How do computers “view” images? How can areas like media and visual culture studies inform our understanding of computer vision? How can viewing with computers inform our understanding of the past?
This talk by Lauren Tilton will introduce the concept and method of distant viewing, drawing on her new open-access book co-authored with data scientist Taylor Arnold titled Distant Viewing (MIT Press). Then, she will turn to examples from visual culture to demonstrate how AI is animating humanistic inquiry. The talk will end with a reflection, and perhaps provocation, on how digital humanities, data science, and the larger field of AI could reshape the world together.
Lauren Tilton is the E. Claiborne Robins Professor of Liberal Arts and Professor of Digital Humanities in the Department of Rhetoric and Communications at the University of Richmond. She also directs the Distant Viewing Lab. Her research focuses on analyzing, developing, and applying digital and computational methods to the study of 20th and 21st-century documentary expression and visual culture. Her primary scholarship incorporates theoretical and methodological approaches from American Studies, Media Studies, Public Humanities, and Data Science. She is committed to interdisciplinary, collaborative, open-access scholarship. She earned a PhD in American Studies from Yale University. She is currently the co-president of the Association for Computing in the Humanities (ACH), the scholarly association for digital humanities in the United States.