School of Humanities and Social Sciences

School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Literary and Cultural Studies Cluster
Welcome to The School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University
As the current pace of technological change is a much discussed feature of contemporary life, this conference on Contemporary Innovations:
The Arts, Technology and Culture is interested in the cultural and aesthetic effects of this phenomenon. This two-day conference is concerned
with the various ways in which technological advancements continue to influence innovations in Art and Culture (including literature, drama,
art, film, translation, digital literacy, cultural heritage, among others). Participants will be asked to consider the impact these changes have had
on how science and technology are represented in the arts - their morphological effects on the arts themselves (hyper-narratives, e-novels,
technodrama, multimedia, etc.) - and the changing shape of what constitutes “literacy” in a digital age. With technological innovations also
continuing to reshape market consumption – as companies such as Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu offer new ways of repackaging and distributing
literature, film, and music (among other artistic endeavors) – we believe that the full impact of these changes on art and culture have yet to be
fully explored, and that a workshop such as this one will result in a better understanding of these issues.
We are pleased that the conference has attracted interdisciplinary papers from a wide range of expertise from numerous divisions and schools
across Nanyang Technological University, including Chinese, English, Sociology, WKW School of Communication, The School of Art, Design and
Media, The School of Computer Engineering, as well as Singapore peer institutions including The National Institute of Education and the
National University of Singapore. We also have Keynote speakers and panel presentations from The United States, England, Germany, Hong
Kong, and Taiwan. The wide range of topics include the intersection between Technology and numerous other fields, including Music, Drama,
Literature, Translation, Cultural Heritage, New Media Narratives, Digital Literacy, and Politics.
We look forward to a spirited and enlightening discussion over the next couple days!
Thanks for coming!
Sincerely,
The Organizing Committee
Literary and Cultural Studies Cluster,
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Including
Kwan Sze Pui Uganda
Daniel Jernigan
Wong Chee Meng
Asiya Bulatova
Program:
Day 1: 19 March 2015, Thursday
11:00-11:30
11:30-12:45
Keynote Speech I
12:45-14:00
14:00-15:00
Concurrent Panel
A
New Media
Narratives
Concurrent Panel
B
Genre & Media
15:00-15:30
15:30-17:00
Digital Literacy
Concurrent Panel
C
Science Fiction
Concurrent Panel
D
Venue
Welcome Reception (Coffee and Tea)
Registration
Roberto SIMANOWSKI,
“The Politics and Aesthetics of Transparency. Data love as obsession and obstacle in
contemporary culture and art”
Moderator: WONG Chee Meng
Lunch
Afternoon Sessions
Elke REINHUBER,
“Multithreaded Tales: Reconsidering Narrative Structures in a Post-Linear Era”
TIAN Xiaoli,
“Fandom and Coercive Empowerment: The Commissioned Production of Chinese Online
Literature”
Moderator: Uganda KWAN
Hanh-Quyen NGUYEN,
“iJoyce and the Ontology of the Text”
2. RODRIGUES Crispin Cyril-Wardley,
“The MP3 Format and the Fall of the Concept Album”
Moderator: Daniel JERNIGAN
Tea Break
Afternoon Sessions
Patrick WILLIAMS,
“With the Screen, Through the Screen: Literacy and Experience in Digital Game
Environments”
Csilla WENINGER / Katy KAN,
“Literacy in the Digital Age: Conflicts and Contentions”
Sher Li ONG,
“Face On, Face Off: Alternative Depictions of Humanity and Monstrosity in Silent Hill 2”
Moderator: Chen Song-chuan
WONG Chee Meng,
“Chinese Science Fiction Movies: An Impoverished Genre”
BALETE Candice Lauren Garcia,
“Playing with Permutations and Forking Paths: The Multiple Possibilities of Interactive
Fiction in Hakuoki: Shinsengumi Kitan"
TEO Kok Keong [Presentation in Chinese],
“旅者✕迷圖：張國強科幻小說”
HSS UG
BB
HSS UG
BB
MR 6
HSS UG
BB
MR 6
Moderator: MASUTANI Satoshi
17:00-18:30
18:30-20:00
20:00-21:00
Keynote Speech II
Animation
Premiers
21:00-21:30
Q&A with the
Artists
21:30-20:30
HSS to NEC
Dinner at Fusion
Free Time
[Optional Event: ADM ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL]
SEAH Hock Soon,
“Computing, Arts and Culture Collaboration in Animation”
Moderator: Asiya BULATOVA
ADM
Daniel JERNIGAN and Hannes MARTIN-RALL,
“The Making of ‘Si Lunchai’ (animation)”
ADM
Moderator: Asiya BULATOVA
Wine Reception
ADM
Day 2: 20 March,
2015
9:30-10:00
10:00-11:15
Keynote Speech III
Venue
Morning Reception (Coffee and Tea)
CHENG Wen-huei [Presentation in Chinese],
“觀念‧事件‧行動：中國近現代觀念形成與演變的數位人文研究”
HSS UG
BB
Moderator: Uganda KWAN
11:15-12:45
Morning Sessions
Andrea NANETTI,
“The Silence of Heritage in Contemporary Innovations”
Michael J.K. WALSH,
Cultural Heritage “A Trans-disciplinary Approach to Protecting Cultural Heritage in an Unrecognised State: The
Armenian Church of Famagusta”
Concurrent Panel E
Gül İNANÇ,
“Teaching the Heritage of ‘Others’ and the Controversy Behind”
oderator: Daniel JERNIGAN
Josh LAM,
“Conjuring the “Thing”: Technology and Its Others”
Asiya BULATOVA,
Politics
“Reproduction Technologies, Early-Soviet Sexual Politics and [Self -] Censorship in Viktor
Concurrent Panel F Shklovsky’s Experimental Prose”
Brian BERGEN-AURAND,
“Regarding Assistive and Adaptive Technologies: On Autonomy, Heteronomy, and Becoming
Awkward”
Moderator: CUI Feng
12:45-13:45
