Learning to See Systems

  • Posted on January 23, 2013 at 1:02 pm by Kevin Hamilton.
  • Categorized: .

Visual Representation, Technological Systems, and New Modes of Collaborative Digital Scholarship

This experimental graduate training and design initiative is based at the Center, and directed in part by Professors Hamilton and Jackson. Beginning in Fall of 2013, a small group of students from multiple graduate programs across the Humanities will work under the supervision of an interdisciplinary team of Faculty through a series of new courses and projects that pose a common question: How can we make visible the values and epistemologies embedded in complex technological systems? We will address the role of vision in new technologies, and we will do so through the production not only of texts, but of images, interfaces and software. The question of vision is central to the study of new technologies not only because of the role of images in these systems, but of sight itself, of seeing. To address and understand the role of vision in technological systems is to expose their underlying value systems, the ways in which they also mediate visibility for others. Outcomes will include scholarly publications and presentations in traditional and experimental forms, a new digital tool made available to the public for use in scholarly research and publication, and a concluding symposium on the rise of the “Humanities Lab” as a space of experimentation for scholarly form, method and audience.

Project homepage: seeingsystems.illinois.edu
The Program is funded through the INTERSECT program in the Graduate College at the University of Illinois.

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