LOOKSEE: Software Tools for Image-Based Humanities Computing

This poster will document LOOKSEE, a Web site and discussion list for image-based humanities computing <http://www.rch.uky.edu/~mgk/looksee/> (first announced at the 1999 ACH/ALLC in Charlottesville). Its primary focus is not imaging and image acquisition - areas with well-established technical literatures - but rather the creation and manipulation of images as structured data in digital editions, archives, and libraries.

LOOKSEE is therefore intended as a community focal point for discussion and development of next generation image-based humanities computing projects. Although the term "image-based" humanities computing has been in circulation for some time, we are now approaching a watershed: a number of pioneering projects (many of them begun in the early nineties) whose promise could heretofore be discussed only in speculative terms are now coming to fruition, while new software tools and data standards (notably JPEG 2000) are poised to redefine the way we create, access, and work with digital images. All of this activity, moreover, is transpiring at a moment when there is an unprecedented level of interest in visual culture and representation in the academic humanities at large.

At present, LOOKSEE consists of:

1. The Web materials at the URL above, collecting resources ranging from computer science to medical informatics to art history, as well as demos and proofs of concept to create a kind of sketchbook for image-based humanities computing.

2. A listserv discussion forum. Though the list is (technically) unmoderated, it is run as a structured discussion in which topics are brought forward at set intervals for the participants' consideration. The first discussion, held in November and December of 1999, revolved around humanities applications of techniques in medical image display and image processing; a second discussion (February/March 2000) will feature artist Johanna Drucker's Wittgenstein's Gallery, a series of over one hundred conceptual drawings constituting a working model of vision, perception, and (re)cognition. (We will use Drucker's work as the basis for a discussion of computer-assisted image analysis.) Later discussions will be given over to producing specs for a suite of open source image analysis tools and will attempt to identify the range of activities that can be supported by computational tools.

3. The LOOKSEE Web site will then expand to include source code, demos, and documentation.

A poster at ALLC/ACH will allow for an opportunity to present preliminary results - both technical experiments and conceptual formulations - to the international humanities computing community while (just as importantly) enlisting participants and establishing contacts with others working with images in humanities settings.

LOOKSEE is edited and directed by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum and hosted by the collaboratory for Research in Computing for Humanities at the University of Kentucky.