Big Data in the Arts and Humanities: Theory and Practice

As digital technologies occupy a more central role in working and everyday human life, individual and social realities are increasingly constructed and communicated through digital objects, which are progressively replacing and representing physical objects. They are even shaping new forms of virtual reality. This growing digital transformation coupled with technological evolution and the development of computer computation is shaping a cyber society whose working mechanisms are grounded upon the production, deployment, and exploitation of big data. In the arts and humanities, however, the notion of big data is still in its embryonic stage, and only in the last few years, have arts and cultural organizations and institutions, artists, and humanists started to investigate, explore, and experiment with the deployment and exploitation of big data as well as understand the possible forms of collaborations based on it.

Big Data in the Arts and Humanities: Theory and Practice

explores the meaning, properties, and applications of big data. This book examines therelevance of big data to the arts and humanities, digital humanities, and management of big data with and for the arts and humanities. It explores the reasons and opportunities for the arts and humanities to embrace the big data revolution. The book also delineates managerial implications to successfully shape a mutually beneficial partnership between the arts and humanities and the big data- and computational digital-based sciences.

Big data and arts and humanities can be likened to the rational and emotional aspects of the human mind. This book attempts to integrate these two aspects of human thought to advance decision-making and to enhance the expression of the best of human life.

Table of Contents

Section I : Understanding Big Data in Arts and Humanities
Chapter 1: Literature Review on Big Data: What Do We Know So Far?
Chapter 2: Toward a Data-Driven World: Challenges and Opportunities in Arts and Humanities
Chapter 3: “Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width”: Big Data for Quality and Performance Evaluation in the Arts and Cultural Sector and the Case of “Culture Metrics”
Chapter 4: Toward “Big Data” in Museum Provenance
Chapter 5: From Big Data to Thick Data: Theory and Practice

Section II : Digital Humanities
Chapter 6: Big Data and the Coming Historical Revolution: From Black Boxes to Models
Chapter 7: Use of Big Data in Historical Research
Chapter 8: The Study of Networked Content: Five Considerations for Digital Research in the Humanities
Chapter 9: The English Gothic Novel: Theories and Praxis of Computer-Based Macroanalysis in Literary Studies

Section III : Managing Big Data with and for Arts and Humanities
Chapter 10: Toward a Data Culture in the Cultural and Creative Industries
Chapter 11: Arts Council England: Using Big Data to Understand the Quality of Arts and Cultural Work
Chapter 12: Visualization of Scientific Image Data as Art Data
Chapter 13: Museums, Archives, and Universities—Structuring Future Connections with Big Data
Chapter 14: Mobile Technology to Contribute Operatively to the Safeguard of Cultural Heritage
Chapter 15: Artists, Data, and Agency in Smart Cities