ModLab @ #HASTAC2016

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Five individuals sit on the floor with electronic components around them. The white woman in the middle is laying down and speaking to the rest.

Last week, a group of researchers from ModLab attended the HASTAC conference. This year’s conference was hosted by Arizona State University, with support from GitHub Education.

A selfie of two white masculine individuals. The person on the left has a beard, and the person on the right is wearing glasses and a cowboy hat. They are making serious travel faces.
Sawyer Kemp (L), a graduate student researcher on Play the Knave, and Amanda Phillips, the ModLab postdoc, prepare to board their flight in Sacramento.

A number of ModLab researchers made individual presentations at the event. Marit MacArthur, our visiting ACLS Digital Innovations Fellow, presented her work on adapting the ARLO voice analysis software for humanities purposes. This is part of her ongoing project of quantifying vocal performance in order to better understand different genres of speech and performance.

Ksenia Fedorova gave a presentation on “The Eliza Effect and Epistemic Fractures in Mixed Reality Interfaces with A.I. Agents,” which looked at A.I. agents in contemporary new media and augmented reality art.

A blonde woman wearing black stands to the right of a slide that reads "The Eliza Effect and Epistemic Fractures in Mixed Reality Interfaces with A.I. Agents," Ksenia Fedorova University of California Davis
Ksenia Fedorova at giving her talk at HASTAC 2016

Sawyer Kemp, a member of the Play the Knave Team, gave a talk about and a demo of the game on a panel about Digital Renaissance and Early Modern Studies.

In addition to these individual papers, ModLab members participated in the Wearable Research Charrette, which brought together scholars from different institutions who study or design wearable devices. The charrette was held in the Arts, Media, and Engineering iStage at ASU. ModLab’s Critical Wearable Computing group helped facilitate this workshop with Professors Jacqueline Wernimont and Jessica Rajko of HS Collab. Participants produced new project ideas and plans for a future demonstration of wearables at next year’s HASTAC.

Five individuals sit on the floor with electronic components around them. The white woman in the middle is laying down and speaking to the rest.
From left to right, Ksenia Fedorova, Jacqueline Wernimont, Jessica Rajko, Fiona Barnett, and Kristopher Fallon participate in the Wearable Research Charrette.

Our thanks to Michael Simeone, Jacqueline Wernimont, the HASTAC Steering Committee, and the other organizers at ASU who made this event possible!