cfp: ECMLG 2013 – Second call for papers – Porto, Portugal 3-4 October 2013

Conference

This is a second call for papers for the 7th European Conference on Games Based Learning – ECGBL 2013 being held at Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP), Porto, Portugal on the 3-4 October 2013.

This call will close on 14th March 2013.

I would be grateful you could please circulate the call to your network again, to make sure that they have plenty of time to submit to the conference. By the way, if you know of any listservs that I might be able to announce the conference on, do please let me know. You may also like to print out a one page poster about the conference that you could post on your department noticeboard. You can download this from: http://academic-conferences.org/ecgbl/ecgbl2013/ecgbl13-glance.htm

For more information please go to: http://academic-conferences.org/ecgbl/ecgbl2013/ecgbl13-call-papers.htm

Academic research, case studies and work-in-progress/posters are welcomed approaches. PhD Research, proposals for roundtable discussions, non-academic contributions and product demonstrations based on the main themes are also invited. Please feel free to circulate this message to any colleagues or contacts you think may be interested.

Subject to author registration and payment, selected papers will also be considered for publication in a special issue of the Electronic Journal of e-Learning and to the International Journal of Game-Based Learning. The latest issue of the Electronic Journal of e-Learning is available to read online. The Proceedings have an ISSN and ISBN and will be submitted for indexing in the Thompson Web of Science, listed in the EBSCO database, indexed by Google Books and Google Scholar and indexed by the Institution of Engineering and Technology in the UK.

Can the past and history be shared? Abstract accepted for Digital Past conference

Conference, design, Digital Humanities, game, virtual heritage,

Paper and workshop proposal accepted for Digital Past conference 2013 @ Monmouth Wales, 20-21 February 2013. URL:http://www.digitalpast2013.blogspot.co.uk/

Paper: Can the past and history be shared?

There is an interesting divide between historians and the public that must be debated, how to best use virtual heritage, and digital media in general, to learn and share historical knowledge and interpretation. Heritage and history do not have to be a series of slides; space-time-intention can now be depicted and reconfigured. Teaching history through digitally simulated ‘learning by doing’ is an incredibly understudied research area and is of vital importance to a richer understanding of heritage as lived.

However, the actual spatial implications of siting learning tasks in a virtual environment are still largely un-researched. Evaluation of virtual environments has been relatively context-free, designed for user freedom and forward looking creativity. It is still much more difficult to create a virtual place that brings the past alive without destroying it.

There has been an explosion in virtual heritage conferences this century. In the last year alone, there have been calls for digital cultural heritage or virtual heritage by Graphite, VSMM, New Heritage Forum, VRST, VAST, DIME, Archäologie & Computer, and DACH, just to name a few. An outside observer may believe that such academic interest, coupled with recent advances in virtual reality (VR), specifically in virtual environment technology and evaluation, would prepare one for designing a successful virtual heritage environment. Game designers may also be led to believe that games using historical characters, events or settings, may be readily adaptable to virtual heritage. This paper will advance key contextual issues that question both assumptions.

Beacham, R., Denard, H., & Niccolucci, F. (2006). London charter for the computer-based visualization of cultural heritage. Retrieved from http://www.londoncharter.org/introduction.html
Fredrik, D. (2012). Rhetoric, Embodiment, Play: Game Design as Critical Practice in the Art History of Pompeii. Meaningful Play 2012 conference paper.
Retrieved from http://meaningfulplay.msu.edu/proceedings2012/mp2012_submission_178.pdf

Submission 2: Workshop Suggestion: Prototyping and Visualizing Virtual Places
This workshop will primarily be a primer for using 3D visualisation, modelling, video editing and game technologies as quick prototyping and scenario design tools. If attendees request it, time may also be spent on attendee issues, solutions, previous experience, and case studies in utilizing these or similar tools. As well as an overview of these tools and an explanation of their comparable features , there will also be a brief presentation of the presenter’s work in using these tools for designing for cultural and historical interaction.

