the top node lead to the maximal bottom node.
- The content of each node is such that higher nodes are summaries of the information contained in the lower nodes: higher nodes condense the information in the lower nodes; lower nodes expand on the information in the higher nodes.
Stratified outlines are read simultaneously in two directions. One reading is restricted to a single column; each heading of that column becomes a part of a coherent text made up of the series of headings at that column. At the same time, each column is an abstract of the lower columns: lower nodes expand on the information of higher nodes; higher nodes summarize.
In this talk we will consider both the stratified browser (described at www.fhis.ubc.ca/winder/me/mutanda) that displays in a flexible fashion a stratified outline and the computational and methodological tools that can be used to construct stratified outlines. Some of the principles of a future semantic integrated development environment will be? outlined.
Conference Panels
- Panel Organiser: Geoffrey Rockwell
- Panelists: Ray Siemens (Malaspina University-College); David McNeil (Dalhousie University); Stan Ruecker, Eric Homich, Stéfan Sinclair (University of Alberta)
: Playing 'Shame': One Technique for Introducing Text Analysis to the Literary Studies Classroom. My paper will discuss a technique used to introduce text analysis to a literary studies class. It is based loosely on the literary parlour game made most famous as "Humiliation" (also called "Shame") in David Lodge's Changing Places, where a group of academics attempt to top each other by making public the most shameful gap in their professional knowledge. Rather than propagating the accumulation of embarrassing gaps in knowledge -- readers of Lodge will recall that the professor who's never read Hamlet wins the game but loses his job as the result of his shameful admission -- this technique champions how one can use down-and-dirty text analysis techniques to prevent those potentially-shameful situations. The technique is neither good text analysis nor good academic research, but it has value in the classroom because it invariably yields results that have significant impact on the students. The impact of this game-playing lays a strong foundation for an appropriate academic address of the topic in the classroom.
: EndNote and HIP (Hockey in Print): Establishing
and Maintaining an Interactive, Annotated Online Bibliography. This
presentation demonstrates how EndNote can be used to establish and maintain
an online bibliography for a specific subject. First, I intend to show how
EndNote can be used to perform a subject search of remote library catalogues
(including the National Library or Library of Congress); in this case, the
subject is "hockey." Information in various formats (e.g., MARC) is then
retrieved in a log file and imported into EndNote.
Second, this information may then be exported from EndNote into HTML format with pop-up windows for each item and made available on the WWW. Interested parties can browse the bibliography according to general categories (e.g., "Popular History," "Life History") or search it by keyword. Responses can be entered in the pop-up window to specific items. A ranking device might also be written into the bibliography. What will distinguish this resource from the commercial Bookstore www-sites with their own subject categories will be its comprehensiveness, especially of items that are no longer in print. In fact, in addition to accessing remote library catalogues, I will also cull information from memorabilia databases like Tom Bailey's, a dealer in rare sports books and articles.
Third, my intention with HIP is to obtain funding so that responses may be recorded, edited and used to initiate a moderated discussion of the material (e.g., is Gzowski's the best book on Wayne Gretzky?). I also intend to set up a special category called "WHIP" (Women's Hockey in Print). EndNote will be the chief mechanism to maintain and expand HIP, the online/interactive bibliography of writing on hockey.
While I would like to do a live, online demonstration of some of the steps described above, I would also be prepared to use previously stored log files, etc. in case the connecting time is too slow. It is my belief that all active researchers have a need for a versatile bibliographic tool and that EndNote, or a program like it, should become as common in academia as word-processing.
A current HIP www-site (not interactive) may be consulted at <http://is.dal.ca/~dmcneil/hockey/hip_bib.htm>
For information on EndNote, go to <http://www.endnote.com/>
: Watching
the Script of Synge's Playboy of the Western World Computer assisted
text analysis has been seen as an aide to traditional research techniques in
textual disciplines. The idea was that computers
could help us answer the questions we have always
asked by automating the repetitive tasks like
creating concordances to texts. Recently however
there has been a shift away from using computers
as servants towards more playful ways of using
computers in literary research. The papers at
this session will explore the intersection of
literary studies and creative computing in order
to survey some of the trajectories taken by
humanities computing researchers and developers.
All of the presentations should include both a
demonstration of a tool or software toy along
with a theoretical positioning of that tool/toy
in the discourse around what computers can do for
literary study.