Lunch
13:45-15:15
Afternoon Sessions
YUNG Sai Shing [Presentation in Chinese],
“广东音乐；唱片音乐；跳舞音乐 吕文成的粤乐事业”
LIEW Kai Khiun,
Sound & Vision
Concurrent Panel “Digital “Red Dusts”: Stereoscopic Phantasmagoria and the Holographic Immortalization of
Departed Celebrities in Transnational Chinese POP”
G
Alvin TAN,
“Absence and Presence: What Digital Makes Possible”
New “Seven Arts”
Concurrent Panel
H
Moderator: Alice CHAN
Hallam STEVENS,
“Science, Public Art, and the Development of Singapore’s Knowledge Economy”
Sam HAN,
“Between Democracy and Civility: Dialogue, Media and the “new” Cultural Sociology”
BB
MR 1
HSS UG
BB
MR 1
Moderator: LIN Jingxia
15:15-15:45
15:45-17:00
Keynote Speech IV
17:00-18:15
19:00-21:00
Tea Break
Ron SCHLEIFER,
“The Origins of Corporate Influences on the Arts: Technological Innovations, Economic
Instruments, and the Shapes of Aesthetic Experience”
Moderator: Daniel JERNIGAN
Transport
Conference Dinner at Blue Bali
Conference Venue
HSS
HSS Undergraduate Office
UG
BB
HSS
Black-box Creative Studio
MR 1 HSS Meeting Room 1
MR 6 HSS Meeting Room 6
ADM ADM Auditorium
HSS-01-01 (1/F)
HSS-B2-01 (Basement 2)
HSS-03-65 (3/F; Room 65)
HSS-04-91 (4/F; Room 91)
School of Art, Design and Media
Moderators from HSS
Day 1 (19 March 2015, Thursday)
Dr CHEN
Assistant Professor, History Program, HSS
Songchuan
Dr
Visiting Professor, Chinese Division, HSS
MASUTANI
HSS UG
BB
Satoshi
Day 2 (20 March 2015, Friday)
Dr CUI
Lecturer, Chinese Division, HSS
Feng
Dr Alice
Assistant Professor, Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies
Chan
Dr LIN
Assistant Professor, Chinese Division, HSS
Jingxia
Full details on speaker, presentation title and abstract
[Information is listed in accordance with the program)
Day 1 (19 March 2015, Thursday)
Keynote Speech I
The Politics and Aesthetics of Transparency. Data love as obsession and obstacle in contemporary culture
and art
Prof. Roberto
SIMANOWSKI
Professor of Media
Studies and Digital
Humanities,
City University of
Hong Kong;
Data love is the euphemistic alternative to the central concept of information society: Big Data mining—the
computerized analysis of great amounts of data to reveal regularities and correlations. Far beyond the
obsession of intelligence agencies and governing authorities, an infatuation with numbers has struck the
economy, the sciences and much of the population. Without reducing the debate on privacy to the enemylogic ‘citizen vs. state’ the talk regards data love as an expression of a fundamental shift in society—a ‘quiet’
revolution subject to the drives of technological potentials, carried out by software developers and
implemented by way of algorithms.
The talk starts from the assumption that measuring is a fundamental symptom of modernity and that the
“full take” the intelligence agencies but also business, management and research are aiming at is no
contradiction to modern society but part of its contradictoriness. Control-society and the “culture of control”
are the consequence of the process of modernization that, if nothing else, applies all available technologies
to improve evermore-effective methods of organization and control of social structures and processes.
Editor of the
The talk describes the cultural side effects of such practices as social media mining, self-tracking, predictive
dichtung-digital.org analytics, and algorithmic regulation. It pinpoints and expands on the changes that this infatuation with
numbers brings to the human situation and explores the entanglement of all those who— be it out of
stinginess, convenience, ignorance, narcissism or passion—contribute to the amassing of evermore data
about their lives, eventually leading to their statistical evaluation and profiling.
The talk ends with a reflection on the options to address this situation on the levels of education and art.
Laying out a framework of media literacy to be achieved within pedagogical environments and public
debates, I argue for the central role of art in the development and acquisition of media understanding. I
finally draw on two practical examples to illustrate how art can explore the cultural implications of
technological advancement.
Concurrent Panel
New Media Narratives
A
Dr. Elke E.
REINHUBER
Multithreaded tales: Reconsidering Narrative Structures in a Post-Linear Era
Based on her recent research on Counterfactuals in Media Arts, Elke Reinhuber explores how narrative
Assistant Professor, structures might be fragmented and dissected, involving a mobile spectatorship. Although the narrative
conventions allow a plethora of stylistic storytelling devices, with the application of new media (interactivity,
School of Art,
Design and Media 3D, split-screen, multi-screen, recombination) and mobile devices (e.g. Augmented Reality), new possibilities
open up to convey different layers of information on a rational or emotional level to the audience.
Nanyang
Technological
University
Fandom and Coercive Empowerment: The Commissioned Production of Chinese Online Literature (Coauthored: Xiaoli Tian and Michael Adorjan)
Compared to that in Western regions, online literature in China differs in terms of its unique genres and
content, as well as the large numbers of online writers, works, and readers. Drawing on four years of online
observation and content analysis, we examine the phenomenon of amateur writers producing online fictions
Assistant Professor,
in China. Enabled by the Chinese literary websites, readers act like sponsors who provide emotional and
Department of
financial incentives for writers to produce online fictions by commenting, voting, and sending money.
