>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The Digital Humanities is not the humanities nor anti-humanities
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Examples of Digital Humanities
Can look like the humanities but are not the humanities.
We believe that the context of the works of digital humanities is already the humanities
The context for the Digital Humanities is nothing but the humanities
Pieces of Digital Humanities are not intellectual, however sometimes can be.
In Digital Humanities the visibility of the humanities is reduced to minimum, the humanities is just the intellectual manner
Every piece of the Digital Humanities is only about the Digital Humanities and nothing more,
therefor all pieces of the Digital Humanities are identical in context – all manifestations of the Digital Humanities have the same sense and meaning and express exactly the same.
In the context of the Digital Humanities,
all interpretations possible in the context of the humanities,
are reduced to one, are equalised, flattened to the Digital Humanities.
Interpreting the Digital Humanities as the humanities or being
about something other than just the Digital Humanities
deprives Digital Humanities of its purpose.
The Digital Humanities can be presented only in Digital Humanities chambers.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> A Digital Humanities chamber is a closed room
that is not a lecture theatre and because of its nature
cannot exist or be presented in a lecture theatre.
A Digital Humanities chamber serves only to show pieces of the Digital Humanities.
Pixilated walls of a Digital Humanities chamber are the only neutral background
for pieces of the Digital Humanities.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>There is no evolution of the Digital Humanities,
there is only its expansion.
Humanity is forever developing <<diverse whole>> . The Digital Humanities is forever expanding <<homogenous mass>>.
I was lucky enough to see War Horse when it came to Melbourne recently. I don’t usually see high-end and popular, international theatre productions but prefer to see local independent theatre (that does have an extraordinarily vibrant community in Melbourne). I only saw Warhorse because my mother was in town and because I was familiar with it as I worked opposite the National Theatre in Drury Lane, London (W1) (where it has been showing for a number of years). It was a spectacular show and I am glad that I went to see it and a local radio host told me that I should take a hanky and sure enough, I needed it.
I remember when I worked on Drury Lane that I could see the War Horse billboard out the window. And when the show started a few years back, the horses were paraded up the street. Â Â But there was a chasm there, it was only on the other side of the street but it might as well been on the other side of the planet. Â I worked in a technology centre, technology in the humanities, and there opposite, the War Horse stared at me in my Benthamite prison enticing me to a place where technology had a greater function than utility. This is the always the real home for technology in the humanities and sometimes we forget this.
A personal project that I have been working on in my spare time over the past few months involved locating, digitising, tagging, and putting into neat little country boxes(on Flikr) all the photos that I have taken on my travels since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. And there are a lot of them, about 5000 photos taken in 40 counties (41 if you count Australia). And some of the countries like Germany, Thailand, the UK, and the US I have visited up to 9 times.
I have wanted to do this project for quite some time as I had difficulty remembering how many times I had visited particular countries and I was not sure how-many I had visited in-total (not that ticking-off countries is what I originally set out to do).
And in reflection, I suppose I am fairly typical of my (x) generation. The world opened-up considerably after the fall of the Berlin Wall with many former Communist-block countries lessening restrictive visa requirements and welcoming snoopy visitors. I was in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) a couple of months after the fall of the Wall and since then have been to numerous ex-Communist countries like Hungary, Vietnam and the Czech Republic. Also, an important factor to consider, is that in all the time that I have traveled, airfares have remained pretty constant (and even become cheaper). Â My first air-fare to the UK in 1989 cost $2200 economy fare, not too dissimilar to what it costs today. And average wages have increased 3-4 times in this time in tandem with the Australian GDP.
I am perhaps the last of the generation to do the coming of age ‘big-trip’ in my early 20s. For many Australians before the 1990s, it was not possible to travel from Australia regularly through-out ones’ life because the costs made it prohibitive. The ‘big trip’ involved saving for many months or even years to get the money together to buy the plane ticket and then have enough beer money once you arrived. And pretty much the only country in the world where Australians could work (and in particular, young working-class Australians) was in the UK.  I am not sure if this is still the case, but the importance of the UK to my own personal development and mobility has been extraordinary. It is crucial to have special working visas and discounted fares for young people to explore the world in their 20s. The individual and country grows immensely because of it, as does the world and the sophisticated interpretations of it.
When I was younger, I also visited many countries over the summer months whilst studying at University. These were primarily in Asia which is geographically close to Australia and relatively inexpensive to get to and travel within. I mostly traveled the ‘hippy-trail’ opened up in the 1960s and 1970s by the baby-boomers; well-trodden and documented by Melbourne’s own Lonely Planet travel books.
India possible changed my thinking about the world more than any other county. Australians, like Americans and Canadians, are ‘Modernists’ (if I can be so reductive and general). We can’t be anything other than Modern and I have never quite understood how one could live their entire life in this otherwise wonderful country and be totally oblivious to the stifling level of conformity imposed upon us by our restrictive and somewhat unresponsive Modern industrial system. We have perhaps lost much more than we have gained (although we never really had it to start with and the more I travel, the less unique the Australian Way seems to me…well, at least from a Modern perspective). India opened me up to alternatives. It is a cultural superpower. It is the most culturally rich place I have been anywhere on the planet and I am sure India can take a crude Aussie Modernist like myself (with his victorious flushing toilets), in its stride.
More recently, I traveled quite a lot for work, but this was for collaboration with fellow ‘Modernists’ so was focused, instrumental, ‘de-territorised’ and I am not sure I gained a lot from it from a travelers perspective. Still, a few stolen days here and there either side of a conference or workshop are always welcome and I am lucky to have had this privilege in my career so far. Still, I have met many academics and business people who travel every-other-week and it doesn’t seem to impact upon them in any enlightened or positive way. Perhaps they approach the world and its magnificent, diverse cultures in the same way they approach other aspects of their lives (ie banally!). I prefer to change my eyes not my cities.
And speaking of such, the World according to Craig is not just about going somewhere and seeing something for the first time, it is how you experience it as a whole person in a different and enlightening way that makes the process worthwhile for you and others. In other words, it is not where you go, it is what you take with you that counts. If you are an Aussie Modernist, you probably aren’t going to get too far away from Hong Kong or Singapore. And you may even think that they are the ‘same-same, but different’. But with the right amount of prodding from some of the World’s great authors; Kapuscinski, Hess, Rushdie, Eco, Gregory David Roberts, Murikami, and Calvino you might just discover yourself and a whole world in the process.
We never travel alone, on a winter’s night there is always Herodotus and we are always the midnights children of the historical narratives that as we grow older, we inextricably absorb into our subjectivity.
And what have I learned so far? The world never gets smaller, only people get smaller.
I love Noel Fielding’s work. If there was a Kinsey spectrum of creativity then Fielding’s would be exclusively creative. Again, it makes me happy. What a wonderful time he must have tapped into the creative rhythm of life in all its absurdities and contradictions.
