Environmental Data, Media and the Humanities-Hackathon, 31 May - 2 June 2023
What? A collaborative event on challenges and research perspectives in Environmental Data, Media and the Humanities
Where? Haus der Brandenburgisch-Preußischen Geschichte, Am Neuen Markt 9, 14467 Potsdam
When? Registration: 2 p.m. of May 31, 2023 | Start: 3 p.m. of May 31, 2023 | End: 6.00 p.m. of June 2, 2023
Who? Potsdam Network for Digital Humanities, in cooperation with the research project Weather Reports – Wind as Media, Model, and Experience, the "Haus der Brandenburgisch-Preußischen Geschichte (HBPG)"and the Fellows Liliana Bounegru, Simone Fehlinger and Jonathan Gray
Funded by the Henriette Herz Prize by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
Call for Participation
What can the Humanities learn from environmental data? This hackathon will bring together researchers across disciplines to explore the unrealised potential of weather and climate data for the Digital Humanities, contributing to the emerging field of Environmental Digital Humanities.
Making sense of meteorological and climatological data is a pressing issue for the Humanities in the face of climate change. As global warming makes weather increasingly unpredictable and chaotic on a spatial and temporal scale that exceeds immediate comprehension, data provides one point of access to this new reality. At present, however, the digital tools which make climate change legible, for instance through visualisation, are only readily accessible to a group of scientific experts. Conversely, meteorologists and climatologists might themselves benefit from the Humanities in making sense of the increasingly large amounts of data and their consequences for humanity. Turning to the past, for instance, a Digital Humanities engagement with historical sources–combining environmental and data-driven approaches–might prove particularly fruitful.
Over 3 days, this hackathon then aims to open up meteorological and climatological data as well as other types of environmental data (satellite imagery, maps, graphs, dashboards, interfaces, video cips, visualisations, apps) to a wider audience, to new readings and novel applications. Bringing together scholars, artists, coders, data managers, librarians, archivists, activists and designers, we will draw from established Digital Humanities methods and develop novel ones to face a number of challenges in smaller groups. Participants apply such methods as exploratory data analysis, mapping & GIS, text mining, topic modelling, sentiment analysis, network analysis, language modelling, data visualisation and so on. Possible challenges include the development of software prototypes, the conducting of digital analyses, the processing (cleaning, enrichment, etc.) of a data set, the design of a data model, the discussion of standards or ontologies or the testing of new workflows.
Organizers
Potsdam Network for Digital Humanities
Anna Busch, Birgit Schneider, Daniil Skorinkin, Peer Trilcke
Research Project "Weather Reports – Wind as Media, Model, and Experience"
Maximilian Hepach, Birgit Schneider
Webpage of the Hackathon: https://mhep.github.io/hackathon/
Mail: digital-humanitiesuuni-potsdampde
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DH_Potsdam #EcoHack2023
In cooperation with the Haus der Brandenburgisch-Preußischen Geschichte (HBPG) and the Brandenburgische Zentrum für Medienwissenschaften (ZeM).
Pressemitteilung: Neues aus der UP - Universität Potsdam (uni-potsdam.de)
The Environmental Data and the Humanities-Hackathon 2023 is organized together with these three international fellows:
Wed, May 31th | Thu, June 1st | Fri, June 2nd | |
9:30 a.m.-10:00 p.m. | Plenary | Plenary | |
from 10:00 a.m. | Team work! | Team work! | |
12:30 p.m.-1:30 p.m. | Lunch (at the venue) | Lunch (at the venue) | |
from 2:30 p.m. | Registration | ||
3:00 p.m. | Opening & Pitches | ||
4:00 p.m. | Coffee break | Coffee break | |
4:30 p.m | Coffee break | Final presentations | |
5:00 p.m. | Find a team! | ||
7:00 p.m. | Get Together (Restaurant in the city centre) | Open end | Get Together (Restaurant in the city centre) |
Challenge | Presenters |
Jonathan Gray, Liliana Bounegru et al. | |
Counter-Visualisations of Ensemble Forecasts (for Mainstream Use) | Simone Fehlinger, Damien Baïs |
Birgit Schneider, Maximilian Hepach | |
Combining Weather Data from Ships Logs with Corpus from Cultural Texts | J.R. Carpenter |
Daniil Skorinkin, Peer Trilcke et al. | |
Manfred Stede et al. |