Category Archives: archaeology

Open access book on paradata

3D and game editors, Academic, Announcements, archaeology, book chapter, digital heritage, Open Access, publication

M. Ioannides, D. Baker, A. Agapiou, & P. Siegkas (Eds.), 3D Research Challenges in Cultural Heritage V: Paradata, Metadata and Data in Digitisation. Springer Nature Switzerland. Open Access. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-78590-0

I have a chapter in there.

Champion, E. (2025). Usable, Useful, Reviewable and Reusable Metadata. In M. Ioannides, D. Baker, A. Agapiou, & P. Siegkas (Eds.), 3D Research Challenges in Cultural Heritage V: Paradata, Metadata and Data in Digitisation (pp. 176-183). Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-78590-0_15. Open Access.

New PhD vacancies open February

Academic, Announcements, archaeology, augmented reality, Digital Humanities, heritage, PhD, serious games, vacancies, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation,

In February I will have 2 PhD projects open for candidates to apply at this new (merged) Adelaide University- Filter “History, Heritage and Archaeology”

https://adelaideuni.edu.au/research/research-degrees/research-projects/

Radical Co-Design for Filtered Affective Digital Heritage via AR and WebXR

This project explores how technology like Augmented Reality (AR) and WebXR can enhance visitor engagement with Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM), particularly dark tourism sites such as prisons, through game design and storytelling. The project focuses on Adelaide Gaol, one of Australia’s oldest colonial buildings. By involving volunteer communities and former prisoners’ families in the radical co-design process, the research aims to develop AR-based experiences that convey personal narratives that can be filtered and tailored to visitors. Key research questions explore utilising radical co-design for dark tourism sites, whether escape-room style game design enhances engagement and how effectively content can be personalised. The project will use low-cost, open-access tools throughout, and will generate new insights applicable across the GLAM and tourism sectors.

Game Prototyping for Museums and Galleries

This project will examine the development and design of game prototypes for use in museums and galleries with content specialists to create interactive, augmented, or immersive exhibitions and/or the evaluation of these exhibitions and works. A number of methods may be considered and investigated, including Figma, ShapesXR, Blueprints, physical game demos, and other methods. Possible outcomes of the project include non-traditional research outputs as well as contributions to theoretical disciplinary knowledge.

Museum Big Data Athens

Academic, archaeology, Architecture, Conference, Digital Humanities, heritage, , , , , , ,

If you are near Athens 18-19 November there is an interesting conference on the topic of the above at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

The program is now available: https://2024.museumbigdata.org/program/

I am giving the below talk and I am happy to mention any information on projects or technology around the following topics and themes.

Immersive Visualisation and the Emergence of Collaborative XR in the Museum Sector

In this talk, I will explore the increasing promise of extended reality (XR), new sensory data and immersive experiences, and recent emerging visualisation strategies for conveying increasingly immersive and data-driven possibilities for the museum sector. Some recent projects I will cover include the Australian Cultural Data Engine, the Time Layered Cultural Map of Australia, and smaller case studies and experiments in data-driven story-mapping, mixed, augmented, and virtual reality. A key issue is immersive literacy: how designers can cater to the visualisation and navigation issues of the general public not yet experienced in these emerging rich, multimodal, but potentially overpowering or confusing immersive experiences. I will sketch out concepts that may be borrowed from game design to engage, entice, and also encourage audiences to explore this new and more immersive world of big data.

Assassin’s Creed in the Classroom

3D and game editors, Academic, Announcements, archaeology, Architecture, augmented reality, Book, book chapter, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, publication, serious games, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, Virtual travel, , , , , ,

Assassin’s Creed‹ in the Classroom History’s Playground or a Stab in the Dark? HAS been published by De Gruyter, on 18 December. Thanks to my co-editor Dr Juan Hiriart, and our authors.

https://degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783111250724/html

Erik Champion and Juan Hiriart
Introduction: History’s Playground or a Stab in the Dark?

