Page 67 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

erroneous or ambiguous, or because data pro- cessing (automatic or otherwise) is determined by our culture and, therefore, has ideological biases. Take the case of CollateX, a tool designed to compare texts with slight variations and align the parts of the texts that are di erent. Among other assumptions of the algorithm, it should be stressed that for CollateX it is not relevant to distinguish between a transposition or changeof place of a portion of text (for example, ina poem, a stanza that appears displaced or ina di erent place) and a substitution (that is, elimination of a stanza from one place and the addition of the same lines in another place) (Van Zundert, in press). Here the question is not to establish whether CollateX’s algorithm is correct. Researchers may or may not agree, but the key lies in knowing about this choice, this preference, and being aware that it conditions results and interpretations.Digital models are thus icons that help us think and learn more about the original, the analogue object and the process of modelling is in uenced by contextual elements.Indeed, a few authors argue that theories and models are even more important in the era of Big Data because it is necessary to explain and understand the phenomena analysed through abstractions. In the Digital Humanities the concept of “model” is very widespread because it helps explain the core of digitisation work. Models are taken as tools, schemes or designs used in a speci c context for particular purposes that are sometimes practical (to make a group of texts available online), but are often, especially in the academic eld, speculative (to understand the structure of texts). More than the nished product, what matters in the Digital Humanities is the creative process that takes place when a phenomenon is “modelled”, because the aim is to gain new knowledge, new meanings, by generat- ing an external object that represents it.The connection between the external object (for example, an epigraphic inscription) and the representation (a 3D reconstruction that allows the tombstone to be viewed from various angles and in greater detail) is based on similarity; it is therefore important to place re ection on “modelling” in context of the tradition of semiot- ics and the science of signs (Ciula and Eder, 2016). Naturally there are di erent degrees of similarity; the relationship can range from total likeness to metaphor, including a certain similar- ity between the properties of the object repre- sented and the digital representation.3D modelled epigraphic inscription. © Epigraphia 3D http://www.epigraphia3d.es/Digital models are thus icons that help us think and learn more about the original, the analogue object. This type of thought has been described as “abduction”, because it stands somewhere between induction and deduction and is based on the intuition and experience of the person who “models” (Bryant and Raja, 2014). In other words, the process of modelling is in uenced by contextual elements such as starting hypotheses, theoretical assumptions, scienti c methods, formats and technologies.AC/E DIGITAL CULTURE ANNUAL REPORT 201767Smart culture. Analysis of digital trends