Tag Archives: erik champion

Book, book chapter, , , , , , , ,

I’m looking forward to this book, I’m interviewed for a section in it and the rest of the content is interesting!

Champion, E., & Estrina, T. (2025: in press). On his roles as Professor and Research Fellow- Erik Champion. In V. Hui, R. Scavnicky, & T. Estrina (Eds.), Architecture and Videogames Intersecting Worlds. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Architecture-and-Videogames-Intersecting-Worlds/Hui-Scavnicky-Estrina/p/book/9781032528854

“The definitive resource on consolidating these interconnected fields, this book will mobilize the current generation of designers to explore and advance this synthesis.””This book explores and affirms the emergent symbiosis between video games and architecture, including insights from a diverse range of disciplines.

With contributions from authorities in both architecture and videogame industries, it examines how videogames as a medium have enlightened the public about the built environments of the past, offered heightened awareness of our current urban context, and presented inspiration and direction for the future directions of architecture. A relatively nascent medium, videogames have rapidly transitioned from cultural novelty to architectural prophet over the past 50 years. That videogames serve as an interactive proxy for the real world is merely a gateway into just how pervasive and potent the medium is in architectural praxis. If architecture is a synthesis of cultural value and videogames are a dominant cultural medium of today, how will they influence the architecture of tomorrow? Heavily illustrated with over 200 images, the book is split into seven sections: Cultural Artifacts, Historic Reproduction, Production Technologies, Design Pedagogy, Proxies and Representation, Bridging Worlds, and Projected Futures.

The definitive resource on consolidating these interconnected fields, this book will mobilize the current generation of designers to explore and advance this synthesis.”

Grants, grants, and more grants!

Grant

No, I haven’t received any either. However, I have decided to put all my fun and crazy ideas down and craft them into small modular grant ideas. I’ve basically got to the stage where writing (publications) is not really a good thing to do at universities, they want cash, they’re just very indirect in admitting it. If I have to spend all my time doing business things, I might as well venture back to business, but in the meantime, I thought, why not go back into the grant-writing slipstream? But grants for activities that are actually enjoyable to undertake?

First project, escape rooms.

Second project, oh that would be telling.

Old ideas

Academic, , ,

On cleaning up old email I found these cursory ideas in 2013 when I was invited to Curtin.

Here are notes I jotted down as part of a sketch for a Centre of Excellence idea but here I am only listing the (then) resources

WE HAD (in 2013)…

  • Specialties in Film Screen Journalism Architecture Media Internet Studies Library and Information Studies..
  • Access to GLAM (*Galleries Libraries Archives Museums•an onsite Gallery)
  • A Library that wants to develop a research field
  • New Visualisation Facilities and iVEC partnership (all 4 WA universities)
  • A new Visualisation Degree/Connective Media area /Curtin Data Visualisation Facility (one display installed already.)

MAIN MISSION

  • Integrating Humanities research with new tools and new ways of communicating and sharing with audiences
  • Creating tools and case studies to show humanities scholars and organiSations how to make convincing visual arguments
  • Developing, maintaining analysing and advising how these tools methods and projects are best used/taught/deployed

AREA

  • Developing tools and methods to help scholars make visual arguments
  • Train curators and visualisation specialists in contextual technical and humanistic skills and competencies
  • Evaluate whether tools and content best suits specialist and generalist audiences
  • Provide single entry point for interested industry and NGOs to contract projects and employ staff

OPPORTUNITIES

  • New intellectual precinct Curtin town
  • New science museum, expansion of Perth and entertainment industry
  • Urban visualisation and idea prototyping, digital humanities
  • New forms of curation and collaborative technologies
  • New low-cost means of design prototyping and production, community hosting, online and on demand printing and creation, the internet of things, multimedia and creative archives..

LOOKING BACK

Now 9-10 years later, after a UNESCO chair (first for the University), involvement in the Computation Institute, grants, talks, workshops, involvement in other research centres and institutes, and a fairly long list of publications, completed PhD theses, grants, and some key projects (camera tracking in 3D, photogrammetry, mixed and augmented reality, Linked Open Data, GIS apps and systems, serious games and virtual environments), I look back at this and think about what happened in the end , my part, what didn’t eventuate, and why. The ideas aren’t useful any more (at least in their original form) but the reasons why some of them were not developed is worth pondering a bit further, maybe in a new post.

New Open-access Article on Mixed Reality

Academic, Digital Humanities, Open Access, PhD, publication, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, , , , ,

A new open-access article by Mr Mafkereseb Bekele, a PhD student at Curtin University and his three supervisors (myself, Dr David McMeekin and Dr Hafizur Rahaman): “The Influence of Collaborative and Multi-Modal Mixed Reality: Cultural Learning in Virtual Heritage” https://mdpi.com/1390992#mdpimti via @MDPIOpenAccess

Studies in the virtual heritage (VH) domain identify collaboration (social interaction), engagement, and a contextual relationship as key elements of interaction design that influence users’ experience and cultural learning in VH applications. The purpose of this study is to validate whether collaboration (social interaction), engaging experience, and a contextual relationship enhance cultural learning in a collaborative and multi-modal mixed reality (MR) heritage environment. To this end, we have designed and implemented a cloud-based collaborative and multi-modal MR application aiming at enhancing user experience and cultural learning in museums. A conceptual model was proposed based on collaboration, engagement, and relationship in the context of MR experience. The MR application was then evaluated at the Western Australian Shipwrecks Museum by experts, archaeologists, and curators from the gallery and the Western Australian Museum. Questionnaire, semi-structured interview, and observation were used to collect data. The results suggest that integrating collaborative and multi-modal interaction methods with MR technology facilitates enhanced cultural learning in VH.