Marc-André Éthier and David Lefrançois
Chapter 1: Historical Video Games and Teaching Practices

Chu Xu, Robin Sharma and Adam K. Dubé
Chapter 2: Discovery Tour Curriculum Guides to Improve Teachers’ Adoption of Serious Gaming

Ylva Grufstedt and Robert Houghton
Chapter 3: Christian Vikings Storming Templar Castles: Anachronism as a Teaching Tool

Julien A. Bazile
Chapter 4: Ludoforming the Past: Mediation of Play and Mediation of History through Videogame Design

Nathan Looije
Chapter 5: Exploring History through Depictions of Historical Characters in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

Juan Hiriart
Chapter 6: Empathy and Historical Learning in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Discovery Tour

Kevin Péloquin and Marc-André Éthier
Chapter 7: The Discovery Tour as a Mediated Tool for Teaching and Learning History

Angela Schwarz
Chapter 8: Discovering the Past as a Virtual Foreign Country: Assassin’s Creed as Historical Tourism

Hamish Cameron
Chapter 9: Classical Creations in a Modern Medium: Using Story Creator Mode in a University Assignment

Kira Jones
Chapter 10: Assassin’s Creed @ The Carlos: Merging Games and Gallery in the Museum

Manuel Sánchez García and Rafael de Lacour
Chapter 11: From the Sketchbook to Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: An Experiment in Architectural Education

Ear Zow Digital
Chapter 12: Assassin’s Creed As Immersive and Interactive Architectural History

CAA2024 Session on Archaeogames

3D and game editors, Announcements, archaeology, augmented reality, cfp, game, heritage, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation

#CFP did I mention Dr Juan Hiriart and I are organizing an archaeogames session? @CAA2024AKL in Auckland New Zealand, 8-12 April? No?

Paper deadline: 19 October.

Venue: Built on the embers of my old condemned student flat.

URL: https://2024.caaconference.org/sessions/#S12

Keywords: #caa #archaeology #games #reuse #auckland #newzealand

Escape Room Archaeology

3D and game editors, Academic, Announcements, archaeology, Architecture, Book, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, Open Access, publication, serious games, virtual heritage, ,

Next project: edited collected chapters (free online): DIY archaeology (history, architectural/art history and heritage) escape rooms children/students can create at home or in class (written and illustrated like cookbook recipes). Now, just how to write up the proposal & find the right designers, writers, & experts! 

Assassin’s Creed in the Classroom: History’s Playground or a Stab in the Dark?

3D and game editors, Announcements, archaeology, Architecture, board game, Book, digital heritage, game, serious games

I am very close to submitting to a publisher the edited book (with Dr Juan Hiriart, University of Salford, UK) “Assassin’s Creed in the Classroom: History’s Playground or a Stab in the Dark?” with 18 writers from history, archaeology, architecture, art history, classics, game design, and education. Thanks to Maxime Durand and Ubisoft for helping getting the party started.

Talk in Iceland, June 16.

3D and game editors, Academic, Announcements, archaeology, Digital Humanities, Presentation, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation,

I wish! (Well, hopefully next year)… but anyway, I will give a 20-25 minute talk by Zoom, on Thursday June 16. The PHIVE conference (PROMOTING HERITAGE IN VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS) is kicked off by the President of Iceland, a noted Professor of History, and a few months older than me (so I still have time to become a head of state).

Title

Into the Heritage-Verse

Abstract

Proponents of virtual reality, extended reality, and the “Metaverse’ suggest the digital future of multiple entertainment and education worlds is imminent. And the field of virtual heritage (virtual reality and related technologies) is arguably over three decades old already.

If this is true, and given that we are saturated by phone-media, apps, and games, why is it so hard to find example of virtual heritage? What is stopping the uptake of these new technologies? And how can we use these new, imminent, and hyped devices and platforms for the benefit of digital heritage, or are there conceptual challenges still to be resolved?

CAA 2022, Oxford

Academic, archaeology, augmented reality, Conference, Digital Humanities, heritage, Virtual Reality

This year the Computing Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Conference is running in person in Oxford, UK and virtually. CAA2022 will be held 8-11 August 2022.

If you are interested, CAA2022’s first session is calling for papers on cultural presence. Elaine contacted me about this for the last CAA (that was postponed) and it sounds very interesting so, hopefully, some of you can make it. You can also submit individual papers to CAA2022.

S01: iN Deep: Cultural Presence in Immersive Educational Experiences (Other)

Elaine A Sullivan, University of California Santa Cruz

Sara Perry, Museum of London Archaeology

Paola Derudas, Lund University

Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (XR) technologies are increasingly incorporated into university classrooms and public education in the GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums). The potential to use these technologies to engage students and the public with archaeological knowledge (such as site reconstructions, artefacts, or re-imagining the activities of past peoples) is exciting, but these forms of representation, including the use of individual headsets, tablets, and personal mobile phones, come with particular challenges. In his book Critical Gaming (2015), Eric Champion argued that virtual realities should express ‘cultural presence,’ the meaning and significance of a time, place, or object to people of the past.

