Digital Arts and Humanities - Book Chapters

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Realism and national identity in 'Y Tu Mamá También': an audience perspective
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2009-03) de la Garza, Armida; Nagib, Lúcia; Mello, Cecília
When referring to cinema and its emancipatory potential, realism, like Plato’s pharmakon, has signified both illness and cure, poison and medicine. On the one hand, realism is regarded as the main feature of so-called classical cinema, inherently conservative and thoroughly ideological, its main raison d’être being to reify and make a particular version of the status quo believable and to pass it out as ‘reality’ (Burch, 1990; MacCabe, 1974). On the other, realism has also been interpreted as a quest for truth and social justice, as in the positivist ethos that informs documentary (Zavattini, 1953). Even in the latter sense, however, the extent to which realism has served colonizing ends when used to investigate the ‘truth’ of the Other has also been noted, rendering the form profoundly suspicious (Chow, 2007, p. 150). For realism has been a Western form of representation, one that can be traced back to the invention of perspective in painting and that peaked with the secular worldview brought about by the Enlightenment. And like realism, the nation state too is a product of the Enlightenment, nationalism being, as it were, a secular replacement for the religious - that is enchanted or fantastic - worldview. In this way, realism, cinema and nation are inextricably linked, and equally strained under the current decline of the Enlightenment paradigm. This chapter looks at Y tu Mamá También by Alfonso Cuarón (2001), a highly successful road movie with documentary features, to explore the ways in which realism, cinema and nation interact with each other in the present conditions of ‘globalization’ as experienced in Mexico. The chapter compares and contrasts various interpretations of the role of realism in this film put forward by critics and scholars and other discourses about it circulating in the media with actual ways of audience engagement with it.
Mockumentary as postnationalism: national identity in 'A Day Without a Mexican' by Sergio Arau
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2009-06) de la Garza, Armida; Haddu, Miriam; Page, Joanna
The turn to neoliberalism in the 1990s proved decisive for Mexico, as the NAFTA project embraced by the Salinas administration entailed a re-definition of national identity, defined since the revolution as mestizo, Catholic and especially as the Other to the United States. And just as cinema was in those days a crucial discourse for this particular construction of the identity, it was in the 1990s equally instrumental to its redefinition, which largely focused on the role of migrants to the US, presented even as supplementary in the Derridean sense. In 1992, as part of these efforts, Sergio Arau directed a mockumentary which in 2004 became a feature film, ‘A Day Without a Mexican’. As would befit more the seriousness of a documentary than the excess and parody of mockumentary, the stated aim in both was to advance a social agenda, arguing the case for immigrant labour and for Mexican presence in the US more generally. The film charts what would happen in California were all Latino immigrants to suddenly disappear, arguing chaos would ensue. Given the link between cinema and modernity and the relevance of cinema for the nation as an alternative public sphere, this chapter looks at the implications of choosing mockumentary, taken by many to be a paradigmatic postmodern and hybrid form, to discuss the hybridisation of national identity in a transnational film, in the present age of globalisation.
Interpreting independence in Latin American cinema today: the digital option
(Peter Lang, 2012-08) de la Garza, Armida; Richardson, Bill; Kelly, Lorraine
Globalisation has transformed “independence” into, at best, “inter-dependence”. In Latin American film, this process has been experienced as a decline in the national productions, now usually co-productions, and a tendency towards the self-exoticising as films cater for a festival-circuit global audience; similarly, theatrical exhibition takes place in one of a handful of the global multiplex complexes. Moreover, narrative film itself has long been regarded as inherently “dependent”, on the conservative sectors that have provided its finance, with the word “independent” referring to authorial features only. However, the very same processes that have allowed for such an unprecedented corporate control of these film industries have also spawned a parallel network of local, regional and national filmmaking, distribution and exhibition through digital media. From the “Mi Cine” project in Mexico to the “Cine Piquetero” in Argentina, digital filmmaking is empowering viewers and restoring agency to local filmmakers. In this paper I argue for this understanding of “independence” in the contemporary cinematic spheres of Latin America: the re-appropriation, amidst the transnationalism of the day, of the democratising potential of cinema that Walter Benjamin once thought was inherent to the medium.
Practice-based film education for children: teaching and learning for creativity, citizenship and participation
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) de la Garza, Armida; Hjort, Mette
Practice-oriented film education aimed at children has been hailed for various reasons: at a personal level, as a means of providing tools for self-expression, for developing creativity and communication skills. And at a social level, it is argued that children must now become competent producers, in addition to critical consumers, of audiovisual content so they can take part in the global public sphere that is arguably emerging. This chapter discusses how the challenges posed by introducing children to filmmaking (i.e. digital video) are being met at three civil associations in Mexico: La Matatena AC, which seeks to enrich the children’s lives by means of the aesthetic experience filmmaking can bring them. Comunicaciòn Comunitaria, concerned with the impact filmmaking can have on the community, preserving cultural memory and enabling participation. And Juguemos a Grabar, with a focus on urban regeneration through the cultural industries.
