Spiders tend to be a step ahead of the rest, whether it’s in their fields of research, internship opportunities, and more. Two professors are prime examples as they are developing new software, thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

Statistics professor Taylor Arnold and digital humanities professor Lauren Tilton are analyzing how moving images such as film, television, and news broadcasts shape cultural norms. Their grant will allow them to develop a free, open source software library that will use computer vision techniques to analyze and organize moving images. They will be collaborating with UR’s Digital Scholarship Lab and the Media Ecology Project at Dartmouth College.

“We are harnessing and developing algorithms that approximate the ways in which humans process moving images by identifying and tracking objects, people, sound, and dialogue,” Arnold said. “What would take a human years to process, this automated toolkit can do in minutes.”

We are so proud when our professors’ innovative projects can help others’ research as well. We look forward to seeing what this duo accomplishes next!