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Sounds Like DNA – a new web installation for generative music at UCL

By ucacngo, on 10 March 2014

As part of our ongoing research and teaching in computer music here at UCL, we’ve been working with a London theatre company, Penny Dreadful Productions.  They have a new show currently touring called How to Be Immortal which presents three true-life stories about love, death and DNA and explores these through music and drama.  It has been developed with input from UCL scientists.  To give an interactive element to accompany the show, we have collaboratively developed an exciting web installation entitled Sounds Like DNA, where you can generate your own music that interprets DNA codes connected with various characteristics set by sliders.  You can reach the installation here: bit.ly/DNAsound

 

Crowdsourcing the Slade Class Photographs

By Sarah Davenport, on 31 October 2013

slade-archive-project-logo-40-percent-grey copyUCLDH is working with the Slade Archive Project on a new crowdsourcing project to identify alumni in Slade class photographs.  The class photographs have been taken annually since 1931 and former staff, students and members of the public are being asked to help identify the sitters.  The photos have been catalogued and are available on a new website, designed by UCLDH, where visitors can zoom in on individual faces.

Further information about the project can be found on the Slade Archive blog and the UCL news site also features an article with comments from Melissa Terras (Director of UCLDH) and Susan Collins (Director of the Slade).

The Great Parchment Book article in the THE

By Sarah Davenport, on 21 June 2013

Melissa Terras, UCLDH Director, talks to the THE about the work being done at UCL to create a digital version of the fire-damaged Great Parchment Book.

Reference cultures in Europe – Major European research grant awarded

By Sarah Davenport, on 7 May 2013

How did the large and cultural powerful countries Britain, France, and Germany influence public debates in smaller countries like the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg?

Cultural historians and digital humanists at UCL and the universities of Utrecht and Trier will address this question in the new research project Asymmetrical Encounters: E-Humanity Approaches to Reference Cultures in Europe, 1815–1992‘ for which they have been awarded a grant of €1 million by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area). In the UK, Ulrich Tiedau (UCL Dutch/Digital Humanities) will be the Principal Investigator.

The project will explore cultural aspects of European identity and how reference cultures have changed over the course of the past two centuries. Using innovative digital techniques the project team will mine and analyse digital collections of the National Library of the Netherlands, the British Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale de Luxembourg and other European libraries with large repositories of digitised newspapers and periodicals. Text mining and sentiment mining open up the perspective of a quantitative approach to the history of mentalities, allowing researchers to discover long-term developments and turning points in public debates, as well as to map vectors of cross-cultural influences.

HERA is a collaboration between the AHRC and twenty other European research funding organizations, with the aim to stimulate the collaboration between leading research institutions in Europe. This year funding was made available for new and exciting humanities-centred projects on the theme “Cultural Encounters”.

UCL Museums Dashboard

By Sarah Davenport, on 18 April 2013

Centre for Digital Humanities (UCLDH), the Barlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) and UCL Museums and Public Engagement have launched a digital dashboard highlighting the UCL Museums and Collections.

Check it out at http://citydashboard.org/uclmuseums/

Part of the bigger CityDashboard project, this special version shows data from, or relevant to, UCL Museums and Collections. It is part of the NeISS project and was jointly funded by JISC and UCL Museums and Public Engagement.

QRator at the Museum of Brands

By Sarah Davenport, on 25 February 2013

QRator has now been rolled out to the Museum  of Brands, offering an interactive experience for visitors via the QRator iPads and the website.  Further details can be found on the QRator website.

Social Interpretation – applying the principles of social media to relationships with cultural objects

By Sarah Davenport, on 8 February 2013

Claire Ross writes about the Social Interpretation project:

The Social Interpretation project was a one year Research and Development exercise joint funded by the NESTA / Arts Council / AHRC digital R&D Fund, and Imperial War Museums (IWM).  At its heart, it aimed to bring successful social interactions already found online and apply them across IWM’s collections – making social objects out of museums objects.  The aim being to increase spread and engagement of  IWM collections.

Museums’ objects have too often been seen as purely historical objects. They aren’t. Rather, they are social objects, inspiring emotional attachment, discussion, debate and action. This project is at the forefront of capturing and representing what audiences feel and say in response to our collections and subjects.

Social Interpretation aimed to holistically represent the discussions about, and sharing of, our objects by audiences. The intention was to do this seamlessly across all of the museums digital outputs (in-gallery, on-mobile and on-line). Making museums objects truly social.

The project essentially applied the models and insight found in social networks, and successful interactions online generally, and applying them wholesale to museum collections.

You can find out more about the project process at http://blogs.iwm.org.uk/social-interpretation/.

Or Read the final report from NESTA: http://www.artsdigitalrnd.org.uk/sites/default/files/case-study-documents/Digital_RandD_CaseStdy_SocialInterpretation.pdf

Or Watch a snazzy video.

KulturBot 1.0: Art goes Robotics

By Sarah Davenport, on 5 February 2013

One of our DH team members—Frauke Zeller—is involved in a new project that brings together art, critics, and robots in a joint international project with Canadian artist David Harris Smith: http://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/article/watch-your-step-campus-toughest-art-critic-could-be-under-your-feet/

Slade Archive Project

By Sarah Davenport, on 13 December 2012

We are pleased to announce that UCLDH will be working with the Slade School of Fine Art on a pilot project to see what is held in the Slade Archive and to look at ways in which the information can be made available to a wider audience.  The project is funded by a UCL Arts & Humanities Small Research Grant.

For further information please see the project blog.

Registration for CHIPS is open!

By ucacngo, on 15 May 2012

The CHIPS project on popular music performance with technology (see previous post) is underway.  There is online discussion of the issues getting started here and registration is now open (there is no charge for the event) for the symposium on 7th-8th June.  We have a programme of great speakers lined up.  If you are interested in coming, please register asap as places are limited by the venue capacity.