Graduate Students in Digital Arts and Humanities: A Conversation with IDAH’s HASTAC Scholars

“Multimedia Collaboration: the Process and the Results”

Will Coogan is  a master’s candidate in Computer Music Composition at the Jacob's School of Music. His recent works involve collaboration between acoustic and electronic elements, including interactive computer processing for both audio and video. Will's new multimedia opera "Marabel" combines traditional operatic elements with interactive software, animation, video, and choreography. His discussion will focus on the collaborative process working with other artists, as well as on the use of mixed media as a way of engaging with audiences.

"Digital Humanities Prehistory and Future Pasts"

Grant Simpson is a PhD candidate in the Department of English and a Masters in Information Science Student, School of Library and Information Science.  He is also Senior Systems Analyst/Programmer for the Office of the Registrar. His presentation will discuss the following issues: Is the digital humanities a sort of futurism? What might we find when we extend our gaze backward instead, to DH's prehistory? How did humanists and others involved in research and publishing conceptualize the relationship between computers and the humanities? How has this developed? In this presentation, Grant will pay particular attention to the visual aspects of published DH materials in his investigation of these questions.  His dissertation in the department of English, Computing the English Middle Ages, deals with the hermeneutics of electronic objects and processes from roughly 1960 to the present. In it he traces the use of computers in Old and Middle English research from the early days of humanities computing to contemporary digital humanities.