• Skip to Content
  • Skip to Main Navigation
  • Skip to Search

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington IU Bloomington

Open Search
  • Mission + People
    • 2020-2023 Strategic Plan
    • 2020 Three Year Review
    • Alumni
    • Staff
    • Partners
    • Governance
    • Consulting Support
  • Degrees + Training
    • Choosing a Digital Methodology
    • Resources
      • Asynchronous Workshops
        • Asynchronous Methods Workshop
        • Digital Arts and Humanities Pedagogy
        • Research in Digital Arts and Humanities
    • DAH Certificate and Minor
    • Fall 2022 Course Offerings
  • Funding + Project Support
    • Scholarships
    • Fellowships
    • IDAH Summer Incubator
      • 2018 IDAH Summer Incubator
      • 2019 IDAH Summer Incubator
      • 2021 IDAH Summer Incubator
      • 2022 IDAH Summer Incubator
  • Fellows + Scholars
    • #WHYDAH: Featured Projects
    • Former Faculty Fellows
    • Former HASTAC Scholars
  • News + Events
    • Symposia
      • Spring Symposium 2022
      • Spring Symposium 2021
      • Spring Symposium 2020
      • Spring Symposium 2019
      • Spring Symposium 2018
      • Vietnam War / American War Stories
    • Events Archive
      • 2021-2022
      • 2020-2021
      • 2019-2020
      • 2018-2019
      • 2017-2018
      • 2015 + Previous
      • GIS Day 2019
      • Reading Group
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • FAQ
  • Consultations
  • Contact

Institute for
Digital Arts & Humanities
A research center of the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, Indiana University Bloomington

  • Home
  • Mission + People
    • 2020-2023 Strategic Plan
    • 2020 Three Year Review
    • Alumni
    • Staff
    • Partners
    • Governance
    • Consulting Support
  • Degrees + Training
    • Choosing a Digital Methodology
    • Resources
    • DAH Certificate and Minor
    • Fall 2022 Course Offerings
  • Funding + Project Support
    • Scholarships
    • Fellowships
    • IDAH Summer Incubator
  • Fellows + Scholars
    • #WHYDAH: Featured Projects
    • Former Faculty Fellows
    • Former HASTAC Scholars
  • News + Events
    • Symposia
    • Events Archive
  • Search
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • FAQ
  • Consultations
  • Contact
  • Home
  • News + Events
  • Events
  • 2016-2017
  • The Phallogocentrism of DH Text Mining and the Aporia of Sound

The Phallogocentrism of DH Text Mining and the Aporia of Sound, by Dr. Tanya Clement (UT Austin)

Thursday, March 23, 2017

4:00 PM – 6:00 PM

Social Science Research Commons (Woodburn 200)

The practice of text mining in digital humanities is phallogocentric. Text mining, a particular kind of data mining in which predictive methods are deployed for pattern discovery in texts is primarily focused on pre-assumed meanings of The Word. In order to determine whether or not the machine has found patterns in text mining, we begin with a “ground truth” or labels that signify the presence of meaning. This work typically presupposes a binary logic between lack and excess (Derrida, Dissemination, 1981). There is meaning in the results or there is not. Sound, in contrast, is aporetic. To mine sound is to understand that ground truth is always indeterminate. Humanists have few opportunities to use advanced technologies for analyzing sound archives, however. This talk describes the HiPSTAS (High Performance Sound Technologies for Access and Scholarship) Project, which is developing a research environment for humanists that uses machine learning and visualization to automate processes for analyzing sound collections. HiPSTAS engages digital literacy head on in order to invite humanists into concerns about machine learning and sound studies. Hearing sound as digital audio means choosing filter banks, sampling rates, and compression scenarios that mimic the human ear.

Unless humanists know more about digital audio analysis, how can we ask, whose ear we are modeling in analysis? What is audible, to whom? Without knowing about playback parameters, how can we ask, what signal is noise? What signal is meaningful? To whom? Clement concludes with a brief discussion about some observations on the efficacy of using machine learning to facilitate generating data about spoken-word sound collections in the humanities.

Clement is Assistant Professor in the School of Information at UT Austin. She studies the dynamic interplay of digital information systems and scholarly research in the humanities.

  • Symposia
  • Events Archive

Institute for Digital Arts & Humanities A research center of the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, Indiana University Bloomington social media channels

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • YouTube

Indiana University

Accessibility | Privacy Notice | Copyright © 2022 The Trustees of Indiana University