As a result of OCR technology, most digital humanities research has been focussed on text. However, the recent development of powerful computer vision techniques (convolutional neural networks) enables researchers to explore the visual side of the digital turn. In the lecture Thomas Smits (Radboud University) and Melvin Wevers (Digital Humanities Lab, KNAW Humanities Cluster), who started using computer vision techniques during a Researcher-in-Residence stay at the National Library of the Netherlands, will explore the use of computer vision techniques to study cultural-historical phenomena such as the circulation of illustrations in nineteenth-century newspapers. They explain the basics of computer vision techniques. How do they work? And how can researchers in the humanities apply them to explore and analyse large numbers of images? The workshop, using jupyter notebooks, familiarises participants with the basic code needed to use the techniques and apply them to historical material. For the workshop, a recent laptop (no tablets) is required. Some knowledge of the command line and Python will help.
The event, which is sponsored by the WeChangEd Research Group takes place on Wednesday, 10 October 2018, from 1.00-5.00pm in the large meeting room on the third floor of the Blandijn. For further details, please contact, Julie Birkholz. Please be aware that places are limited.
