Project Name | Start Date | End Date |
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CLIO-Infra project | 2011-01-01 | - |
- Description
- In 2010, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) awarded a subsidy to the Clio Infra project, of which Jan Luiten van Zanden was the main applicant and for which the International Institute of Social History (IISH) fulfills the secretarial function. Under the title of Clio Infra, a set of interconnected databases has been set up containing worldwide data on social, economic, and institutional indicators for the past five centuries, with special attention to the past 200 years. These indicators allow research into long-term development of worldwide economic growth and inequality.
Global inequality is one of the key problems of the contemporary world. Some countries have (recently) become wealthy, other countries have remained poor. New theoretical developments in economic science - such as new institutional economics, new economic geography, and new growth theory - and the rise of global economic and social history require such processes to be studied on a worldwide scale. The question of worldwide economic growth and inequality can only be researched on the basis of worldwide data concerning the patterns of economic performance and their causes. Clio Infra provides datasets for the most important indicators. Economic and social historians from around the world have been working together in thematic collaboratories, in order to collect and share their knowledge concerning the relevant indicators of economic performance and its causes. The collected data have been standardized, harmonized, and stored for future use. New indicators to study inequality have been developed. The datasets are accessible through the Clio Infra portal which also offers possibilities for visualization of the data. All Clio Infra datasets will be archived by Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS).
The unique global datasets enable new opportunities for data analysis and the testing of hypotheses from new economic theories. Clio Infra offers the opportunity to greatly enhance our understanding of the origins, causes and character of the process of global inequality.
- Disciplines
- Social History
- Institutions
International Institute for Social History (IISH) (Secretariat) - Persons
Prof.dr. J.L. van Zanden (Project leader)
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Interface Studies | 2011-01-01 | - |
- Description
- For more than a quarter of a century, the personal computer in the desk top or laptop variety has been the main portal to the virtual worlds of digital data. Since the PC with its screen, keyboard, mouse and its graphical user interface (GUI) has hardly been challenged during all this time – a remarkable feat in an age of rapid technological change – the so-called WIMP interface (‘windows, menus, mouse and pointer’) has, with a few exceptions (Hayles 1999, 2002, Hansen, 2004, Simons 2002) until recently hardly been theorized. New Media studies tended to focus on the content displayed on the screen (e.g. hypertext studies, game studies), the logic of protocols and algorithms underlying applications (e.g., software studies, internet studies, Manovich 2000, Fuller, 2003, 2007, Galloway 2004), or on processes of media convergence, social networks, and surveillance and control (Chung, 2006), taking the interfaces that mediate and organize the interaction with and experience of digital data for granted. Interfaces were mainly studied from the strictly utilitarian perspective of usability that is mainly interested in enhancing performance, productivity and efficiency.
The PC interface that constrains human-computer interaction to the minimal physical activity of key-strokes and mouse actions and watching information displayed on the screen, has for a long time provided the material basis for experiencing and conceiving the interaction with digital data and their relationship to the physical world. It inpired visions of cyberspace as a utopian world of unbounded freedom, egalitarianism, altruistic sharing and collaboration and ‘collective intelligence’ (e.g., Rheingold 1991, 1993, Lévy 1994) or, on the contrary, as an utterly dystopian universe of manipulation, control and deceit (as envisioned in fictional works such as William Gibson’s novella Neuromancer (1984) or the filmic trilogy The Matrix (Andy and Larry Wachowski, USA, 1999, 2003). In most of these visions, that imagined cyberspace as an abstract, immaterial universe of pure information, the Cartesian mind-body split made an astonishing come-back.
In the last couple of years computing has gone beyond the desk and has begun to rapidly permeate everyday life. Mobile devices, geographical information systems (GIS), geographical positioning systems (GPS) and radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies have made ‘always online everywhere’ today’s maxim. Today, most household appliances or vehicles have more computing power than the early PC’s from twenty-five years ago and so-called ‘smart buildings’ and ‘responsive environments’ are being designed and engineered that respond to and even anticipate the requirements, needs, and desires of their users (so-called ubiquitous and pervasive computing).. Computing devices become sensitive to the location, movements and actions of their owners and people with whom they are connected through digital networks. These developments not only blur the boundaries between ‘virtual’ and ‘material’ reality (as commonsensically conceived), but new mobile and wireless devices and new forms of ubiquitous, ambient and pervasive computing, also organize human-computer interaction by taking into account the whereabouts, purposes, habits, moods etc. of the users, thus putting the bodily presence and affective states of the latter center stage. Haptic and tactile interfaces (e.g. touch screens), sensors, actuators, tags, wearable computing, voice- and face recognition technologies and more will transform human-computer interaction from a mainly optical and cognitive operation into a bodily and affective experience.
