The Stanford Humanities Lab is a Center for
Transdiciplinary/Post-Disciplinary Study. We discover
fascinating futures to be explored in ignoring and crossing disciplinary borders.
SHL believes
that some crucial questions — about what it is to be human, about experience in a connected world, about the boundaries of
culture and nature — transcend old divisions between the arts, sciences and humanities; between the academy, industry and
the cultural sphere.
We engage in experimental projects with a "laboratory" ethos — collaborative, co-creative, team-based — involving a
triangulation of arts practice, commentary/critique, and outreach, merging research, pedagogy, publication and practice. Beyond commentary and discussion, we build: new media, interactive archives,
predictive models of social change, collaborative research workshops, art exhibitions.
The SHL agenda encompasses
• animating archives - regenerating, bringing to life,
and fostering new modes of interaction with the storehouses of human, cultural, artistic, scientific achievement - our focus is on the question of the relationship of the human past to efforts at conservation and preservation
• building bigger pictures - putting specialized in-depth research into the context of big human questions; questions, for example, of rapid social change and innovation, the ethical implications of information technology, the character of distributed digital communities, the politics of digital citizenship, the past, present, and future of intellectual property
• enabling co-creative collaboration - developing successful models of teamwork, learner-centered models of training (thinking through doing), and collaborative authoring tools and processes
• building bridges - establishing innovative partnerships between industry, museums, foundations, and high-level university-based research
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A second round of Roberta
 Artist and SHL collaborator Lynn Hershman is referenced in Artnet column, L.A. Confidential: "Themes of digital identity are explored at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in a show titled "Identity Theft," [...] Especially interesting is San Francisco-based artist Hershman’s alter ego, "Roberta Breitmore," or the Roberta Project, as it has become known. Cutting no corners, "Roberta" acquired a Social Security number and bank accounts, in addition to going on dates with strangers she met through personal ads, and meeting with a shrink while in persona to discuss her new "self." The exhibition documents such forays with letters and photographs and even Roberta’s garments. Hershman has now brought Roberta into the digital era as an avatar character, fit perhaps for the much-ballyhooed community website Second Life." SHL's Life Squared project brought Lynn's Roberta into her "second life." Roberta is shown here at the opening of the gallery devoted to this project on SHL's showcase island Hotgates in Second Life.
Stanford Library Digital Archive Development Project Seeks Volunteers for User Study
Stanford University Library is planning several short observational studies to examine how users of archives carry out their work. We are seeking historians, journalists, and graduate student researchers for a one hour observational study in which will we shall document an individual user's interactions with a digital and/or paper archive and carry out a short interview. As part of Stanford's Self-archiving Legacy Toolkit Project (SALT), in which scientist and scholar luminaries archive and annotate their collected papers, we are developing tools to assist the users of these collections. To better understand the users' goals, tasks and needs, we are asking for volunteers whom we may observe as they carry out their typical research activities. The studies will be carried out in the subject's normal work area (e.g., their office, the library, etc.). A member of the SALT team will ask the subject to carry out several tasks and then hold a short interview. The study will take about about one hour. It will be carried out in July and August, 2007 If you can participate in this study, please contact charles.kernsATyahooDOTcom
Body Language in Film at XXXVI Mostra internazionale del Cinema Libero: Il Cinema Ritrovato
 Prof. Oksana Bulgokova presents SHL project Body Language in Film at this prestigious festival in Bologna. From the festival website: "The 21st edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato, a festival providing an array of unknown, little-known, rediscovered, and restored films, gathers in a single week several of the latest international restorations from some of the world’s most creative archives, thus providing fertile ground for discussion among eminent film historians, specialists, and archivists, as well as showcasing the most up-to-date, advanced restoration techniques." The Body Language research project addresses the metamorphoses of body language in Russian and Soviet society through the 20th century as evidenced by documentary and fiction films and other media.
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