ag

Prof. Brady gave an introduction describing the historical background of image interpretation in the Humanities. He also gave a brief introduction of the sessions that are going to be happening during the day.

Quality of Digitisation and Capture of Evidence

eSAD Research Question: Dr. Melissa Terras (UCL)

Dr. Terras introduced the session by describing how resources on the web have transformed the way that we do research. She ponders about the consequences of the inherent nature of digital images as illusions.

Invited Speaker: Prof. Lindsay MacDonald (LCC, UCL)

Prof. MacDonald ponders what is the resolution that we need to image to capture every man-made detail in a specific object. He describes different traditional techniques to acquire high-resolution images, charting their performance by resolution. He also shows some alternative methods, like laser scanning. He uses an example of a real artefact to determine, for this specific artefact, what is the spacial resolution needed to accurately represent it digitally.

There are different factors that might also contribute to the technology that is required. The researcher might also be interested in the composition of the paper, or the quality of the colour. Cameras will always see colours differently from a human observer. He describes a common problem where an observer matches two colours under one light, but the colours might not match under a different light, or under analysis from a different observer.

He concludes by giving some recommendations into how to make a better digitisation:

Analyse the original Documents
Choose the best scanner of camera to minimise distortion.
Select a resolution of at least double the highest spatial frequency of the original
generate and use icc profiles.
Store RAW image files.

QP

The decisions taken at the time of digitisation for a specific project might affect what can be done with those images in future projects. Ideally you want to capture as much information as you can.

Respondent: Dr. Julia Craig-McFeely (Oxford, Royal Holloway)

Dr. Craig-McFeely argues that we need to take into account the way that each person’s perception of colour is different.

Evaluating evidence

eSAD Research Question: Dr. Ségolène Tartre (Oxford)

Ségolène is interested in how the cognitive processes of interpretation work.

Invited Speaker: Dr. Floris Bex (Dundee)

Dr. Bex’s studies argumentation using evidence, he handed us a concise two page summary of the issues in dialogue and argumentation.

It is important to visualise the structure of an argument to be able to identify the points where counter-arguments can be found. It is important when building an argument to be able to identify evidence. It is also important to have a grasp of what the assumptions are, the points in which the argument is being built from.

He gives an example of argument visualisations where he shows how experts make inferences about a document, based on a piece of evidence, philological knowledge and assumptions. Counter-arguments can be done by questioning any of the steps of the argument, for example denying the assumptions, or questioning the ability of the expert.

Structuring reasoning in the form of an argument allows us to understand each other easily and share knowledge. We can also easily support our ideas and provide the framework for others to make the reasoning better, or even come up with a better theory.

Dr. Bex gives a demo on a new project in which parts of an argument are explicitly declared. Others can then question, disagree, and partake on the argument in a structured way.

Dr. Bex recommends reading Edward Tufte.

QP

This system ignores the confidence levels in an argument. Where there is some doubt but a reasonable argument with made with some level, but not complete certainty.

Respondent: Dr. Sanjay Modgil (KCL)

Dr. Sanjay argues that argumentation theory is common sense. They come from established work in logic and AI. This is important because it is a accessible resource for communities of research in all areas. Argumentation theory schemes can map out the strength of an argument in respect to a specific topic. They support users in fulfilling their dialectical obligations. It also offers a standard arguments to assess arguments and counter-arguments. It also offers a clear path in a dialogue to where additional arguments or counter-arguments should be made.

The intention is not at all to replace the role of experts in interpreting the texts, but to make it more efficient. That implies that we first need to understand what it is.

Restoration, Palaeographical Knowledge Bases and Classification of Letter-Forms

eSAD Research Question: Henriette Roued-Cunliffe (Oxford)

~~Henriette’s work is on character recognition.~~ She is working on APELLO a web-based search engine that offers suggestions for pattern recognition using EpiDoc based corpora.

Update: I missunderstood Henriette’s work, she corrected me. My apologies and thanks for the update.

I just wanted to rectify this. I do not do any work what so ever on character recognition. It is something that we work on as a part of the project, but I am not directly involved with it. My work is instead on building a Decision Support System for reading ancient documents and as a part of this I could use different knowledge bases such as a character recognition system. I am working on one such word search knowledge base.