The Interface Studies project aims at studying the ways in which interfaces organize, enhance or constrain the interactions between human users and computer based systems and how they shape subjectivity, agency, and affective and bodily experience. On the one hand the project will look into the historical antecedents of the current development to ubiquitous, ambient, and pervasive computing such as the works of pioneers like Myron Krueger and Roy Ascott and the theoretical (and practical) explorations of the interface by Brenda Laurel, Jaron Lanier and others. On the other hand, will look into new and upcoming developments such as the emergence of haptic and tactile interfaces, wearable computing, smart houses, and responsive environments and examine their aesthetic, kinesthetic, rhetorical, expressive, and semiotic potential.
The penetration of digital technology into virtually every aspect of everyday life has made the study of the experiential dimensions of interfaces not only an urgent matter for the humanities, but increasingly also for engineers, designers, and programmers, who are, like architects already for centuries, confronted with the social, cultural, and experiential impact of their products. The Interface Studies project aims at an interdisciplinary approach in which academics from the humanities and scientists and engineers collaborate. Therefore, we have joined forces with the Department of Industrial Design of the Technical University of Eindhoven and the Department of Engineering Systems Foundations of the Technical University of Delft.
- Disciplines
- -
- Institutions
Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) (Secretariat) - Persons
Dr. J.A.A. Simons (Project leader)
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DARIAH; Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities | 2012-03-01 | - |
- Description
- In the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH) project, a digital workbench will be realized for arts and humanities scientists in Europe. Researchers can go to DARIAH to find data and tools, archive their data, exchange information and advice in the field of metadata and digitalizing. The European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) has emphasised the importance of DARIAH by including the project in its Roadmap 2006. This also comprises four other important initiatives in the arts and humanities and social studies, including a similar proposal for a data infrastructure for the social sciences (CESSDA Major Upgrade) and language resources (CLARIN). A request for financing of the preparatory activities was submitted in May 2007 to the European Commission (FP7 Capacities Infrastructures). The proposal has been evaluated positively. The two-year preparatory project, entitled Preparing DARIAH , was officially launched in September 2008. DANS will coordinate the preparatory work. At present there are 14 partners from 10 countries involved in the project. For more information please visit the DARIAH website. The Preparing DARIAH project was finalized at the end of February 2011. DARIAH is in a transition phase at the moment and the expectation is that the actual construction will start in 2012.
- Disciplines
- Social Sciences
- Institutions
Data Archiving & Networked Services DANS (Secretariat) - Persons
Dr. J.H. (Henk) Harmsen (Contact person)
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Tunes & Tales. Modeling Oral Transmission | 2011-09-01 | - |
- Description
- Oral transmission is a fascinating aspect of the broader phenomenon of cultural transmission. In oral culture, artefacts such as songs and stories are passed on to next generations without written or technical reproduction media, just by voice and ear. Oral transmission implies alteration and variation to a considerable extent. Yet after several generations of oral transmission the artefacts are still ‘the same’ (in oral terms), or at least recognizable variants (from a literate point of view). How can this be? Are there convergent forces? How can we model the process of oral transmission?
In the project Tunes & Tales we will create such models, based on the vast oral corpora of Dutch folksongs and Dutch and Frisian folktales of the Meertens Institute. We will consider two categories: tunes (music) and tales (text). Firstly, we will formalize tunes and tales as layered sequences of motifs, this will result in prototype systems for the automatic recognition of motifs in tunes and tales. Formalization is an important first step that will enable the analysis of large amounts of available data for creating models of the mechanism of oral transmission. On top of that, automatic recognition of motifs can be used for automatic classification of the corpora – a much needed practical application for making the Meertens collections further accessible for ethnomusicological and ethnological research.