Computer assisted text analysis has been seen as an aide to
traditional research techniques in textual disciplines. The idea was that computers
could help us answer the questions we have always asked by automating the repetitive
tasks like creating concordances to texts. Recently however there has been
shift away from using computers as servants towards more playful ways of using
computers in literary research. The papers at this session will explore the
intersection of literary studies and creative computing in order to survey
some of the trajectories taken by humanities computing researchers and developers.
All of the presentations will include both a demonstration of a tool or software
toy along with a theoretical positioning of that tool/toy in the discourse
around what computers can do for literary study.
Scripts for stage and screen
constitute a special class of texts, in that their primary function is to serve
as instructional material for actors and directors who are staging plays or
creating films. However, these printed texts are also objects of study in their
own right, since the writing is amenable to treatment as literature. In many
cases, students will approach the study of a script as a combination of two
activities: reading the script, and watching some specific interpretation of
the script in the form of a play or film. By reading the script, the student
is able to take advantage of textual apparatus such as footnotes or annotations,
while watching the staged version provides direct observation of character
interactions, stage directions, and interpretations.
If the printed text and
the film are placed as difference poles on a spectrum, the opportunities presented
by digital versions of the text provide a range of possibilities that lie between
these difference poles. Dynamic text can be used for online script presentations
that combine the advantages of printed forms with some of the advantages of
enacted forms. A dynamic script presentation can include, for example, an affordance
to stop the playback in order to consult a secondary source that is linked
directly to the text. It can allow playback at speeds that vary under user
control, so that scenes can be sped up or slowed down, or set to loop. It can
also employ visual techniques that capture stage instructions in terms of character
location and interaction. Finally, it can draw on existing video and still
images as supporting material that is available on demand but is not primary
to the experience.
This demonstration shows a dynamic text environment that
presents the script of Playboy of the Western World, including a cast list
and stage, the movement of characters, and the display of stage instructions.
A register provides current location in the script in terms of act, scene and
line, and a text slider indicates current location in terms of the total script.
Individual text items are linked to scholarly annotations, with the script
pausing when a link is clicked. The reader is also allowed to decide the characteristics
of the display that are related to text movement, such as whether dialogue
appears by scrolling or serial display, or whether scrolling is top-down or
bottom-up. A preliminary prototype of Watching the Script is available at <http://tapor.ualberta.ca/ERW/WatchingScript/syng.php>.
The
Playboy of the Western World script environment is situated somewhere near
the middle of the spectrum. Closer to the printed script would be versions
where the text is less dynamic and the actors are positioned in a static location.
Closer to the enacted difference pole would be versions incorporating affective
forms of typography, and closer still would be versions featuring images and
sound. Each of these variants has its own strengths and weaknesses, and all
of them provide affordances based on digital text that are not available in
printed forms.
Panelists: Ian Lancashire (University of Toronto); Robert Whalen (Northern Michigan University); Ray Siemens, Barbara Bond, Karin Armstrong (Malaspina University-College)
: Encoding Renaissance Electronic Texts. In 1987 I attended the founding meeting of the Text Encoding Initiative and afterwards took part in its committees, even while co-developing text-analysis software (TACT) that did not read/write SGML/TEI. I have edited, since 1994, Representative Poetry On-line, an HTML-tagged anthology of 400 English poets from Caedmon to Mark Doty. In 1996, MLA published my small e-library of English literature in a CD-ROM with Using TACT with Electronic Texts. Both include Renaissance literature. For my on-line Renaissance Electronic Texts (RET), where I placed encoding guidelines that compare SGML with COCOA, for the Early Modern English Dictionaries Database (EMEDD), and now for Lexicons of Early Modern English, its successor, I have honed an XML tagset. These experiences persuade me that scholars should take personal responsibility for encoding their texts and have specific goals in doing so. I will illustrate by discussing tagging options for several perplexing Renaissance manuscript and printed texts.
: Building the Electronic Temple. I am working towards a definitive electronic edition of George Herbert's English poems -- an SGML-encoded Temple unprecedented in design and presentation and much more than just another hypertext edition, and a valuable tool for critics, historians, scholars, teachers, and students of seventeenth-century literature. It would include fully-encoded diplomatic transcriptions of the manuscripts and the 1633 editio princeps, and a textual apparatus that would foreground variants rather than relegate them to foot- or endnotes as in a conventional print-based edition. An equally important feature of this Temple would be its links to high-resolution digital images of the original manuscripts in their entirety. The edition thus would highlight the convergence of print and manuscript cultures that is crucial to our understanding of early modern book production and notions of authorship. It would also be one of the first editions of Renaissance literature to photograph and systematically to encode manuscripts as well as their commercially printed derivatives.