Invited Speaker Dr. Peter Stokes (Cambridge)

Dr. Stokes is interested in recognising authors, styles, dates… in text. There is a standard criticism of palaeography where experts are accused of hiding any doubt from their arguments, regarding their authority as the ultimate defence.

Computers can help the process but they will never replace the work of an analyst. Computers cannot become an authority, or even a witness. We can also create databases for palaeography, where we keep information about different types of writings. This information will help experts identify authors and build evidence based arguments to support their conclusions.

He is working on a web-based service for a palaeographical database. The database includes images, and descriptions of the letter-forms. It allows a researcher to search through the database using a variety of parameters. Ideally, the library needs to be a standard resource. If arguments are built with the help of this service, it needs to be permanently attached to it. Copyrights issues might be an obstacle.

Respondent: Dr. Gabriel Bodard (KCL)

Historians are concerned about the computer’s ability to replace an expert analyst. All they can do is help less-experienced people do a valid analysis.

Another issue is dating. Epigraphy dating is constantly being questioned. Work in epigraphy always seems to be in progress. Hard conclusions are hard to come by.

How do we make evidence available to non-experts. Seeing evidence might convince people in other areas or non-experts of your conclusions.

QP

Gathering data for the database is an extremely long and detailed process. Is it scalable? The value in compiling this kind of data for an individual researcher is great, but it does require a great amount of resources.

How far are we from having a sufficient database in order to be able to use machine learning algorithms — How do you know the computer is right?

How do you recognise an author when they deliberately write in different manners according to the context.

Wrap-up

Prof. Alan Bowman (Oxford)

Prof. Bowman concluded the workshop and thanked the speakers.

Technical advances are exciting, and provide new opportunities for research. Trial and error is important. How do we make the technology useful to more people?

Sometimes the question is not to get a good reproduction, but to obtain something that is better than the original.

Extracting meaning from documents requires sometimes checking multiple documents, to manipulate them. It is easy to make a mistake, it is quite hard to recognise it. How do we argue the meaning of text? How do we include interpretations of images in this dialogue?

(Field)

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:25:59 +0000

(Field):

Field is a mac development environment for digital art. It features a python text editor, graphical elements embedded in the editor and the possibility to use many available libraries and technologies like opengl and processing libraries.

No one is an outside observer of nature. We are a product of the...

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:02:20 +0100

No one is an outside observer of nature.

We are a product of the environment and our interaction to the environment.

Beau Lotto: Optical illusions show how we see (via TEDtalksDirector)

"Twitter’s detractors are used to sneering that nothing of value can be said in 140 characters...."

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:04:21 +0100

“Twitter’s detractors are used to sneering that nothing of value can be said in 140 characters. My 104 characters did just fine.”

- The Trafigura fiasco tears up the textbook | Alan Rusbridger | Comment is free | The Guardian

Object Artefact Script

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:13:00 +0100

(http://www.alejandrogiacometti.com/2009/10/object-artefact-script/)

I’m in Edinburgh, Scotland. Attending the Object Artefact Script workshop organized by the National e-Science Centre. My attendance here is mostly for learning purposes as I am new to this discipline. The program starts Today, Thursday, October 8th until Friday, October 9th, 2009.

Edinburgh is a beautiful city. Last night I had a chance to walk through Grassmarket, and up the hill to see the Castle.

Introduction

Gabriel Bodard introduced the workshop by talking a little about its main concept. He argued that there is a need for a space to analyse text and the objects where the text is written together in order to gain wholesome understanding of them. This workshop is meant to create that space.

Written Things, Human Agents, Inhabited Worlds: Revealing processes of mutual constitution through digital technologies

Kathryn Piquette [abstract]

Too much emphasis is put on the text as an independent object of study, separating it from the object. Kathryn has developed some methods in order to study and capture the text as well as the material. She argues that meaning is only created in a particular context. She has found Atlas.ti to be a useful tool to aid her research. Atlas.ti is used to combine multimedia (pictures, video, text) using functions to annotate, select and organize. The study of materials is important because it shows us the object as changing, reused, engaged, etc. James Gibson’s properties of materials and the environment: Medium, Substances, and Surfaces, already makes an argument for the study of the object in context. She is interested in seeing how digital tools can help capture this context. An example is Digital Karnak project from UCLA, which is a digital representation of the temple of Karnak, offering videos, a 3d reconstruction, with patterns of construction, modification and destruction. Some other issues might arise, like misleading visualizations.