Sociology,
Readers become actively involved not just because of the content of the stories, but because they form
The University of
strong commitments to stories and their writers, and gain reciprocity and a sense of self-determination
Hong Kong
during the interactional process. We argue that while this mode of cultural production sustains both the
production and consumption of online literature, it simultaneously constrains the genre and quality of the
work produced. We contribute to online community studies by analyzing how website settings structure the
strategies available to participants and subsequent consequences, as well as how the Chinese historical and
cultural contexts impact the dynamics in the online community
Concurrent Panel B Literature
Dr. Xiaoli TIAN
Hanh-Quyen
Nguyen
PhD Student,
iJoyce and the Ontology of the Text
In our turbulent information revolution, serious literature has been transformed by technology with
innovative platforms in which adept multimedia tools enable a new reading experience. Now, soon after
most of James Joyce’s works entered the public domain in 2012, things are about to change drastically. The
Division of English,
School of
Humanities and
Social Sciences,
Nanyang
Technological
University
RODRIGUES
Crispin CyrilWardley
MA Student,
Division of English,
School of
Humanities and
Social Sciences,
Nanyang
Technological
University
Concurrent Panel C
Dr. Patrick
WILLIAMS
Associate
Professor,
Division of
Sociology,
School of
Humanities and
Social Sciences,
Nanyang
Technological
University
Dr. Csilla
WENINGER
Joyce Industry has after years of legal wrangling which sank major hypermedia projects, with a loss of
hundreds of thousands of dollars each, produced three legal mobile apps with visually captivating interfaces.
They are Digital Dubliners, The Dead App, and the Ulysses App. These applications combine Joyce's texts with
criticism, images, and music. Not only are they easily downloadable from the internet, but two of three are
free of charge. Moreover, each unabridged book is accessed via a touchscreen for mobile handsets and
tablets, enabling hundreds of hyperlinks, and with a couple taps offer annotations to the notoriously
enigmatic works of Joyce.
However, along with the popularity and advantages of iProducts, many questions emerge and await study.
Do the Joyce Apps with their interactive interfaces stimulate us to more intense, closer reading, thus
enhancing aesthetic perception as well as knowledge transmission? Or are these supposedly literary apps
actually consumption-oriented products that provide glib explanations that narrow down the reader’s
interpretation of Joyce? Furthermore, do these digital Joycean offerings liberate Joyce’s works or encumber
them?
In this paper I will examine these three digital Joyce products from unrelated teams who have tackled
Dubliners and Ulysses. (The Dead is by far the longest story in Dubliners). I will examine the intertextuality of
Joyce’s works, which inherently cries out for illustrations with maps, images, music, and allusions. I will also
highlight how multimedia versions of Joyce's works affect the reading experience and challenge our notion of
the ontology of the Text itself. The representation and performance of any text in a digital platform is itself
an act of interpretation. I will round things off with a discussion of how the maps and facts about the city of
Dublin incorporated into these apps may alter, even confuse, our understanding of Joyce's factual-fictional
Dublin.
The MP3 Format and the Fall of the Concept Album
1999 saw the release of Napster, the P2P file sharing site on which users could (then under the nose of the
law) share music files in .mp3 format, while in 2001, Apple released iTunes, which regulated the transfer and
downloading of music across devices. By permitting the dissection of music into packets of information based
on singular units of songs, and thereafter reconstituting them in permutations of playlists, the listener now
has the ability to construct his own narrative (moods, genres and countries of origin). This disrupts the
narrative flow found in the concept album, a phenomena developed by musicians since the late 1960’s as a
means of constructing longer narratives in their works. The paper investigates how the democratization of
the listening experience with the MP3 format has subverted the artistic endeavor of the concept album in
favor of the pop song.
Digital Literacy
With the Screen, Through the Screen: Literacy and Experience in Digital Game Environments
Digital game environments are increasingly complex technological products and social worlds. In this paper I
provide an analytical approach to the study of the technological and social interface by focusing broadly on
the idea of media literacy, and more specifically on digital games environments as interactional domains:
social configurations through which people develop sets of relevant competencies to successfully act.
Experiences with and within digital game environments involves a process of learning to make sense of the
many symbols that populate the virtual world. And like digital technology use more generally, digital
gameplay evolves on at least two analytic levels. One level has to do with the player’s interaction through her
in-game character, or avatar, where play evolves through the medium of the screen. Another level of
gameplay is more pragmatic and has to do with interacting with the screen, where the player must learn the
symbolic value of what is represented on the screen via the game’s user interface. With the screen and
through the screen, the interactional domain takes shape as players master some form of understanding of
gameplay.
Literacy in the Digital Age: Conflicts and Contentions
There has been widespread academic consensus in the last two decades on the need for pluralistic and
complex understandings of literacy in a media and technology-saturated world, evident in the notions of
Assistant Professor,
multiliteracies, new literacies and critical literacy, among others. Such literacy involves a critical, evaluative
Assistant Head,
disposition towards the production and consumption of texts of diverse modalities and genres, attention to
Graduate Programs the artistic and aesthetic dimensions of textual and multimodal ‘prosumption’, and an awareness of the
Program
socially situated and socially consequential nature of literacy acts that are nested within participatory
Coordinator, MA in cultures. Somewhat juxtaposed to this, we find increased international literacy competition that proceeds
Applied Linguistics along standardized testing regimes (e.g., PISA, PIRLS) as well as a vocationalization of language education
English Language that prizes skills acquisition for the benefit of an effectively literate future workforce. In this talk, we will
discuss these tensions as they play out in the Singapore education system, and share insights gained from a
and Literature AG
study that aims to enhance secondary language education through the infusion of media literacy.
