[-empyre-] Engineering the University : Week 03 : Bettivia and Flanders

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

"I wonder what students end
up being DH professionals and what programs do they attend? Is DH IT +
humanities training? Is it IT skills taught in the context of
humanities? Is it better under the umbrella of computer science as a
data science?


*Is DH a signal of the impending collapse of the science and art
distinction, resulting in a unified quantitative methodological framework
for science-about-culture and science-about-nature?"*
Ben, it appears to me the utopian project you are describing is basically a
19th through to approximately mid 20th century idea. I will make a
provocative claim and will be happy to discuss it with you or anyone in the
group. That unification is impossible for a few basic reasons. The Turing
test does not apply here. Intelligence and art are different things. The
defintionof intelligence is basically transactional. It may be framed in
terms of capabilities that can be measured, empirically "verified"
(realified). A parallel definition of what art is (as opposed to purely
design products that have commercial viability, therefore measurablility)
is impossible. There are theoretical reasons, a conceptual basis to my
argument. I will be happy to elaborate on it.

(By the way, a work of art, visual or literary, may or may not be
commercially viable. But that viability is independent from its value as
art, regardless how the capitalist ideology may desperately tro to conflate
them.)

Ciao,
Murat

On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 12:25 PM, B. Bogart <ben at ekran.org> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Thank you Julia. I'm not sure if you saw my question that followed up on
> Rhiannon's question? (Sent on Mar 17, 2015 11:42 am)
>
> After reading your responses I'm even more confused as to what DH
> actually is. You did mention some difficulty in defining it, but the
> extract from your email below baffles me. Based on this quote, it would
> seem DH is simply the application of IT skills (meta data, websites,
> etc.) in a humanities context. This is quite a bit more shallow than my
> previous conception of DH as science-about-humanities. I fail to see
> what, as a discipline, we gain if its simply the exploitation of an
> existing skill set that becomes increasingly dominant and even
> displacing traditional media. Is DH about making humanities knowledge
> more accessible, or about applying quantitative and analytic methods
> from data science to cultural artifacts? (or both? or neither?)
>
> What strikes me most is the notion of all the graduates of new media art
> and design programs could fit under the umbrella of DH (as far as I can
> glean from the quote below). I keep thinking of the notion of the
> "creative coder" who knows a lot of design and some coding, and is
> intended to prototype whole projects and act as a bridge between the
> design and coding specializations. There has been some backlash against
> this area because graduates have been seen as lacking the depth of
> coding skills to balance their design ability, and end up working
> largely as designers because coders are required to fill in the skill gaps.
>
> The reason for my interest in (and challenge of) DH is an apparent move
> to the quantification of everything and thus the domination of
> scientific methodologies over all others. Maybe this is an obvious
> extension of the movement for social science to be accepted by hard
> sciences in terms of rigorous methods?
>
> To get back to the topic of Engineering the University (which is
> interesting it itself being an apparent optimization or design problem
> to solve, rather than a dialogue to unfold), I wonder what students end
> up being DH professionals and what programs do they attend? Is DH IT +
> humanities training? Is it IT skills taught in the context of
> humanities? Is it better under the umbrella of computer science as a
> data science? Is DH a signal of the impending collapse of the science
> and art distinction, resulting in a unified quantitative methodological
> framework for science-about-culture and science-about-nature?
>
> Ben Bogart
>
> On 15-03-17 07:27 PM, Julia Flanders wrote:
> > A museum might feel a need, without any prompting, for a "web master"
> > or a "metadata specialist"--but once we have a pool of professionals
> > who understand how the well-formalized intellectual capital of
> > metadata can serve as the basis for a dynamic online presence that
> > engages the public in exploring the museum's collections, that's the
> > basis for an entirely different kind of professional niche.
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
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