observations – Page 10

26 June, 2018

University of Bristol Jean Golding Institute’s Data Week 2018

The black cat in the film the matrix credited as deja vu or a glitch in the matrix

Just come across this via a colleague. Lots of interesting things on at the Jean Golding Institute as part of their ‘data week‘, including live-coding/algorave!

**University of Bristol Data Week Timetable**
Date	Time	Workshop	Venue
Monday 25 June	10.00 – 13.00	Beginning Python	1.07, Merchant Ventures Building, BS8 1UB
Tuesday 26 June	09.00 – 17.00	Introduction to R in 6 hours	1.08, Merchant Ventures Building, BS8 1UB
Tuesday 26 June	09.00 – 12.00	A hands on introduction to 3D digitisation*	LG05, 8-10 Berkeley Square, BS8 1HH
Tuesday 26 June	09.30 – 12.30	Introduction to Shiny	1.07, Merchant Ventures Building, BS8 1UB
Tuesday 26 June	13.00 – 16.00	A hands on introduction to 3D digitisation*	LG05, 8-10 Berkeley Square, BS8 1HH
Tuesday 26 June	13.30 – 16.30	Introduction to ggplot2	1.07, Merchant Ventures Building, BS8 1UB
Wednesday 27 June	09.00 – 17.00	Introducing modern Generalized Additive Models	1.08, Merchant Ventures Building, BS8 1UB
Wednesday 27 June	10.00 – 13.00	Intermediate Python	1.07, Merchant Ventures Building, BS8 1UB
Wednesday 27 June	14.00 – 15.30	Colour as data	Hepple Lecture Theatre, Geographical Sciences, BS8 1SS
Thursday 28 June	10.00 – 13.00	Data analysis in Python	1.07, Merchant Ventures Building, BS8 1UB
Thursday 28 June	10.00 – 12.00	An introduction to open research	1.20, 35 Berkeley Square, BS8 1JA
Friday 29 June	10.00 – 12.00	Introduction to machine learning	1.20, 35 Berkeley Square, BS8 1JA
Friday 29 June	14.00 – 16.00	Live-Coding / Algorave workshop	Bill Brown Design Suite, Queen’s Building, Woodland Road, BS8 1TR

25 June, 2018

Cavell in the LRB

From ‘The Editors’ on the LRB website:

The philosopher Stanley Cavell, who died yesterday at the age of 91, wrote a piece on the Marx Brothers for the LRB in 1993:

Movies magnify, so when pictures began talking they magnified words. Somehow, as in the case of opera’s magnification of words, this made their words mostly ignorable, like the ground, as if the industrialised human species had been looking for a good excuse to get away from its words, or looking for an explanation of the fact that we do get away, even must. The attractive publication, briefly and informatively introduced, of the scripts? of several Marx Brothers films … is a sublime invitation to stop and think about our swings of convulsiveness and weariness in the face of these films; to sense that it is essential to the Brothers’ sublimity that they are thinking about words, to the end of words, in every word – or, in Harpo’s emphatic case, in every absence of words.

…

Michael Wood reviewed Philosophy the Day after Tomorrow in 2005:

The ordinary slips away from us. If we ignore it, we lose it. If we look at it closely, it becomes extraordinary, the way words or names become strange if we keep staring at them. The very notion turns into a baffling riddle. Shall we say that the ordinary doesn’t exist, or that it exists only when we don’t look at it closely? Stanley Cavell has been thinking about the ordinary (although not only about that) for the whole of his philosophical career, and he knows the riddle inside out. But the riddle is not where his interest lies. He doesn’t mind if the world goes strange on us, as long as we keep looking at it, and he is happy to assert ‘the extraordinariness of what we accept as the ordinary’. The question for him is not a linguistic one, and beyond the simple, slippery word is a whole range of human practices crying out for, but not often getting, our attention.

25 June, 2018

The Trouble with Bias – Kate Crawford [Video]

This keynote from the NIPS 2017 conference by Kate Crawford is excellent – a good resource for anyone interested in thinking and communicating about the issues of bias in AI.

