Critical Media Lab meets Digital Humanities Lab (EPFL)

Leonardo Impett
Computational Experiments with Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas
This talk will start with a discussion of the my project on Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas, a joint work with Sabine Suesstrunk and Franco Moretti. The project was posed in the opposite way to most computer-science tasks: a clear database, but no clear problem to solve. Through the ‘operationalisation’ of some of Aby Warburg’s concepts – their critical conversion into a series of operations – I will present some of our work analysing the Pathosformel through human pose in the Bilderatlas, a morphological-historical tension.

In drawing some conclusions about this ongoing project, and where the road lies for computational art history more generally, I will touch on some epistemological and methodological uncertainties in the new field of the Digital Humanities. I’ll explain my own efforts to come to terms with the nature of these new types of research, touching on Critical Technical Practice (from Artificial Intelligence research) and artistic research. Finally, I’ll seek to explore the relationship between forms of unscientific scientific research (including the Digital Humanities) and artistic research, and what common methodological, epistemological and technical challenges we share.

Dario Rodighiero
Affinity Map: Making Visible the Invisible
The Affinity Map project puts attention to scholars of EPFL and the way they work together. How simulate the invisible mechanisms that enables collaborations? The project proposes a map based on research, teaching, grants and subjects of research. A map intended as a tool to visualize complex organizations, such as in the case of the ENAC School, to improve understanding and to foster discussions among scholars. The Affinity Map is an exploratory doctoral thesis conducted by Dario Rodighiero under the supervision of Prof. Frédéric Kaplan, director of the DHLAB, and Prof. Boris Beaude, member of the Institute of Social Sciences at UNIL. The project is promoted by the ENAC School and its dean, Prof. Marilyne Andersen.

Leonardo Impett is a PhD candidate in computer science at the Image and Visual Representation Lab, EPFL, under Sabine Süsstrunk and Franco Moretti. He was previously at the University of Cambridge, graduating in Engineering. He’s made a number of interactive electronic musical instruments, presented at IRCAM Paris, the European Conference of Artificial Life, and the Royal Opera House (London) and is currently a member of the Crucible Research Network and the Ways of Machine Seeing project in Cambridge. He is also a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, and a fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts.
https://people.epfl.ch/leonardo.impett

Dario Rodighiero is a designer and scholar in Data Visualization at DHLAB, the Laboratory of Digital Humanities of EPFL, and a PhD candidate at the Doctoral School of EPFL in Lausanne, attending the Doctoral Program Architecture and Sciences of the Cities. Previously Dario joined the team of AIME, a project led by Bruno Latour carried out at the Médialab of Sciences Po in Paris. Dario has been interaction designer and assistant professor at University of Milan-Bicocca and information scientist at European Commission.
http://www.dariorodighiero.com/