DIGITAL RESEARCH OR DIGITAL ARTS?

To date, humanities computing has been entrenched
in an archival sensibility. While the technologies involved in this field may be innovative, they are
still geared toward the production of traditional
research papers rooted in the materiality, methods and
ideology of print culture. I suggest that humanities computing should not only focus on the preservation
of the human record, but should also foster the
invention of research methods more suitable to a
digital culture. In addition, digital humanities projects
should serve not only to better our understanding of human artifacts, but should also consider the impact of technology on the humanities and on human being itself. I will pursue this argument by presenting some of my own research projects, which blur the boundaries between the arts, critical theory, and the humanities. The projects in question may be viewed at the following URL’s: http://www.spleenhouse.net; http://www.dreadmill.net .
For the time being I gave up writing--there is already too much truth in the world--
an overproduction of which apparently cannot be consumed!
-Otto Rank, Letter to a Friend, 1933
In his brilliantly digressive response to the question, “Is Humanities Computing an Academic Discipline?” Geoffrey Rockwell quotes Phaedrus (http://www.iath.
virginia.edu/hcs/rockwell.html). Within this famous
passage, a Socratic account of the invention of writing, is
King Thamus’s response to the enthusiastic inventor, Theus:
O man full of arts, to one it is given to create the things of art, and to another to judge what measure of harm and of profit they have for those that shall employ them.
My concern is that humanities computing, challenged by the need to financially sustain and legitimate itself in a rampant technocracy, has lost sight of the latter assignment noted by Theus. How do we measure the harm and profit that digital tools have for humanists, and for humanity in a more global sense? I do not expect to answer this question adequately in a single presentation, but I believe it is worthy of discussion--and in effect its absence would be conspicuous--at a conference in the digital humanities.
I will approach the question by examining some specific
projects in digital criticism that blur the boundaries between
artistic practice and humanistic scholarship. In addition, I will argue that such projects point the way toward a new digital aesthetics in humanities research.
Following John Guillory, I argue in E-Crit: Digital Media,
Critical Theory, and the Humanities (U of Toronto Press, 2006) that critical theory lent the humanities a
much-needed aura of “rigor” at a time when academic
institutions sought a fuller integration within the dominant technobureaucracy. I also argue that media technologies are serving the very same legitimating purpose for the
humanities today, now that theory’s aura has all but
dissipated. Humanities computing, in this sense, is the new critical theory. But my hope is that the production of digital tools for the humanities is not simply an effect of what Heidegger called technology’s “challenging forth.” My hope as well, is that humanities computing, with its primary concern for preserving artifacts, will not fashion itself as a neo-traditional (though digital) backlash to the perceived threat imposed by critical theory on the
canon. Finally, my hope is that computing humanists will draw on the methodological innovations, ontological
suspicions, and phenomenological conceptions of
technology, as put forth by Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, etc., to develop research projects that both critique and make full use of the expressive forms available in digital media. Who will invent the scholarly methods suitable to a digital culture? The inventors of such tools should not only be given to create things of art, but should also be given to measure the harm and profit of such things.
As a former student of Gregory Ulmer, I came to
Phaedrus--the first discourse on method--with a very clear purpose in mind: to understand how scholarly method is invented, and how it works within the communications
apparatus that makes it materially possible. To date, humanities computing projects, rooted in an “archival” sensibility, have done little more than increase the speed and efficiency of hermeneutic research methods developed
in and for a print culture. My concern for the future of the humanities, then, is summarized in the following
question, which I extend to the creators of digital humanities
research tools, myself included: “What will we do with all this information once it has been digitally archived?”
I believe that humanities computing can sustain and
legitimate itself not only through the preservation of the human record, but also through the invention of new, digitally mediated research methods that serve to better our understanding not only of human artifacts, but of the impact of technology on the humanities and on human being. To that end, I will introduce two digital media projects, a performance and an installation, that attempt to combine humanistic scholarship, digital art, and the critique of technology.
Project 1: Dreadmill (http://www.dreadmill.net)
The “dreadmill” is a treadmill hardwired to a
computer so that a runner’s speed and heart rate control a multimedia show. In performances of 5-7 kilometres, I run on the dreadmill and discuss the “collusion of death and technology,” drawing primarily on Heideggerian phenomenology, existentialism, and cultural theory. This performance, which I have given at several universities
and art galleries in Canada and the United States, is
designed to challenge preconceived notions of what
defines humanistic scholarship and the dissemination of research. Not only does Dreadmill critique the immobility
of the human body in a screen obsessed culture, it also critiques the sedentary practices of scholars, who
submit themselves physically to the print apparatus. As a
provocative contrast to the conventional lecture or the reading of a conference paper, Dreadmill radically
implicates my body in the act of information delivery. I will show brief video footage of the performance and discuss its relevance to humanistic research practices.
Project 2: Spleenhouse (http://www.spleenhouse.net)
Spleenhouse, an extensive installation project, is designed to rescue the land, language, and practices of one of the few remaining French farmsteads in Ontario, Canada. The project involves relocating a greenhouse from a heritage site in LaSalle, Ontario, and relocating it in the nearby Art Gallery of Windsor, Ontario. Digital documentary footage of the few remaining Francophone farmers in the region will be projected onto the roof of the structure, providing light for the growth of vegetables inside the greenhouse. In the attempt to fuse form and content, this installation, provides a visceral environment for the encounter of rustic agrarian practices and digital techniques, rural simplicity and urban sophistication. I will show slides of the project, play a brief sample of the video footage, and discuss how Spleenhouse presents a new approach for disseminating humanities research in a digital culture. This project is especially suitable to this conference since the final destination of Spleenhouse is in Paris, France, and conference attendees will be able to visit it if they are interested.
For the past decade, I have incessantly been asked to define my work as either humanities research or digital art. This confusion regarding my area of specialization is something that I have consciously fostered. As I will argue throughout this presentation, humanities scholars have a great deal to gain by drawing on the practices and techniques of digital artists. The object of research in the projects outlined above might very well have been
approached from a uniquely print oriented perspective,
resulting in the production of academic essays and books—indeed, these projects have resulted in scholarly publications. But as I will discuss in my presentation, the media chosen to disseminate this research enhances it in several ways, providing an argument for the integration of artistic practices and materials in humanistic scholarship. In addition, the use of digital media in these projects is essential for engaging in a self-reflexive assessment of the impact of technology on the human condition.