Hyper-reality, photogrammetry, and ever-increasing levels of ‘accuracy’ in 3D models do not inherently convey aspects of cultural significance and meaning, and many VR/AR/XR experiences fall dramatically short of the goal of expressing the importance of past places and things to
their original communities. Emphasis on technological and (especially) hardware innovation often deflects attention from critically engaging with questions of meaning-making.


This panel asks those creating or intensely using Archaeology VR/AR/XR to focus NOT on software, hardware, or the latest technical innovations, but on how we as archaeologists can better design, create, or curate experiences that inspire and educate students and the public on the cultural importance of archaeological spaces, objects or themes.

What are successful techniques to aid a visitor to better understand the original context of an object now placed in a (often far off) museum or gallery? How can university instructors incorporate the (problematically individual) headset or mobile experiences into pedagogy to provide meaningful and active student learning? How can complex data be usefully layered or curated so that multiple types of museum visitors or classes could find it informative and emotionally resonant? How can we turn these increasingly popular technologies into serious spaces of cultural learning and curiosity, moving beyond the initial ‘wow’ factor

Format
Instead of traditional 20 minute talks, we request that participants present 8-10 minutes in depth on one VR/AR/XR experience they have designed and/or utilized in a university or GLAM setting (not a general review of multiple types of work). We ask participants to present and explain aspects of design and interaction and their intent in that experience; or, if the content was not designed by the presenter, how content was incorporated, curated, or enhanced for the classroom or GLAM experience.

Specifically, we ask presenters to think thoughtfully and critically about how we might collectively learn to use these technologies in more informed ways, including: What types of interactions with students or the public have shown promise, and how might we build on those successes? What practices have not worked, and how might we learn from our failures? What particular aspects of archaeological and cultural heritage knowledge are best emphasized in the VR/AR/XR experience? What is key to re-using content created by others, including content created by non-archaeologists?

The session will be divided into four sections:

  • 1st group of presentations, ~five presenters (10 minutes per presentation)
  • a ~30 minute ‘hands-on’ period** where participants and the audience will be able to engage/interact directly with the presented content from both presentation groups
  • 2nd group of presentations, ~five presenters (10 minutes per presentation)
  • concluded by a ~30-minute Q&A session for the full group of presenters and audience

We hope this format will allow the audience to engage directly with the content before opening up the session for questions and comments. The goal is to turn this session into a workshop that helps all present work more critically with VR/AR/XR content and improve how we communicate scholarly information at the university and GLAM setting.

**We therefore ask participants to commit to bringing their discussed content uploaded or downloadable in some format that can be shared directly with others: including (but not limited to) VR headsets, Google cardboard, AR apps pre-installed on tablets or smart phones, etc.

References
Champion, E. (2015). Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

3D, Maps and DBPedia

3D and game editors, Academic, Announcements, archaeology, Digital Humanities, infrastructure, Linked Open Data, PhD, visualisation, Web GIS

The UNESCO Chair of Cultural Heritage and Visualisation (10/2016 – 09/2020) project at https://unesco-chv.curtin.edu.au will be shut down in June 2022.

Before then feel free to look at the online Australian map platform with 3D models, Linked Open Data, DBpedia, open data etc… https://unesco-chv.curtin.edu.au/mapplatform but please allow 20-30 seconds for some of the larger 3D models to load.

It was developed for Ikrom Nishanbaev’s PhD project, (supervised with Dr David McMeekin), the thesis by publication has just been successfully reviewed.

Thank you to Ikrom, David, the GIS and cultural heritage people who provided feedback and the reviewers.

Interesting to note Ikrom started the PhD in humanities then when I left Curtin University he moved to Science and Engineering. So it is arguably a truly interdisciplinary Digital Humanities project.

One of his papers received an award. The papers are listed at:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vmha0GcAAAAJ&hl=en

Cultural Presence Session proposed for CAA2022 Oxford

Academic, Announcements, archaeology, Conference, Digital Humanities, Symposium, ,

Associate Professor Elaine Sullivan will propose a session on cultural presence (based on my writing in Critical Gaming) but also on wider issues of virtual heritage, for CAA2022, Oxford, 8-11 August (physically and virtually). It was approved for CAA2020 Oxford but the conference was postponed due to COVID, and she will need to reapply. However, if you are interested please contact her via her University of California-Santa Cruz Faculty page.

