News – Page 6 – Victoria E. Szabo

ACM SIGGRAPH, News

I hadn’t planned to go this year (after a number of years running volunteering for the conference) because I was doing so much traveling this year, but I got the happy news that I’d been selected and approved as the new Chair of the ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community Committee, so headed out to Anaheim to meet with the committee and begin planning. My term officially begins September 1, but I was already busy learning more about the inner workings of the DAC and its projects during my time there. The group has been putting together some fine online exhibitions, and has been working on an ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Art History project for several years.

It is very interesting to have this window on the year-round committee when most of my experience so far has been with the annual conference art shows and art papers. We are in the middle of setting up some new projects, upgrading the social media presence, and finding more ways to connect members with each other and with related organizations and events.

Oh, and how cool is this? I got to be on the back cover of the ACM magazine earlier this year. Will need to scan the back cover, but in the meantime, this pic from the glamorous photo shoot says it all. (Can’t imagine why they didn’t pick this one for the mag though.)

Archives, NC Jukebox, News, Projects, Workshops

DH2016 and the wonders of Krakow

Victoria Szabo

August 1, 2016

I had the fantastic opportunity to attend DH 2016 in Krakow this year. I had never been to Central/Eastern Europe, which, considering my ancestors come from the region, seemed overdue. It was wonderful to experience history as represented through museums and heritage sites in both Budapest and Krakow before heading to the conference itself. Hannah Jacobs and I taught an Omeka/Curatescape pre-conference workshop, and then I gave a talk, “The North Carolina Jukebox Project: Archives Alive and the Making of Digital Cultural Heritage” and chaired an additional session. What struck me about the conference experience was how much overlap there was between my concerns about creating an online archive of North Carolina mountain music and the concerns of other grappling with similar heritage projects in terms of organization, transformation, appropriation, and ethics. I look forward to continuing some of the conversations begun in one of my ancestral cities!

Now if I can just convince someone we need to do a Visualizing Krakow project…

Augmented Reality, Digital Heritage, Exhibitions, Ghett/App, News, Projects, Visualizing Venice

Visualizing Venice 2016 and Ghett/App Launch

Victoria Szabo

July 1, 2016

I had the opportunity to teach the VV Summer Workshop version 5.0 this year. I was joined by my colleagues from the Wired Lab, Mark Olson, Hannah Jacobs, Ed Triplett along with Ludovica Galeazzo, whom we have worked with on various Visualizing Venice projects over the years. While prior versions of the workshop were also great, we had an exceptional experience this time in terms of overall quality and commitment. Through the generous support of the Getty Foundation we have been able to bring together an ever-more competitive applicant pool, and we also made sure we had time to delve into the students’ individual project plans in hopes of tracing direct and lasting impacts from our interventions.

This year was special because we were holding the workshop in conjunction with the 500th anniversary of the Venetian Ghetto’s founding. Our Italian colleagues put together a major exhibition at Palazzo Ducale, and our workshop group had the great fortune to visit during the opening weekend.

At the same time, I worked with collaborators Paolo Borin, Università degli Studi di Padova, and Ludovica Galeazzo, Università Iuav di Venezia, in putting together a mobile app to be used on-site in the city. We experimented with different ways to present historical materials reflecting the lived experience of the space at different historical periods. Our final product, Ghett/App 1.0 is available for download now. Other colleagues developed another map-based tool, MAPPot, which focused on locating some other exhibition content within the city. We advertised both together at the exhibition.

Our biggest challenge was finding ways to overlay panoramas of the past and present in order to convey the sense of enclosure, densification, and change the region experienced, while still encouraging active engagement with the site today.

I will continue to develop these augmented reality and rich media content pieces of the project while I am teaching in Venice in Fall 2016.

News, PhD Lab

HASTAC Steering Committee Membership

Victoria Szabo

June 10, 2016

No Comments

I’m honored to be joining the HASTAC Steering Committee! HASTAC and Duke have enjoyed a close relationship over the years, as Cathy Davidson, one of the co-founders, was at Duke at the time it was created. HASTAC also partners with the Franklin Humanities Institute on the PhD Lab for Digital Knowledge, founded by Cathy, and which I currently co-direct. The HASTAC conferences are always a highlight of my year when I’ve been able to attend – Peru was especially memorable – and the community is rich and unique in its focus on teaching and learning in the digital age. I’m very much looking forward to staying connected and helping to plan the next phases of the HASTAC community operations.

CMAC, Digital Art History/Computational Media, News

MA and PhD Comp Media Programs Approved and Running

Victoria Szabo

May 26, 2016

Huge achievement this year: we got the interdisciplinary, interdepartmental PhD in Computational Media, Arts & Cultures approved in May by the Board of Trustees. A collaboration between AAHVS, Literature, and the Franklin Humanities Institute, and with the support of the Mellon Foundation, this is a novel and inovative program in many ways. As the person carrying the latest proposal through the various committees for the approval process I have learned a tremendous amount about how programs are structured and evaluated! CMAC_logo

CMAC is now listed on the Graduate School website with the hopes of accepting students for Fall 2017 admission. We already have a proto-PhD track in AAHVS, with students who have been pioneering the concept, but now we are getting into the next phase of the operation. As the new DGS for the program, I am hoping for – and fearing – a deluge of applications.

Earlier in the year we successfully renamed the AAHVS Historical and Cultural Visualization MA to be Digital Art History/Computational Media. The DAH track is tied to the Wired Lab while the Computational Media track is tied to the various labs operating under Media Arts + Sciences/CMAC. It is exciting to see this community of fellow travelers grow! Smith Warehouse is buzzing.

