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!
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.
The prospect and potential of videogame-induced tourism has only recently been discussed in academic publications. I will examine three possible reasons why, I will provide evidence to the contrary, and suggest new developments that may accelerate the impact of videogames on tourism (and the related experiencing of affective landscapes). My main case study will be Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. This 2019 game draws the player into the exploration of idyllic and war-torn historic and mythic landscapes of Athens and Sparta, via questing and simulated violence. It also features a non-violent “Discovery” mode, photographical functions, and a Story Creator mode allowing quests (and in-game photos) to be designed and shared with other players. Beyond violent gameplay, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey allows the exploration of idyllic historic landscapes and heritage sites. Given the company employs both high-quality designers and professional historians (and archaeologists), we can employ such sandbox games as both a pre-visitation visualisation tool and as a hybrid fictional and yet also factual learning environment.
This PhD project focuses on reviewing challenges and successes in Australian museums (MOD, National Maritime Museum and the South Australian Museum) with the aim to develop a participatory open-ended game framework to encourage greater engagement, wider audiences, and increased visitation, as well as reuse of content, data, and related media.
The successful candidate will focus on either the evaluation and framework based on interviews, surveys and workshops with museum experts, or on developing overall game mechanics examples (game prototypes) showcasing best practice game techniques for showcasing Australian museum content, promoting reuse.
This project is funded for reasonable research expenses. Additionally, a living allowance scholarship of $28,854 per annum is available to Australian and New Zealand citizens, and permanent residents of Australia, including permanent humanitarian visa holders. A fee-offset or waiver for the standard term of the program is also included. For full terms and benefits of the scholarship please refer to our scholarship information.
URL here.
I will give a talk tonight via Zoom to UniSA IVE colleagues on the above topic.
Time: 4PM
2022 IVE Research Seminar Series
Please join our next IVE Seminar.
Presenter:
Prof. Erik Champion
Enterprise Fellow, UniSA Creative
Title:
Immersive Challenges for Museums and Heritage Sites
Abstract:
This talk will cover recent and persistent challenges facing museums, practical issues with the implementation of virtual reality, games and gamification, and some case studies exploring potential solutions, particularly in the area of cultural heritage.
Bio:
Erik Champion is currently Enterprise Fellow (Architecture, Creative) at the University of South Australia; Emeritus Professor at Curtin University; Honorary Research Professor at ANU; and Honorary Research Fellow at UWA. He was recently a chief investigator on 4 Australian Research Council grants, Curtin University’s first UNESCO Chair (of Cultural Visualisation and Heritage) and Visualisation theme leader and Steering Committee member of the Curtin Institute for Computation.
https://people.unisa.edu.au/Erik.Champion
Date & Time: 5 April 2022 (Tuesday) 4pm (Adelaide ACST — Australian Central Standard Time UMT +9 hours 30 minutes)
Where: Zoom
There are two PhD scholarships at the University of South Australia, in Built Environment and Design, that may interest Australian or NZ citizens or Australian permanent residents:
Details of the supervisors are listed against the projects.
No, I am not a supervisor for either, I am currently helping PhD students at my last university submit their theses (two passed so far, three to go!)
To offer a PhD scholarship-supported project at UniSA, I have to propose and have accepted a project, then students can apply. For self-funded PhD study, students can apply straight away.
I know I have talked about it enough but I finally have a hardcover copy in my hands…
Published by: Indiana University Press
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.
I wrote a commissioned article for Tencent Games last week “Intangible Cultural Heritage and Digital Games”-as some ideas struck me while writing it I’d be happy if I can circulate it more widely if Tencent let me (the first stage is internal/company discussion).
This weekend I leave for the “Athens of Finland”, that’s right, the Aalto city, Jvyäskylä, to be a visiting fellow. The University of Jvyäskylä is a partner in the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies (https://coe-gamecult.org). I’ll still have news and posts to update this site with but postings may be irregular (again) for awhile.
To the journals and book editors and conference organizers who seem to regularly ask for my time, I’m sorry, I’m cutting back for the next few months and will only take on assignments close to my heart and/or that I have already promised to complete. I have several book projects and some small commissions that should take precedence.
A view from Aalto’s home in Helsinki. Photo taken a decade ago by me.
A major game company (I’d say a global company, not in Australia) invited me to quote/ setup an international advisory board in relation to intangible heritage and digital games to meet annually or biannually virtually or in reality. It is a bit of a challenge looking forward to estimate the budget in this time of pandemics, lockdowns, and border control issues.
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):
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..
Macquarie University in Sydney, NSW, Australia, plan to hold the above conference 5-7 November 2021 in Sydney Australia (and remotely). I imagine the CFP will be out soon, website is at:
The Macquarie University Simulation Hub
Modern, innovative data collection and digital visualisation capabilities are able to capture ancient artefacts and structures, contexts, and traditions faster and in greater detail than ever before. Their sophistication and multi-dimensionality promise engagement with the past at many levels offering opportunities for deeper analyses and experiences to increasingly broader audiences.
This conference will be organised and hosted by the Centre for Ancient Cultural Heritage and Environment (CACHE). CACHE is a multi-disciplinary research centre focused on research on cross-cultural interaction in ancient cultures from Western Europe to China. Concentrating not only on the history of the societies concerned, but on the languages used, with a special focus on the close study of physical artefacts from antiquity. CACHE engenders transdisciplinary research into ancient knowledge by gathering leading MQ researchers across several disciplines (archaeological science, ancient history and literature, bioarchaeology, biology, environmental sciences) and departments (Human Sciences, International Studies, Biological Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Ancient History, Geography and Planning). CACHE particularly welcomes contributions reflecting the Indigenous Australian context – submissions concerned with Indigenous issues are especially relevant to the symposium and will be warmly welcomed.