QP

Projects like these have a shelf life. We need to make sure we document the sampling, data gathering. In the future, researchers using improved methods and technologies might take advantage of our experience.

Digitization has already a lens of interpretation, and we need to come to terms with this. We cannot present a digital representation as pure data.

A puzzling letter form, or how ways-of-seeing and ways-of-looking differ

Ségolène Tarte [abstract]

Ségolène works at E-Science and Ancient Documents (ESAD) project at Oxford University. The aim of the ESAD project is to develop a web-based interpretation support system. It is very important that the system is not conceived as a replacement of the expert. The project aims to understand how the expert thinks in order to provide support and help her do her job better. An expert reader takes into account a set of levels of reading in order to build a meaningful document. Digitization can help only with a few levels: Physical attributes of the documents, and Features of a character. Image Processing can help with the levels of reading: Features of character and Possible character. Knowledge bases: Possible Character Possible sequence of characters, Possible word or morphemic unit, Grammar, Meaning or sense of a word, and Meaning or sense of a phase or group of words.

Digitization takes advantage of the physicality of the document. For example, multiple pictures with varying lighting angles can help capture the incisions of clay tablets. Image processing algorithms work much better in black and white. Subjectivity is a challenge in several steps of the process, Identifying characters, for example is subject to visual illusions, preconceptions, and expectations from the researcher. Experts have different strategies in interpreting the text, Kinaesthetic / palaeographical (drawing, embodiment, visual feedback), and Cruciverbalistic / philological (puzzle solving, script as a collection of symbols, intuition). She creates a map of the process of reading and interpreting a tablet, taking into account skills, expectations, levels of reading.

Panel discussion

How do we assess what makes good evidence?

The technology must be an enabler, and not a constraint.

What is a relevant amount of information to provide?

Simple assumptions help us understanding and analysing, but they affect how future work is made. How much documentation or rough data can you publish in order to allow further analysis, alternative work, etc. What was useful to the project as it was made is probably enough.

How well do editions of a text reflect the active resolution of the above-mentioned tensions?

(Ségolène’s talk)

What is the process of favouring one resolution? Our aim should be to aid that resolution, to provide the tools to make interpretation. We cannot aim to make an exact transcription, we want to get as close as possible to what it was intended to be. Scholars present an illusion of a level expertise that is not subject to interpretation. One strategy could be to show that there can be several ways to arrive to an understanding, show competing hypotheses.

Is it possible to help the researcher? – should be the important question. We claim that we can and hypothesis generation is one way to do this.

Is formalism contributing to the loss of detail in the capture of objects?

Documentation does not help, the fact that we know how we got to a conclusion, does not mean it can be reversed.

Can we reconstruct how previous decisions were taken, how previous interpretations were formed.

Can this ISS be useful to other disciplines?

The ISS draws inspiration from medical support systems. There is an important difference though, in this case we are building a narrative about an object.

It could be used to interpret metaphorical representations in paintings.

Kings College London - Visualization Lab’s concept of paradata.

Further Reading: Formality Considered Harmful

Object, text and image: concepts and technology

Dot Porter [abstract]

Dot talks about the relationship between the text and materiality of objects. She uses Beowulf as an example. There is only one manuscript of the poem, and every version is derived from this original manuscript. Digital means would allow us to make it available to researchers without putting the manuscript in danger. Her main question is how do we use this digital technologies in an editorial process. What kind of information about the digital process do we use, keep, etc. What kind of information do we make available in the final edition.

There are many types of digital images that can be incorporated into the projects: there is technology helps us recovering the information, 3d models of the object, high resolution photos.

Manuscript description, Transcriptions, and Facsimiles are different ways to represent a document. TEI can help combining this representations into one rich document. But, there is a disconnect between what the TEI structure and the technology that is available to use that information. The software is limited in how it takes advantage of the encoding.