13 June, 2018

Groundhog IOT futures Day

Spot the difference:

2011

2018

Both Microsoft.

7 June, 2018

Tarleton Gillespie on “Custodians”

Over on the Culture Digitally site Tarleton Gillespie discusses his new book Custodians of the Internet, reflecting on some of the meanings of “custodian” and how they variously relate to the topic of the book – content moderators for social media services. Gillespie is an astute observer and analyst of contemporary ‘digital culture’ (I struggle to think of another noun right now) and the issue of moderation is certainly timely.

I thought I would explain the book’s title, particularly my choice of the word “custodians.” This title came unnervingly late in the writing process, and after many, many conversations with my extremely patient friend and colleague Dylan Mulvin. “Custodians of the Internet” captured, better than many, many alternatives, the aspirations of social media platforms, the position they find themselves in, and my notion for how they should move forward.

Some podcasts…

I blogged about the BBC’s unpopped podcast a while ago, and in reply Scott kindly made a further recommendation (below). I’ve also recently begun to listen to a few more podcasts and so I thought I’d do another quick post that recommends some podcasts that some of the readers of this blog may find interesting…

Scott Rodgers recommended the podcast 99% Invisiblewhich is ostensibly about design but covers all sorts of things and I’ve enjoyed listening to this over the last couple of months. They have a website with lots of additional info and articles based on the topics of each show. The show is part of the Radiotopia stable, which has quite a few well-regarded podcasts.

One of the recommendations that I’ve been incredibly thankful for, actually from the BBC’s Podcast Radio Hour, is the sublime Everyone Else – a podcast ‘telling the stories of strangers’. One of the many things I love about the podcast is the sound design – there are all sorts of wonderful atmospheric effects and incidental music. The stories themselves are fascinating, often moving and always evocative of a very human experience of life.

Another recommendation from Podcast Radio Hour is The Tip Off – a podcast concerning investigative journalism. Maeve McClenaghan from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism takes you through the processes of investigative journalism. Again, some really evocative audio production and some gripping stories.

Whilst I’m thinking about it, and maybe I’ll blog about this another day – one thing I am beginning to find a little frustrating about the majority of recommendations from the BBC’s Podcast Radio Hour and other folks who are, for want of a better word, podcasting ‘insiders’ is what I’ve come to think of as a weird kind of fetishisation of a privileged position as a listener being party to some kind of apparently authentic or intimate story or truth. These sorts of podcasts are becoming the norm – a presenter, often a comedian for some reason, talks to someone else and apparently intimate or frank conversations ensue. Either that or we are invited into an otherwise hard-to-access or ‘edgy’ context, such as a prison, and allowed to gawp. Most of the time, in my limited and partial experience, recommendations of podcasts (and sometimes the podcasts themselves) presuppose a white middle-class audience, who most likely are metropolitan and/or university-educated – one might look at the winners of the recent British Podcast Awards and ask questions along these lines. The fact that many are hosted by women often performing either/both of what comes across as earnest concern or compassion or a confessional revelation of intimacy also seems worthy of critical reflection. I’m just sort of uncomfortable about the aesthetic that seems to have become a norm in British, perhaps BBC-favoured, podcasting. Maybe I’m wrong. I hope so.

If you’ve read this far and have any thoughts I’d be really happy to hear from you – especially with other podcast recommendations!

