Professor and Founding Director
Visual Thinking Laboratory
College of Information
University of North Texas
My research focuses on Photo Provocations (thinking in, with, and about photographs); Doing Things with Information (modeling human information retrieval); Structures of Image Collections (how much entropy can you stand?); Soft retrieval (pragmatic philosophy and computation); Interdisciplinary studies (erosion of boundaries so that "inter" will be irrelevant).
I shot my first roll of photographs in the first grade - before writing my first sentence. I studied Greek & Latin literature at Dartmouth, was on the fencing team, did early work with computers and structural analysis of documents, and spent a good deal of time at the movies. I was awarded a full ride fellowship for a master's degree in film under Michael Siporin at Montclair State, then spent several years in various aspects of documentary production. In Berkeley I began running hard and stumbled into the Ph.D. program at the School of Information Studies at UC Berkeley where I focused on representation of moving image documents and idiosyncratic methods of finding documents. Collaborations with family, close friends, and colleagues have led to publications in several arenas dealing with images, representation, and questions.
In the early part of the 21st century I find myself wrestling with notions of just what is a document and just how do image-based documents work? It is exciting to be engaged in the philosophical, social, and artistic realm of making sense of the new image environment in which we find ourselves.
books
O’Connor, B. C., R. L. Anderson, and J. L. Kearns. (2008) Doing Things with Information: Beyond Indexing and Astracting. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.
O’Connor, B. C. and H. F. Greisdorf. (2007) Structures of Image Collections: Chauvet-Pont d’Arc to Flickr. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.
O’Connor, B. C., R. L. Anderson, and J. L. Kearns. (2007) The Functional Ontology of Filmic Documents, chapter in A Document (Re)turn: Contributions from A Research Field in Transition, R. Skare, N.W. Lund, A. Värheim, eds. Berlin: Peter Lang Publishers.
O’Connor, B. C. and R. B. Wyatt. (2004) Photo Provocations: Thinking in with and about Pictures. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
O’Connor, B. C. and J. H. Copeland. (2003) Hunting and Gathering on the Information Savanna: Human Information Seeking Behavior. Lanham, MD : Scarecrow Press.
articles
Yoon, JW and B. C. O'Connor. (2010) "Engineering an image-browsing environment: re-purposing existing denotative descriptors" Journal of Documentation, 66(5): 750 - 774
Klaver, I. & O'Connor, B.C. (2010) "Photography changes our environemntal awareness". Smithsonian Photography Initiative.
O’Connor, B. C. and E. M. O’Connor. (2008) “Verisimilitude: Representation and Ultra-High Resolution Photographs of Realia” DOCAM 2008, Document Academy Annual Conference, Madison WI
Kearns, J, B. C. O’Connor, and F.B.-G. Moore. (2007) “Provocations on the structure of scholarly writing in the digital era” On the Horizon, 15(4): 222-238.
Kearns, J. and B. C. O’Connor. (2004) “Dancing with Entropy: Form Attributes, Children, and Representation” Journal of Documentation, 60(2).
Greisdorf, H. F. and B. C. O’Connor. (2003)“Nodes of Topicality Modeling User Notions of On Topic Documents” Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 54(14): 1296-1304.
------- (2002) “What Do Users See?”Proceedings of the 65th ASIST Annual Meeting, 39: 383-390.
------- (2002) “Modeling What Users See When They Look at Images: A Cognitive Viewpoint” Journal of Documentation, 58(1): 1-24
B. Augst and B. C. O’Connor. (2000)“No Longer a Shot in the Dark: Engineering a Robust Environment for Film Study.” Computers in the Humanities, 33(4): 345-363
Goodrum, A. A., B. C. O’Connor, and J. M. Turner. (2000) “Introduction to Special Topic Issue of Computers and the Humanities: “Digital Images.” Computers in the Humanities. 33(4): 291-292.
shows
“SCS #16.” Photo mural collaboration with Rich Anderson. UNT on the Square, March 2010.
“Chopped and Screwed Redux: Father & Son Photo Murals”. Installation at Art 6 Gallery. Denton, Texas, June 2006
“Before My Eyes.” Installation of three photo murals at Art 6 Gallery. Denton, Texas, December 2005
“PhotoSurface.” 35 foot photo mural. Uncommon Ground. Denton, Texas, April, 2004.
presentations
“Semi-Automatic Semiotic Analysis of Hitchcock’s The Birds.” Fused media presentation at the University Film and Video Association Conference, Denton, TX, August 2007.
“Computational Structural Analysis of Video Structure” (with Richard Anderson) at the International Visual Literacy Association Annual Conference, Ft. Worth, TX, October 2006.
“Computational Approach to Structure–Based Classification of Film” (with Richard Anderson) at the Document Academy Fourth Annual Meeting, Berkeley, October 2006.
“Semi-Automatic Semiotic Analysis of Film?” (with Richard Anderson) at the Document Academy Third Annual Meeting, Berkeley, October 2005.
“Eye’s Mind” keynote presentation Workshop on Museums and Photographs. California chapters of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, San Francisco Museum of Art, Berkeley Art Museum. April, 2005.
“Snapshots” panel session on visualization. Annual Conference of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 2004.
“Bounty Hunters & Sub Chasers” panel session on street level information flow. Annual Conference of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 2004.
“Photocutionary Acts and the Representation of Photographs” Research & Teaching Lecture, College of Information Science and Technology, Drexel, November 2004.
“Photocutionary Acts: Re-thinking the Nature of Interaction with Photographs” Distinguished Lecture, School of Information Systems and Management, University of California, Berkeley, September 2004.
“Size Does Matter – Doesn’t It? User Reactions to Very Large, Data-Rich Photographs.” (2002) Panel on Cutting Edge-Digital Imaging Research, Annual Conference of the American Society for Information Science & Technology.
“Molecules of Meaning.” (2002) Symposium on Understanding Video UNC-Chapel Hill interaction design lab.
“Thresholds of Representation: Building Taxonomies for Enhanced Image Retrieval” (with Greisdorf) 17th Annual Computers in Libraries Co nference, 2002.
“If a Picture were Worth One Thousand Words, which One Thousand Would Those Be?” (2001)Annual Conference of the American Society for Information Science & Technology.
“Pheromones of Meaning: Community Memory and Image Retrieval.” (2001)Annual Conference of the Museum Computer Network.
“Thoughts on Representation of Images.” (2001) Massachusetts Institute of Technology Conference on Images & Meaning.
films
Aces & Eights, 1996. Competitive roller blading team.
Amber Waves of Grain, 1985. Documentary on difficulties for Kansas agriculture.
Strong City, 1985. Documentary on Strong City PRCA rodeo
Running Film, 1983. What happens when a runner carries a 16mm movie camera through a canyon in California.
Epilepsy Teens, 1982. Television spots to raise awareness of epilepsy.
GymMaster, 1979.
Gymnastics USA, 1977. Documentary on selection of US Olympic gymnastics team.
In Reserve, 1974. The workings of the Federal Reserve Bank.
Practice, 1974. World class gymnasts work out in the gym.
Horse Pulling, 1974. Horse pulling competition at the Deerfield Fair, New Hampshire.
College in the Community, 1974. Montclair State University engagement with Montclair, New Jersey.
Dome Film for Michael, 1973. A little "artsy" tribute to Mickey Siporin.
Elevation 168, 1972. Documentary on teen drug use in a collapsed mill town economy.
No Place to Go, 1971. Documentary on the downsides of urban renewal.
Catullus Clips, 1969. Film essays to support senior thesis in Greek & Latin Literature at Dartmouth.