: Prototyping an Electronic Edition of the Devonshire MS. This paper addresses issues of electronic textual encoding, document imaging, and incorporation of extra-textual materials - specifically as they relate to the act of prototyping an interface for an electronic scholarly edition. Discussion will centre on, and examples will be drawn from, among others, an electronic edition of the Devonshire MS (British Library Additional MS 17, 492) that is currently in progress.
Panelists: William Bowen (University Toronto); Richard Cunningham (Acadia University); Michael Best (University of Victoria).
: Iter: Building an Effective Knowledge Base. The relationship of a card catalogue to a collection of print media is insufficient as a model for Iter, a not for profit partnership devoted to enhancing the teaching and study of the European Middle Ages and Renaissance through the development of online resources. Indeed, as it becomes increasingly common to distribute digital collections over the web, it is becoming very clear that Iter can provide more than a sophisticated body of inter-related databases which include pointers to digital collections by enabling researchers to interact with the digital documents themselves. This will, of course, raise new challenges of collaboration, access, knowledge management, standards, and delivery, all of which require answers reflecting the needs of Iter's community of scholars.This paper will focus on the strategies currently being entertained by Iter in building an effective knowledge base for study of European culture form 400 to 1700. It will begin by outlining the current status of its databases and will continue with the more challenging issue of the connection between the databases and the objects being described.
: "Visibly Charactered": Binary Objects as Text in the Internet Shakespeare Editions. On many levels, Shakespeare's text can be seen as more than a simple stream of characters. Shakespeare did not use a word-processor; the texts as we receive them are cluttered with broken type, stains, oddly spaced lines, and other artefacts of the physical processes of printing. It is also possible to claim that Shakespeare was, in effect, a multimedia writer, one whose works live on in the environment of stage and film. The Internet Shakespeare Editions is taking advantage of the electronic space of its servers to create texts that interconnect modern, machine-readable texts with multimedia annotation of various kinds: images of the original pages, early illustrations of the plays in performance, the paraphernalia of modern stage interpretations, and, where copyright permits, sound and video sequences. A major challenge is to make these extensions of the text integral to the edition without overwhelming it.
: Coincidental Technologies: Moving
Parts in Early Modern Books and in Early Hypertext. The production
of images such as that of the declination instrument in print and in hypertext
calls attention to the similarities between the two historical moments, between
the first print revolution and the second. The technology of print faces
an obvious problem when confronting the need to represent something in three
dimensions and with moving parts. While hypertextual representation would
seem to answer and avoid this confrontation, in fact the answer has so proven
to be extremely labor intensive - to the extent that it is available at all.
In both historical moments, these images serve to highlight facets of the
reader's experience, and facets of the writer's and printer's experience.
The production of images such as these offer to teach a reader instrument
design and use, and they offer to teach a writer how to communicate. And,
especially because of the layered nature of the imagery, they function to
develop the communicative technology itself, whether book or hyper!
text.
- Panel Organiser: John Bonnett
- Panelists: Blair MacIntyre (College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology); Pierre Boulanger (Department of Computing Science, University of Calgary); John Bonnett (Institute for Information Technology, National Research Council of Canada) [Chair: Ray Siemens (Department of English, Malaspina University-College)]
The purpose of this panel is to explore an important confluence, one emerging between history and computer science. In the past 15 years, researchers interested in 3D imaging and virtual environments have systematically begun developing software applications and hardware to facilitate the computer's use as a platform to represent the past. Historians such as David Staley have also begun to query how, when and where virtual environments should be appropriated to support their need to represent and teach the past. The premise of this proposal is that this confluence serves the interests of historians, and needs to be explored in greater detail. Historians interested in the history of sensory environments and urban historians at some point will want to appropriate 3D objects to represent the past. It is also based on the premise that 3D content will become an increasingly central constituent of computer-mediated communication. Economic drivers - such as the formation of a five-company consortium in Japan comprised of Sony and other companies - suggest this development will occur within 10 years. This panel is thirdly based on the premise that both research communities are best served through interaction. If historians want powerful, robust tools to serve their needs, they will need to collaborate with IT researchers capable of producing them. It is finally based on the premise that such a conversation can only begin when historians gain an informed knowledge of existing and emerging 3D technologies, and a sense as to how they might be applied. Providing such an overview is the aim of this interdisciplinary panel.