Aboriginal digitalities: indigenous peoples and new media
(Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2016) de la Garza, Armida
This article goes beyond considerations of digital media supporting identity and community to discuss the ways in which digital technology itself resembles and even parallels traditional indigenous means of producing and sharing knowledge and of experiencing time and space. Drawing from examples ranging from Aztec maps that represented time-space units simultaneously, through discussing indigenous codex and glyphs in which visual language is able to convey meaning using simultaneity rather than chronological narration, to the use of performance for durable cultural storage and transmission, this article points to the many areas of convergence between the multimodal communication that digital media increasingly enable and ancestral practices of indigenous peoples around the world.
Infrastructure for open access: mechanics, economics, politics
(Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) Mattson, Mark; Pickle, Sarah; Gearhart, Andrew; O'Sullivan, James; Smith, Kevin L.; Dickson, Katherine A.
This volume of Creating the 21st-Century Academic Library looks closely at issues of policy and infrastructure for libraries that wish to provide leadership on their campus in the transition to more open forms of scholarship. The authors discuss how to make the case for open access on campus, as well as the political and policy implications of libraries that themselves want to become publishing entities.
Dissemination as cultivation: scholarly communications in a digital age
(Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2016-01) O'Sullivan, James; Long, Christopher P.; Mattson, Mark; Crompton, Constance; Lane, Richard J.; Siemens, Ray
Participatory web platforms have greatly enhanced the means by which students, scholars, and practitioners engage in arts and humanities research. Intuitive interfaces and content delivery systems have brought about paradigm shifts in the ways in which scholars connect and communicate, removing the need for advanced technical expertise when conducting a range of scholarly activities. Collaborative networks of both research and communications are now facilitated across ubiquitous systems that interact to form a transdisciplinary and dynamic interconnection of thought and practice. This chapter introduces readers to the underlying principles of scholarly communications and publishing in the digital age, uncovering the affordances and limitations of online public scholarship. The relationship between form and content is discussed, drawing upon relevant case studies to demonstrate how scholars should consider cultivating the habits and practices of thick collegiality. From here, an overview of relevant platforms is offered, before strategies for social media are detailed, all of which are supplemented by this chapter’s corresponding electronic materials.
Political cinema in Latin America: from nation-building to cultural translation
(Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016-06-30) de la Garza, Armida; Tzioumakis, Yannis; Molloy, Claire
Moving histories: performing Bolívar in Jorge Ali Triana’s film 'Bolívar Soy Yo' (2002)
(University Press of Florida, 2016-07-26) de la Garza, Armida; Shanahan, Maureen G.; Reyes, Ana María
"your visit will leave a permanent mark": Poetics in the Post-Digital Economy
(Bloomsbury Academic, 2017-11-30) Heckman, Davin; O'Sullivan, James
Nomos identifies the juridical power of code and structure without recourse to the metaphysical status of logos (and the understanding of ecology and natural). Hence, "economy" is the appropriate term for the programmed oikos. And against this economy, the question of poetics is reframed.
Electronic literature: contexts and poetics
(Modern Language Association, 2018) Heckman, Davin; O'Sullivan, James
Electronic literature, essentially, must be electronic and literary. Even if we cannot define the literary, we can at least recognize it, and, from recognition, we can begin to build meaning. This chapter attempts to do just that: offer readers an account of some of the contexts that suggest literature that is inherently digital and extrapolate from those contexts a poetics suited to works of this nature.
Internationalisation in Higher Education as a catalyst to STEAM
(Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2019) de la Garza, Armida
Internationalisation efforts in Higher Education are usually led by the institutions' International Offices in partnership with the academic units at various levels, thus providing an ideal opportunity to promote collaboration across colleges, schools and departments, and to bring staff with a broad range of experience and expertise to work together. This chapter discusses two ways in which Higher Education institutions can take advantage of these internationalisation efforts to cultivate and nurture STEAM. First, considering internationalisation of the curriculum (IoC) across disciplines, which entails the incorporation of 'an intercultural dimension into the content of the curriculum as well as the teaching and learning processes and support services of a programme of study' (Leask 2015). Inasmuch as IoC seeks to develop students' international and intercultural perspectives as global professionals and citizens, it requires engagement with the arts, humanities, social sciences and sustainability initiatives across programmes, providing an opportunity to embed STEAM in the curriculum. Further, I argue that there is a parallelism between the national cultures that IoC seeks to draw from and the disciplines themselves, which are also different cultures, 'separate communities of practice with their own organisations, power hierarchies, questions to answer and [sometimes heavily policed] entry boundaries' (Brown and Harris 2014, 115). An interdisciplinary approach, and in particular one that promotes STEAM, should enrich the curriculum and increase its relevance in the same way that an international approach would. And second, through matching an employability and transferable skills training programme across disciplines to the 'internationalisation at home' initiatives that seek to deploy international students and staff as resources in Higher Education institutions (Altbach and Yudkevich 2017). Such a programme would focus on bringing skills traditionally associated with the arts and humanities - such as aesthetic appreciation, critical thinking or communication skills - to students of technology and science, while also bringing skills traditionally associated with science and technology - such as planning and problem solving, numeracy and the use of information technology - to students of arts and humanities, actively taking advantage of the innovative perspectives that international staff and students bring. In sum, the chapter argues that the internationalisation agenda in Higher Education partly inherently overlaps with that of STEAM cultivation, and highlights two practical ways in which curricula can be modified to promote the latter while advancing the former for a more inclusive student experience, enhancing employability skills and promoting the interdisciplinary outlook to the most pressing wicked problems that societies so badly need today.