Out in November, purchasable in September. Contact IUP for reviewer copies “Rethinking Virtual Places” (in the IUP Spatial Humanities series) https://iupress.org/9780253058355/rethinking-virtual-places
I have been informed, that if there are no major holdups the above will be available as a free online book from Ubiquity Press in July 2021. Cover image courtesy of Michael Carter.
Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory – PRECESSION OF SIMULACRA – it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own.
The desert of the real itself.
“ The Precession of Simulacra” from Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan, USA: University of Michigan Press, 1994.
Aim of Essay
Update and Relate Simulations and Simulcra to the current era of Hacking and Virtual Reality.
Google reminded me of a 2017-18 summer student intern project I supervised 3 years ago. I asked Corbin Yap to calibrate Unreal to larger screens (as with the French intern hybrid reality project I have not written this up although Corbin wrote an excellent report on how to do this).
The screen is 3 metres high and 8 metres in diameter, forming a near half-circle of approx 179 degrees, designed by Paul Bourke in 2013. It can also handle stereo (which Corbin did not have time to adjust the display for). Funding by Curtin Institue for Computation. Corbin was hosted in the library makerspace, great people to work with. Presentation was, I believe, 16 February 2018. Yes I wanted to port my Palenque models but the then-new version of Unreal would require a complete rebuild.
If I have the chance to teach game design again I would greatly appreciated having access to a similar environment that is accessible and immediate for game content. I have many ideas for this.
I am not sure this will be the final title but just finished (I hope) my editing for the following open access 10 chapter book: Virtual Heritage: A Guide, Ubiquity Press 2021.
Table of contents:
| Foreword | Stuart Jeffrey | |
| Virtual Heritage: from Archives to Joysticks | Ear Zow Digital | |
| 1 | Speculating the Past: 3D Reconstruction in Archaeology | R. P. Barratt |
| 2 | Photogrammetry: What, How and Where | Hafizur Rahaman |
| 3 | Animating the Past | Michael Carter |
| 4 | Mapping Ancient Heritage With Digital Tools | Anna Foka, David McMeekin, Kyriaki Konstantinidou, Nasrin Mostofian, Elton Barker, Cenk Demiroglu, Ethan Chiew, Brady Kiesling |
| 5 | Hybrid Interactions in Museums: Why Materiality Still Matters | Luigina Ciolfi |
| 6 | Video Games as concepts and experiences of the past | Aris Politopoulos, Angus Mol |
| 7 | Mixed Reality: A Bridge or a Fusion between Two Worlds? | Mafkereseb Bekele |
| 8 | Getting it Right and Getting it Wrong in Digital Archaeological Ethics | L. Meghan Dennis |
| 9 | Evaluation in Virtual Heritage | Panayiotis Koutsabasis |
| 10 | Preserving Authenticity in Virtual Heritage | Ear Zow Digital |
Was one of two book covers possible and I think due to some email confusion they didn’t choose my preferred cover but I really appreciate permission by Dr Anthony Masinton to use his rendered image. The publisher of Rethinking Virtual Places will be Indiana University Press, via their Spatial Humanities Series.
Champion, E. (2020). Culturally Significant Presence in Single-player Computer Games. Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, 13(4). doi:10.1145/3414831. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3414831
Cultural presence is a term used to explain and evaluate cultural learning in virtual heritage projects but is less frequently used for video games. Given the increasing importance of video games to cultural heritage, this article investigates explanations of cultural presence that could be communicated by games, especially concerning UNESCO and ICOMOS definitions of cultural significance. The aim is to determine if cultural presence can be communicated via video games and across a range of game genres.
Observations derived from game prototyping workshops for history and heritage aided the development of a teachable list of desirable game elements. To distinguish itself from the vagueness surrounding theories of cultural presence, a theory of culturally significant presence is proposed. Culturally significant presence requires three components: culturally significant artifacts and practices; an overarching framework of a singular, identifiable cultural viewpoint; and awareness by the participant of both the culturally significant and the overarching cultural framework and perspective (which gives sites, artifacts, and practices their cultural significance and relational value).
As awareness of cultural presence requires time for reflection, single-player games were chosen that were not completely dependent on time-based challenges. Another criterion was cultural heritage content: They must simulate aspects of heritage and history, communicate a specific cultural framework, or explore and reconstruct a past culture. Four games were chosen that simulate a culture, explain archaeological methods, portray indigenous intangible heritage, or explain historical-based ecosystems of the past based on educational guidelines. The games are Assassin’s Creed: Origins; Heaven’s Vault; Never Alone; and a Ph.D. project: Saxon. Their genres could be described as first-person shooter/open world/virtual tour; dialogue-based puzzle game; 2D platform game; and turn-based strategy game.
The aim is not to evaluate the entire range of interactive virtual environments and games, but to examine the applicability and relevance of this new theory and to ascertain whether the four games provided useful feedback on the concept and usefulness of culturally significant presence. A more clearly demarcated theory may not only help focus evaluation studies but also encourage game developers to modify or allow modification of commercial games for classroom teaching of digital heritage.
Ear Zow Digital