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Digital Surrogates asks participants to learn about the process of creating digital copies of physical objects with attention to issues of representation, engagement, and meaning.
Beginning with the question “What does it mean to digitize an object?” participants will be asked to consider the responsibilities of a digitization project as it is related to paid and unpaid labor, the ethics of working with digital material, and how decisions about technical standards and platforms can facilitate or limit future use of digitized materials.
Framed via critical readings, participants will be asked to consider their learning within their own individual and institutional values and support systems.
Students in the course will participate through lectures, tours, readings, hands-on project development, and group discussion. Class events will include a tour of the University of Pennsylvania’s SCETI digitization lab, and discussions with experts from UPenn working on the digitization pipeline including photographers, cataloguers, infrastructure specialists, and front-end developers.
Specific tools and approaches covered in the class in 2023 will include:
Over the past 20 years, the number of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that have been digitized has expanded dramatically. What opportunities does this widespread digitization make possible? In this class, students will learn about the process of digitization, focusing on photography and touching on other methods for making manuscripts available through digitization. We will learn and experiment with various tools for working with digitized manuscripts. Finally, we will discuss both the promise and the limitations of digitization.
Over the course of the week, students will have the opportunity to apply new knowledge to a digitized manuscript of their choice and share their progress and results with the class. The course will combine lectures, tours, readings, hands-on project development, and group discussion.
Students should come to class with a digitized manuscript they wish to work with and should have access to images and a description of the manuscript. Applicants’ personal statements should include a description of the manuscript and a discussion of what kind of project they are interested in undertaking with the manuscript.
Tuition: $1000 USD