6 June, 2018

Excellent post by Angela Last on teaching geohumanities

I enjoyed reading this thoughtful piece on teaching ‘geohumanities’…

An experiment in teaching geohumanities

As someone whose work gets framed as ‘geohumanities’, I often get asked about my take on the field, both in terms of research and teaching. I usually answer that I feel that geohumanities is in danger of becoming a mere rebranding exercise for cultural geography or environmental humanities. Looking at articles from journals across those three fields, it becomes difficult to make out a difference. This dynamic seems aggravated by the demands of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) that evaluates research output according to discipline. Many academics have complained that, while contemporary problems (and research funders) demand interdisciplinarity, the current research (and academic career) assessment punishes discipline transgressions. Your work will always be scrutinised for sufficient adherence to disciplinary boundaries, and it seems not enough that most of your work can be accounted for in this way, and the fact that there are dedicated journals for this field in which you can publish. Although the new framework promises to pay more attention to interdisciplinarity, the paranoia around disciplinarity persists. Certainly, during last year’s job interviews, I experienced anxiety around my work and the journals in which I decide to publish. Even at interviews for geohumanities themed posts, when bringing up potential practice based or inter/cross-disciplinary outputs, the answer was often ‘no’.

…

A related issue is interdisciplinary teaching. There are many different ways of doing this, depending on institutional logistics (timetabling, student location, connection to other departments etc), levels (undergraduate, postgraduate) and staffing. An increasing number of universities claim to have interdisciplinary undergraduate teaching programmes such as ‘Liberal Arts’, but in reality, subjects are still being kept separate and taught by specialists. The location of an interdisciplinary programme also often determines the angle. For instance, if an art and science programme is located within an arts faculty, the syllabus is more likely to be art centred, no matter how diverse the student body.

Reblog> Derrida’s Margins: Inside the personal library of Jacques Derrida

Really interesting… via Stuart Elden.

Derrida’s Margins: Inside the personal library of Jacques Derrida

For Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), reading was an active process: he read texts by thinkers like Rousseau, Heidegger, Lévi-Strauss, Hegel, and Husserl with a writing utensil in hand. As Derrida affirmed in a late interview, the books in his personal library bear the “traces of the violence of pencil strokes, exclamation points, arrows, and underlining.”

Derrida’s Margins invites scholars to investigate these markings while unpacking the library contained within each of Derrida’s published works, beginning with the landmark 1967 text De la grammatologie (Of Grammatology). Additional Derrida works will be added as the project continues.

The website catalogues each reference (quotation, citation, footnote, etc.) in De la grammatologie and allows users to explore Derrida’s personal copies of the texts he cites. Due to copyright restrictions, only annotated pages corresponding to references in De la grammatologie are shown here; users may also view external images of each book as well as images of the numerous insertions (post-it notes, bookmarks, calendar pages, index cards, correspondence, notes, etc.) Derrida tipped in to his books.

The website includes the following sections, accessible via the links in the four corners of this page: Derrida’s Library, where users may browse or search Derrida’s copies of the books referenced in De la grammatologie; Reference List, where users may browse or search the nearly one thousand references to other texts found in the pages of De la grammatologie; Interventions, where users may browse or search Derrida’s annotations, marginalia, and markings that correspond to the references in De la grammatologie; and Visualization, which provides users with alternative ways of exploring the references in De la grammatologie. Users may search a particular section or the entire site at any time by using the search field at the top of every page.

The Library of Jacques Derrida is housed at Princeton University Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections.

5 June, 2018

7th European Colloquium on Culture, Creativity and Economy 4-5 Oct ’18

May be of interest to people that follow this blog… Via Brian Hracs:

7th European Colloquium on Culture, Creativity and Economy

October 4-5, 2018 – Stockholm, Sweden

The myriad links between culture, creativity and economic practice are major topics of intellectual discussion. Culture and creativity are collaboratively practiced by a range of workers and communities — from artists to entrepreneurs— and in a range of occupational, organizational, institutional and spatial settings. Indeed, far from being restricted to global cities and urban settings, a growing body of research highlights the presence and uniqueness of cultural and creative activities in suburban and rural settings. Moreover, digital technologies and processes of globalization continue to create, destroy, and restructure the markets and conditions under which cultural creation, production, intermediation, dissemination and consumption are undertaken and experienced. These are in turn underpinned by a plurality of micro-spatialities and micro-processes through which the dynamics and spaces of culture and creativity emerge. More than ever perhaps there is a need for critical and radical debate that addresses questions about the value and values inherent in culture and creativity; questions surrounding the ownership and marketization of culture and creativity; and the dynamics of cultural and creative spaces, institutions, production and work.