The proposed workshop will run for 90 minutes. The purpose will be to overview 3D modelling, rendering and animation packages for creating digital places and visualisations of past cultures . The convener will bring the required applications, and make available applications either from a website or via a USB stick.

Tools Previewed
Google Sketchup
Google Sketch up is both a free and commercial 3D application which offers simple modeling and rendering features, a huge warehouse of free 2D and 3D assets, and can export to Blender, Unity,

Unreal UDK (via kmz4 format) and Google Earth.
Blender 3D runs on MAC PC and Linux, Blender is totally free, and the new version 2.5 and its derivatives offers a much improved interface. The bulk of the workshop will concentrate on Blender, as not only is it an impressive modeling and rendering package, but it also offers interesting compositing and video editing features. Blender also has a simple game engine and has possibilities for exporting to Apple iOS.
UNITY has free and trial versions, runs on MAC, PC, Android and iOS, and game consoles. It can import many formats, and is easy to learn, or to add assets to. Scripting can be by JavaScript, Python or C# but there are standard assets and add-ons that can create 3D objects and environments very quickly. It can also create webplugins that run inside browsers or even inside MOODLE.

BUILT HERITAGE 2013: 1st Call for Papers, Milan

Conference

In the framework of the 150th anniversary of the foundation of the Politecnico di Milano and on behalf of the Scientific and Honor Committees, the Centre for Conservation and Promotion of Cultural Heritage announces the 1st Call for Paper of the

International Conference

BUILT HERITAGE 2013 Monitoring Conservation Management

18-20 November 2013, Politecnico di Milano

This conference brings together university researchers, professionals and policy makers to illustrate and discuss the most pressing issues concerning the conservation of archaeological, architectural and urban landscapes. In particular, the main goal of the conference is to discuss multi-disciplinary researches on complex Cultural Heritage sites, ranging from archaeological ruins, historical architecture and centers.

Please see the attached Flyer, BH2013 1st Call.pdf

and view full details about the conference objectives, topics and submission requirements online at: www.bh2013.polimi.it.

BH2013_1st_CALL.pdf

DARIAH meeting, Vienna 28-30, 2012

Digital Humanities, ,

Currently in Vienna for the DARIAH meeting, what can our Research and Education VCC offer DARIAH? A quick list that will change in the next hour.

  1. A review board for a working paper-journal series
  2. Content, annotation, cross referencing, and comments and use in classrooms for an online web portal of European Digital Humanities
  3. Linking in with NeDiMAH, CENDARI, EHRI, ARIADNE and other EU projects via contestable funding projects (Short term Scientific Missions)
  4. Extend DARIAH bibliography in Zotero on Digital Humanities.
  5. Develop a primer for newborn Digital Humanists on resources, tools, and introduction-level publications and exemplar projects across disciplines (or key research themes).
  6. Share components and staff and resources for cross-Europe and transEurope courses and summer schools and possibly staff exchanges, expert seminars or workshops or thatcamps or hackathons.

