DHASA conference

DHASA conference

The Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (DHASA) held their second conference at the University of Pretoria from 25 to 29 March 2019. Three lecturers from the Visual Studies programme in the School of the Arts participated in this exciting and inspiring event.

Ms Karli Brittz, a PhD student in Digital Culture & Media, presented a paper entitled, How to conduct a multi-scale digital humanities project: using computer vision, artificial intelligence and digital visualisations to combine close and distant humanities research. Drawing on her PhD research, Ms Brittz demonstrated the aspects involved in conducting a multi-scale digital humanities project. The paper established the importance of both distant and close reading of humanities research through digital technologies.

Dr Rory du Plessis, a lecturer in Visual Culture Studies, presented a paper entitled, The application of geographic information systems (GIS) to visualise the nineteenth-century life histories of South African people with intellectual disabilities. The casebooks for the Institute for Imbecile Children (established 1895) contains important biographical and personal narratives, as well the pathways that the children took to and from the Institute. By visualising the pathways by using Geographical Information Systems (GIS), it becomes evident that the pathways for each patient contained unique contours and some specific sites. These visualisations underscore the unique life story, and the relationships that anchored each child’s life.

Dr Jenni Lauwrens’s paper was entitled Digital humanities meets sensory ethnography: analysing multisensory experiences through digital resources. The presentation described a student project in the BA (Honours) Visual Studies programme which was conducted at UP’s Student Centre and Piazza. The project resulted in the creation of a digital archive of photographs and sound recordings, as well as interactive, multi-media, hypermedia essays on Scalar, a free, open source publishing platform.