PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 25, No. 12, Dec. 15, 2005

Center links computing and humanities, arts and social science

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@uiuc.edu

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Bridging the digital divide Distinguished Teacher/Scholar Vernon Burton, a professor of history and of sociology, is director of the Center for Computing in the Humanities, Arts and Social Science, a joint initiative of the UI’s Urbana campus and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. CHASS aims to democratize access to information and high-speed computing and communications.

Scholars from an array of disciplines converged at the National Center for

Supercomputing Applications on Dec. 9 to discuss how advanced digital tools used by scientists might be applied to research and teaching in the humanities, arts and social sciences.

The occasion was the first Center for Computing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science Conference, which was held at NCSA. The Center for Computing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science is a joint initiative of the UI and NCSA that began Oct. 21.

CHASS was formed to foster innovation by engaging humanists, artists and social scientists with their colleagues in computer science, engineering and high-performance computing and communications to develop tools that will accelerate research and education in the humanities, arts and social sciences.

Vernon Burton, director of CHASS and leader of NCSA’s Arts and Humanities Division, is a UI Distinguished Teacher/Scholar and a professor of history and of sociology. Burton, who began using computers in his research many years ago, also is the author of the book, “Computing in the Social Sciences and Humanities” and the accompanying CD, “Wayfarer: Charting Advances in Social Science and Humanities Computing,” published by the UI Press in 2002.

“The humanities, arts and social sciences have an important role to play in today’s science and technology discovery,” Burton said. “Critical, sustained and engaged thinking about concrete problems with broad cultural impact can illuminate new areas when information technology research and development are needed. Bringing together the expertise and experience of humanists and information technology specialists is critical to the future development of science and technology, and to the engagement of a much broader community, including many who as yet do not have access to emerging technologies. A new world of information is evolving, and it’s imperative that technology should not widen the gap between those who have access to new information and tools and those who do not.”

Burton and NCSA director Thom Dunning think the center will help democratize the technological world and “free information from the dark corners of archives and open it up for all citizens,” a goal that coincides with Dunning’s vision for NCSA.

“Bringing together the experience of humanists and the expertise of information technology specialist will immeasurably benefit all participants. It’s vital that those in the arts, humanities and social science be able to tap the benefits of technology, and they also have much to contribute to the development, deployment, and understanding of information technology,” Dunning said.

At the conference, speakers from the UI faculty and scholars from other institutions showed digital tools that they have integrated into their research. Michael Welge, director of the automated learning group at NCSA, demonstrated M2K, an environment for music information retrieval and analysis that can analyze a musical piece being played and identify its genre – whether it is classical, rock, blues or another variety. M2K is an adaptation of another brainchild developed by NCSA staffers, Data to Knowledge, or D2K, a flexible, visual programming environment with a set of 6,000 modules that researchers can link together to build analytical tools without having to write extensive computer code.

M2K is a key component of a project that Welge is collaborating on with J. Stephen Downie, a professor of library and information science, who is building the International Music Information Retrieval Systems Evaluation Laboratory – the world’s first internally accessible, searchable, large-scale collection of music materials in audio, text and metadata forms. The project, which is being funded by the National Science Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, also involves researchers from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science and the College of Engineering.

The CHASS conference was broadcast over the Access Grid, a high-speed audio-visual network, so that scholars from around the world could participate via the Web.

CHASS also is planning a biennial, multi-track conference that will be held at the Urbana campus in 2007, then biennially, alternating with international locations.

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