[en] The Potential and Problems in using High Performance Computing in the Arts and Humanities: the Researching e-Science Analysis of Census Holdings (ReACH) Project.Melissa M. Terras, Department of Information Studies, University College London
Abstract
[en]
e-Science and high performance computing (HPC) have the potential to allow large datasets to be searched and analysed quickly, efficiently, and in complex and novel ways. Little application has been made of the processing power of grid technologies to humanities data, due to lack of available large-scale datasets, and little understanding of or access to e-Science technologies. The Researching e-Science Analysis of Census Holdings (ReACH) scoping study, an AHRC-funded e-science workshop series, was established to investigate the potential application of grid computing to a large dataset of interest to historians, humanists, digital consumers, and the general public: historical census records. Consisting of three one-day workshops held at UCL in Summer 2006, the workshop series brought together expertise across different domains to ascertain how useful, possible, or feasible it would be to analyse datasets from Ancestry and The National Archives using the HPC facilities available at UCL. This article details the academic, technical, managerial, and legal issues highlighted in the project when attempting to apply HPC to historical data sets. Additionally, generic issues facing humanities researchers attempting to utilise HPC technologies in their research are presented.
[en] e-Science for Medievalists: Options, Challenges, Solutions and
OpportunitiesPeter Ainsworth, Dept of French and Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield; Michael Meredith, Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield
Abstract
[en]
Medievalists typically resort to parchment for primary research and when editing
their sources. Not always accurately catalogued, manuscripts copied onto animal skins
may have started life in the same workshop but over the centuries have become
dispersed, coming to rest in libraries all over the world; bringing these together
entails travel, microfilm purchases and reassembly and collation of the data within
reach of a microfilm reader. These unwieldy machines afford only moderate scope for
exploring single manuscripts at close quarters. High-resolution digitisation yields
not just better surrogates in full colour; it allows for the development of
additional research tools using image compression and manipulation, and new modes of
representation, e.g. juxtaposed display of several related witnesses. This paper
outlines research questions underpinning the development of an electronic tool for
viewing, transcribing and manipulating manuscripts; it moves on to show how the
viewer can be adapted for access from remote sites, to compare and annotation one or
more witnesses (interactively and in real time), and for use as an integral part of
an online edition. Finally, it explores how it can be deployed for use on projects
taking knowledge outside the academy: in museums, galleries and other public
spaces.
[en] Service-Oriented Software in the Humanities: A Software Engineering PerspectiveNicolas Gold, King's College London, Department of Computer Science
Abstract
[en]
Software Engineering, as a sub-discipline of the broader field of computer science, is concerned with the production, use, and maintenance of large, complex software systems. On first inspection, the set of managerial and technical activities involved in software engineering appears to be somewhat orthogonal to core research activity in the humanities, being concerned more with the production of research-enabling software systems than the research itself. However, as the scale of software used in digital humanities has increased, it is becoming clear that there are ways in which software engineering can inform, inspire, and aid in the management of the larger-scale software systems now being constructed in these disciplines. In particular, the development of service technology to aid in the production of flexible software systems for business now offers opportunities, not only for collaborative data sharing, but also the modelling, capture, provenancing, and replay of the research (and possibly creative) process itself.
This paper examines, from the perspective of a software engineer relatively new to the digital humanities, how the recent developments in service-oriented architectures could be used to enable new approaches to digital enquiry in the arts and humanities. The first part of the paper presents a brief history of software engineering, with particular reference to the aspects that have led to service-oriented architectures. In the second part, the paper offers some thoughts on how certain aspects of service-oriented architectures could be used to enable new kinds of computer-based research and practice in the arts and humanities. It also introduces important national initiatives in this area, such as the JISC e-Framework programme for Higher Education.
[en] The Making of “Our Cultural Commonwealth”
John Unsworth, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Abstract
[en]
Reflections on the ACLS Commission on Cyberinfrastructure
[en] The “e” Prefix: e-Science, e-Art & the New CreativityGregory Sporton, Director, Visualisation Research Unit, School of Art, Birmingham City University
Abstract
[en]
What does it mean to put an “e” ahead of a concept? This essay
discusses the purpose of doing such a thing, arguing there is a distinct
method in the apparent randomness of labelling something “e” this or
that. Far from simply denoting that it might be done with computers
(and, indeed, what isn't today), Sporton argues that beyond the effect
of explaining this is something to do with technology, there is an
emergent “e-culture” that reunites the arts and sciences after two
hundred years of separate development within the academy. An
“e-Culture” emerges that reflects the values, opportunities and
restrictions of Internet as a research environment. The potential of
that environment requires a mindset focussed on collaboration to achieve
anything of creative significance.
[en] Locating Grid Technologies: Performativity, Place, Space: Challenging the
Institutionalized Spaces of e-ScienceAngela Piccini, University of Bristol
Abstract
[en]
This paper arises out of a brief period in the early- to mid-2000s when the British
funding and research climate facilitated a relationship between the technical,
operational language of e-Science and the creative and performing arts. It concerns
the ways in which live creative practices produce media traces that are fractured
across screens and networks to produce new spatial relations between live events and
their records. The split and contradictory subjectivities produced in these highly
mediatized environments bring to the fore creative tensions between the live event
and the recorded document. That is, the discourses, technologies and practices (if we
may separate these) of e-Science not only produce new, spatial connections between
events and their archives, they enact the “liveness” of archives as they are
accessed and recombined to produce new art forms. Locating Grid Technologies:
Performativity, Place, Space, a research workshop series funded by the A&H
e-Science Initiative in its 2006 round, aimed to investigate how e-Science
technologies might inform new understandings of space and time for distributed,
creative research practices. Arts and technology researchers from the UK, US and
Japan met to generate, analyze and re-use audio-visual documents of distributed
practice-led research. Specifically, the project sought to combine and repurpose
e-Science tools in order to investigate the spatial relationships produced between
time-based, live events and their immediately mediatized traces. This paper
investigates those performative fragmentations of place and space. It suggests that
the potentialities and pitfalls of e-Science tools and technologies present fertile
material for the arts researcher, particularly within the area of practice-based
research: from the politics of surveillance to the aesthetics of video compression,
from the ethics of multidisciplinary collaboration to the theoretical implications of
mixing video time and space with the time and space of the performance event.
[en] Grid-enabling Humanities DatasetsMark Hedges, Centre for e-Research, King’s College London
Abstract
[en]
The term “grid-enabling” is sometimes (or even often) used without a
clear idea of what is meant. In this article we attempt to clarify
some of the possible meanings of grid-enabling data resources. In
particular, we examine how researchers in the humanities may benefit
from using such approaches, and examine some concrete case studies in
which grid technologies have been used to support data-driven research
in the humanities.