National Institute
of Education
Dr. Katy Hoi-Yi
KAN
Research
Associate,
English Language
and Literature,
National Institute
of Education, NTU
Face On, Face Off: Alternative Depictions of Humanity and Monstrosity in Silent Hill 2
Sher Li ONG
Graduate Student,
Division of English,
School of
Humanities and
Social Sciences,
Nanyang
Technological
University
This paper discusses the notion of unmasking a monster as a means of defeating it, and the ways in which
this idea reveals several conventional ideas about monstrosity and humanity. This process of unmasking is
dependent on three main assumptions: that there exists a binary division between monstrosity and
humanity; that this relationship is static and involves a heroic human who performs the unmasking and a
monster that is unmasked; and that this relationship is a confrontational one. These rules governing the
relationship between humans and monsters in horror narratives are more prominent in video games, where
such rules are enforced both by narrative conventions and game mechanics and design choices.
However, this paper contends that through alternative game mechanics and game design in a video game
like Silent Hill 2, the aforementioned assumptions about humans and monsters can be problematized.
Through Silent Hill 2, this paper argues that these assumptions are firstly based on the notion that there is a
clear distinction between monstrosity and humanity, and that the game shows that by decentering the
human figure in the game these categories can gradually become confused. Secondly, by creating confusion
between the categories of human and monster, it is thus necessary to reconsider the relationship between
these two categories of being that is not simply a confrontational one. Finally, this new alternative
relationship between humans and monsters is conceptualized here as one of constant exchange between the
two categories and an ultimately chimerical one.
Concurrent Panel D Science Fiction
Dr. WONG Chee
Meng
Post-Doctoral
Fellow,
School of
Humanities and
Social Sciences,
Nanyang
Technological
University
Chinese Science Fiction Movies: An Impoverished Genre
Science fiction is not a genre usually associated with Chinese movies, where action movies have been
dominated by martial arts films and gangster films imbued with Chinese social values. One of the few
mainstream examples of Chinese sci-fi movies which managed to spawn sequels of sorts has been The
Legend of Wisely (1987) based on the novel series by Hong Kong writer Ni Kuang; this was however more of
an action-adventure similar to the mould of Indiana Jones. A more recent attempt such as Future X-Cops
(2010) about cyborg assassins on the other hand seems like a variant on the Terminator franchise. Taking
into account possible sources in more progressive works of Chinese sci-fi literature which may be left on the
shelf, this paper will argue that the development of Chinese sci-fi movies may partly be hampered by modes
of commercialism geared towards a target family audience, and partly by censorship or a general lack of
social and political imagination in an authoritarian Chinese society.
Playing With Permutations and Forking Paths: The Multiple Possibilities of Interactive Fiction in Hakuoki:
Shinsengumi Kitan"
BALETE Candice
Lauren Garcia
Graduate Student,
Division of English,
School of
Humanities and
Social Sciences,
Nanyang
Technological
University
TEO Kok Keong
Writer,
Independent Artist
Keynote Speech II
Prof. SEAH Hock
Soon
Technology has altered the ways in which readers can access text in contemporary times, and it also allows
innovative ways for literary theories to become actualized. This paper will discuss the "forking paths"
narrative structure in the Japanese "novel game" Hakuoki: Shinsengumi Kitan (2013). The "forking paths"
narrative, a term borrowed from Jorge Luis Borges' short story "The Garden of Forking Paths" (1941), is a
narrative characterized with its story having various "turning points", where the reader has to choose one
out of a few choices for the story to proceed in; the narrative possibilities branch out at each of these turning
points, allowing the readers to experience multiple possible endings after multiple read-throughs. While
stories with "forking paths" narratives have existed in the form of books (the most popular being the makeyour-own-adventure texts), innovations in contemporary gaming have contained the possible permutations
of the "forking paths" into a system that the gamer can be self-conscious of, deviating from how this kind of
text has been received in its previous forms. Aside from being characterized with having a "forking paths"
narrative, Hakuoki is also perceived as a type of "novel game" that is marketed towards women in Japan. The
different possible endings for Japanese "novel games" are usually characterized by which in-game character
the reader would want to have a romantic ending with; often, the players of Japanese novel games would
make motivated choices during the game's "turning points" in order to get the endings they desire. Such
"novel games" are then different from other forking paths narratives that have more arbitrary narrative
turning points and more infinite, rather than fixed, possibilities.
Travellers X Labyrinth
[旅者✕迷圖：張國強科幻小說]
Singaporean author Teo Kok Keong, who has published Luzhe Mitu (‘Travellers X Labyrinth’) as a work of
Chinese science fiction with a Taipei publisher in 2014, will share his sources of inspiration and creative
process behind a story about the impact of big data and other media technology on literary writing. He will
also discuss the general relevance of science fiction as a genre in the local Chinese literature scene.
Computing, Arts and Culture Collaboration in Animation
The rapid advancement of technology has made computer animation available to the masses and the
animation industry is one of the fastest-growing industries. Animation is increasingly used in video games
Professor, Director,
and movies are also gradually reliant on animation and computer graphic special effects. The demand for
Multi-Platform
animated entertainment has expanded with the increase in broadcasting hours by cable and satellite TV
Game Innovation
along with the growing popularity of the Internet.
Centre,
Nanyang
Technological
University
Dr. Daniel
JERNIGAN Division
of English, School
of Humanities and
Social Sciences,
Nanyang
Technological
University
Hannes MARTINRALL
Associate
Professor, School
of Art, Design and
Media, Nanyang
Technological
University
Traditionally, due to high cost of film production, the industry is dominated by several large studios.
However, digital technology and computer-generated imaging are rapidly making inroads and are
transforming the industry, enabling many small and medium-sized independent filmmaking companies to
compete with major studios. This also enables individuals to generate their own digital contents.
Nevertheless, technology is only an enabler and not an end in itself. Arts and culture could provide
innovation and freshness to storytelling, which is an important component of every animation.
In this talk, we present our research and innovation in various forms of computer animations. To facilitate
collaboration between computing, arts and culture, we are creating a digital platform for people to have
access to technology to experience and experiment with animation creation from script writing to the final
animation. We seek the research community and industry to join us on this journey.
