J. Stephen Downie
@profdownie.bsky.social
680 followers 1.2K following 62 posts
Professor and Associate Dean for Research, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois. Digital Humanities-Music Information Retrieval-Library and Information Science
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Reposted by J. Stephen Downie
roopikarisam.bsky.social
Getting ready for my lecture for Dartmouth’s Family Weekend tomorrow! They’re getting the #DataEmpire sneak peek 🤩
From Clay Tablets to Cloud
Servers: The Deep History of Data (Murdough Center)
Read more v
Cook Auditorium, 31 Tuck Mall Drive
Special Faculty Lecture
Before there was "big data," there were tallies carved on bone, census rolls of empires, and ledgers of trade. Sharing insights from her forthcoming book, Data Empire: A Human History of Records and Rule (HarperCollins, 2026), Prof. Risam reveals how data has always been a tool of power, tracing its history from ancient civilizations to the digital platforms that govern our lives today.
profdownie.bsky.social
Yiting Xia showing our poster at ISMIR 2025’s Late-Breaking/Demo session!
Reposted by J. Stephen Downie
ryancordell.org
Pulling this post from the archives because…well because I have only a few papers left to comment on & need to fill the exponentially-longer stretches of time between each one
ryancordell.org
Prof. Zeno’s paradox—to grade a stack of papers, you must first grade half the stack—With this done, you must now grade half the remaining stack—then half again—then half again of the remaining stack—Each smaller stack takes just as much time as the previous for some reason—You never finish grading.
profdownie.bsky.social
MIREX poster at ISMIR 2025.

MIREX started 2005!
Reposted by J. Stephen Downie
arxiv-sound.bsky.social
A controlled symbolic music generation task produces piano scores with a desired difficulty level; an auxiliary optimization target for difficulty prediction helps prevent conditioning collapse, enabling more precise and adaptive score generation.
Difficulty-Aware Score Generation for Piano Sight-Reading
Pedro Ramoneda, Masahiro Suzuki, Akira Maezawa, Xavier Serra
arxiv.org
Reposted by J. Stephen Downie
anuncivilphd.bsky.social
So delighted to be hosting my friend @hellejensen.bsky.social as an @ischoolui.bsky.social Research Fellow over the next 10 days!

She’ll be giving several talks about digital history, a transnational look at Sesame Street, and a new transnational project on childhood during the early WWW years.
profdownie.bsky.social
Beautiful day in Daejeon for my favourite conference.
profdownie.bsky.social
Thanks, Mike. Very kind of you.
Reposted by J. Stephen Downie
epyllia.bsky.social
Our closing keynote for #TEI2025 is @juliaflanders.bsky.social , who speaks earnestly of TEI’s ongoing relevance in an ethical formulation of our technologies and data structures.
Reposted by J. Stephen Downie
nabsiddiqui.bsky.social
My book Cultural Analytics in R: A Tidy Approach has just been published! It showcases how tidy data can be used in cultural analytics workflows, from text analysis, machine learning, network science, etc. Check it out: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

#tidyverse #rstats #digitalhumanities
profdownie.bsky.social
Will be in Seoul on K-Saturday. Down to Daejon on Sunday to Thursday, then back up to Seoul.

Should I plan for rain or is it like here in Illinois, short really intense storms, then clear again?
Reposted by J. Stephen Downie
machawk1.bsky.social
@tarannum44.bsky.social from @webscidl.bsky.social is up next at #ACMHT2025 describing web archives usage for verifying attribution of Twitter screenshots with a compelling use case of one's love for pineapple pizza. 🍍🍕 @phonedudemln.bsky.social
Reposted by J. Stephen Downie
yrhu.bsky.social
Hi Friends! My coauthors @tedunderwood.me @gworthey.bsky.social @profdownie.bsky.social and I are excited to share our new article in DSH @adho-org.bsky.social
@eadhorg.bsky.social "Comparative analysis of classics book review data created by users across Douban and Goodreads". Link in comment:)
Yuerong Hu, Ted Underwood, Glen Layne-Worthey, John Stephen Downie, Comparative analysis of classics book review data created by users across Douban and Goodreads, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2025;, fqaf084, https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqaf084
Reposted by J. Stephen Downie
tedunderwood.com
Modern Fiction Studies is sponsoring a conference on “Cultural AI” at Purdue, to be followed by a special issue. @aarthivadde.bsky.social, @richardjeanso.bsky.social, N Katherine Hayles, @mattwilkens.bsky.social , @mellymeldubs.bsky.social, and I will be there later this week.
Conference on Artificial Intelligence
www.cla.purdue.edu
profdownie.bsky.social
One of the first concerts I ever went to was the Kings @ Lambton College.
profdownie.bsky.social
On fast and furious road trip to Brantford, ON to see my mum. Stopover in London, ON. Was able to drop by a long-standing haunt and see folks that I have know since the 80s!
profdownie.bsky.social
How much would one need to pony up? 🤔😁
Reposted by J. Stephen Downie
grubstreetwomen.bsky.social
Prepping for my first one-shot digital humanities workshop 💪 Intro to Data for Humanists that is the most gentle walkthrough for folks who aren't used to thinking about their work in these terms.

Working with data from my two fav projects: @ccp-org.bsky.social and the Womens Print History Project