We need to avoid to create exact representation of the text, they will never be the original (Uncanny valley). We need to create applications that take advantage of the metadata and present the information in a useful way. The model should clarify rather than mimic the object.

Further reading: Uncanny Valley

QP

How far do you have to go through he uncanny valley until it becomes OK again? Imitation is misleading because it does not add real properties, but algorithmically defined flaws to add to the illusion.

There is a certain experience of the materiality of the book, or the scroll. Should digital visualizations try to recreate that experience?

AG: Digital tools have recreated the original documents, cleared the text, brightened contrast, but they are a fundamentally different experience than the embodied object. Any attempt of recreating that experience would fail. Also, we could claim than any recreation of that experience is based on a personal account of that experience, either from the editor. Most likely it would be what the editor thinks that the experience of that object was by somebody who read it in the period that it was created. There is no definite experience of the object to mimic.

img2xml: Linking Image and Text with SVG

Hugh Cayless [abstract]

Hugh presents img2xml, a tool to link text with images via the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. SVG is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3) specification for vector graphics for the web. Vector graphics are infinitely zoomable, they are not meant to be a perfect representation of the image’s elements, but they are useful in several ways. They are also very flexible, therefore very useful for visualization purposes.

An SVG trace consists of shapes and regions which both together map to a transcription. These structures could be mapped to text by using RDF. There are some advantages to using this technique: we can capture how elements of the text worked with each other, we can modify elements. There are some disadvantages as well: it is 2-dimensional, it reduces the image into a 1 bit colour space, it lacks browser support, and it lacks semantics.

Project Objectives:

Working prototype by the end of 2009
Research other texts (papyri, Archimedes palimpsest)
Incorporate a transcription tools (SoSOL)

QP

Is is useful? YES!

It uses Potrace to generate the vector graphics.

It does not create a perfect representation of the text, and it is meant to be used together with the image.

TILE: The Text Image Linking Environment and Image-based Editing

Dot Porter

Text Image Linking Environment TILE is a project that aims to semi-automate the linking of text regions in xml encodings. It will probably use Hugh’s img2xml open source code to define the regions. They have funding to develop the tool and have some actual projects test it and give feedback. The Mapas Project and the Homer Multitext Project, the Chymistry of Isaac Newton, the Algernon Charles Swinburne Project have shown interest.

It needs to be interoperable and TEI compliant, modular and extensible, and focused on community in development and testing.

QP

TILE is being built on top of the AJAX XML Encoder (AXE).

END OF DAY 1

Images as Evidence: Challenges for Imaging Ancient Objects

Ryan Baumann [abstract]

Ryan talks about establishing images as evidence of objects when advanced imaging techniques are being used. Images will not look like the object would be seen in natural light because often it is damaged. It is important to document the process of image acquisition and modification. Images can be obtained with several methods or at different points in time. Image/Image linking shows the relation between images or parts of images to a reference image. The use of reference frames, however, can create some constraints. Metadata links can be used to create links between images without altering the reference data. Understanding the imaging techniques is important to understand the images.

Showing relationship between complex object representations is new and not very developed. Through metadata we can transparently show direct comparisons between representations, thereby improving understanding of the object.

QP

This is cool from the technical perspective, how do we make it useful for scholars/editors?

We want to avoid the loss of data to conform to predefined formats of reference images, ie. resize, crop, etc. Image/Image linking uses metadata to show the relationship between new data and reference data.

Further Reading: Rainbow Color Maps (Still) Considered Harmful

Augmenting Epigraphy

Leif Isaksen [abstract]

Leif shows pictures from his various trips around the Europe, where he finds many inscriptions that are not really documented. He would like to have this inscriptions studied in some way. He offers an idea for a solution using mobile computing devices like phones, the web, and computing services. The larger community could take advantage of services that are already available, OCR, Digital Corpora, GPS… The service can take advantage of web-community mechanism: information is collaboratively created and shared. As the community increases in size, more information is available, and the information that is available is, presumably, corrected. Provides some sort of motivation system for tourists, or the general public, as they get some instant information when they are curious. It is interesting for scholars as well: collections can be created, large amounts of information can be gathered. Additional benefits could be automatic 3d modeling, texture mappings, provide a model for other projects. Challenges: current corpora’s accessibility is limited (API search?), image correction, text identification, bootstrapping.

