ASA Funds Workshop on Digital Image Analysis

The American Society for Aesthetics Board of Trustees has approved a grant of $4,250 for "Making WAIVS! A workshop introducing digital image analysis tools." The workshop will be held May 19, 2017, at the Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg State University, Massachusetts. The ASA  project is directed by William P. Seeley (Lecturer in Philosophy, University of New Hampshire, and Lecturer in Humanities, Bates College).

This interdisciplinary workshop is partially sponsored by a $40,000 Digital Humanities Startup Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The NEH grant was awarded in April 2016 to Catherine A. Buell (Mathematics, Fitchburg State University), William P. Seeley, and Rick J. Sethi (Mathematics, Fitchburg State University).

The primary goal of the May 19 workshop is to introduce philosophers, art historians, art educators, and museum administrators to the potential that digital image analysis tools might hold for their practices. "Visual stylometry" is a new field that lies at the confluence of cognitive science, computer science, and the digital humanities. The software used in this project is valled WAIVS for Workflows for the Analysis of Images in Visual Stylometry.

The workshop organizers will be recruiting up to 45 participants from New England and New York, with a focus on participants from philosophy, art history, and museum education and administration. Two travel grants will be available to local-area graduate students in philosophy.

Speakers at the May workshop include (in addition to the NEH and ASA project organizers) Mary Tinti (Associate Curator, Fitchburg Museum of Art), Daniel J. Graham (Psychology of Art, Hobart & William Smith College), Yolanda Gil (Computer Science, University of Southern California), and Charlene Villasenor Black (Art History, UCLA).

For more information, please contact William Seeley at wseeley@bates.edu

For the complete list of grants funded by ASA 2011-2016: click here.