CFPS for Nov 2012 onwards

Academic, Conference

By CFP deadline

START*DUE*CONFERENCETHEMELOCATION
17-Jun-1330-Nov-12EurovisVisualization SymposiumLeipzig Germany
25-Sep-1330-Nov-12EAEA2013Envisaging ArchitectureMilan Italy
7-Apr-137-Dec-12SIMAUDSimulation for Architecture and Urban designSan Diego, CA
17-Apr-137-Dec-12Crafting the futureCrafting the future-designer´s practice knowledgeGothenburg Sweden
14-May-1310-Dec-12FDG 2012Foundations of Digital GamesCrete
21-Jun-1315-Dec-12History of Computer GamesWorking With, Building, and Telling History (book)Montreal Canada
27-Jun-1331-Dec-12xCoAx Computation Communication Aesthetics and XBergamo, Italy
7-Mar-138-Jan-13Augmented Human 13Augmented HumanMunich Germany
2-Sep-138-Jan-13Interact2013designing for diversityCapetown South Africa
28-Apr-1311-Jan-13Gamification Workshop (CHI2013)Designing Gamification: Creating Gameful and Playful ExperiencesParis France
4-Jul-1314-Jan-13EGOS ColloquiumBridging the Real and the Virtual in a Digital WorldMontreal Canada
24-Jun-1315-Jan-13ISAGAGaming simulationStockholm Sweden
21-Jul-1317-Jan-13SIGGRAPHComputer Graphics and Interactive TechniquesAnaheim USA
27-Apr-131-Feb-13IASESP Mediated SpacesInternational Association for the Study of Environment, Space and PlaceFlorida USA
29-Jun-131-Feb-13C&TCommunities and TechnologiesMunich Germany
1-Jul-131-Feb-13CAADFUTURES2013Global Design & Local MaterializationShanghai China
3-Oct-1314-Mar-13ECGBL 2013 7th European Conference on Games Based LearningPorto Portugal
10-Oct-1321-Mar-13visweekAtlanta USA
21-Jul-133-Mar-03DH Summer School LeipzigCulture and TechnologyLeipzig Germany
9-Dec-1324-May-03icmi2013Multimodal Interaction, ICMISydney Australia
27-Apr-13?Chi2013 workshop:Games User ResearchPractice, Methods, and ApplicationsParis France
6-Jun-13?DHSIDH Summer InstituteVancouver Island Canada
26-Jun-13?DH Summer School BernDigital Humanities Summer School SwitzerlandBern Switzerland
8-Jul-13?Digital.Humanities@ OxfordDigital.Humanities@Oxford Summer School (tentative date)Oxford UK

By Starting Date

*START*DUECONFERENCETHEMELOCATION
20-Feb-1326-Oct-12Digital PastNew technologies in heritage, interpretation and outreachWales
7-Mar-138-Jan-13Augmented Human 13Augmented HumanMunich Germany
26-Mar-1310-Oct-12CAA2013Across Time and Space:Computer Applications in ArcheologyPerth Australia
7-Apr-137-Dec-12SIMAUDSimulation for Architecture and Urban designSan Diego, CA
17-Apr-137-Dec-12Crafting the futureCrafting the future-designer´s practice knowledgeGothenburg Sweden
17-Apr-1330-Sep-12MW2013Museums and the WebPortland Oregon
27-Apr-131-Feb-13IASESP Mediated SpacesInternational Association for the Study of Environment, Space and PlaceFlorida USA
27-Apr-13?Chi2013 workshop:Games User ResearchPractice, Methods, and ApplicationsParis France
27-Apr-135-Oct-12CHI2013changing perspectives (5 Jan interactivity)Paris France
28-Apr-1311-Jan-13Gamification Workshop (CHI2013)Designing Gamification: Creating Gameful and Playful ExperiencesParis France
1-May-131-Nov-12MuseumnextMuseumnextAmsterdam Netherlands
14-May-1310-Dec-12FDG 2012Foundations of Digital GamesCrete
15-May-139-Sep-12CAADRIACAADRIASingapore
25-May-1315-Nov-12HASTAC 2013The Storm of Progress: New Horizons, New Narratives, New CodesToronto Canada
1-Jun-131-Nov-12CongressCongress of the Humanities and Social Sciences: @ the edgeVictoria Canada
6-Jun-13?DHSIDH Summer InstituteVancouver Island Canada
17-Jun-1330-Nov-12EurovisVisualization SymposiumLeipzig Germany
21-Jun-1315-Dec-12History of Computer GamesWorking With, Building, and Telling History (book)Montreal Canada
24-Jun-1315-Jan-13ISAGAGaming simulationStockholm Sweden
26-Jun-13?DH Summer School BernDigital Humanities Summer School SwitzerlandBern Switzerland
27-Jun-1331-Dec-12xCoAx Computation Communication Aesthetics and XBergamo, Italy
29-Jun-131-Feb-13C&TCommunities and TechnologiesMunich Germany
1-Jul-131-Feb-13CAADFUTURES2013Global Design & Local MaterializationShanghai China
4-Jul-1314-Jan-13EGOS ColloquiumBridging the Real and the Virtual in a Digital WorldMontreal Canada
8-Jul-13?Digital.Humanities@ OxfordDigital.Humanities@Oxford Summer School (tentative date)Oxford UK
16-Jul-133-Nov-12Digital Humanities 2013University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA (2013) notification 1 FebNebraska USA
21-Jul-1317-Jan-13SIGGRAPHComputer Graphics and Interactive TechniquesAnaheim USA
21-Jul-13?DH Summer School LeipzigCulture and TechnologyLeipzig Germany
2-Sep-138-Jan-13Interact2013designing for diversityCapetown South Africa
25-Sep-1330-Nov-12EAEA2013Envisaging ArchitectureMilan Italy
3-Oct-1314-Mar-13ECGBL 2013 7th European Conference on Games Based LearningPorto Portugal
10-Oct-1321-Mar-13visweekAtlanta USA
9-Dec-1324-May-03icmi2013Multimodal Interaction, ICMISydney Australia