Based on the automated analysis of motif sequences, a generative model that simulates the oral transmission including the inherent variation will be created. The models will be tested on the oral material of the Meertens Institute in cooperation with domain experts. This will contribute to understanding the mechanism of oral transmission as described above.
A software engineer will robustly implement successful models developed during the project. The resulting tools will be integrated in the Dutch Song and Folktale Databases of the Meertens Institute and made available to other researchers. Thus the project will have both a theoretical and a practical impact on the research of oral culture. By modeling cultural artefacts and processes, this project contributes to the broad challenges facing computational humanities.
- Disciplines
- Musicology
Linguistics
- Institutions
Meertens Institute Research and documentation of Dutch language and culture (Secretariat) - Persons
Dr.ir. P. van Kranenburg (Researcher) Dr. T. Meder (Project leader) Prof.dr. L.P. Grijp (Project leader) B. Janssen (Doctoral/PhD student) F. Karsdorp (Doctoral/PhD student)
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Enhanced Publications | 2011-01-01 | - |
- Description
- Enhancing scholarly publications involves presentation in a Web environment with interlinking of the ‘objects’ of a document such as: data on which the publication is based, supplementary materials, post-publication reactions and secondary analyses. This Website is the central location for an ongoing project of creating, co-locating, and intertextual linking of Enhanced Publications of traditionally published books related to Digital Scholarship.
- Disciplines
- Media Studies
- Institutions
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences - KNAW (Financier) SurfFoundation (Financier) DANS Research (Secretariat) E-publishing - Persons
Drs. C.C. Tatum (Researcher) Z. Tatum (Researcher) MSc N. Jankowski (Researcher) Dr. A. Scharnhorst (Project leader)
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COMPARE | 2014 | - |
- Description
- COMPAring floor plan lay-out of REconstructed Dutch farmhouses of the 1940s and 1950s, using visualization and pattern recognition techniques.
The project aims at recognizing and organizing maps by using innovative pattern recognition software, digital image processing and visualization techniques
- Disciplines
- History
Cultural Heritage
- Institutions
Meertens Institute Research and documentation of Dutch language and culture (Collaboration) - Persons
- -
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e-Learning and Entertainment program | 2012-01-01 | - |
- Description
- The entertainment business of today is booming. Not only digital or video games penetrate all walks of life, digital media all over has become an almost indispensable part of modern western society. With that, an increasing variety of entertainment applications can be found throughout the World Wide Web, ranging from simple avatars in business or health applications to complex creatures in multilayered storytelling in virtual worlds as well as in YouTube clips and social media. Clearly, the media device is not an issue anymore soon most applications will be accessible from any wireless device, in particular via small mobile devices (e.g., smart phones, iPad), making them available anywhere and everywhere. Thus, the role of entertainment in media use, learning and development can hardly be overestimated while the omnipresence of current entertainment fare provides insuperable options for top-notch research and applications in a variety of fields. CAMeRA's research program e-Learning and Entertainment aims at an in-depth understanding of the entertainment functions, uses and effects in learning and development, both from a fundamental and applied perspective. Research pursued in this program is interdisciplinary in scope covering the schools of social sciences, computer sciences, humanities, and psychology. Oftentimes, we also develop materials, tools, and measurement devices in collaborative efforts to meet our goals (e.g., games for diagnosis, training, health coaches, or experimental variations). Research initiatives within CAMeRA cross-bridge a variety of insights, theories, and methodologies from various disciplines to enrich and strengthen each other's research efforts and develop innovative, cutting-edge research in studying the opportunities and challenges that today's new media offer for communication in its broadest sense. Entertainment has a profound impact on and shapes social behaviour of particularly the young; however, entertainment media applications increasingly intrude in the lives of the elderly (e.g., the project Ambient Assisted Living). An important question studied within the research program e-Learning and Entertainment is how entertainment media may serve or hinder individual well-being and well-being in society at large. In general, a better understanding of how entertainment may support or hinder learning processes en what underlying cognitive and affective processes serve such functions, will be helpful in applying appropriate entertainment tools in various applications in the entertainment industry, but also in health, business, commerce, learning, and training environments. Virtual environments as an interface for learning and enjoyment, but also the development of robots with human-like cognitive and empathetic abilities is one of the lines of research within this field with respect to media-interaction. Another line focuses on the effects of the continued growth and widespread use of various media, for example, on language development, aggression, morality, health, relationships, and emotion regulation. CAMeRA's use of entertainment media for research and application are often integrated into the virtual technology that we develop in-house (e.g., see 'Games as research and training tools' below), accessible to all researchers engaged in CAMeRA. The e-Learning and Entertainment program closely collaborates with the e-Health and Care program in terms of the applications but also with e-Language for societal impact and to a lesser extent with e-Heritage on media-semantics.
