Disegno 2023/1

Designing Digital Humanities

Editors: Zsolt Gyenge, Olivér Horváth (Managing Editor), Szilvia Maróthy, Márton Szentpéteri, Péter Wunderlich (Project Manager). Founding Editor: Heni Fiáth

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

Szilvia Maróthy and Márton Szentpéteri: Designing Digital Humanities

RESEARCH PAPERS

ESSAYS

INTERVIEW

Szilvia Maróthy and Márton Szentpéteri: Designing Digital Humanities

Disegno 2023/1, page range: 4–6. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2023_1szmmsz

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Ágnes Anna Sebestyén: Designing the International Network of Tér és Forma, 1928–1939. A Hungarian Architectural Journal’s Data-Driven Analysis

Disegno 2023/1, page range: 8–24. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2023_1aas

Architectural periodicals were the major means of transferring textual and visual information about the current production, discourses, and problems of architecture during the interwar era. Illustrated magazines were widely available, and the immaterial sites of architectural publications became equally important as the construction site itself.

In interwar Hungary, the architectural journal Tér és Forma (Space and Form) was the major organ of modern architecture under the editorship of the architect Virgil Bierbauer between 1928 and 1942. The periodical included the latest examples of modern architecture in Hungary and the current international scene covering most of Europe with an outlook on the USA, South America, and Japan. Bierbauer relied on his extensive international network of professional connections for transferring information and creating content for his journal.

My paper focuses on the digital processing and analysis of Tér és Forma using the Croatian Artists Networks Information System (CAN_IS) as a digital network analysis tool. It allows the representation of the international relations of the journal based on its content, and the changes in editorial directions and its social network. My paper considers the methodology of organising the information extracted from the system and how this knowledge can be visualised. My paper also addresses the problems of legibility and distortion in data visualisations.

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Dinara Gagarina: Data and Knowledge Modelling as the Methodological Foundation of the Digital Humanities

Disegno 2023/1, page range: 26–45. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2023_1dg

Digital humanities is a multidisciplinary field that leverages digital technology and methodologies to explore and answer questions pertaining to the humanities. It is a dynamic intersection between the domains of computer science and the humanities, promoting innovation, collaboration, and research at the highest levels. However, as a relatively young field, the methodological foundations of the digital humanities are still being established. This paper seeks to explore the core methodologies that underpin digital humanities.

The modelling of data, information, and knowledge can be considered one of the foundations of digital humanities. One of the arguments confirming this is that the development of digital humanities and the development of technologies in general are the development of ways to formalise and present data and knowledge. Science has come a long way from the modelling and computer representation of numbers to generating texts and art on the basis of prescribed inputs. With the advent of artificial intelligence, especially machine learning and deep learning techniques, the potential for more sophisticated and nuanced data modelling in the digital humanities has expanded significantly, linking computational capabilities with humanistic inquiries in unprecedented ways.

The article considers the periodization, classification, and trends of approaches and methods for modelling data, information and knowledge in the humanities. The article provides an overview of existing examples and data models of different complexity from various humanities disciplines, including history, linguistics, literary criticism, and cultural studies.

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Dorottya Kun: Design Culture’s Perspective on Institutional Repositories: Challenges and Opportunities

Disegno 2023/1, page range: 46–65. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2023_1dk

This paper aims to identify and summarise the challenges of preserving the outputs of design universities in institutional repositories (IRs) and share the developments and lessons learned from similar fields’ successful projects. For traditional academic disciplines, metadata models and standards are well-developed for publication and preservation practices. Research in this area is presently underrepresented in academia; furthermore, the collections tend to be scattered or hidden. In the last fifteen years, preserving works in repositories has become one of the central issues in design institutions. This study examines the problems and other collections’ responses to these challenges — observations which can be utilised in the field of design where it is difficult to make visible and present the values created in design.

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Merve Pekdemir Başeğmez and Burak Asiliskender: Smart Factories: New Production Spaces in Digital Transition

Disegno 2023/1, page range: 66–81. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2023_1mpbba

Digital developments have affected humanity in industry and many areas in recent years. The new revolution, defined as Industry 4.0, is planned to ensure remote and digital machine–human collaboration for a new working life. Thanks to internet technologies, communication can be achieved in a digital network with the machines and robots used in production and the employees who manage and supervise them. In this new order, the possibility of people participating in the system remotely, leaving physical production to robots, and using smart production systems leads to factories turning into smart factories. While smart factories require a digital environment between humans and machines, they also bring humans and machines together for different functions.