The best game and virtual environment journals?

Academic, game, Journal, virtual heritage, ,

How do you measure the reach, quality and effectiveness of journals in the areas of game studies and virtual environments? Many of them do not clearly feature impact factors, but by using commercial software one may be able to get a better idea of how well they help the h-index of submitted papers. I won’t get into the debate here on open access journals but as some of the below journals are open access, and some are extremely expensive, this should also be a consideration, especially if one is writing also for a non-academic audience (such as game designers).

I have been reading a few articles on how book chapters do not get cited (Anderson, 2012; Bishop, 2012) and whether academics should write book reviews (Toor, 2012). In Virtual Heritage research many conferences are not fully published and indexed, while the book chapters are seldom cited.  There are some good articles out there on how to get published (Armstrong, undated), but why bother if one is not cited? Lack of citations probably also means that one is not read by a serious professional audience.

And I note in (my) area, some of the more famous journals appear to be

NB related VR/VE/ graphics journals impact factors here.

*I am on the editorial boards of the above journals.

UPDATE: you can compare the above journals at SCIMAGOJR website.

Descriptive Theory Does Not Build Place

Digital Humanities, virtual heritage, , ,

This is from the Hong Kong New Heritage Place Panel in 2006. Seems such a long time ago! One day I should revisit all these grand claims that arose from a younger me, and aim for more substantiation and logical structure.

Descriptive Theory Does Not Build Place

New media, virtual heritage, cultural heritage, and place are all hotly contested concepts, of interest to many different fields. They have in common a slippery definitional outline, and they all feature in fiery interdisciplinary debates. They also pose many difficulties for those of us attempting to create a lucid prescriptive and descriptive theory that explains and employs them effectively.

For real world cultural heritage projects one must consider actual problems of preserving the present, while allowing people to in some way understand the past. According to constructivist and constructionist theories, the best way of creating understanding for people of different learning abilities and interests is to allow them to interact with the object in question. Virtual heritage, for all its difficulties, can augment and afford experiential understanding via interaction in a way not always directly accessible through present day cultural sites. It may sound flippant, but place can actually get in the way of cultural understanding for both the public and for archaeologists. For what survives may not always be accurate, authentic, or revealing.

On the other hand, many critics have argued that virtual environments lack a sense of place. In trying to answer these critics, the danger lurks that in attempting to create a sense of place, we convince the public of a hypothetically constructed past. With technology currently used by many VR centres, such issues might appear to be easily resolvable. I reluctantly disagree.

