Computer Science Lab

From its outset, computer science has played an increasingly central role in the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’. Our material- and content-oriented approach to written artefacts, which generates large amounts of data, opens up the opportunity to harness the potential of new developments in artificial intelligence and virtual reality for manuscript research. At UWA, we are developing an advanced data infrastructure, interactive applications, and customised software tools in our Computer Science Lab. These resources provide valuable services to our scholars and manuscript researchers around the world in answering existing questions in the humanities or inspire the formulation of entirely new research questions.

UWA’s Computer Science Lab has three components: The Data Linking Lab is closely related to the research field of the same name, which has been part of UWA’s research infrastructure from the very beginning, and involves the AI-supported utilisation of research data in the field of manuscript research. The close link between UWA and the Institute for Humanities-Centred Artificial Intelligence favours the exchange between our experts from the humanities and computer scientists and promotes the development of application-oriented tools. In the Human Interaction Lab, a cross-disciplinary team develops innovative applications that allow our researchers to experience written artefacts in their spatial context in a virtual environment. These applications also harbour great potential for use in museums and for science communication. Finally, the Visual Manuscript Analysis Lab leverages AI advancements in computer vision for manuscript research, addressing practical questions arising from the exploration of digitised manuscripts. It is dedicated to the systematic visual analysis of manuscript images with computational precision.