As a result of the digital revolution, the transformation of factories into smart factories and innovations in the production space initiates a new discussion in industrial architecture. This study focuses on the spatial effects of the smart production model of the new factory revolution. The research aims to understand how digital production processes in smart factories change factory designs. For this reason, smart factory definitions were first researched in the literature, and future factory propositions were examined. Then, in this context, smart production spaces designed and built to produce new technologies since the day the new revolution was introduced were analysed. This study aims to present a projection for new production spaces with the morphological analyses performed. As a result, this study will form the basis for future studies as an architectural criticism of the transition process.

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Iacopo Neri, Darío Negueruela del Castillo, Pepe Ballesteros Zapata, Valentine Bernasconi, and Ludovica Schaerf: Cityscapes Transformed: Immersive Exploration at the Intersection of Culture, Computation, and Curatorial Practices

Disegno 2023/1, page range: 82–92. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2023_1inetal

Designing a novel approach to existing art collections requires a shift in perspective. Computational approaches allow for an agnostic approach to cultural assets—akin to distant reading—,affording a capacity for embracing estrangement as a fertile design strategy. This paper investigates the potential convergence of these fields through the lens of machine curation and audience engagement, specifically examining the influence of contemporary machine learning models on curatorial methodologies. This investigation takes the form of a project conceived for the 2023 Helsinki Art Biennial and as a collaboration between the Centre for Digital Visual Studies (MPG, University of Zurich) and the media artist Yehwan Song, aptly titled Newly Formed City. Exploring the art collection of the Helsinki Art Museum (HAM), we seek to reinterpret the cityscape of Helsinki through a machine-oriented perspective. Utilising visual-textual models, we relocate unexhibited artworks to public locations, where, through the creation of context-based computer generated 360-degree panoramas, artworks are placed. Consequently, the outdoor sites are changed by the presence of the artworks, creating a new speculative geography where the city and its art collection are visually fused together. Interaction is achieved through a web interface, offering visitors the opportunity to move through an alternative version of the city and interact with its cultural heritage on a large scale, exploring the capacities for creativity located at the crossroads of a reflective exchange between vicinity and ignorance, machinic analytical prowess, and the uncanny and the unexpected.

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Stefano Corbo: The Dodecahedron and the Basket of Fruit: Architecture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Disegno 2023/1, page range: 94–104. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2023_1sc

Starting from the late 1980s, the advent of digital design—the possibility to ideate, develop, and generate projects via computers—has progressively pushed the disciplinary discourse to rethink architecture’s role in society, as well as its formal manifestations. The contemporary evolution of digital architecture has taken different directions, which are sometimes contradictory and ambiguous in their intents. This paper especially focuses attention on one of those directions—the opportunities that artificial intelligence can offer in the future production and communication of architecture. Recent episodes are analysed and contextualised within the historical antinomy between two diverging worldviews that, since the fifteenth century until the end of the twentieth century, have informed the architectural discourse. These worldviews can be exemplified in the dichotomy between the dodecahedron and the basket of fruit.

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Zsolt Almási: AI? Predictive Media. Art

Disegno 2023/1, page range: 106–117. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2023_1zsa

In this paper, I shall explore the relationship between predictive text2image technology and art. To do this, I shall navigate the discursive landscape that facilitates the consideration of this cultural phenomenon within a rational framework. This is necessary because public discourse is mostly dominated by unrealistic expectations resulting from identifying this technology as “Artificial Intelligence.” The theoretical frame is posthumanism, which affords us the necessary intellectual tools to scrutinise the genesis of what Manovich calls “predictive media.” Equipped with the appropriate terminology, I will explore the process of the creation of images with a special focus on prompt engineering and curation to showcase the collaborative effort of the artist and the application. Furthermore, I shall refer to the competitions (Sony, Főfotó) wherein this technology plays a consequential role, to traditional art forms that share some crucial features with this technology, and some concerns related to predictive media will be raised. Through this analysis, I argue that contrary to early responses, predictive media applications bear the hallmark of art, and their creators rightfully merit the designation of artists.

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Szilvia Maróthy and Márton Szentpéteri: A Distant Reader: An Interview with Iván Horváth

Disegno 2023/1, page range: 118–125. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2023_1szmmszih

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About the Authors

Disegno 2023/1, page range: 128–131.

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