Numesthesia. The screen to capture the sensible?

After the first two editions devoted to the constitution of research data (2021) and their ethical foundations (2022), the EVEille project wishes to explore the place of sensoriality in digital representation, by questioning the participation of the five senses in the processing and transmission of scientific corpora and cultural objects. While the field of museography has long invested in digital devices for heritage valorization, the humanities have only recently taken up the question in the conduct of research projects.

The EVEille 2023 days will take place in five phases spread from January to May and will be held in hybrid mode in five cities and on videoconference simultaneously. They will bring together researchers in the humanities, engineers, managers of cultural and heritage collections, scientific mediators, and teachers who analyze, transmit, interpret, and explain scientific heritage and cultural objects digitally, also using their senses to understand and communicate their complexity.

Challenges: The sensible part of digital devices in the field of Humanities

By coining the neologism of numesthesia - born from the contraction of numérique (digital) and the Greek term esthesia which designates apprehension through the perception of the intellect and the senses - the EVEille project presupposes that in the field of Humanities, sensory apprehension is not only called upon to restore to large audiences the phenomenological reality of a scientific object that is offered to the intellect of the expert. The notion also suggests that the epistemological approach engages sensible devices of digital mediation to access, through the senses, the thickness of the scientific object and this, from the phase of investigation of the data itself.

The interest devoted to sensoriality in the apprehension of heritage and cultural assets is not new. Since the works of Georg Simmel (1908) or Lucien Febvre (1952), through the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945), Claude Lévi-Strauss (1962), until the more recent works of Jacques Rancière (2000) or Jean-Pierre Changeux (2010), the sensitive experience lends itself to sociological, historical, anthropological, literary or even neuro-psychological analysis. The traces left by sensoriality are an integral part of the sources and documents available to researchers (Ginzburg, 2001), as evidenced by the growing interest in material culture in these different disciplinary fields.

The "sensory turn" in the humanities and social sciences, as highlighted by David Howes (2005), has however renewed these approaches by contributing to give the anthropology of the senses an institutional and disciplinary recognition. It has shown that sensory relations are also (and perhaps even above all) social relations and that the senses act in interdependence within given historical and social configurations.

Following this perspective, the Digital Humanities open new possibilities: far from being only a mode of reception of works, sensoriality can intervene from the very constitution of the field of observation, in the methods of analysis as well as in the restitution of scientific investigation, to then be summoned in order to put at the disposal of the public a reality that is offered to the senses as much as it is offered to the mind.

Questionings

The aim of the 2023 EVEille Days "Numesthesia. The screen to capture the sensible?" is to question the role of digital processes in the implementation of a sensory encounter with the scientific, patrimonial and cultural object. While studies in digital mediation, and particularly in museography, have participated in this "sensory revolution" announced by Michel Serres in 1985, such questioning has not necessarily been carried out with the same interest in the field of research in the humanities.

Indeed, if we can agree that digital technologies seem to introduce a “problem” in the dialectic relationship between distance and proximity tying researchers to their scientific objects, it appears to be more difficult to characterize the different relation regimes that digital devices introduce with these objects.

The originality of the questioning that we would like to dedicate to the investigation and mediation devices lies in the role given to sensoriality in the digital regime: it is not only a question of considering that the senses are solicited during the reception of the scientific project following the diffusion of the research results by the researchers. We also choose to examine the way in which the senses intervene from the production of the research data by postulating the existence of a critical empathy - variable according to the studied objects and the adopted methods - which makes the researcher's senses intervene from his apprehension of the scientific object. It is thus presupposed that beyond the sight, often evoked during the work of "visualization of the research data", other senses are put to use, which undeniably intervene in the work of the researcher. The role given to the manipulation of scientific objects therefore deserves to be documented in its own right and recorded in the descriptive metadata accompanying the produced data.

The material criteria of the perception by the senses of the scientific, patrimonial and cultural object condition the modalities of analysis as well as the digital restitution, for the public, of the studied object. We can measure the impact of the precise adjustments made for the 3D digitization of an archaeological object, the choice for the modalities of sound recording or the treatment of the tracks during the processing of an audio tape, the taking into account of the state of deterioration of a document, the rate of hygrometry of the place where it was discovered or other goods which might have been found in the same place, up to the existence of more invasive samples during the study of inks, writing supports, or even the bindings of old documents. Thus, in the scientific field, it is not only a question of visualizing the results of research, but of representing them in order to question them. In terms of scientific mediation, the objective is not limited to communicating a discourse about the document, but it also aspires to provoke an encounter with the heritage and cultural object in all the facets of its intelligibility, including sensory.

The EVEille 2023 days will thus propose a framework for analyzing the conditions of possibility of numesthesia in the field of the Humanities proper (literature, history, art history, archaeology, musicology, sociology of culture...), in its theoretical presuppositions, its practical challenges and its hermeneutical implications. For that, the modes of designation of the results produced by these devices will vary between "virtual", "increased", "enriched", "restored", "restituted", "experienced reality", etc. Whatever the ways of qualifying this “reformatted” reality, we find in it the expression of a recontextualization and a transformation of the initial object into a different reality that is experienced as well as analyzed and interpreted.

What forms of sensory exploration do the digital devices implemented in the study of the humanities make possible? To what extent do certain digital investigation and mediation devices condition the intimate and sensitive relationship that researchers have with their scientific object? How does this renew the exploration and production of research results? Following what modalities do the latter transmit this singular relationship to the public, be it expert or amateur? In short, how can we imagine the sensible relationship towards the digital document of the 21st century through the mediation of the screen?