Fall 2016, News, Projects, Teaching

Fall 2016 Teaching

Victoria Szabo

May 2, 2016

In Fall 2016 I will be teaching two courses at Venice International University, through their Globalization Program. I’ve returned to VIU for the last five years co-teaching the Visualizing Venice summer workshops, and also taught at VIU in Fall 2013, so this is a welcome return.I’m very much looking forward to meeting my new colleagues and students!

Both courses, Digital Storytelling, and Web-Based Multimedia Communications, are Information Science+Studies/Visual and Media Studies courses at Duke that I will be adapting to the Venetian context. The courses are listed as part of the Cultural Heritage Track at VIU, and students will be doing hands-on digital projects related to the heritage of Venice as part of both. We’ll be in VIU’s lovely Mac Lab, which was modeled on the Wired Lab back home. While I’m at VIU I’ll also be developing a book project on augmented reality and cultural heritage, as well as continuing to work on Visualizing Venice digital projects, with which I hope to involve Duke students upon my return. ( I also expect to drop in virtually to the NC Jukebox project, Wired, the PhD Lab etc.at Duke periodically.)

News, Spring 2017, Teaching

Teaching: Spring 2017

Victoria Szabo

April 26, 2016

In Spring 2017 I will be teaching two Capstones – for the Visual and Media Studies Major in Art, Art History & Visual Studies and for the Information Science + Studies Certificate Program. Both courses will meet concurrently, with two sections total.

I will also be consulting on the NC Jukebox course, which will be offered through the History Department with cross-lists in Information Science + Studies and Music.

In addition, I will be participating as a facilitator in the FHI the PhD Lab Fellows seminar.

Activities, Archives, Digital Heritage, Digital Humanities, NC Jukebox, News, Projects

NC Jukebox at HASTAC and DH2016

Victoria Szabo

February 22, 2016

Looking forward to sharing the NC Jukebox project at HASTAC in Tempe, AZ and at DH2016 in Krakow!

https://hastac2016.sched.org/event/6DtD/achives-alive-activating-the-north-carolina-jukebox

DH2016

HASTAC is always a great experience, of course. I’m also exceptionally excited for the latter, however, both because getting conected to the international, big-tent DH community is great – and b/c Krakow is one of the family’s ancestral homelands. Will there be time to find out about my great-great-great (maybe a couple more greats in there?) grandfather who had some sort of military leadership role in the Tatra Mountains sometime back in the day, according to our late great-Aunt? How do I even begin to figure that one out? Back to the archives….

This makes me wonder about how much useful overlap there might be between digital cultural heritage and ideas of personal identity and histories as they relate to variously-hyphenated descendants. There is so much crowd-sourced, navel-gazing energy in the latter arena. Could it be deployed for DCH in academically useful ways?

CAA, Games, News

Procedural Art: Game Platforms for Creative Expression at CAA 2016

Victoria Szabo

January 16, 2016

More fun at College Art Association! I’m co-chairing a session with my collaborator Joyce Rudinsky on “Procedural Art: Game Platforms for Creative Expression” at CAA in a few weeks. This session is part of the New Media Caucus offerings at the conference:

http://conference.collegeart.org/programs/procedural-art-game-platforms-for-creative-expression/

PROCEDURAL ART: GAME PLATFORMS FOR CREATIVE EXPRESSION

Time: 02/05/2016, 3:00 PM—5:00 PM
Location: Thurgood Marshall Ballroom West, Mezzanine Level

This panel will focus on the design, aesthetics, and affordances of game platforms for new media art, as well as in critical approaches to this emerging genre. Participants will share projects that demonstrate the creative use of game platforms in fine art contexts, and in highlighting the full range of possibilities this new medium offers.

Moderators: Victoria Szabo, Duke University; Joyce Rudinsky, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Participants:

Hye Young Kim, Winston-Salem State University
Soraya Murray, University of California, Santa Cruz
Paolo Pedercini, Carnegie Mellon University
Susana Ruiz, University of California, Santa Cruz
Myfanwy Ashmore, independent artist

CAA, Digital Heritage, News, Talks

Digital Cultural Heritage as Public Humanities Collaboration

Victoria Szabo

January 16, 2016

In a couple of weeks I will be leading a session called “Digital Cultural Heritage as Public Humanities Collaboration” at the College Art Association’s annual conference in Washington DC. We have a fantastic panel of presenters who will share their projects in a “project fair” and then we will switch over to a roundtable discussion format. Join us!

Session Site

DIGITAL CULTURAL HERITAGE AS PUBLIC HUMANITIES COLLABORATION

Time: 02/04/2016, 2:30 PM—5:00 PM
Location: Washington 1, Exhibition Level

Chair: Victoria E. Szabo, Duke University

The Regium Lepidi Project 2200
Maurizio Forte, Duke University; Nevio Danelon, Duke University

Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Bombs. Restoring the Monumental Landscape of South Italy (The Kingdom of Sicily Image Database)
Caroline A. Bruzelius, Duke University

Experimenting with 3D Visualizations of the Lost 17th Century Labyrinth of Versailles
Copper Frances Giloth, University of Massachusetts

Mapping Ararat and Beyond: Augmented Reality Walking Tours for Imagined Jewish Homelands
Louis P. Kaplan, University of Toronto; Melissa Shiff, York University

MQUADRO: a Platform Model for Cultural Heritage
Stefania Zardini Lacedelli, Regole of Ampezzo, Cortina; Giacomo Pompanin, ADOMultimedia, Cortina

Playing the Scales: the Human Scale in Digital Data Visualization
Radu Leon, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Università Iuav di Venezia

Program in Interactive Cultural Technology (PICT): a Partnership between New Mexico Highlands University and the New Mexico State Department of Cultural Affairs
Kerry Loewen, New Mexico Highlands University

The Will to Adorn: African American Diversity, Style, and Identity
Diana Ndiaye, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian

Discussant: Mark J.V. Olson, Duke University