How can data science and the arts and humanities learn from one another?

The growing digitization of the cultural record and the explosion of new data generation, collection, and analysis practices create a new state of cultured data: culture as data, and data as a driver of culture. Our symposium examines this emerging condition, considering both how analytic techniques enable new understandings of culture, and how the proliferation of data in everyday life changes how culture is produced, distributed, and influenced. In these panels, we wrestle with new modes of scholarship and cultural production enabled by data-forward analysis methods, and consider perspectives from the arts and humanities for data science practice. What can these disciplines teach one another about their possibilities and limits towards realizing a more just, informed, and culturally-rich future?

Sponsored by the Halicioglu Data Science Institute, The Library at UC San Diego, the Division of Arts and Humanities, as well as local partners, this event aims to contribute to interdisciplinary exchange defining the nascent field of Data Science. 

Over the two day symposium we will host four panels, each focused on one intersection of data science and the arts and humanities. Each panel will have four speakers drawn from academia, industry, and the arts. The first day will be held at CalIT2 on campus with a related arts exhibition. The second day will be hosted in Bread & Salt, a popular arts warehouse in Barrio Logan, concluding with evening performances. 

To extend the reach of symposium programming we will offer a series of public workshops on and off campus in the weeks surrounding the event. These afternoon sessions will unpack concepts from the panels through hands-on activities using the relevant data science tools. These workshops will be hosted through partnering entities (The Library at UCSD, Envision Makerspace, etc.), and will be open to students, faculty, and the general public. 

The hashtag for the symposium is #CulturedData.