Virtual heritage environments typically encounter issues of meaningful interaction, authenticity, accessibility, maintenance, non-intrusive evaluation of cultural understanding of inhabitant values and beliefs, and of course the ethical issues of site ownership, management and identity. It is also possible that many in the virtual heritage community may benefit from revisiting heritage studies to see how real world places have attempted to answer similar issues.

My suggestion is that new media (i.e. small n and m) technology offers more accessible, user friendly, and innovative ways of capturing and expressing place qualia to current generations. New media has challenged Presence research to study not just response to virtual environments, but also virtual environments with suitable content. The artistic expansion of new media in terms of enhanced sensory input and output may help virtual reality break free of the mouse and the screen as creative constraints to digital expression.

New media has started to separate data from platform, which may eventually also help port VR to the wider public. New media has addressed consumer demand for personalisation, social sharing, and social identity, in entertainment media. Virtual heritage, by contrast, has been slow to address audience and user issues. New media, through its holes, hacks, and add ons, has also helped foster a community-based network of developers who are working together to create open source projects. Virtual heritage needs to utilise such technology so that the training of designers and owner-operators can help distribute and manage the content.

New media has started to separate data from platform, which may eventually also help port VR to the wider public. New media has addressed consumer demand for personalization, social sharing, and identity, in entertainment media. Virtual heritage, by contrast, has been slow to address audience and user issues. New media, through its holes, hacks, and add-ons, has also helped foster a community-based network of developers who are helping create open source projects. Virtual heritage needs to utilize such technology so that the training of designers and owner-operators can help distribute and manage the content.

Update: the original panel abstracts are here:
http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~giaccard/research/pdf/GiaccardiKalay_NH06.pdf

Prototyping for Ownership Workshop at Media Architecture Biennale

Architecture, Conference, design, game, virtual heritage

On 15 November i.e. yesterday, I attended the “Prototyping for Ownership” workshop, run by

Klaus Birk (Media Design, DHBW & Information Environments, UAL London)
Roman Grasy (Intuity Media Lab). >Their company is based in Germany.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The workshop had 2 groups. Our group of between 5-9 people (it varied!) spent the day choosing little pictures, noting down ideas to them, on creating media architecture on problems close to us. There was a Kinect and VVV (runs nicely with Kinect), augmented reality trackers, a 360 degree mouse, and a macbook pro with after affects (you can guess what I ended up doing).

Some of my ideas are in the slide show above.

My group chose my idea of a giant phonogram set into a square, people would run around tracks or grooves of the phonogram, which would start tracks of music, their speed and rhythm would be tracked, affecting the music, and gestures could affect the timbre. Small orchestral pits in the corners of the square would allow sound editing via mechanical or visual (projected) buttons. Also there would be exercise levers that would control the music just like dials on a sound editing desk (may attach sketch later). Shells or pipes in the side streets would faintly play current or past performances, to draw people to the square. We also thought of a catch the light or animated sprites game, that would be derived from the spinning carousal-musical tracks, on the surrounding urban facades, and there could be small lasers inside the tracks, broken by the shadows of the dancers.

There is also a video of us dancing to the start stop Fat Boy Slim track while being rotated. Too embarrassing to add here, to be honest. So I hope they don’t choose this video part of the prototype to show at the Biennale! (Edit: Klaus has, oh well, I am stuck in the office so if it is shown today I won’t know about it).

Part of our kinect interface for the “anti travelator” or “magic urban roundabout” prototype is below, it worked, you step into the light (the magic circle) and the music turns on, you step out, it stops. Ideally it would record your height and changing y position to change tracks in the music and pitch. Truly a magic circle!

NB the twitter handle for the conference is @MABiennale website address is http://mab12.mediaarchitecture.org/

It also runs on Saturday at Godsbanen, Aarhus (great venue for this sort of thing).