Presentation of the days

The five days will follow a progressive path, from the most minimal digitization to the most advanced exploitation, in order to question the regimes of sensoriality that intervene in the digital communication of the scientific, cultural and patrimonial object. It will be a question of examining the way in which the five senses are solicited in a variety of ways, from the initial apprehension of the object of research to the production of a new scientific artifact, henceforth dematerialized, while passing by the various devices of its conversion to the digital format. We will study in particular the sensitive mechanisms implemented by the digital devices examined during the presentation of case studies, which could be from literary, linguistic or historical studies, as well as from the fields of musicology, art history, archaeology and more broadly from cultural studies.

D1. Digitizing reality

During the "Digitizing reality" day, attention will be brought to the action of converting research sources and objects into a digital format, which leads to the creation of virtual avatars. Because of this transformation, it is no longer the object we access but necessarily a media representation of this object, most often reduced to two dimensions. The bulk, the mass, the matter, the smell, in a word all that constitutes the physical characteristics of the object, are in this context more difficult to evaluate. On the other hand, this representation is duplicable, easy to consult, to share, to transform.

D2. Reconstructing reality

During the "Reconstructing reality" day, we will envisage more digital procedures that add new artifacts to the reality of objects whose completeness is definitively lost. We are thinking in particular of investigations that aim to find and assemble fragments of the same archaeological piece, to compose, in a single virtual edition, pages of books extracted from different copies, to recolor certain images, to constitute models reproducing on a reduced scale a site or a disappeared construction, etc. However, as a certain amount of information is often no longer directly known and accessible, the reconstruction requires an effort of methodical re-construction based on solid scientific foundations which, notwithstanding, orient and stimulate the imagination.

D3. Enriching reality

During the "Enriching reality" day, we will emphasize the production of metadata of various natures which, similar to a critical apparatus, affix to the restored object an additional layer of expertise. This enrichment orients and accompanies the viewer's gaze around the noticeable characteristics of the original sources and documents, and even fills in some of the gaps produced by the digitization. Thus, when the volume of the object is not perceptible, it can be indicated by means of a reference frame often familiar to the users. The schematic representation of a body or a hand, for example, can give a sense of scale as to the real dimension of the object.

D4. Augmenting reality

During the "Augmenting reality" day, we will be interested in digital devices that invite new investigations, and this, beyond the access that traditionally the five senses allow. One thinks in particular of the representations of impalpable worlds: of the infinitely large or the infinitely small, but also of the invisible, and of an ensemble of reality that is calculable, measurable, quantifiable by the computer tool. In such a case, the perimeter of the studied object can be widened giving place to new interactions (animation of fixed image, recourse to the multimedia, etc.).

D5. Experiencing digitality

During the "Experiencing digitality" day, we will finally consider the way in which the digital world invites to sensory experience the research object after its investigation. Can we feel the object through digital devices? Or can we only study it, consult it in the practical sense of seeing and representing. What does this relationship to the sources bring to our apprehension of the works? The question of the public and the result exposed to the user is often projected, but the impact of the specialist on the work from the research process itself is scarcely addressed. We particularly think of the place of the senses in the research process, in the elaboration of the scientific questioning itself during the analysis of the sources and objects and more largely in the ways of reading or observing the digital documents.

Organization of the days

The five days will be organized around three recurring sessions that will progressively build a path in the exploration of the sensible part of digital devices in the field of Humanities.

Session 1 - Immersive excursion

A visit introduced by a specialist, in person and virtual, will open each day of conference. This will be an opportunity to examine different valorization projects undertaken by heritage and cultural institutions partnering in the project (program to come soon).

Session 2 - Interventions

During this session, the papers presented will examine the relationship to the senses involved in the digital processing of scientific heritage and cultural objects. The interventions will also take the form of presentations of research projects in progress, feedback, completed projects and recent publications.

Session 3 - Workshop

A time of practical work devoted to a specific mode of processing (digitization of documents, image processing, 3D reconstruction...) will allow the participants to get the handle of a specific tool: a practical presentation of the principles, functionalities and most common uses of this type of software (Blender, Autocad / FreeCAD, ...) will lead the participants to question the very process of apprehension of the scientific object, in its most material and technical part.

About

The project EVEILLE aims at developing new digital practices within ILLE, complementary to the research work already undertaken, in order to reinforce the digital valorization of this work at the laboratory level and to develop new strategies of production and communication of the results of research in HSS. It is accompanied by events and exchanges conducted more widely within the scientific, heritage and cultural community of Digital Humanities.

The EVEille project is led by Régine Battiston, director of the ILLE laboratory, Anne Réach-Ngô, senior lecturer at the FLSH, and Marine Parra, Ph.D. at ILLE.

It relies on close and regular collaborations with the MISHA, in particular with Régis Witz, engineer of the PHUN Plate-forme HUmanités Numériques, and Guillaume Porte, research engineer at the ARCHE laboratory of Unistra, as well as with Benoît Roux, research engineer at the ERIAC laboratory of the University of Rouen.

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Scientific Committee

Clarisse Bardiot (Université Rennes 2)
Régine Battiston (UHA, ILLE)
Guido Braun (UHA, CRESAT)
Bram J. M. Caers (Leiden University)
Pierre Cubaud (CNAM)
Marie-Luce Demonet (CESR / Université de Tours)
Ambre Philippe (Fondation Catherine Gide)
Tony Gheeraert (Université de Rouen)
Nicolas Genis (Université de Lille, HALMA)
Renske A. Hoff (Utrecht University)
Madeleine Hubert (BNU, Data Lab)
Jelle Koopmans (University of Amsterdam)
Isabelle Lefèvre (UHA, SUAC)
Véronique Lochert (UHA, ILLE)
Marine Parra (Utrecht University)
Anne Réach-Ngô (UHA, ILLE)
Martine Robert (Université de Rouen, ERIAC)
Benoît Roux (Université de Rouen, ERIAC)
Franck Varenne (Université de Rouen, ERIAC)

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