in his paper "Bringing History Alive: Dramatic Augmented Reality Experiences in Historic Settings" will introduce conference participants to a new computer-generated medium referred to as Augmented Reality, or AR. AR is similar to Virtual Reality in that both forms of representation use computer-generated 3D objects as the basis of their representations, objects generally perceived through a head-mounted display. AR differs from VR in its degree of removal from real space. Virtual reality is completely removed from the real world. It is a completely artificial environment. Augmented Reality, by contrast, merges virtual objects with a user's view of real space. Artificial objects like a virtual vase can be placed on a real table. A virtual building can be registered with a real street corner. Aside from describing AR, MacIntyre will also describe his use of the technology to transform the Historic Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta into a platform that represents multiple points in southern history, including the American civil war.
's purpose in his paper "Are We Getting Closer to Virtual Time Travel?" is to pose a general question: how can historians and information scientists collaborate to create immersive representations of the past? As an information scientist, his aim is to generate historic representations so compelling that the experience can metaphorically be compared with time travel. For Boulanger, one key to fulfilling this aim is to generate 3D models of existing historical artefacts and to incorporate them into virtual representations of the past. His paper provides an overview of technologies that have been developed to facilitate the rapid construction of such objects, everything from 3D scanners to photogrammetric software, software capable of translating photographic images into 3D models.
argues that historians must think now about the opportunities and constraints that 3D technologies will afford in "New Platforms, New Primary Sources: History and Computing in the 21st Century." He suggests that 3D modes of representation will impose two specific constraints on historians: a need to represent sensory environments, what people saw, smelt, tasted and felt in the past; and a need to impose narrative pathways to afford users a coherent message. Without some measure of constraint, all users will obtain is fragments of unrelated information. The two constraints in tandem, Bonnett suggests, will encourage historians to model a specific object: the voice of historic actors who lived in periods prior to the onset of electro-magnetic media. The basis for this argument is two-fold, the first being the recent success of the Human Genome Project. With the recent transcription of the human genome, Bonnett suggests historians will eventually appropriate genetic information as a primary source to model the voice of an historical actor. The second basis is economic. The pharmaceutical industry has a strong interest in creating virtual models of humans to test new products. Software will emerge to support the transcription of historic DNA and modelling of historic actors, in whole or in part.
- Panel Organiser: Geoffrey Rockwell
- Panelists: Geoffrey Rockwell; Alan Burk; Clifford Lynch; Mark Olsen
The Text Analysis Portal for Research project is a CFI funded infrastructure project that brings together researchers at six universities across Canada. This project was developed both to support research infrastructure at the funded nodes and to reach out and involve other researchers interested in text representation, text analysis and techniques, and access and usability of electronic text systems. In this panel we will bring together two researchers within the TAPoR group and two outside to talk about how TAPoR could support the broader community. The panel will focus on what could be and elicit questions and suggestions from the audience.
The four presenters will be:
- will talk about TAPoRware Tools and how they can be used by researchers. In particular he will talk about two new types of tools that are being developed. The first type is a collection of aggregators that are designed to gather texts of the Web around a key word or name for those studying the representation of culture on the Web. These tools are being designed to use search engines like Google to gather "just-in-time" texts that can be treated as a small corpus for further processing. The second type of tool being developed are visualization tools from distribution graphs to visual concordances.
- will introduce some of the issues related to search and retrieval in TAPor. He will then discuss and demonstrate a metadata tool that UNB is contributing to TAPoR that will enable description, annotation, and searching of TAPoR texts at a collection level and compatible tools through a common interface. The metadata tool in its final development will be able to handle metatada at both an item and collection level and to accept and ouput different forms of metadata, Dublin Core, TEI and CanCore, expressed in the Resource Description Framework or the Open Archives Initiative Metadata Harvesting Protocol.
- , both external board members of TAPoR, are being asked to participate and to challenge TAPoR in how it might encourage research in text analysis and humanities computing.
- is the Assistant Director of the ARTFL Project at the University of Chicago since 1988. He received a PhD in history from the University of Ottawa in 1991.