Dear all,
I would like to report briefly on the DIGIMED
conference (http://web-linux.unisi.it/tdtc/digimed/)
held last week in
The University of Siena-Arezzo (specifically the Dipartimento di Teoria e Documentazione delle
Tradizioni Culturali and the Centro
Interdipantimentale di Studi sui Beni Librari e Archivistici) and the
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London were
involved as European partners (together with the Italian foundation Fondazione Ezio Franceschini) in the
organisation of the international seminar entitled “Digital Philology and
Medieval Texts”.
The event has been successful on different levels and
from different perspectives:
-
first of all the
programme itself was rich and combined both scholars presenting the most
advanced humanities computing approaches to philology and scholars keen on the
traditional methods of philology.
Many presentations and discussions
revealed that the latter - the traditional methods of philology - are very
much perceived as not adequately represented by the available digital resources
and tools. In some cases, these critics are the results of a basic misunderstanding:
is up to the philologist as such to develop a “proper” (whatever
this means for the editor itself) digital edition. The dichotomy between “us”
as philologists and “you” as computer scientists or whoever else is
never fruitful as we all know.
However, it is necessary
to acknowledge that digital philology as a discipline is not mature at all both
in principles – as the debates at the conference stressed out - and in practices
(where the discipline itself seems to enlarge and become a “transdiscipline”).
Some talks though excelled in showing that this is not always true. Ambitions
are high both in the development of new tools and in the contextualisation of
the discipline in a specific theoretical framework.
-
the attendance was very
much over the organisers’ expectations and most importantly, besides the
big names in the field, featured a crowd of young people (undergraduate and
postgraduate students as well as young researches from all over
Their subscriptions to
the workshop exceeded the available seats. However, they didn’t intervene
at the open discussion itself. What does this mean? Would the debate been different
if lead by a younger generation? Do they prefer doing rather than talking? Do they
privilege the direct experience and then model the theory on it? Do they see
less the discrepancies and more the challenges?
-
the debate at the round
table was passionate and stimulating.
Being all compressed in
one afternoon, the discussion became rather abstract and intense, detached from
the single presentations. Rather than concentrate on the single implementation
and ideas, the juice of the substantial issues came out leaving the audience,
or at least me, immobilised by the flood.
-
even if dominated by the
Italian language, the multilingual (and multicultural) aspect of the conference
emerged during the presentations, the discussions and the social moments,
reminding us of a wider challenge beyond the one of digital philology itself.
Another occasion for
creating bounds and think of future collaborations.
Some of the materials related to the presentations are
already available on the conference website.
All the best,
Arianna