SpecLab Projects

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THE IVANHOE GAME
This game is currently under development as Web-based software for use in research and pedagogy. Ivanhoe is suited to any discipline in the humanities concerned with textual and visual hermeneutics. The game promotes self-conscious awareness about interpretation and seeks to encourage collaborative learning. Ivanhoe facilitates the imaginative use of electronic archives and online resources in combination with traditional text-based and visual research materials. The game's rules and conditions are adjustable to different player levels and interests, from secondary school classes to advanced projects undertaken by established scholars. Ivanhoe was first conceived by Jerome McGann and Johanna Drucker in late spring 2000, and played in e-mail and paper-based formats. Since that time the project has been developed by a SpecLab research team and sponsored by a grant from the College of Arts and Sciences.    [more]

TEMPORAL MODELING PROJECT
The practical goal of this project is to create a visual scheme and interactive tool set for the representation of temporal relations in humanities-based or qualitative research, with particular emphasis on the subjective experience of temporality. Its rhetorical goal is to bring visualization and interface design into the early content modeling phase of humanities computing projects, with an eye toward both enriching the design aspects of established scholarly endeavors and making humanities computing attractive and comprehensible to students and faculty without specialized technical skills. This group, guided by Johanna Drucker and Bethany Nowviskie, has been in existence since January 2001 and is funded by the Intel Corporation.    [more]

BIBLIOLUDICA
Biblioludica was conceived by Bethany Nowviskie as "a book history mystery," a game for teaching textual materiality and bibliography, but it is applicable to any humanities field in which historical research, close examination of material artifacts, and production as a mode of enquiry are relevant activities for students and scholars. Play unfolds as a series of exploration and production projects through which a semi-fictional research mystery is revealed. Because the generalizable "Ludica" system addresses gameplay, critical thinking, physical analysis and production, and pedagogy rather than specified artifacts and discipline-specific methodologies, it is easy to adapt. Any field which studies the material productions of human beings through time is well suited to the Ludica game model. This project is sponsored in part by a grant from the Delmas Foundation.    [more]

DEFORMATIVE INTERPRETATION
This project explores textual deformance protocols as a means of exposing the hidden structures of non-digital information structures. Stephen Ramsay is currently undertaking several different approaches -- for example, using graphical design software (like GraphViz) to study structures latent in large and complex databases like The Rossetti Archive (a project originally sponsored and developed through IATH.)    [more]

FORMAL & INFORMAL CONSTRAINTS ON TEXTUAL PRODUCTION
This project proposes to develop tools for critical reading. Exploring the intersection of structuralist theory, cognitive psychology and markup technologies, the tools will ask human readers to make explicit the structuring process implicit in any reading. But this project will succeed to the extent that it fails: the goal, in large part, is to investigate the locations of overflow. Where are formal systems inadequate; where do informal systems prevail? Computers, which require and enforce rigorously formal systems, allow the application, processing, and comparison of these structured narratives. Andrea Laue's project speculates that computers will expose new (formal and informal) aspects of narrative.

THE 'PATACRITICAL DEMON
A forthcoming SpecLab production, the 'Patacritical Demon is an interactive tool for nonhierarchical text markup in a visual and temporally-sensitive environment. The Demon is designed to expose the multiple "dementians" along which we interpret texts and documents.

ROSSETTI ARCHIVE REDESIGN
Some SpecLab members and projects are involved in an effort to redesign the interface to the Rossetti Archive. The watchwords of this project are familiar to SpecLab: interpretation, visualization, subjectivity. Temporal Modelling tools and techniques will play a role in a new interface designed to foster interactive and interpretive scholarship in a digital environment.