Accepted as a poster for the 5th IEEE conference on e-Science 2009, University of Oxford. By Henriette Roued-Cunliffe.

Poster for the Interface 2009, the 1st Internationan Symposium for Humanities and Technology, 9th-1-th July 2009, University of Southampton, UK. By Henriette Roued-Cunliffe.  

Title: "A puzzling letter form, or how ways-of-seeing and ways-of-looking differ". Abstract: This talk will present how, in the context of building an Interpretation Support System for the transcription and interpretation of ancient and damaged documents, we are working on developing strategies to port perception and interpretation into the Digital world. Based on a specific example, I will briefly present our digitization process, which aims to mirror the experts’ real-world strategy, and the image processing algorithms we developed to enhance the images. I will then elaborate further on the chain of reasoning that progressively unravels when experts set to discover meaning to a text-bearing artefact. Building on previous work that identified 10 levels of reading in the transcription process, I will present some of the strategies that the experts adopt, and how the jumps between reading levels occur. Throughout, examples will be given of the continuous tension and search for balance between ways-of-seeing and ways-of-looking, between intentionality and serendipity, between what the text-bearing object allows and what it invites; all in an effort to make explicit, some of the key implicit mechanisms that cause perception and interpretation to be so tightly intertwined. By S. M. Tarte

Abstract: Linking up two projects that are dedicated to facilitate the work of documentary scholars, this paper presents image processing algorithms tailored to the study of ancient documents and how they have been made available to the users through a portal that calls upon a web-service exploiting grid computational power. To that end, image processing algorithms were wrapped to fit into the National Grid Service (NGS) Uniform Execution Environment; the data model of an existing Virtual Research Environment (VRE-SDM) was extended; JSR-168 compliant portlets were developed to facilitate secure and seamless distributed image analysis; and a GridSAM interface between the portal and the NGS-installed algorithms was developed. The outcomes of the project include:  a web-based application, a proof of concept for the usability of the VRE-SDM platform, an opportunity for wider dissemination for the eSAD algorithms, and a proof of feasibility for the use of the NGS for Humanities applications.[paper accepted for presentation at the 5th IEEE e-Science conference 2009] by Tarte, S. M.; Wallom, D.;  Hu, P.; Tang, K. and Ma, T.

The abstract for the Digital Humanities Conference in June 2009. Has been accepted for the conference. By Roued Olsen, H.; Tarte, S. M.; Terras, M.; Brady, J. M.; Bowman, A. K.