The Making of Si Lunchai (animation)
Since 2008 faculty from the Schools of Art, Design and Media; Humanities and Social Sciences and Computer
Engineering at Nanyang Technological University have collaborated in several interdisciplinary research
projects. The goal was to explore new ways of adaptation for traditional Asian art forms and narratives for
digital animation. The research was developed through a continuous dialogue between scholarly
investigation, creative practice and technical development.
The outcomes of the projects manifested themselves in a significant amount of academic publications,
development of proprietary software and two animated short films:
“Si Lunchai” (2014) directed by Hannes Rall, written for the screen by Daniel Keith Jernigan, produced by
Seah Hock Soon and Hannes Rall.
The poor yet smart trickster Si Lunchai triumphs over the cruel king.An adaptation of an Indonesian legend,
inspired by the style of the Southeast Asian shadow puppet play “Wayang Kulit. “Si Lunchai” has been
selected by 58 international film festivals and won 6 awards.
“The Beach Boy” (2015) directed by Hannes Rall, produced by Seah Hock Soon and Hannes Rall.
Based on a Vietnamese legend, the film tells tragic story of a princess who falls in love with a poor fisherman.
The piece adapts the style of Vietnamese brush painting for digital animation. It is shown as Singapore prepremiere.
Day 2 (20 March 2015, Friday)
Keynote Speech III
觀念‧事件‧行動：中國近現代觀念形成與演變的 數位人 文研究 [Aesthetics, Event, Action: The
Formation of the History of Idea in Modern China and its Evolution in Digital Humanities Research]
Prof. CHENG Wenhuei
因應著數位時代知識微縮革命的推進，面對各式各類的學術資料庫與巨量的數位文獻，以數位文本作
為研究的文獻類型，在「人文研究思維」結合「數位推論技術」下所形成的「數位人文思維邏輯」，
無疑開啟漢學研究一種新方法與新視野，也帶來研究範式轉向的新可能。本講題以「觀念‧事件‧行
Professor
動：中國近現代觀念形成與變遷的數位人文研究」為題，分從「知識微縮革命與數位人文思維邏
Department of
輯」、「中國／東亞／全球：自我與他者觀念域的跨語際實踐與文化考掘學」、「觀念史／概念史：
Chinese Literature, 從語言到數位人文的轉向」「觀念‧事件‧行動：中國近現代觀念形成與變遷的數位人文」等面向，
National Chengchi 探討在知識微縮革命與大數據時代下，隨著全球數位人文語境的開展，面對數位史料的巨量資料，觀
念史／概念史研究從語言到數位人文的轉向的可能性與可行性。本專題藉由前概念研究法、前後詞綴
University,
研究法、關鍵詞與關鍵詞叢研究法、社會網路模型研究、報刊立場與觀念轉型研究法、觀念與事件、
Taiwan
行動的互動研究法等，以《新民叢報》、《新青年》等進行分析，以勾勒中國近現代「主義」、「華
人」、「國家」等觀念形成與演變的過程，及觀念與事件、行動之間相互影響的過程，以掌握近現代
中國國族認同及現代性形成的發展歷程，也期盼能在實際的數位人文研究法的操作中，建構出一種新
的觀念史／概念史數位人文的研究範式。
Concurrent Panel E Cultural Heritage
Dr. Andrea Nanetti
Associate Professor
in Art History,
School of Art,
Design and Media,
Nanyang
Technological
University
Vice-Director,
International
Research Centre
for Architectural
Heritage
Conservation ,
Shanghai Jiao Tong
University
The Silence of Heritage in Contemporary Innovations
This paper discusses heritage as THE (Treasure of Human Experience) in its relationship with the arts,
technology, and culture in the context of contemporary innovations.
Heritage is a state-of-the-art multidisciplinary domain that investigates and pioneers integrated action plans
and solutions in response to, and in anticipation of, the challenges arising from cultural heritage issues in
society. "Heritage poses the challenge of innovation in a new way: How does the new integrate with the
old?" This was the key question raised by Helga Nowotny (co-founder and former president of the European
Research Council) in her keynote address The embarrassment of complexity: A phase of transition? given at
the 1st Singapore Heritage Science Conference (NTU, 6-7 January 2014) on Heritage science as a complex
system.
Our society is very close to a fully digital and sustainable access to all information encapsulated in
monuments, museums, galleries, libraries, live performances, and archives; all over the world and in any
language. But to distill data into knowledge, a new generation of scholars needs to discuss, test, and
implement ICT tools and solutions in co-relation with the centuries-old results of each single discipline, which
contributes to the domain of heritage science (in humanities, social sciences, architecture, life sciences,
engineering, and computer sciences). The vision is that a science of heritage in the digital era can provide
THE heritage to everyone, anywhere, and anytime.
In this theoretical context works the project of EHM-Engineering Historical Memory. EHM is both an
experimental methodology and an ongoing research project, which develops and tests new sets of shared
conceptualizations and formal specifications for content management systems in the field of heritage
science. EHM was first theorized at Princeton University in 2007 and is now carried out in Singapore at
Nanyang Technological University after having been linked to Complexity at the University of Venice Ca'
Foscari in 2012. The master plan designing, web strategies, commercial and industrial solutions of EHM are
developed and administrated by Meduproject Pte Ltd.－a company established in 2002 as academic spin-off
of the Department of History and Methods for Cultural Heritage Conservation of the University of Bologna,
after having been awarded in 2001 a prize in the first Italian business plan competition devoted to projects
with high content of knowledge and having been financially supported by the Italian National Agency for
New Technologies, Energy and Environment－. The project was awarded best conference paper at 2013
Culture and Computing (Kyoto, Japan) and has been recently funded by Microsoft Research (2014-2015).