- Disciplines
- Computer Science
Philosophy E-health Game Studies Media Studies
- Institutions
Network Institute UU (Secretariat) Universiteit van Amsterdam - Persons
Prof.dr. E.A. Konijn (Project leader)
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Changing Dynamics of News | 2012-07-01 | - |
- Description
- Information and communication technologies enable us to gather vast amounts of data in a short time period; news on current events is a particularly plentiful information stream. Since it is not possible to evaluate all this data manually, yet there is a journalistic and public need to maintain at least some grip on the developments, we need to build systems that can turn this data into information for different purposes in time. While the purpose of automatic analysis has been mainly the identification of factual information so far, it should now be enhanced to take into account other dimensions of the information beyond the mere factual, such as temporal, epistemic and volitional qualifications. In my PhD project, publicly available microblogging platforms such as twitter.com, identi.ca, rstat.us, etc. and traditional news media will be taken into account. Differences between the organization of the information between different sources will be analyzed and bridged (e.g. to connect micro blogs and news releases to the same event) to be able to benefit from the available data as much as possible.
- Disciplines
- Information Science
Media Studies
- Institutions
Centre for Language Studies RU (Secretariat) Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen - Persons
Prof.dr. A.P.J. van den Bosch (Supervisor) MA A. Hurriyetoglu (Doctoral/PhD student)
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Identifying and using implicit structures in sequences | 2012-01-01 | - |
- Description
- Many sources of data, such as natural language or music, have an inherent internal structure. This structure describes the regularities and restrictions of the data. This research aims at making the structure explicit, which leads to a description of the underlying (formal) language of the data. This information can then be used, for instance, to group similar elements in the data together. The research is divided into two parts. The first part aims at learning language models that describe the data and can be used to introduce explicit structure on top of the unstructured data. The second part aims at using the identified structure in specific applications. For instance, in the context of mood classification of (music) lyrics, language models for each of the different moods can be used to identify the underlying mood of a particular lyric. Similarly, language models can be applied within spelling correction systems that require sentential context to identify and correct errors.
- Disciplines
- Musicology
- Institutions
Universiteit Tilburg Center for Cognition and Communication - Persons
Dr. M.M. van Zaanen (Project leader)
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Arts, Media and Culture | 2006-07-01 | - |
- Description
- The aim of the Arts, Media and Culture (AMC) programme is to analyse the dynamics of cultural transformation by studying how developments in the arts and the media respond to socio-cultural and political changes and how vice versa cultural artifacts and practices can shape social and political culture. AMC researchers study the whole spectrum of high-brow, middle-brow and low-brow culture, ranging from poems to installation artworks, from political essays to public monuments, from social media to performance art and from digital games to Limburg Carnival. What unites these inquiries is a focus on the practices in which cultural artifacts are produced, distributed and received. AMC research continues to analyse and interpret the meaning of cultural objects as ‘texts’, but increasingly this research includes the sites of their production, reception and/or co-creation: the classrooms where children’s literature is taught, the museum storage rooms where installations are stored and conserved, the supermarkets where dialect is spoken, the elderly homes where clowns perform with people with dementia or the virtual communities where game or music enthusiasts share fan productions. This emphasis on situated practices means that we are interested in the social and historical, but also in the material and bodily constituents of culture-in-the-making.
- Disciplines
- Social History
- Institutions
Research Institute for Arts and Social Sciences Maastricht (Secretariat) - Persons
Prof.dr. R. van de Vall (Project leader)
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