Page 19 - University of Pretoria RESEARCH REVIEW 2018
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Voices from the South Amanda du Preez, School of the Arts: Visual Arts
What does it mean to be human in an age of digital technologies? The question is by no means new, but by viewing the problem through the prism of popular self- depictions (selfies) and Digital Humanities, we create opportunities for powerful critical engagement.
all its different guises dominates the media and social spheres – and our imaginations. The research question posed throughout the volume is: what do images (or selfies more particularly) want? This indicates that images are imbued with a particular agency. Images address us, not only in the sense of interpellation but also in a radical ontological sense. Something comes forward to meet us when we engage with images.
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This is the project undertaken
in Voices from the South: Digital Arts and Humanities (AOSIS, 2018), edited by Professor Amanda du Preez in the Department of Visual Studies. As such, it provides a timely and innovative engagement with the field of Digital Humanities on the African continent and South Africa in particular.
The study probes human experience in the network society by flagging two trends within digital self-expression, namely democratisation and datafication. As many scholars have noted, the possibilities for spreading democracy on social media networks are abundant. Of increasing concern, however, is the looming presence of control through datafication (Big Data) and the threats to human freedom this may pose. Voices from the South proposes that human interactions with digital technologies manifest in unpredictable, and yet distinct, ways that may dramatically challenge our notions of what it means to be human.
In this study, Digital Humanities are positioned as an important means of engaging with the pervasive digital culture of the 21st century from an humanities perspective. It argues that the humanities and the arts, in particular, have an essential role to
play in unlocking the broader human significance of scientific, technological and data-driven research.
Much of the critical engagement with Digital Humanities undertaken in
this study centres on the notion of thinking through images. The image in
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