Digital as pop culture

Τhe workshop aims to explore the relationships between the complex fields of digital humanities and contemporary popular culture.

On bullshit
Digital space inherently overcomes any boundary between valid and invalid knowledge. The internet is filled with bullshit, as a result of the fact that each of us carries the right to communicate his/her thoughts or feels obliged to share his/her knowledge. Thus, however, we have the opportunity to critically think about the characteristics and scope of knowledge, as well as the new capabilities being activated by the noisy invasion of pop in the inaccessible field of expertise.

Web 2.0 and new music communities
Traditionally, online communities were set up around sites related to specific interests. However, the emergence of social networking sites has led to a new phase of online interaction (web 2.0) contributing to the creation of communities organized around people. Recent ethnographic researches show that the ‘traditional’ communities have not been abolished, however. The new online music communities share more in common with like the geographically defined offline communities rather than traditional online communities of interests.

DH and DigHist: pop till you drop!
Digital Humanities (DH) and the digital story (DigHist) have recently invaded actively in the vocabulary and practices through which we understand the past. E-journals, digital libraries-collections-archives, digital memory, internet file crowdsourcing and public participation in the production of digital historical content: new words, new ways to get familiar with the past, study our history and “write history” daily. What are the digital humanities and digital history then? How have spread among us and how popular?

Pop, digital and viral
The concept of popular is inextricably linked to the ‘analog’ worlds that massive technologies had introduced in the past. It is difficult to bring to mind today the worlds of radio, film, pictorial form or TV away from attendant pop-rules and pop-practices. At the turn of the new millennium, the long experience of the twentieth century which is usually described as pop culture, faces new transformations: The virulence (virality) invaded the cyberspace of modern digital technologies, claiming dynamically through the words and performances to redefine the relationship technology, critical mass and culture in the digital age.

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ARTISTS

Vasiliki Lalioti (GR)

Vassiliki Lalioti studied History and Archaeology in the University of Crete and Social Anthropology in the University of Durham – UK. She is currently an assistant professor of anthropology of performance at the Department of Music Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She teaches cultural and music anthropology, contemporary popular music and internet ethnography, ethnographic approaches to performing arts. He research interests and publications include the study of contemporary ancient Greek drama performances and their role in the construction of Greek ethnic identity, the application of performance theory in the study of performing arts (music, theatre), and the study of the role of technology in contemporary popular music.

Manolis Patiniotis (GR)

Manolis Patiniotis is associate professor of History of Science at the department of History and Philosophy of Science, Athens University. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on the historiography of science, the history and historiography of Scientific Revolution and the sciences during the 18 th and 19 th centuries. His research interests include the study of Newtonianism’s impact on various 18 th -century intellectual environments, the appropriation of the 17 th and 18 th -century natural philosophy by the scholars of the European periphery, and the application of information technology in historical inquiry. He participated in the construction of the digital libraries Hellinomnimon and Katoptron and he is a founding member of the international research group STEP (Science and Technology in the European Periphery).

Mitsos Bilalis (GR)

Mitsos Bilalis is an Assistant Professor of Theory and Technology of Historical Information at the University of Thessaly, Department of History, Archaeology, Social Anthropology (Volos, Greece). He studied History at the National and Kapodestrian University of Athens and University of Sofia “Sv. Kliment Ohridski”. He has published on theory of History, contemporary visual culture, social history of information and historical culture in the digital domain.

Despoina Valatsou (GR)

Dr. Despoina Valatsou has studied History and Archaeology with a specialization in History (first degree, 1998) at the University of Athens. She has also studied Digital Media (Master of Arts, 2000) at the University of Sussex (UK). She holds a PhD in Digital History (2014) from the University of Athens. Her PhD thesis is entitled “The emergence of new sites of memory on the Internet”. Her academic interests involve Digital Humanities, Digital History, Crowdsourcing and Public History, Memory Studies. She has worked at the private sector (POLIS Publishers). She has participated in research projects at the Historical Archives of the University of Athens concerning the digitization of archives and the representation of historical archival information in digital environments such as the Pergamos Digital Library. She is currently employed by the Research Centre for the Humanities (RCH). She speaks English and French.