"The Idea of a Measurable Space" - Joseph Priestley's 1765 Chart of Biography

On 1 June, I will be talking at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, University of London, on "The Idea of a Measurable Space": Joseph Priestley's 1765 Chart of Biography

My central question will be: why did Priestley’s Chart of Biography take the form it did? I'll trace the answers through the contemporary visual and intellectual culture, and through some of Priestley's personal characteristics.  I'll also ask what is unique about Priestley's approach - correcting some common errors - and highlight what is truly special about his contribution.

Date
1 June 2016, 17:15 - 19:15
Venue
Wolfson Room I (NB01)
Senate House
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HU

More event information here.

Forthcoming talks on chronographics

On 20 May, Florian will be presenting at the Digital Humanities Early Career Conference 2016 "Mapping the Scope & Reach of the Digital Humanities" at King's College London.

The paper focuses on the relationships between the digital, humanities, design, and research.

Full conference programme here.




On 1 June, I will be talking at the Institute of Historical Research on "The Idea of a Measurable Space": Joseph Priestley's 1765 Chart of Biography

My central question will be: why did Priestley’s Chart of Biography take the form it did?  I'll trace the answers through the contemporary visual and intellectual culture, and through some of Priestley's personal characteristics.  I'll also ask what is unique about Priestley's approach - correcting some common errors - and highlight what is truly special about his contribution.

Date
1 June 2016, 17:15 - 19:15
Venue
Wolfson Room I (NB01)
Senate House
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HU

More event information here.



On Saturday 18 June, I will be contributing a talk to a joint study day between the V&A and the Science Museum.

Though the day is called 'Sensing Time: The Art and Science of Clocks and Watches' I won't be talking about either clocks or watches!  Instead I will focus on the 'mechanical' aspects of diagrams of historic time. Here is the blurb for the day:

Time is of the essence. This truth is visible, tangible and audible in the masterpieces of horology in collections across the globe. This interdisciplinary study day will bring together international expertise from curators, makers and conservators. It will explore the different priorities for collecting clocks and watches from exquisite decoration, to materials, mechanics and technological innovation.

Date
Saturday 18 June, 10.00 – 17.00
Venue
The Lydia & Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre

More event information here.



On 14 July, Olivia Vane and I will be presenting a paper by myself, Olivia and Florian at Electronic Visualisation and the Arts - 'Using Data Visualisation to tell Stories about Collections'.

The paper explores visualisation of “big data” from digitised museum collections and archives, focusing on the relationship between data, visualisation and narrative. A contrast is presented between visualisations that show “just the data” and those that present the information in such a way as to tell a story using visual rhetorical devices; such devices have historically included trees, streams, chains, geometric shapes and other forms. The contrast is explored through historical examples and a survey of current practice.  A discussion centred on visualising datasets from the British Library, Science Museum and Wellcome Library is used to outline key research questions.

Dates
Tuesday 12th July - Thursday 14th July 2016
Venue
BCS
First Floor
The Davidson Building,
5 Southampton Street
London
WC2E 7HA

More event information here.

 

Dr Florian Kräutli

A quick note to celebrate the award yesterday of PhD to Florian, who has worked so intensively for three and a half years on his investigations of critical chronographics. No amendments, no changes to be made - an immediate pass.

Dr Kevin Walker, Prof Sue Walker, Dr Florian Kräutli, Prof Paolo Ciuccarelli, Prof Stephen Boyd Davis, Dr Michael Selway. Photo: Delfina Fantini van Ditmar

My thanks to...

• Dr Kevin Walker, head of Information Experience Design, RCA and chair of the exam board
• Professor Sue Walker, of Reading University, external examiner
• Paolo Ciuccarelli, of Politecnico di Milano, external examiner
• Dr Michael Selway and Dr Michael Stapleton of System Simulation Ltd, external supervisors
• Prof Ashley Hall and Prof Miles Pennington for providing a scholarly ‘home’ for Florian in Innovation Design Engineering
• ... and of course Florian himself for his deep engagement with a subject to which I am so committed! 

Florian’s PhD was funded by EPSRC grant EP/J502169/1 and System Simulation Ltd.

Countess Markievicz and Dublin Mean Time

Among the many things I did not know about the Easter Rising 100 years ago in Ireland – until today – was that Ireland had its own standard time until 1916. It was an effective symbol of London scorn to abolish the subject country’s time – one that duly caused anger in Ireland.

According to an article from a couple of years ago in the Irish Times, ‘the House of Commons in London introduced Greenwich Mean Time in Ireland and abolished Dublin Mean Time, which was 25 minutes behind.’

Countess Markievicz, one of the rebel leaders in the 1916 Rising and the leading woman in the Irish struggle for independence, complained bitterly about the measure in a letter which only came to light in 2014.