Text Is Dead, Long Live Text!
(The Liquid Information Company, 2020) O'Sullivan, James; Hegland, Frode Alexander
A short reflection on the future of text in a digital age.
Publishing electronic literature
(Bloomsbury Academic, 2020-12-13) O'Sullivan, James; O'Sullivan, James; Grigar, Dene
If publishing is the set of activities which achieves the dissemination of literature, then what can publishers offer work which can quite readily attend to its own dissemination? The creators of electronic literature often act as artist, producer, and distributor, removing the relationship between writer and publisher which has persisted since the earliest days of the literary market. Those who wish to find readers for their writing have long relied on publishers as "useful middlemen". Informed by my own experiences running a publishing house which publishes born-digital electronic literature, this short chapter explores the extent to which electronic literature needs such middlemen, whether electronic literature has any need for publishers in the traditional sense. As just noted, why seek a publisher for something which publishes itself?
Visualising humanities data
(Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022-11-03) Day, Shawn
Visualization of data is undertaken for a variety of reasons, uses, and purposes in the humanities. Ultimately this forms part of a process of knowledge construction through exploration and discovery. The act of visualizing data as information is both an individual inward pursuit as well as an external performance. Engagement with the viewer/participant and audience raises questions, provokes discussion, and can stimulate activism. Traditionally non-humanistic disciplines have tended to often focus on using data visualization specifically for analysis and definitive substantiation. Until recently, few data visualization tools have been created specifically to fulfill the humanities' unique needs, which has led to adoption and adaptation, often involving conscious or unconscious compromise towards heuristic ends. As a result, these otherwise-engineered tools and methods pose challenges to visualizing humanities data. This chapter explores these challenges and issues to encourage reflection and possibly inspire effective remedy.
Sharing as CARE and FAIR in the Digital Humanities
(Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022-11-03) Egan, Patrick; Murphy, Órla
Introduction: Reconsidering the present and future of the digital humanities
(Bloomsbury Academic, 2022-12-01) O'Sullivan, James
Irish digital literature
(Cambridge University Press, 2023-01-19) O'Sullivan, James
Experimentation is central to the Irish literary tradition, so it is striking to see that many new forms of digital literature remain uncultivated on this island. Where Irish literature has engaged with the digital, it is usually in the form of film-poetry, fragments of text set to video and sound. Other national canons have long progressed to more technically sophisticated genres – literary games, walking simulators, interactive fiction set in immersive virtual worlds – but Irish digital literature remains dominated by the film-poem, and in many respects, seems stagnated. But the situation in Ireland is not entirely bleak: in the figure of Doireann Ní Ghríofa, now a household name after the success of A Ghost in the Throat (2020), Ireland has a high-profile author who has shown a willingness to embrace the digital, something which may encourage further support for multimodal writing among arts practitioners and policymakers. Through its emphasis on Ní Ghríofa’s e-lit works, this chapter explores the past, present, and future of digital literature in Ireland, its major impediments, and possible futures.
Literary games, walking simulators and the new wave of digital fiction
(Routledge, 2023-08-30) O'Sullivan, James
Has the promise of digital literature ever really been realised? Or is the form, as suggested back in 2008 by Andrew Gallix, just one big anti-climax? Is hypertext fiction, essentially just a computerised version of the old-fashioned choose-your-own-adventure model, or generative writing, based on algorithms which string together words from pre-determined pools, all this field has to offer? Or do we find in new genres like the ‘walking simulator’ examples of fiction which brings text-based storytelling to rich, vibrant gamespaces, merging the expressive power of language with the immersion of present-day computer graphics? Since Gallix published his provocation in The Guardian, a series of critically acclaimed works which might be considered to be both literary and digital have been produced, titles like Dear Esther (2012) and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (2017). But one could contend, as does Gallix, that digital literature is dead because the form is no longer reliant on language for creative expression and is thus no longer literary. This chapter explores the current status of digital literature in the context of walking simulators, offering a typological account of the form, its origins and the state of the art, before asking: have works like Esther and Rapture really rejuvenated digital literature, or are they something else entirely? The chapter begins with a brief survey of dominant definitions, resolving any tensions between terminologies like literature, digital literature and videogames, establishing what is meant by a ‘walking simulator’, and detailing the genre’s major aesthetic and mechanical characteristics. The argument that walking simulators are representative of a ‘new wave’ of digital literature is then advanced, comparing such aesthetic traits with older, what will be described as partly scholastic, experimental forms. This chapter argues that the art of digital literature has moved into an era where there is an explicit tension between literature as technical experimentation and literature as immersive digital storytelling. In doing, it is hoped that this chapter, through its focus on the walking simulator genre, demonstrates what digital literature looks like in the twenty-first century.

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