A Trans-disciplinary Approach to Protecting Cultural Heritage in an Unrecognised State: The Armenian
Church of Famagusta
Dr. Michael John
Kirk WALSH
It is difficult to imagine how the cultural heritage of a city as important as Famagusta (Cyprus) might find
itself neglected and in an advanced state of decay. This was, after all, the coronation place of the crusader
kings of Jerusalem, mentioned specifically in Dante's Inferno, and chosen by Shakespeare as the cityscape in
Associate Professor which to situate Othello. Famagusta was a place of extraordinary wealth, had a multi-faith population, and
Associate Chair,
boasted some of the finest moments of Lusignan and Venetian architecture and art found anywhere in the
Eastern Mediterranean. So, what was the sequence of events that led to its fall from grace, and what is
School of Art,
Design and Media, preventing it's heritage from receiving the expertise it so desperately needs in 2014? Through a case study of
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the Armenian Church in Famagusta this presentation explores theoretical notions of cultural heritage and
Technological
national identity while offering a pragmatic insight into what inter and trans-disciplinary work is nevertheless
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being done, by whom, and with what objectives in mind. It charts the increasing use of laser, radar, and 3D
modeling technology as tools to compliment the research of historians, art historians and conservation
experts, then concludes with an appeal to revisit and up-date current international legislation concerning
heritage welfare in territories that fall outside ‘the system of nations’.
Teaching the Heritage of “Others” and the Controversy Behind
Dr. Gül İnanç
Lecturer,
School of Art,
Design and Media,
Nanyang
Technological
University
Concurrent Panel F
This talk is kind of a balancing act between a work of art (fresco) from 15th century that has recently been
saved and a children’s story that promotes the idea of interfaith dialogue in the 21st century. But it also
involves a discussion on teaching the concept of cultural heritage in an unrecognized country, a Eureka
project of creating a text book for primary education, notion of martyrdom, and the controversy around
global citizenship and positive “others”.
Politics
Conjuring the “Thing”: Technology and its Others
Dr. Josh LAM
Part-time Lecturer,
Division of English,
School of
Humanities and
Social Sciences,
Nanyang
Technological
University
Dr. Asiya
BULATOVA
Post-Doctoral
Fellow, School of
Humanities and
Social Sciences,
Nanyang
Technological
University
This paper will examine the ways in which technology mediates race and its representation in AfricanAmerican literature. It focuses on the figure of the “automaton” in the works of two authors who bookend
the twentieth century: the “conjure tales” of Charles W. Chesnutt published in the 1890s, and The Black
Automaton published by Douglas Kearney in 2006. The automaton, a body without agency or ambition, has
long been a figure for the dangers of technological or industrial modernity. This paper seeks to demonstrate
how that figure has played an especially important role in representations of blackness and black masculinity.
In particular, this paper will examine the ways in which Kearney’s work critiques the technological production
of racial othering within American folk and pop cultures. From references to the modern folk hero John
Henry to the postmodern anime cyborg Voltron, the figure of the racialized automaton mediates
representations of blackness in Kearney’s book. For Kearney, the automaton is an “[IT]”—a subject that is not
quite a subject, subjected to processes of objectification (racial, sexual) that render it an [IT]—opaque, twodimensional, thingified.
By contrast, the statuesque, reified, and objectified black bodies in Chesnutt’s conjure tales are produced by
the invisible forces of ‘black magic’—a far cry from the post-industrial context of Kearney’s poetics. Yet in
Chesnutt’s work, automatons take on a performative dimension; they are conjured by tricksters, utilized for
the storyteller’s ends. The performative aspects of this figure thus reveal that the automaton is less a
production of technology than of techne—a product of representation. And, like John Henry, this figure is
mythic, masculine, there-but-not-there—a black body constructed for the pleasure of others via
entertainment, labor, and performance. By tracing the continuities between Chesnutt and Kearney, this
paper elucidates some of the ways in which stereotypes of mindlessness and impulsivity, often associated
with the figure of the automaton, have been mimicked and mocked in African-American literature.
Reproduction Technologies, Early-Soviet Sexual Politics and [Self -] Censorship in Viktor Shklovsky’s
Experimental Prose
In this paper I am going to discuss an episode of early-Soviet self-censorship which reveals the difficult
dynamics in the literary, scientific and sexual politics of early 1920s Russia. In uncovering this dynamic, I will
explore the ways in which Russian Formalist theories of literature and language engage with scientific
advances in other disciplines, particularly those in agricultural engineering and biotechnology. The paper
focuses on Viktor Shklovsky’s epistolary novel Zoo, or Letters Not about Love, in which he attempts to
respond to tightening censorship regulations by linking attempts to control literary production to the
changing regulations of sex life and reproduction of new Soviet citizens. Viktor Shklovsky initially wrote and
published Zoo, or Letters Not about Love while living in exile in Berlin in 1923. Another version of the text was
published in Leningrad only one year later, in 1924. Although the two editions came out almost back to back,
the second version was substantially different from the first one.
In letters added to the second edition Shklovsky directly addresses the drastic restructuring of social relations
which was instrumental in the revolution’s attempt to transform mankind. I will demonstrate how in these
letters Shklovsky re-contextualises his role in Soviet literary and political history by presenting it as part of a
wider project of creating a new Soviet citizen. I will argue that second edition creates an uneasy link between
the utopian technological imagery and the depictions of sexual crime, pointing out the problematic reception
of the new sexual politics in post-Revolutionary Russia, which is here interlinked with the science of genetics
and technologies of animal breeding. To do this I will draw on the recent research in history of science that
suggests that scientific and political revolutions in Russia go hand in hand and the project of creating the new
Soviet citizen is indebted to the legacy of biological engineering, which was institutionalised in the late
nineteenth century within the Imperial Academy of Experimental Medicine.
