Digital Humanities

The term “digital humanities” has become popular both referring to various theoretical problems related to the role of the humanities and the arts in a digital context, as well as to several practical applications in libraries, archives and museums. This opens up a false dichotomy between STEM (acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and the Humanities as if they configured separate theoretical worlds.

In some cases digitisation in arts and humanities is seen merely as a tool used to digitalise manuscripts, old files, and documents, whether sound or visual. It is clear that the dissemination of digitised materials allows widespread access to historical sources through the Internet. But it is also clear that as digitisation has enormous theoretical and analytical implications for our studies, we need to seriously explore how to relate to STEM in a deeper way. This allows to open an important window of opportunities, not only in preservation of, for instance musical instruments, but it also makes it possible to construct replicas with modern techniques such as 3D printers.