Digital Media still in the lead in HUMlab-X. The cell phone reception stopped working in our faraday cage after one layer of tinfoil but the wireless still operates, with a mixed result, with two layers. The battle continues with the help of a group of art students in our investigation of the Anti-Digital Resistence.

Visiting Harvard Junior Fellow Jo Guldi will be giving a seminar in HUMlab on Tuesday 8 May at 13:15-15:00 entitled Mapping Time and Mapping Space: Scale, Time, and the Longue Durée, a Methodological Query for the Digital Humanities. This is a USSTE, Umeå Studies in Science, Technology and Environments seminar talk.

Abstract
If technologies of digital analysis allow us to sort larger numbers of books, performing “distant reading” over entire corpi at the same time, a new question of methodology arises: what sorts of longue-duree questions are suited to questions that happen over an immense scale of time and space? Which historical problems and methods meet each other to test our capacities as scholars of the digital?

Jo Guldi, a historian of political economy and information whose work ranges from the fourteenth to the twenty-first century, will present initial findings from her new project, “The Long Land War,” a study of land reform movements, academic paper production, and pamphlet distribution that linked first-world modernists with developing-world revolutionaries in a conversation about land, history, and agency. Timelines, geoparsing, and image abstraction show how new scales of historical inquiry — ranging over continents and centuries — are enabled by the wide methods of the digital turn.

About the speaker
Jo Guldi is Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, Boston, USA. and the author of Roads to Power: How Britain Invented the Infrastructure State (Harvard University Press, 2011)

Welcome to HUMlab and what should be a fascinating presentation.

We have started lunchtime sessions in the brand new HUMlab X on the soon-to-be-officially-opened Arts Campus. Today we screened the Danish produced documentary Good Copy Bad Copy. Students and some of the HUMlab staff enjoyed this provocative documentary from 2007 while enjoying free coffee and their own lunches.

This event was part of what we call Lunchtime Learnings, an informal series of seminars, screenings and talks we will be holding in HUMlab X over the coming months. We will announce the next one on this blog shortly.

One Monday and Tuesday this week HUMlab hosted a workshop entitled “Science Fiction Across Media: Alternative Histories, Alien Futures”.

An international workshop exploring the complex representation of natural and technological ecologies in science fiction in and across its varied media – novels, short stories, films, animation, comic books, computer games.

A broad range of topics were discussed by a fascinating group of people (really I know next to nothing about the theory behind science fiction, but I learned a lot as an observer at this event). The Twitter stream for the workshop is here. The workshop was organized by Finn Arne Jørgensen, who managed to put together an amazing event.

In the above images (from the top going from left to right) you can see a shot of the audience, then former HUMlab postdoc Fellow Lisa Swanstrom, now of Florida Atlantic University, delivering the keynote for the workshop (soon to be streamed online), then Joe Trotta, University of Gothenburg, followed by Dolly Jørgensen, Umeå University and then Tony Thorström, Uppsala University. Our very own Finn Arne Jørgensen is next and finally another audience shot.

Thanks to all the participants. A wonderful couple of days.

We will be starting a series of lunchtime talks and presentations in the new HUMlab X this Thursday at 13:00 with the screening of Good Copy Bad Copy. This is a documentary film made in 2007 that examines cultural production in the USA, Nigeria and Brazil in relation to digital media and intellectual property. The film will be followed by a short discussion. All are welcome.

HUMlab-X is moving in to its new location at the Arts Campus. There’s still a lot to be done, but we want to fill the place up with people anyway. Come and join us for a housewarming fika!

During the evening there’ll be screenings of the documentaries “Everything is a Remix”, “The Future of Art” and “Good Copy Bad Copy”. The films deal with issues like copyright, the networking society and how it affects the future of the art scene.

If you’re more interested in activating yourself, we’ll also set up a game area. There you’ll be able to play the digital folk game Johann Sebastian Joust made by Douglas Wilson.

We’re not fully furnished yet, but cover it up with art instead! The artists Jennifer Myerscough, Jonas Gazell, Clarissa Siimes and Gabriel Bohm Calles Umeå Academy of Art will show their works in and on our empty spaces.

You’re also more than welcome to come and just hang out on our Fatboys, get some pizza and refreshments and help us figure out what Humlab-X should be all about. Be there on time, because we can only promise pizza to the first 200 guests.

The housewarming fika will take place in HUMlab-X in the middle of the Artistic Campus, at April 4th between 5 p.m – 9 p.m.

We hope to see you there!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sachiko Hayashi recently completed an Art Fellowship in HUMlab. The project involved

“gestural interface, via which three components (avatar, sound, visual) are brought together in real-time in a mixed-reality performance. The gestural interface via Kinect and Processing programming enable elimination of pre-programmed (pre-animated) and pre-recorded sequences of avatar movements, sound and visual components.

Kinect captures real-life body movement to control avatar movement in Second Life. Kinect is also used for the part of real-life audio-visual performance, for which Kinect captures the real-life imagery of the performer and her surroundings and manipulates it in real-time via programming in Processing. The sound is generated by computer glitch in real-time also through gestural interface. The audio-visual performance is then streamed into Second Life to be combined with the movement of the avatar in real-time. Because of the gestural interface for the movement of the avatar and incorporation of real-life surroundings, each performance becomes truly unique” (Sachiko).

Sachiko’s time in HUMlab was a rich experience for everyone involved and much was learned by all. HUMlab’s collaboration with Sachiko continues with the ongoing Yoshikaze Up-in-the-Air Artist in Residency program where international artists work in the Yoshikaze studio space on the HUMlab Island in the virtual world of Second Life. More on Yoshikaze and the current artist in residence Pyewacket Kazyanenko can be found HERE.

More videos from Yoshikaze can be viewed here.

Yesterday I stumbled upon a gorilla costume in HUMlab

The gorilla costume sparked my interest and I spoke to the students who seemed to be responsible for it. Turns out it is part of an very dynamic and exciting project being conducted within the Culture Entrepreneurship Program being run in conjunction with HUMlab. I decided to delve deeper on this one, and conducted a short interview with the people behind the project, “Naken på” (Naked at)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Naken På (Naked At) is a nomadic club night that presents culture in a club environment, be it art, fashion or music with “the desire to challenge the traditional culture of consumption”. Naken på is managed by Albin Davidsson, Minna Lindahl, Anna Hagen, Sofia Stefansson, Petra Svanstöm and Alexander Lundgren. All are students in the Kulturentreprenörsprogrammet (KEP) (Culture Entrepreneurship Program). Naken På is a multimedia project in the Events and Arrangements course within the KEP program.

The Naken På crew have made HUMlab their official workspace this term, due to the ‘access to tools’ it provides and an environment they describe as “more creative” than any other space on campus. They enjoy the bean bags, white boards and the ability to ask questions and get assistance from the support staff in the lab.

It great to have such a vibrant and creative group in the lab.