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Join us for a discussion on dashboards, interfaces, formats and data politics with Nate Tkacz (Warwick) and Caroline Bassett (Cambridge).

About this Event

This event will feature a talk by Nate Tkacz (University of Warwick) titled On data and formatting: Or, how to think about dashboards, a talk from Caroline Bassett (University of Cambridge) titled Driversity: What the Dashboard promises?, followed by discussion.

On data and formatting: Or, how to think about dashboards

Nate Tkacz (University of Warwick)

Data are tricky stuff. They can be the content of a medium, or a medium in their own right. They can be configured in any number of ways -- through numbers, code, colour, line, even sound -- while still retaining their status as data. There is a sense that data are ontologically fluid. In this presentation, I reflect on how I have approached data through the notion of the format and formatting. I present the format as a way to deal with some of the challenges of understanding data's mediations. I use the format of the dashboard as the basis of the inquiry.

Dr Nathaniel Tkacz is a Reader in Digital Media and Culture at The University of Warwick and currently visiting researcher at the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London. His work investigates the political, cultural and methodological dimensions of digital media. This has led to studies of political openness in online communities, practices of ‘mass collaboration’, experimental economic platforms, software forking, trolling, apps, banking and payment services, interfaces, user experience design, digital public services, and environmental situation rooms, among other things. With Geert Lovink, he co-founded the Critical Point of View network for Wikipedia research as well as the MoneyLab research network, and he recently joined the App Studies Initiative. Tkacz is author or editor of a number of books, including Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness (University of Chicago Press, 2015). He is currently working on a book on dashboard interfaces.

Driversity: What the Dashboard promises?

Caroline Bassett (University of Cambridge)

Dr Caroline Bassett is Professor in Digital Humanities at the University of Cambridge where she is currently leading Cambridge Digital Humanities. She was formerly Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Sussex, as well as Director of the Sussex Humanities Lab. Her research is centred on investigating and critically analysing the relationship between communication technologies, cultures and societies. Professor Bassett’s extensive publications include work on digital transformation, mobile and pervasive media, gender and technology, medium theory, digital humanities, science fiction, imagination and innovation, and sound and silence. Her current research is exploring anti-computing. Her latest book ‘Furious: Technological Feminism and Digital Futures’, co-authored with Sarah Kember and Kate O’Riordan, will be out this Autumn.

 

This event is part of an ongoing seminar series on "critical inquiry with and about the digital" hosted by the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London. If you tweet about the event you can use the #kingsdh hashtag or mention @kingsdh. If you'd like to get notifications of future events you can sign up to this mailing list.

 

Event details

Safra Lecture Theatre
Strand Campus
Strand, London, WC2R 2LS