Until the late 19th century, time in Ireland and Britain was defined locally according to sunrise and sunset. But the development of railway timetables and telegraphy required time to be standardised. In 1880, the House of Commons introduced legislation to enforce Greenwich Mean Time, but Ireland – where the sun rose 25 minutes and 21 seconds later than at Greenwich – had Dublin Mean Time. That ended with the Time (Ireland) Act 1916.

Countess Markievicz was born Constance Gore-Booth. She was sentenced to death by the British for her role in the Rising but the sentence was commuted to life in prison. She was released a year later, in 1917, under a general amnesty. A few months after writing her letter about oppressive time, she became the first woman elected to the House of Commons.

She had acquired her name upon marrying a Polish émigré, Count Casimir Markievicz, in 1900. She was one of the first women in the world to hold a cabinet position (Minister for Labour of the Irish Republic, 1919–1922).

Babbage at Wroughton

Last Wednesday, 10th February 2016, Stephen and Olivia went to Wroughton, the reserve collection of the Science Museum to look at examples of the Babbage collection.

The papers held by the Science Museum Library and Archives relate principally to Charles Babbage’s calculating engines. They consist of most of the surviving technical material relating to his designs for automatic calculating machines such as the Difference Engines and the Analytical Engine. The archive contains three types of material:

1. Babbage’s notebooks 
2. engineering drawings 
3. notations, which are principally 'walk throughs' or 'traces' of micro-programs for various models or plans of the Analytical Engine.

The collection is unusual in that a large portion of it has been digitised - which is where we come in.  What kinds of sense can be made from this heterogeneous material, what stories can it tell?

Olivia Vane - new PhD student in chronographics

Olivia joined the RCA as a research student in chronographics in October 2015. She joins Florian Kräutli (now completing his studies) and Sam Cottrell (who is half way through his studies in an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award with The National Archives).

Cultural institutions have become swamped by digital data. Digitising the objects, images and texts in their collections has resulted in millions of electronic records. The question is, how can museums / archives / libraries make sense of it all? Olivia’s research explores how data visualisation may be used to reveal patterns and insights, and to present stories about collection data. A particular emphasis is competing and conflicting narratives.

Olivia is currently working with partners at British Library Labs, Science Museum and Wellcome Library.

Olivia’s background is multi-disciplinary, bridging science, visual design and the humanities. She holds a BA (1st class) in Natural Sciences and an MSci (1st class) in History and Philosophy of Science, both from the University of Cambridge.

Since graduating, she has worked as a designer: leading the graphic design team for a large charitable organisation in London; producing visual and user experience design for a web start-up; and designing anthologies for literary projects. Her current research focuses on programming, data and visualisation.

Olivia is funded by AHRC studentship AH/L503782/1 through LDoc, the AHRC London Doctoral Design Centre consortium.

Olivia’s new blog: http://research.oliviavane.co.uk/

Article in Visible Language: Idea and Image of Historical Time

Final-year PhD student Florian Kräutli and I have recently published a paper in Visible Language looking at some issues in visualising historic data – especially legacy data belonging to institutions.

The paper addresses the relationship between design and the digital humanities, asking what each can learn from the other and how they may make progress together. The focus is critical making in chronographics — the time-wise visualisation of history — based on the authors’ historic research and current practice in visualising collections of cultural objects and events. This is situated in historic and contemporary contexts, arguing that the eighteenth century origins of the modern timeline have useful insights to offer in terms of objectives and rationale. The authors advocate a critical approach to visualisation that requires both design and digital humanities to face up to the problems of uncertainty, imprecision, and curatorial process, including in relation to time itself.

The whole issue (49:3 December 2015) of the journal is Critical Making: Design and the Digital Humanities.  It was ably guest-edited by Jessica Barness and Amy Papaelias. Here is the table of contents:

• GUEST EDITORS' INTRODUCTION
• Critical Making at the Edges  Jessica Barness, Amy Papaelias
• THEORY AND SPECULATIONS
• Meta!Meta!Meta! A Speculative Design Brief for the Digital Humanities  Anne Burdick
• Clues. Anomalies. Understanding. Detecting underlying assumptions and expected practices in the Digital Humanities through the AIME project  Donato Ricci, Robin de Mourat, Christophe Leclercq, Bruno Latour
• Writing Images and the Cinematic Humanities  Holly Willis
• Beyond the Map: Unpacking Critical Cartography in the Digital Humanities  Tania Allen, Sara Queen
• FORMS AND OBJECTS
• The Idea and Image of Historical Time: Interactions between Design and Digital Humanities  Stephen Boyd Davis, Florian Kräutli
• Critical Interfaces and Digital Making  Steve Anderson
• Making Culture: Locating the Digital Humanities in India  Padmini Ray Murray, Chris Hand
• Prototyping the Past  Jentery Sayers
• visual book review + essay: Book Art: a Critical Remix of The Electric Information Age Book  Steven McCarthy