Details of her session S26 (specific details may be changed for 2022) are at https://2020.caaconference.org/sessions/ (N.B. I updated my definition of Cultural Presence in the journal article Culturally Significant Presence in Single-player Computer Games (JOCCH 2020).

Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (XR) technologies are increasingly incorporated into university classrooms and public education in the GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums). The potential to use these technologies to engage students and the public with archaeological knowledge (such as site reconstructions, artefacts, or re-imagining the activities of past peoples) is exciting, but
these forms of representation, including the use of individual headsets, tablets, and personal mobile phones, come with particular challenges.

In his book Critical Gaming (2015), (free PDF) Erik Champion argued that virtual realities should express ‘cultural presence,’ the meaning and significance of a time, place, or object to people of the past.

Hyper-reality, photogrammetry, and ever-increasing levels of ‘accuracy’ in 3D models do not inherently convey aspects of cultural significance and meaning, and many VR/AR/XR experiences fall dramatically short of the goal of expressing the importance of past places and things to their original communities.

Emphasis on technological and (especially) hardware innovation often deflects attention from critically engaging with questions of meaning-making. This panel asks those creating or intensely using Archaeology VR/AR/XR to focus NOT on software, hardware, or the latest technical innovations, but on how we as archaeologists
can better design, create, or curate experiences that inspire and educate students and the public on the cultural importance of archaeological spaces, objects or themes.

What are successful techniques to aid a visitor to better understand the original context of an object now placed in a (often far off) museum or gallery? How can university instructors incorporate the (problematically individual) headset or mobile experiences into pedagogy to provide meaningful and active student learning? How can complex data be usefully layered or curated so that multiple types of museum visitors or classes could find it informative and emotionally resonant? How can we turn these increasingly popular technologies into serious spaces of cultural learning and curiosity, moving beyond the initial ‘wow’ factor?


Format
Instead of traditional 20 minute talks, we request that participants present 8-10 minutes in depth on one VR/AR/XR experience they have designed and/or utilized in a university or GLAM setting (not a general review of multiple types of work).

We ask participants to present and explain aspects of design and interaction and their intent in that experience; or, if the content was not designed by the presenter, how content was
incorporated, curated, or enhanced for the classroom or GLAM experience. Specifically, we ask presenters to think thoughtfully and critically about how we might collectively learn to use these technologies in more informed ways, including: What types of interactions with
students or the public have shown promise, and how might we build on those successes?

What practices have not worked, and how might we learn from our failures? What particular aspects of archaeological and cultural heritage knowledge are best emphasized in the VR/AR/XR experience? What is key to re-using content created by others, including content created by non-archaeologists?

CAA2022 potential session

Academic, archaeology, Conference, Digital Humanities, heritage, infrastructure, Presentation, workshop

Despite COVID, lack of travel resources etc, (especially to the UK from Australia), I’ve been thinking about proposing a panel/session at CAA2022 about “what is lost in the digits”-which elements, features, beliefs or interpretations are left behind or overlooked when scanning / digitally simulating…and what we can or should do about it (with a nod to @EthanWatrall). A short twitter discussion (with many points by Anton Scoetzee) followed.

So, if I think it is feasible, I will apply to CAA2022 before 17 January and post the proposal here. I can see it morphing into an open access, dialogue-friendly edited book.

https://2022.caaconference.org/call-for-sessions/

Living Digital Heritage 2021

Academic, Announcements, archaeology, augmented reality, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, heritage, infrastructure, serious games, Symposium, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation

I was given the honour of opening Living Digital Heritage conference with a keynote today and full congratulations to Frederik Hardtke and the other organizers at Macquarie University’s Centre for Ancient Cultural Heritage & Environment (twitter @cachemq) in Sydney, a great range of papers, all presented on Zoom. Finishing Sunday 7 November (when I fly to South Australia to take on a new role so I may miss a little of it).

If you are interested you may be able to follow via the above twitter links, I don’t know if they still accept registration but it was free.

Keynote and CFP: Living Digital Heritage

Academic, Announcements, archaeology, Conference, Digital Humanities, virtual heritage

Call for papers!

