Visualizations play a central role in digital humanities and for digital methods. They serve as a means of inquiry and of communication. In a joint workshop of the collaborative research center “Media of Cooperation”, the BMBF project “Film Circulation on the International Film Festival Network” and the DFG network “New Directions in Film Historiography” we will explore the potentials as well as the epistemological and practical challenges of visualization in digital media studies.
Our aim is to explore current approaches, practices and techniques of visualization and to discuss their potential contribution to digital media studies. Visualization refers to more than the beautiful, yet potentially misleading and suggestive presentation of fact through visual artifacts. Visualization denotes also a process, i.e. an exploratory research process in the mode of the visual. Therefore, the workshop will pay special attention to the practices of inquiry in the process of visualizing: How can visualization be understood as open-ended inquiry and how can critical intervention be articulated in and through visualization? In short, how can visualization be practiced as a mode of digital media studies in its own right? We invite contributions that engage with the topic of the workshop and are based in projects with specific practices of visualization and research on visualization.
The online workshop is organized by Skadi Loist and Marcus Burkhardt
„Visualization for Modeling Interpretation“
The Workshop kicks off with a talk by Johanna Drucker (UCLA)
Monday, 15 November 2021, 3-5pm CET
Visualizations are generated as the display of data or information, and in spite of their many interactive features for query, search, filter, and other activities, they are not used as primary methods for modeling interpretation. Several crucial components are required for modeling, rather than display, and the specific elements of interpretative work add other requirements to the design of the interface. This talk sketches some principles and concepts for the design of visual environments for modeling interpretation and examines a few cases that suggest potential directions.
Johanna Drucker is the Breslauer Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Studies at UCLA. She is internationally known for her work in artists’ books, the history of graphic design, typography, experimental poetry, fine art, and digital humanities.
Workshop Schedule
Thursday, 18 Nov 2021
09:45 – 10:00 Welcome
10:00 – 11:20 Nadieh Bremer: data sketch|es – A year of exotic visualizations
11:20 – 11:30 Short Break
11:30 – 12:20 Martina Schories: Visualization as a Process
12:20 – 12:30 Short Break
12:30 – 13:30 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Group Discussion
Friday, 19 Nov 2021
09:00 – 09:50 Deb Verhoeven and Michelle Mantsio: Loaded Images: Feminism, Data and the Film Industry’s “criminal networks”
09:50 – 10:00 Short Break
10:00 – 10:50 Federica Bardelli and Marcus Burkhardt: Visually Studying Cultures of Coding on GitHub: A Work in Progress Report
10:50 – 11:00 Break
11:00 – 11:30 Wrap up + End of the Workshop