Ways of Seeing*

Perception, Understanding, and Argumentation in a Digital World

Conference Cycle, February – June 2016

The conference cycle brings together internationally renowned scholars and upcoming researchers from the humanities and social sciences, as well as from science and technology studies. The key purpose of the conference cycle is to deepen the discussion and reflection on visual inquiry, its disciplinary sources and future developments, in the context of big data, digital visualizations, and secondary analysis (e.g., digital humanities). The envisaged interdisciplinary dialogue will be conducted in a series of workshops, workshops that are also designed to open up a more general discussion on perception, understanding, and argumentation in a (partly) digital world. The workshops are public and multilingual (French, Italian, German, English). An evening lecture will be part of each of them.

Among many other sources, the asterisk marks our indebtedness to John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (1972) and the “Web of Science” (WOS).

PROGRAM

I.
25-26 February 2016

Images, inquiry and innovation: current practices  and problem of visual analysis
Interdisciplinary opening workshop

Evening lecture:
Images and imaging in inquiry and innovation: a view from Science and Technology Studies
Martina Merz, Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt, Austria

Thursday 25 February | 6pm, Istituto Svizzero in Rome
Full video of the lecture

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II.
23-24 March 2016

Going digital? Images, data, and disciplinary imaginaries
Historical and archeological approaches

Evening lecture:
Digital or Digitalism – another chapter in the history of the humanities?
Michael Hagner, ETH Zürich

Wednesday 23 March | 6pm, Istituto Svizzero in Rome

III.
13-15 April 2016

Transcribing and visualizing language, time, action, and the body: an experimental project
Linguistic approaches of interaction

Evening lecture:
A visual turn in linguistics? Uses of video for studying language
Lorenza Mondada, Universities of Basel and Helsinki

Wednesday 13 April | 7.15pm, Istituto Svizzero in Rome
Full video of the lecture

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IV.
26-27 May 2016

Visual inquiry in the social sciences:
intelligibility, analysis, and reflexivity

Sociological approaches

Evening lecture:
Accounting for taste. Video analysis of tasting sessions
Giolo Fele, University of Trento

Thursday 26 May | 6pm, University Roma Tre
Full video of the lecture

V.
16-17 June 2016

Montages: film, video art, and critical aesthetics
Historical and philosophical approaches

Evening lecture:
Reality, authenticity, and images’ authentication: aesthetic emotion and new technologies
Pietro Montani, University of La Sapienza, Rome

Thursday 16 June | 6pm, Istituto Svizzero in Rome
Full video of the lecture

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