The European Colloquium on Culture, Creativity and Economy is a European network of excellence and CCE Stockholm 2018 is the 7th annual meeting of the Colloquium. The Colloquium aims at bringing together junior and senior scholars from different disciplines (e.g. sociology, cultural and urban studies, geography) and locations around the world in an exciting, intense and dynamic meeting aimed at generating not only new networks but new knowledge, approaches, and practices. The Colloquium will be based for one day at Sweden’s arts grants agency and for one day at Stockholm’s largest modern and contemporary art museum. Each day the program will partly reflect discussion themes related to and inspired by the institution and space we are in; and will involve dialogue with people from these institutions. Day 1 will be, at least partly, focused on the dynamics of contemporary creative practice and work, and work organization in arts and cultural production. Day 2 will focus partly on cultural exhibition, public-private interactions, and cultural consumption. These issues will form a background agenda but as in previous years the Colloquium welcomes a variety of perspectives and aims to reflect participants interests and research on the multiple intersections between culture, creativity and economy. The event will give participants the chance to share ideas, receive feedback on current research and to preview cutting-edge research in the field.

[…]

Applying

The conference organizers will select up to 30 individuals to attend. To be considered you must send the following to Taylor Brydges (taylor.brydges@humangeo.su.se) by Friday, June 8, 2018. Late applications will not be considered. Participants will be informed of their acceptance late June. Please include the following information in a word document: – A short bio of approximately 200 words – A personal photo of sufficient quality to be included in the program – A 250 word statement of current interests or what you consider the most important research issue to address in the coming years

Once Accepted

By September 16, 2018, please send Taylor Brydges (taylor.brydges@humangeo.su.se) a paper for review and discussion. The choice of your contribution is open – it could be your latest published paper, a draft paper, a grant proposal, or an outline of an idea.

More information is available from the CFP.

17 May, 2018

Event > Data Feminism with Lauren Klein (at KCL)

This event looks really interesting!

Via Pip Thornton.

Data Feminism

Lauren Klein, Assistant Professor, Georgia Tech

How might we draw on feminist critical thought to reimagine data practices and data work? Join us for a public talk with Lauren Klein (Assistant Professor, Georgia Tech) to discuss her recent work on data feminism. Hosted by Jonathan Gray at the Department for Digital Humanities at King’s College London.

With their ability to depict hundreds, thousands, and sometimes even millions of relationships at a single glance, visualizations of data can dazzle, inform, and persuade. It is precisely this power that makes it worth asking: “Visualization by whom? For whom? In whose interest? Informed by whose values?” These are some of the questions that emerge from what we call data feminism, a way of thinking about data and its visualization that is informed by the past several decades of feminist critical thought. Data feminism prompts questions about how, for instance, challenges to the male/female binary can also help challenge other binary and hierarchical classification systems. It encourages us to ask how the concept of invisible labor can help to expose the invisible forms of labor associated with data work. And it points to how an understanding of affective and embodied knowledge can help to expand the notion of what constitutes data and what does not. Using visualization as a starting point, this talk works backwards through the data-processing pipeline in order to show how a feminist approach to thinking about data not only exposes how power and privilege presently operate in visualization work, but also suggests how different design principles can help to mitigate inequality and work towards justice.

Lauren Klein is an assistant professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech, where she also directs the Digital Humanities Lab. With Matthew Gold, she editsDebates in the Digital Humanities (University of Minnesota Press), a hybrid print/digital publication stream that explores debates in the field as they emerge. Her literary monograph,Matters of Taste: Eating, Aesthetics, and the Early American Archive, is forthcoming from Minnesota in Spring 2019. She is also at work on two new projects: Data Feminism, co-authored with Catherine D’Ignazio, and under contract with MIT Press, which distills key lessons from feminist theory into a set of principles for the design and interpretation of data visualizations, and Data by Design, which provides an interactive history of data visualization from the eighteenth century to the present.