Regarding Assistive and Adaptive Technologies: On Autonomy, Heteronomy, and Becoming Awkward
One must always regard the possibility of moving in the wrong direction or making a back-handed gesture, of
spilling half the water, as it were. One must always look at and care for the possibility of becoming bloodless
and awkward, especially in the embodied encounter with dis/abling technologies. Originally conceptualized
in Disability Studies contexts, “Assistive technologies” and “adaptive technologies” have come to refer to
Dr. Brian Bergen- different sets of tools or techniques that dis/able—increase/diminish, maintain/destroy, or
AURAND
improve/decrease functionality. Thus, such technologies are caught in the oscillations between excess and
lack, abundance and privation, that affect the very dis/abled bodies with which they are associated. The
Assistant Professor, dis/abled body is always in the precarious position of becoming awkward, of becoming excessive or lacking.
Division of English, Dis/abled subjectivity, then, is always subject to an awkward relation with dis/abling technology. Such
subjectivity marks the very awkwardness of such relations. Thought through the philosophy of Emmanuel
School of
Levinas, the awkwardness of dis/abling technologies provokes an ethical question, one concerned with the
Humanities and
relation between autonomy and heteronomy. For Levinas, ethics arises from the encounter with the other.
Social Sciences,
The encounter with the other renders me responsible; it dis/ables my power and in the process enables me
Nanyang
to respond. Thus, ethics for Levinas is heteronomous, is a relation with exteriority. Crucially, in “Reality and
its Shadow,” Levinas regards this awkwardness as well in the relation between art and criticism, where the
Technological
exterior interpretive tools and techniques of critics dis/able the oscillating gestures of artists, steady their
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hands, and keep them on the right course—the path of reality and not lost in the world of shadows. The
muscular and self-possessed critic steadies the shaky, foolish artist. One must always regard such possibilities
of the good and the good of such possibilities of assistive and adaptive techné-logoi in relation to “the
humanitas of man.”
Concurrent Panel
G
Dr. YUNG Sai-shing
Associate
Professor,
Division of Chinese,
Faculty of Arts and
Social Sciences,
National University
of Singapore
Dr. LIEW Kai Khiun
Assistant Professor,
Wee Kim Wee
School of
Communication
and Information,
Nanyang
Technological
University,
Sound & Music
广东音乐；唱片音乐；跳舞音乐 吕文成的粤乐事业
[Cantonese Music and Modern Media: The Career of Lü Wencheng （Lui Man Shing, 1898－1981）]
呂文成（1898－1981）是广东音乐史上的传奇人物，粤乐“四大天王”里面的“二胡王”；二、三十年代
间旅居上海，经常在“中華音樂會”、“精武體育會”、和“广东大戏院”等排练演出，是沪上著名粤乐业
余乐师（包括作曲、编曲、演奏、演唱，时称“玩家”）。二十年代中期，呂文成出任上海“大中华唱片
公司”灌片主任，见证了早期中国唱片工业的历史。1932 年吕文成从上海返回香港定居，参与香港唱
片和电影制作事业，并在“大觀新月聲片公司”的影片《摩登新娘》，和一众广东音乐名家初登银幕。
五十年代初，吕文成在香港替“和声唱片公司”生产“跳舞粤曲”，也就是今天“粤语流行曲”的前身，风
行海外东南亚。这篇报告将以这位粤乐泰斗的事业历程为主轴，探讨上世纪二十到五十年代广东音乐
的生产、转化和消费，特别是和城市娱乐媒体——唱片和电影——之间的关系。
Digital “Red Dusts”: Stereoscopic Phantasmagoria and the Holographic Immortalization of Departed
Celebrities in Transnational Chinese POP
Used for more than a century in popular amusement and creative works, holographic projections have
gained an unprecedented level of animation with the convergence of advancements in Computer Generated
Images and Performance Capture technologies. Through the case-studies of such stereoscopic holograms of
otherwise departed Hong Kong and Taiwan based transnational Chinese celebrities like Bruce Lee, Wong Kar
Kui and Teresa Teng for the past decade, this chapter explores the cognitive-spatial dimensions that such
projections have engendered. This chapter would in turn illustrate the process in which, in both the
performative arenas and the related interplay of collective memories of popular culture, the industry led
efforts in creating some of such productions have served as part of the cultural continuum.
Absence and Presence: What Digital Makes Possible
Alvin TAN
The Necessary
Stage
Concurrent Panel
H
Dr. Hallam
STEVENS
This presentation traces the role technology plays in the history of The Necessary
Stage intercultural and interdisciplinary practice. Focusing on works such as Completely With/Out Character,
Frozen Angels, Mobile 2: Flat Cities and Poor Thing, I will be sharing the employment of digital technology in
both the form and content of our theatre-making, impacting on the relationship between the theatre work
and the audience. I will also touch on the collaborative aspect between artists involved and how technology
may influence societal norms
New “Seven Arts”
Science, Public Art, and the Development of Singapore’s Knowledge Economy
Standing in the middle of Biopolis – Singapore’s complex of bioscience labs and companies – is a strange,
snake-like, copper colored coil. This is, in fact, a sculpture that represents the shape of a protein (called a
Assistant Professor,
protease inhibitor) that belongs to the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) virus. The sculpture,
School of
created by Mara Haseltine and unveiled in September 2006, commemorates the work of the Genome
Humanities and
Institute of Singapore and the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology (both at Biopolis) in rapidly
Social Sciences,
sequencing the virus genome and developing DNA-based and antibody-based tests. The SARS sculpture is
just one of the many prominent artworks on display in public spaces throughout Biopolis and the larger One
Nanyang
Technological
University
North area of which it is a part. The commissioning of these works suggests that the planners and managers
of One North (the JTC Corporation, former Jurong Town Corporation) consider artwork to be an important
part of the push towards developing scientific and technological spaces in Singapore. The significant
investment in the aesthetics qualities of buildings and spaces goes beyond mere beautification. This paper
seeks to understand the role that public art plays in the creation of “high tech” spaces in Singapore and will
suggest that art has have become central to the island state’s vision of creating a “knowledge economy”
based on a highly educated workforce and large investments in science and technology.