QP

Feasible? Effort? Funding? If the focus is changed to general recognition of what object a person is looking at or where the object is, it seems like a possible project. Flickr could be mined for images, they already have a large dataset, and location information for a large set of them. GPS is already quite a ubiquitous technology in phones, or will be soon.

There needs to be some expert input into the service, an authority who can confirm what an inscription says.

Machine learning is probably the appropriate technique given the variability of the images.

Can we crate something that the community can start generating transcriptions, and add the additional services after.

Serious question: Is it valuable for the research community? or is it just a cool thing to do?

It is establishing a database of inscriptions.

Further Reading: Dictionary of Words in the Wild

Panel Discussion

Leif’s Augmented Epigraphy

Issues surrounding hosting images. Would images endanger the monument by stating where it is? Are there going to be so many of those issues that the project would be better off using a image hosting service, like Flickr, or an existing resource database like the British Museum. Museums that do not have the budget to 3D scan all their objects might like to have those community generated resources available to them.

Methods for preserving inscriptions used by researchers are damaging to the object, and their work is not necessarily available to the general public. This would be a good way of non-destructive methods being used to make some data available. It would also create a database of these objects and their locations, which can prove beneficial for the purposes of preserving them.

General Discussion

Divide between disciplines are relatively new, but we have sometimes strong divisions between them. Additionally adding the ‘Digital’ term might create more divisions. Why is this?

Further Reading: Writing as Material Practice

Discussion and collaboration networking

Greek Curse Tablets

Gabriel Bodard talks about an idea for a side project. There is a jigsaw puzzle of several hundred Greek Curse tablets at the British Museum. The tablets are translucent and very hard to read. There is also another collection in France (Louvre maybe?). There are about eight hundred people named in those tablets, which talk about political affairs of a small town in Cyprus.

The writing is carved on the tablet in very thin strokes, and the material of the tablets is semi-transparent, which renders most methods of digitization almost useless.

Who are the appropriate people to work on this project? What do we do with this text in the case we can digitize it?

Can we find out from the text if the damage is deliberate?

ag

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Understanding Image-based Evidence

Introduction

Prof. Sir Michael Brady (Oxford)

Quality of Digitisation and Capture of Evidence

eSAD Research Question: Dr. Melissa Terras (UCL)

Invited Speaker: Prof. Lindsay MacDonald (LCC, UCL)

QP

Respondent: Dr. Julia Craig-McFeely (Oxford, Royal Holloway)

Evaluating evidence

eSAD Research Question: Dr. Ségolène Tartre (Oxford)

Invited Speaker: Dr. Floris Bex (Dundee)

QP

Respondent: Dr. Sanjay Modgil (KCL)

Restoration, Palaeographical Knowledge Bases and Classification of Letter-Forms

eSAD Research Question: Henriette Roued-Cunliffe (Oxford)

Invited Speaker Dr. Peter Stokes (Cambridge)

Respondent: Dr. Gabriel Bodard (KCL)

QP

Wrap-up

Prof. Alan Bowman (Oxford)

(Field)

No one is an outside observer of nature. We are a product of the...

"Twitter’s detractors are used to sneering that nothing of value can be said in 140 characters...."

Object Artefact Script

Introduction

Written Things, Human Agents, Inhabited Worlds: Revealing processes of mutual constitution through digital technologies

QP

A puzzling letter form, or how ways-of-seeing and ways-of-looking differ

Panel discussion

How do we assess what makes good evidence?

What is a relevant amount of information to provide?

How well do editions of a text reflect the active resolution of the above-mentioned tensions?

Is formalism contributing to the loss of detail in the capture of objects?

Can this ISS be useful to other disciplines?

Object, text and image: concepts and technology

QP

img2xml: Linking Image and Text with SVG

QP

TILE: The Text Image Linking Environment and Image-based Editing

QP

END OF DAY 1

Images as Evidence: Challenges for Imaging Ancient Objects

QP

Augmenting Epigraphy

QP

Panel Discussion

Leif’s Augmented Epigraphy

General Discussion

Discussion and collaboration networking

Greek Curse Tablets

Other Topics

END OF DAY 2