SAVE AS: Lunch is an informal discussion series for students, staff, and faculty interested in technology, digital scholarship, media production, data, gaming, and design. The discussions are held monthly over lunch at the Coop and this month’s topic was “Bridging the Digital and the Physical.” Over the sounds of chatter and the aroma of coffee, Assistant Professor of History Andrew Friedman spoke about his course “Walter Benjamin on Lancaster Avenue,” which requires students to create a collective project of digital scholarship, based on semester-long student-faculty collaboration in archival research on Philadelphia’s Lancaster Avenue. He also examined the possibilities of using digital humanities to navigate between history, memory, and experience in a new way. How can the digital be used to represent marginality and also the tactical, sensory, and cognitive experiences between the subject and actor? Also part of the discussion: What makes a successful digital scholarship website and how can we make digital humanities more interactive and accessible to a wider audience? Assistant Professor of Chemistry Joshua Schrier, along with students Brandon Smith ’16 and Jack Rasiel ’17, brought their own perspective to the SAVE AS event with a discussion of 3D printing and the capacity to build physical models via low-budget technology and equipment. Smith and Rasiel, along with Casey Falk ’16, lead the campus Robotics Club, which seeks to explore, in fun ways, the hardware and software behind robotics and engineering. Started last October, their project this semester is to build an operator drone. The students also find designs online and use 3D printing to construct cool stuff layer by layer at the KINSC’s Makerspace, a part studio and part lab. The interesting discussion roused all around curiosity at the growth of digital scholarship and the DIY spirit of 3D printing.
—Hina Fathima ’15
Photo by Thom Carroll