Between Democracy and Civility: Dialogue, Media and the “new” Cultural Sociology
Amid the growing amount of criticism of contemporary digital culture, one of the most frequent points made
by critics has been about the lack of civil discourse on the Internet. From headlines such as “Is Google Making
Us Stupid?” to declarations of “digital Maoism” online, there is, as expected perhaps, a backlash to Internetbased digital culture. With the preponderance of “trolling” and “flame wars,” the Internet seems to breed
Dr. Sam HAN
something quite contrary to what the early proponents of Internet culture had predicted regarding the
democratizing potential of digital culture, with its peer-to-peer nature and the seemingly uncontrollable flow
Assistant Professor,
of information. But, with hacking, cyber-bullying and the like taking up so much space in public discourse,
Division of
many critics suggest, contemporary Internet culture is far from the Habermasian “public sphere” that many
Sociology, School had hoped for.
of Humanities and
In social theory and sociology, there has been a recently renewed interest in the nexus between democracy
Social Sciences,
and digital culture, specifically among scholars involved in what is called the “strong program” in cultural
Nanyang
sociology. Taken by the uprisings in the Arab world as well as the social media strategy of the Obama
Technological
Campaign of 2008, these social theorists and sociologists have paid great attention to facets of digital culture
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and social media that, for them, promote democratic values that amount to what they call “civil society.” In
Keynote Speech IV
this paper, I analyze and critique this stance by suggesting that they hold a particularly ideological view of
contemporary digital media as “dialogic.” By equating democratic media with dialogic media, I argue that
they miss not only the actual nature of contemporary media but also constrain themselves conceptually in
equating “democracy” and “civility” with a particular form of communication that narrowly confines
communication to rationality at the cost of emotion and affect.
The Origins of Corporate Influences on the Arts: Technological Innovations, Economic Instruments, and the
Shapes of Aesthetic Experience
Prof. Ron
SCHLEIFER
George Lynn Cross
Research Professor
of English;
Adjunct Professor
in the College of
Medicine,
University of
Oklahoma
This paper examines the advent of corporate culture at the beginning of the twentieth century, particularly in
the United States and Great Britain, in relation to aesthetic experience, the horizons of knowledge, and
everyday life. Some of the greatest innovations in the history of Western culture took place at the turn of
the twentieth century, a period that David Landes, in his book The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, describes
as comparable in its innovative transformation of human life to the “Neolithic . . . shift away from hunting
and gathering [that] made possible towns and cities, with all that they yielded in cultural and technical
exchange and enrichment.” The phenomena of this period is sometimes describes as “the second Industrial
Revolution,” the period of cultural modernism that I examine in Modernism and Time in relation to science
and literature. In this paper, I focus in on one institution that arose, as we know it, in this period, the modern
continental – and, lately, the transnational – corporation. The corporation itself is a product of technological
innovation – in steel production, communication, electrical power, and, perhaps most important in relation
to the arts, “immaterial assets” of finance and corporate life itself – which, in turn transformed the
possibilities and experiences of the arts. This presentation will examine local technological innovations for
the arts at the turn of the twentieth century: the creation of portable oil paint (in tubes), which created
possibilities of painting outside of the studio for impressionist and post-impressionist arts; widespread
newspaper distribution, which encouraged the epiphanic literary discourses of Joyce and others; possibilities
of musical recordings, which stimulated a host of innovations in music, from Gershwin to Stravinsky; and, of
course, filmic transformations of the theater. But it will do so in the larger context of corporate culture,
where advertising, credit, marginal trading, and the very incongruence between new technologies and old
helped to shape experiences of social and aesthetic experience and the very sense of value in human affairs.
It does so in the hopes of describing in historical detail, both in the early twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries, the relationship between the “digital age” that the conference focuses upon to the “corporate
age” in which we all live.
NTU Map
From Nanyang Executive Center to School of Humanities and Social Sciences
From Boon Lay by Bus
There is a public bus service that reaches the NTU School of Humanities and Social Sciences from the Boon Lay bus interchange, 179/179A.
Please alight at B15 Innovation Centre (27251). Details of the bus route are available online:
http://www.ntu.edu.sg/AboutNTU/visitingntu/Pages/bybus.aspx
NTU Map
From School of Humanities and Social Sciences to School of Art, Design and Media
Email Contacts:
Name (alphabetical order by surname)
BALETE Candice Lauren Garcia
Brian BERGEN-AURAND
Asiya BULATOVA
Alice CHAN
CHEN Song-chuan
CHENG Wen-huei
Michelle CHIANG
CUI Feng
Sam HAN
. Gül İNANÇ
. Daniel JERNIGAN
. Katy KAN
. Uganda KWAN
. Josh LAM
. LIEW Kai Khiun
. LIN Jingxia
. Hannes MARTIN-RALL
. MASUTANI Satoshi
. Andrea NANETTI
. Hanh-Quyen NGUYEN
. Sher Li ONG
. Elke REINHUBER
. RODRIGUES Crispin Cyril-Wardley
. Ron SCHLEIFER
. SEAH Hock Soon
. Roberto SIMANOWSKI
. Hallam STEVENS
. Alvin TAN
. TEO Kok Keong
. TIAN Xiaoli
. Michael J.K. WALSH
. Csilla WENINGER
. Patrick WILLIAMS
. WONG Chee Meng
. YUNG Sai Shing
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