Living Digital Heritage Conference: “Integrating the Past into the Present and Future”

Friday 5 – Sunday 7 November 2021, Sydney/Virtual

Hosted by the Centre for Ancient Cultural Heritage and Environment (CACHE), Macquarie University

If interested please send your abstracts (panel or paper) to https://event.mq.edu.au/living-digital-heritage by 1 October.

I am happy and honoured to say that I have been invited to keynote, thank you to the organizers and for their tenacity in running this conference.

Virtual Heritage: How Could It Be Ethical?

Announcements, archaeology, book chapter, virtual heritage, , , ,

Latest book chapter in the works:

Virtual Heritage: How Could It Be Ethical? Invited chapter for The Routledge Handbook of Heritage Ethics, Andreas Pantazatos, Tracy Ireland, John Schofield and Rouran Zhang (eds.), Routledge, 2023.

Ranging from modified adaption of commercial games (game mods) to multi-million dollar 3D visualizations and web-based projects, virtual heritage projects have showcased cutting-edge technology and provided insight into understanding past cultures. While the research field of virtual heritage (virtual reality and related immersive and interactive digital technology applied to cultural heritage) is several decades old, its specific ethical issues have not been extensively addressed.

Six issues will be discussed in this chapter: cultural ownership; the depiction of humans no longer with us; obsessions with photorealism rather than the complex topic of authenticity; environmental costs; accidental social alienation; and the gamification of serious, traumatic, or personal content.

update: ‘Rethinking Virtual Places’ Proof Approved

Academic, Announcements, archaeology, Architecture, augmented reality, Book, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, publication, Virtual Reality, visualisation, , , ,

I mentioned in the below post that I was on the home stretch with this book (in the Indiana University Press Spatial Humanities series), final proof was approved by me this week. I also noticed it was over 107,000 words. Thanks to Dean and Professor Marc Aurel Schnabel for the comments on the back.

“An essential contribution to a very current topic.” —Marc Aurel Schnabel, Victoria University of Wellington

If anyone wishes to review or consider ‘Rethinking Virtual Places‘ for courses please contact Indiana University Press or email me.

Final touches to next book

Virtual Heritage: A Guide

3D and game editors, Academic, Announcements, archaeology, augmented reality, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, Open Access, publication, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, , , , , , , , ,

“Virtual Heritage: A Guide” is published and open access!

Why did we write it? For all those interested in an introduction to virtual heritage, but facing steep purchase costs for academic books, so it is especially suitable for university undergraduate courses. Download what you need, for free.

And given it was written from go to whoa in less than a year and to a tight word limit, I am very grateful to the authors for their time…

Cite: Champion, E. M. (ed.) 2021. Virtual Heritage: A Guide. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://lnkd.in/gNkNWiB. License: CC-BY-NC.

Playing With The Past 2nd ed.

Academic, archaeology, Architecture, Book, Digital Humanities, PhD,

Are second editions of specialist academic books worth the rewrite? Springer asked me to consider a second edition of Playing With the Past (https://lnkd.in/gXYH5Uy), as 10,000 chapters have been downloaded..but it requires some work to update it.

Apparently, 20% can be rewritten but as most of the main chapters were written in 2003-4, updated before publication in 2011, to update to 2021 will be quite some work. There weren’t so many books and papers in the area when I started! On the other hand it is an opportunity to review what I was trying to determine in 2001-2004 during my PhD candidature. And I would love to replace the original cover. Decisions, decisions!

digital games and intangible heritage

3D and game editors, Academic, archaeology, Architecture, digital heritage, game, heritage, serious games, UNESCO Chair, virtual heritage, visualisation

If you have or know of digital games that helped in the “regeneration” of intangible heritage, as well as related organizations, projects and websites or organizations, please let me know…I have been asked to present on this topic on Monday 5 July to overseas gaming companies and academics..

Here was my initial beginning list (woefully incomplete but will soon expand):

Heritage organisations

  • UNESCO Chairs … I am investigating, most lists of Chairs and Networks are a little out of date and a few seem to have changed or expanded their remit.
  • Historic Urban Landscapes [UNESCO-associated]-none I know of use digital games but I think that would be useful…
  • ICOMOS none I know of but it is a huge association.
  • Europeana/CARARE/ARIADNE are more into digital archives/preservation?

Game organisations

Universities Research or Courses

Games

I am going to include Never Alone. There are at least 6-12 in my head that I need to review to see if they really were “regenerating” intangible heritage..