An Introduction to Computer Vision and Multimodal Learning for the Digital Humanities
Digital Humanities and Sensory Heritage (DHSH) - Seminar Series
An Introduction to Computer Vision and Multimodal Learning for the Digital Humanities
Digital Humanities and Sensory Heritage (DHSH) - Seminar Series
Speaker: Dr Giles Bergel, University of Oxford
Registration required (limited spaces for our ‘Methods Workshop Series).
Computer vision is one of the leading areas of AI, and has made significant progress in recent years. Computers can now generate images from text prompts, detect objects in images, isolate audio and visual streams in video, and match or classify the content of images of all kinds. Increasingly, computer vision is an element of multimodal learning, in which information belonging to multiple human senses is combined. This presentation and workshop will outline the state of the art in the field, with particular reference to humanities applications. Participants will have the opportunity to try hands-on demos based on current research collaborations with Oxford’s Visual Geometry Group; to learn for themselves what can be done with current technology; and to discuss such critical and ethical issues as privacy, bias and the limits and capabilities of machine understanding as a whole.
Methods Workshop Series requirements: This workshop is aimed at beginners. It is useful if participants have basic computer skills, but nothing more is required! If you wish to participate, do please bring along your device (laptop/tablet).
Biography:
Giles Bergel is Senior Researcher in Digital Humanities in the Department of Engineering Science. His personal research is primarily in the history of books and printing, while he also manages a humanities research engagement programme in Visual AI on behalf of Oxford’s Visual Geometry Group, a leading reseach group in computer vision and machine learning. He has particular interests in the digitisation of cheap printed multimedia formats such as broadside ballads and illustrated chapbooks, and in the study of their images, tunes, texts and audiences. He oversaw the development of Bodleian Ballads Online, worked at the English Broadside Ballad Archive, and has an ongoing project to digitise The Wandering Jew’s Chronicle. He recently served as the inagural National Librarian of Scotland’s Fellow in Digital Scholarship, working on a project on chapbooks and is the co-editor of Stationers’ Register Online. He regularly teaches at the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School and London Rare Books School and in the Department of Information Studies in University College London.
Find out more about the Digital Humanities and Sensory Heritage Network here.
