The Digging Condition:
The Material Turn
in Digital Humanities

Jentery Sayers | University of Victoria | @jenterysayers
Future Knowledge Lecture | Center for Digital Humanities
University of South Carolina | 13 February 2015

Follow Along?

Slidedeck Online: jentery.github.io/sc
Source Files: github.com/jentery/sc

The Maker Lab @UVic

Blending Media Studies with Experimental Methods
Expand Digital Humanities beyond Text
Sample of Work: maker.uvic.ca

Kits for Cultural History

Remaking Technologies We Cannot Access,
That Never Existed, or No Longer Function
Details: maker.uvic.ca/kch

Into the Classroom

Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) Each June
"Arguing with Computers" English Graduate Seminar
DHum Sequence for Undergraduate Students across Disciplines
e.g., Modelling and Printing 3D Objects + Prototyping Indie Games

Keys of MLab Culture

Tacit Knowledge and Collaboration (Including Fine Arts)
Conjectural Criticism and Speculative Computing
Repurpose the Adjacent Possible
Start with What We Know Already (Feminist Hackerspaces)

Making Humanities Matter

What If We Understand Humanities Scholarship as
Built, Creative, Assembled, Evocative, or Constructed?
Call for Papers (Abstracts Due 3 April 2015)

Today

Material Turn in Digital Humanities
Some Materialities in the Field
"Digging Condition"
Examples from Early Magnetic Recording

Ongoing Project

"Making the Perfect Record" with American Literature
The Digging Condition with University of Michigan Press

The Material Turn

Digital Media Are Not Ephemeral Info-Dust
"more comprehensive treatment of the material particulars of
a given technology" (Kirschenbaum, Mechanisms)

Metaphorical Materiality

What We Talk about When We Talk about Media + Information
Practice: Discourse, Writing, Worldview, Communication
Examples: "Knots," "Durable," "Rotting," "Stitches," "Digging"
See Bowker, Star, Latour

Procedural Materiality

Physical Processes Operating across Computing Systems
Practice: Code, Platform, Hardware, and Software Studies
Examples: Object-Oriented Histories of Gaming Systems
See Bogost, Fuller, Montfort, Marino

Forensic Materiality

The Inscriptions and Matter Fundamental to New Media
Practice: Textual Studies, Recovery, Versioning, Emulation
Examples: Preserving Virtual Worlds
See Kirschenbaum, Kraus, Reside, Lowood, Internet Archive

Withdrawn Materiality

Immanent to the Medium, Inaccessible by Us
Practice: Antiquarianism, Computer Vision, Bots, Media Art
Examples: Media Archaeology, Steampunk, New Aesthetic, OOO
See Parikka, Huhtamo, Emerson, Ernst, Bridle

Glitch Materiality

Machine Interruption Inherent to Systems
Practice: Bending, Modding, Exploits, Noise
Examples: "It's not a bug; it's a feature."
See Arcangel, Rodgers, Collins, Anthropy, Sample

Welded Materiality

Media as Matter and Event Structures the Senses
Practice: Sensual Labor, Cinema, Spectacle
Examples: The Attention Economy, Google AdSense
See Beller, Debord, Kracauer, Frankfurt School

Landscape Materiality

The Topography of Big Data
Practice: Scraping, Formatting, Slurping, Visualizing
Examples: Distant Reading, Macroanalysis, Cultural Analytics
See Moretti, Manovich, Jockers, Underwood

Learning from the Turn

Cannot Reduce Media to Concepts, Environments, or Discourse
Anthropomorphism and Narrative Too Often Drive Method
Objects of Inquiry Are Also Agents of Inquiry
Consider an Ontology of Suspicion with Respect to the Subject
Critique Need Not Be Negative or Secondary
Humanities Research Can Privilege Surprise

Digging Condition

Object-Oriented in the Last Instance
Extracting or Emulating History
State of Wonder, Awe, or Whiz Bang
Binary Thinking (e.g., Person or Machine)

"So, where are we left if everyone insists on being interested in materiality?" (Parikka, What Is Media Archaeology?)

Speculative Media

Blending Social and Object Orientation
Entanglement of Subjects, Objects, and Materials
How Object-Orientations Demand Cultural Imagination
The Transduction of Material Culture (How This Becomes That)
See Barad, Hayles, Rosner, Chun, Nowviskie, Kraus, Gitleman, Sterne

Object Lesson: Telegraphone

Three Perspectives

Social: An Effect to Render Listening Productive
Object: A Machine in Constant Need of Operator Assistance
Speculative: An Entanglement of Storage and Memory

Thank You

Jentery Sayers | University of Victoria | @jenterysayers

Special thanks to David Miller, Colin Wilder, and John Knox