Seeing the past with computers : experiments with augmented reality and computer vision for history /

Seeing the past with computers : experiments with augmented reality and computer vision for history /

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Bibliographic Details
Imprint:	Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2019]
Description:	vi, 247 pages ; 24 cm.
Language:	English
Series:	Digital humanities Digital humanities (Ann Arbor, Mich.)
Subject:	Digital humanities. Augmented reality. Computer vision. Augmented reality. Computer vision. Digital humanities.
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11784688

Hidden Bibliographic Details
Other authors / contributors:	Kee, Kevin B. (Kevin Bradley), 1969- editor. Compeau, Timothy, 1981- editor.
ISBN:	9780472131112 0472131117 9780472123558 9780472900870
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary:	"We focus on two related forms of seeing technology that are changing how some humanists work, but remain untapped and confusing for most scholars and students: computer vision and augmented reality. Computer vision (CV) is a technology that can access, process, analyze, and understand visual information. Consider, for instance, optical character recognition (OCR), which allows computers to read text from digitized print sources. Whereas scholars used to read a few books deeply ("close reading"), OCR has facilitated what Franco Moretti called "distant reading," helping us mine and analyze thousands of books across eras, genres, and subjects. Such quantitative approaches to textual analysis have their critics, but they also hold many lessons for those interested in history. Yet history involves more than just the textual evidence historians have traditionally privileged; traces of the past are also embedded in the visual--photographs, paintings, sketches--and material culture. The proliferation of digitized visual sources presents historians with exciting new technical and theoretical problems and opportunities. The scholars in this collection offer ways of thinking about where we might look for source material, and how we might use CV to analyze those sources, in the context of our research or teaching, to ensure broader, deeper, and more representative understandings of the past. Seeing the Past is in many ways a sequel to PastPlay: Teaching and Learning with Technology (2014), and we return to some of the ideas explored in that volume. Above all, however, this book is a testament to the power of playful experimentation with technology and techniques in our discipline, and in other domains of inquiry, simply to see what happens."--Provided by publisher.
Other form:	Online version: Seeing the past with computers Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2019] 9780472124558

Description
Summary:	Recent developments in computer technology are providing historians with new ways to see--and seek to hear, touch, or smell--traces of the past. Place-based augmented reality applications are an increasingly common feature at heritage sites and museums, allowing historians to create immersive, multifaceted learning experiences. Now that computer vision can be directed at the past, research involving thousands of images can recreate lost or destroyed objects or environments, and discern patterns in vast datasets that could not be perceived by the naked eye.<br> <br> <br> <br> Seeing the Past with Computers is a collection of twelve thought-pieces on the current and potential uses of augmented reality and computer vision in historical research, teaching, and presentation. The experts gathered here reflect upon their experiences working with new technologies, share their ideas for best practices, and assess the implications of--and imagine future possibilities for--new methods of historical study. Among the experimental topics they explore are the use of augmented reality that empowers students to challenge the presentation of historical material in their textbooks; the application of seeing computers to unlock unusual cultural knowledge, such as the secrets of vaudevillian stage magic; hacking facial recognition technology to reveal victims of racism in a century-old Australian archive; and rebuilding the soundscape of an Iron Age village with aural augmented reality.<br> <br> <br> <br> This volume is a valuable resource for scholars and students of history and the digital humanities more broadly. It will inspire them to apply innovative methods to open new paths for conducting and sharing their own research.
Item Description:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Physical Description:	vi, 247 pages ; 24 cm.
ISBN:	9780472131112 0472131117 9780472123558 9780472900870