ahrc digital transformations

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Reflections: a Vision for the Arts and Humanities in a Context of Digital Transformation Andrew Prescott, King’s College London

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Presentation to AHRC Digital Transformations workshop

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Page 1: AHRC Digital Transformations

Reflections: a Vision for the Arts and Humanities in a Context of Digital

Transformation

Andrew Prescott,King’s College London

Page 2: AHRC Digital Transformations

Electronic Beowulf Patent Office Express

Dunhuang Project Network catalogues

Digitisation of microfilm(Burney Newspapers)

Turning the Pages

• Initiatives for Access: pioneering British Library programme from 1993-1997

• Variety of experimental projects• High level of risk, but many of the

experimental projects have turned into key services such as the online catalogue, newspaper digitisation and online patent access

• PLURAL, TRANSVERSAL AND GENERATIVE

• This translates to: no one single approach, piece of kit or infrastructure which will enable us to deliver, master or manage the digital.

• The digital is shape shifting, so it adapts to our interests and preoccupations

• It is (and should be) like riding a tiger.

Page 3: AHRC Digital Transformations

There is no single answer

True digital transformations will involve:• Risky short-term experimentation and supporting

sustainability• Mash-ups made in bedrooms and experiments with

synchotrons• Digital art works and huge quantitative visualisations• A critical and theoretical debate and building new

things• Data flows and new perspectives on materiality• Technology and people

Page 4: AHRC Digital Transformations

In tough times, how do we deliver an innovative and exciting programme that is still focussed and coherent?

Page 5: AHRC Digital Transformations

Digital transformations and innovation

Page 6: AHRC Digital Transformations

Digital transformations and innovation• The Facebook problem. Are we doomed always to be low

impact?• Should we let science and technology be more in the driving

seat?• Or is it cultural theory and critical tools that we bring to the

table? The data world is a world of text, sound, image, movement. We can imagine new shapes and connections in that world. Should we be shaping scientific agendas more?

• How do we integrate the insights of process from practice-led research with speculative research elsewhere?

• Does innovation lies somewhere in the triangulation between technology, artistic practice and theory? Is that a new territory?

Page 7: AHRC Digital Transformations

An element of the vision?

• Can we use our theoretical, artistic, historical, cultural and philosophical insights to develop new challenges for scientists and to create new transformations?

Page 8: AHRC Digital Transformations

My HASTAC experience

• A dreary inward-looking digital humanities world that hadn’t changed very much in seven years

• Young humanities scholars who are very critically and theoretically aware but who are also enthusiastic hands on coders. Hack v yack doesn’t matter.

• A lot of the digital transformation is being driven by pedagogy. Is that a missing piece of the jigsaw?

• True digital transformations are driven by the people not the technology. We need to transform the people, the practice and the relationships. Human transformation, not digital transformation.

Page 9: AHRC Digital Transformations

What was missing?

• Sound? Video? Immersive technologies? Were we too textual, too data driven?

• What about our links with libraries, archives, galleries, museums?

• Likewise, where do publishers and broadcasters fit in?• Globalisation? Erik and the Indian call centres.• The digital economy programme?• What are the implications for research in the arts and

humanities of the new alignments and commercial models currently emerging (vide Leveson Enquiry)?

• How do we stop ourselves going backwards?

Page 10: AHRC Digital Transformations

Who should we be talking to?

• Are we focussing too much on a dialogue between the arts and humanities?

• How should we develop our dialogues with other funding councils?

• What about technology developers e.g. Google? Google UK Scholars Forum

Page 11: AHRC Digital Transformations

Are we ready enough for the unexpected? Are we riding a tiger?

• Is the future really digital? Is quantum digital? And where do other technologies (nanotechnology, biotechnology) fit in? Why do we privilege the digital in our dialogue with science and technology?

• What if the lights go out? Should the arts and humanities be thinking more about Green ICT?

• We assume that data is big, immaterial and capable of infinite linking? But the most important digital transformation might be a material one. What if the most profound digital transformation turned out to be Industrial Revolution 2.0?

Page 12: AHRC Digital Transformations

Richard Misrach, Destroy this Memory (Aperture, 2010)

Page 13: AHRC Digital Transformations
Page 15: AHRC Digital Transformations

Three things

• Embracing diversity and plurality: there isn’t a single answer

• New dialogues with science and technology• Seeking a President Kennedy moment:

materiality?