Cfp: Rhetoric as Equipment for Living

Academic, Conference

http://www.cultureeducation.ugent.be/kennethburke/

Kenneth Burke, Culture and Education – May 22-25, 2013, Ghent University, Belgium

In what will be the first major conference devoted to Kenneth Burke outside the United States, we aspire to introduce the ideas of this seminal thinker to disciplines that might benefit from them. We therefore welcome both paper abstracts as panel proposals that broadly explore the topic of Rhetoric as Equipment for Living from the perspective of education, citizenship, literature, literacy, technology, games, (new) media… and from the perspective of disciplines such as pedagogy, social work, psychology, cultural studies, management and communication. The committee especially welcomes contributions that examine the possible use of rhetoric for education or educators, as well as contributions that explore affinities between Burke and European scholars or scholarship, or that apply new rhetoric to political, economic or social issues.

  • Conference dates: May 22-25th 2013
  • CFP deadline: January 15th 2013
  • CFP decision: by February 15th 2013
  • Registration starts: February 15th 2013

Call for Papers for a special issue on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Conference

http://hastac.org/opportunities/cfp-journal-online-learning-and-teachings-special-issue-moocs

The MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT) has just released a Call for Papers for a special issue on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), to be published in Summer 2013. Both papers reporting on empirical studies/evaluations (research papers, case studies) as well as conceptual and position papers will be considered for publication in the special issue. The Guest Editors of the special issue are George Siemens (Athabasca University), Valerie Irvine (University of Victoria), and Jillianne Code (University of Victoria).

Proposals in the form of extended abstracts (500 words) are due on November 15, 2012, with full manuscripts due on January 31, 2013.

The full Call for Papers is available at http://jolt.merlot.org/jolt_moocs_cfp.pdf

CFP: The History of Games International Conference | HASTAC

Conference, design, game

CFP: The History of Games International Conference | HASTAC.

Montréal, 21-23 June 2013

29 August, 2012 – 20:06 — Henry Lowood
The History of Games International Conference

1st edition: Working With, Building, and Telling History
Montreal, Canada. June 21st – 23rd 2013
Organizers: Espen Aarseth (IT University of Copenhagen), Raiford Guins (Stony Brook University), Henry Lowood (Stanford University), Carl Therrien (Université de Montréal).

Submissions

Proposals should be at least 1000 words in length (plus references) and include a title, author’s name, affiliation and short C.V., and provide a clear synopsis for a 20-minute conference length paper.
Deadline for proposals: December 15th 2012.
Please send proposals to Laine Nooney (laine.nooney@gmail.com).

OpenEdition Calenda

Conference

Dear colleagues,

To celebrate the publication of the 20,000th event announcements on Calenda, the OpenEdition is pleased to announce the launch of the multilingual version of the humanities and social sciences calendar: calenda.org.

The sheer volume and variety of announcements required a more detailed, yet more ergonomic interface for a more in-depth use of the calendar. The calendar has now published more than 2000 announcements in English and 300 in Portuguese, hence a multilingual interface was required. The future of OpenEdition in general and Calenda in particular, lies in this international dimension.

Calenda’s main improvements to functioning include:
– Easier browsing of announcements via a search engine using both criteria and facets;
– The multilingualism of the platfrom has been refined with the implementation of linguistic browsing (French, English and Portuguese, with German and Spanish soon to follow);
– Announcement documentation is now enhanced with automatic geolocalisation and language indications.

During the weeks to come, we will be presenting these functions in more detail as well as other news of the site in posts published.

Calenda is an OpenEdition platform (Revues.org, Hypotheses, Calenda and OpenEdition Books), with its own Academic Committee (http://calenda.org/about). Calenda has been developed by the Centre for Open Electronic Publishing (UMS 3287 – CNRS, Université d’Aix-Marseille, EHESS, Université d’Avignon). The Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian is co-financing the development of the Portuguese-speaking version of Calenda in partnership with Cléo and the Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia (CRIA, Portugal).

We welcome any proposal coming from other languages, in order to provide more translations to european languages, such as german, italien, danish, polish, etc.