DARIAH Annual Event 2021: Interfaces – Registration open

By Eliza Papaki | News | February 26, 2021

Online Event | September 7-9, 2021

Save the date for the DARIAH Annual Event 2021 that will take place online, on September 7-9, 2021. Topic of this year’s event is Interfaces.

Digital interfaces enable communication between humans and machines, especially computers, by translating signals and providing capacity for the interpretation of information. They facilitate work in digital environments and can take on many different forms, ranging from command line interfaces to 2D graphical user interfaces or immersive 3D approaches. It is the aim of this year’s DARIAH Annual Event to discuss the role that interfaces play in the arts and humanities. To what extent do they enable new research, and at the same time, do they also limit research possibilities? How is content/information changed while being transmitted by interfaces? How do interfaces reframe the roles of those using them, their roles as producer and/or consumer of interfaces?

Programme & Registration

Tentative programme of the event is now published on the conference’s website. The programme, which will run over three days on September 7-9, includes two keynote speeches by Sarah Kenderdine (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) and Chris Heilman (Microsoft), 3 panels and 4 paper sessions on the following topics:

Interfaces for GLAM and Cultural Heritage Institutions
The Making of Interfaces
Interfaces and Infrastructures
Theoretical Reflections Around Interfaces

Registration to the event is now open, and will remain open until early September. Please make sure to register to follow the event. Zoom links will be distributed to registered participants prior to the event in September.

Call for Participation

* The call is now closed.

We invite researchers and research projects to present (ongoing) work that deals with the topic of interfaces in a broad sense, in the form of (1) papers, (2) panels, (3) posters and demos. Find all information on the call and the suggested tracks of research.

Papers and Panels

We invite researchers and research projects to present (finished or ongoing) work that deals with the topic of interfaces in a broad sense. All accepted papers will be part of thematic sessions, chaired by a member of the Programme Committee.

Paper submissions should include a title, the names of the authors and a 500-word abstract. Paper sessions will consist of 10-minute paper presentations, plus an additional 20 minutes of discussion for the whole panel.

Panel submissions should include a general title and a list of three papers that make up the panel, the names of the authors and a 750-word abstract. The total duration of the panel session is 60 minutes, approximately 10 minutes per presentation, followed by a discussion.

We propose the following themes that may guide your submission. Please feel free to explore topics outside of these proposed areas of research, too.

1. Interface as Metaphor

The concept of interface is often used to express a mechanism of transforming information between different languages, or between a user and a machine. The understanding of interface can however be broadened to new meanings, and be used almost as a metaphor for the action of entering a new reality or new dimension. Submissions related to this topic reflect on the concept of interface as technical gateways that give access to content, such as research data or historical data, to translate data and better understand complex phenomena; they investigate how interfaces affect the user experience, and at the same time how they reframe the objects presented with new interpretations.

2. Future Interfaces

The arts and the humanities are often mentioned together in the same funding calls or share the resources assigned to them inside faculties. However, in practice, the arts and the humanities are rarely involved in multidisciplinary endeavours in which one field can enrich and help develop the other. In this track we wish to address the challenge of connecting the arts and humanities through future interfaces. What are the trends in this direction? What will future interfaces look like?

3. The Making of Interfaces

This track wishes to explore case studies of existing interfaces that are representative for their relevant or critical approach to giving access to resources.

4. Theories of Interface, and the Disappearance of the Interface

This track invites contributions that reflect on theoretical analyses of the autonomy of interface as an agent participating in the information communication process. Today some of the most promising research in digital humanities is occupied with the use of computational interfaces for unsupervised processing and analysis of large datasets, or big unstructured data, e.g., annotation and classification, through recursive mechanisms. These interfaces connect a language to the semantic and pragmatic contents of formal statements enabling interpretation. This track will discuss the exploration and development of these interfaces (e.g., machine learning, neural networks) in processes wherein they become the cause of assemblages that execute material and information relations (Deleuze 1988: 37), focusing on the interface (e.g., trained algorithms) rather than the content (dataset) or expression, such as the results of the process.

Posters and Demos

We are looking for original posters and demos broadly related to the topic of this year’s event. These posters and demos typically include state-of-the-art project reports, work in progress, beta-versions of tools or new releases of existing tools and services. Demonstration interfaces, online prototypes and experimental work on digital interfaces from the arts and humanities are welcome. Submissions should include a title, the names of the authors and a 500-word abstract. Demos and interface prototypes could also be submitted in the form of any online interactive platform, such as Mozilla Hubs, Unity WebGL, Unreal Engine, OpenSpace 3D, etc.