Can you hear it?

Sound, Technology, and Digital Humanities

The Humanities, Done Digitally

So, what are the digital humanities?

"The Humanities" - fields that consider the record of humanity and asks questions about what it means to be human

For example: History, English, Philosophy, Religion, Musicology, Performance Studies, etc.

Using digital tools to explore humanities questions, and applying humanities questions to digital tools.

Sources

What historical material or artifacts is the website displaying?

Letters, photographs, instagram posts, sound recordings, etc.

Processed

How are those sources made machine-readable?

Transcribed, digitized, database, etc.

Presented

How are the processed sources made readable to the public?

An archive, a map, a visualization, etc.

Digital humanities projects

Adapted from Miriam Posner, "How Did They Make That?"

Sonic Sources

The Global Jukebox

The Roaring Twenties

Data Driven DJ : Too Blue

Music and DH recap

  • Using digital tools to explore questions about music and music-making, and exploring how sound can illuminate or raise new questions about the past.
     

  • Music and sound has its own cultural and technological history, and we need to think about context--the who, what, when, where, and why. Digital humanities can help with that.
     

  • Digital projects use a variety of tools--digitization, metadata, mapping, data visualizations, and data sonfication, among others--to explore, present, and investigate humanities topics in new ways.