The latest session of the seminar Digital Humanities, the transformations of the relation with knowlegde took place on Wednesday, March 16th 2011 from 2PM to 4PM at the 96 bd Raspail, Paris 6e, in computer room. We welcomed Nadine Wanono, Research engineer at Cemaf.

Presentation of the seminar: http://www.ehess.fr/fr/enseignement/enseignements/2010/ue/894/

Conference’s summary: After exposing the methodological characteristics and the academic context in which visual anthropology takes place, we presented the epistemological and technological evolutions that promote the renewing of expression tools and means in this discipline, around a representation of reality framed by academic criteria.

We dealt with the issue of production, as method and process, from two points of view:

– The control by anthropologists of the possibilities offered by programming language during the production of new representation forms. Also the control of the ways to spread the data collected in the field.

– Which methodology and which tools do the anthropologists and human sciences researchers have when their field of work is mainly on a digital device?

We presented some researches carried out by European teams or laboratories that actively work in these fields since many years in order to present and assess the interactions that come from these collaborations.

Nadine Wanono’s biography : Research engineer at Cemaf, she directed and produced several ethnographic movies during her research activities in Mali. Within her work around new representation modalities offered by programming language, she co-organized a seminar titled Singularity and Technologies from 2005 to 2008 in order to promote the interdisciplinary dialogue between researchers in human sciences and computer scientists.

She also launched a vulgarization project called Cultures Jeunes, sponsored by the Mairie de Paris and the CNRS, where about ten teenagers where introduced to programing in collaboration with a digital artist. Within the activities of VANEASA, she is in charge of the edition of the Journal of Visual Anthropology, soon hosted by Revues.org. A first meeting dedicated to « Singular Storytelling » will be organized at the Cube, in collaboration with the Comity of Ethnographic Movie, in November 2011.