Keywords: mixed reality; virtual heritage; collaborative interaction; multi-modal interaction; engagement; cultural learning

LUDIC PASTS workshop at DiGRA2017 Melbourne

Academic, Conference, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, virtual heritage, visualisation, workshop, , , , ,

LUDIC PASTS: “Game Simulations of Past Cultures and Places” Workshop

ORGANIZERS:

Erik Champion, Curtin University Australia, email erik.champion@curtin.edu.au
Michael Nitsche, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, email michael.nitsche@gatech.edu

The fusion of archaeology and gaming has become known as archaeogaming, although this term covers several approaches. For example, Reinhard (Reinhard 2015) wrote: “I had originally thought of Archaeogaming as a framework around studying how archaeology and archaeologists are portrayed by game developers, and how they are received by gamers. I was also curious to see how (or even if) I could apply real-world archaeological methods to virtual spaces, studying the material culture of the immaterial.” However, this is not simply a workshop about archaeogaming, there are other related fields interested in the ludic simulation of past places and past cultures (art history, museum studies, media studies, anthropology, sociology, urban design, geography, to name a few). There may be specific issues that distinguish, say heritage-based games (Champion 2015) from history-based games (Chapman 2016) but there are also common themes, authenticity, accuracy, imagination and how interaction helps learning.

Despite increasing interest in archaeogaming theory, there is little discussion of the field in terms of actual game design. And despite the increasing range and quality of courses (Schreiber 2009), books (Fullerton 2014) and presentations (Lewis-Evans 2012) on game design and game prototyping, there is still a paucity of available game design tools and techniques specifically for capturing and communicating the past (Manker 2012) (Neil 2016, 2015). In addition, we face a lack of venues for archaeogaming developers and related experts to present, pitch, playtest and perform their game prototypes (Ardito, Desolda, and Lanzilotti 2013, Unver and Taylor 2012, Ardito et al. 2009). Hence content experts in history and heritage-related fields often lack the experience or knowledge to test game ideas, and, conversely, game studies scholars may not be aware of discipline-related problems in history, heritage, museum studies and archaeology.

This half-day (4 hour) workshop brings together researchers and designers interested in evaluating and tackling issues in the simulation of past places, events and cultures through computer game interaction. The format will combine the presentations with a discussion centered on the question of how games can support cultural heritage. Each participant will present on a particular theme, challenge or case study.

We invite contributions from any domain, including game analysis, interaction design, digital humanities, play studies, among others. In the second part, we will identify key issues arising from the presentations and in small groups will suggest a game design scenario that could address the issue in an interesting way. We are also interested in theoretical papers that examine and suggest answers for issues in converting history, heritage and general archaeology projects into potential games.

SUBMISSION:

  1. Please email a one page proposal to champion@curtin.edu.au, with the title “DIGRA workshop-LUDIC PASTS-<your surname>”.
  2. Provide a short but descriptive title.
  3. A description of the issue that you wish to present, whether it is a theoretical theme, design challenge or case study
  4. Mention any examples that exist.
  5. Outline any potential solutions or ideas that you wish to discuss.
  6. Is there anything you would like to bring, show or demonstrate?
  7. In one short final paragraph please explain your related background, why this issue is significant to you and which audience would be interested in a potential solution, is it specific to a field or of wider interest and impact in game studies?
  8. Lastly include contact details, your name, job title and any affiliated institute or organization.

 DEADLINES:

  • 6 March 2017                      deadline for papers
  • 10 March 2017                    announce selected authors
  • 3 July 2017                            LUDIC PASTS workshop, DIGRA2017, MELBOURNE (http://digra2017.com/)

WORKSHOP GOALS:

  • Critical discussion from multiple related domains of archaeogaming.
  • Design sketches indicating possible approaches to address them.
  • We will discuss a potential shared book publication about the topic.

THE FORMAT AND ACTIVITIES PLANNED FOR THE WORKSHOP:

  • Individual presentations of key challenges.
  • Identify shared themes and concerns to form small groups developing game sketches for archeogaming and related fields.
  • Presentation of the concepts and conclusion.

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE (4 hour workshop, 240 minutes total):

  1. 160 minutes: 8 presentations, each a maximum of 20 minutes long (including questions).
  2. 60 minutes: work on game scenarios (scene) in one of 4 groups.
  3. 20 minutes: summarize and report findings to all attending.

POTENTIAL TOOLS:

Whiteboard, pen and paper. If there is a video projector or large screen, then digital game scenarios/sketches could be shown as well.

 AUDIENCE

  • Of interest to content experts in history and heritage-related fields, game studies scholars, game designers and developers.
  • Ideal size of audience: up to 32 not including the 8 speakers

PUBLICATION

We will discuss approaching a creative publisher (Liquid Books, University of Michigan Press or other) to provide an online or printable output of the demonstrations and the audience feedback.

 If you are interested in submitting a chapter, but cannot attend the workshop, please email the organizers a proposal similar to the 1 page workshop proposal outlined above.

CITATIONS AND REFERENCES

  1. Ardito, Carmelo, Paolo Buono, Maria Francesca Costabile, Rosa Lanzilotti, and Antonio Piccinno. 2009. “Enabling Interactive Exploration of Cultural Heritage: An Experience of Designing Systems for Mobile Devices.” Knowledge, Technology & Policy 22 (1):79-86. DOI: 10.1007/s12130-009-9079-7.
  2. Ardito, Carmelo, Giuseppe Desolda, and Rosa Lanzilotti. 2013. “Playing on large displays to foster children’s interest in archaeology.” DMS.
  3. Champion, E. 2015. Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage.
  4. Chapman, A. 2016. Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice.
  5. Fullerton, Tracy. 2014. Game design workshop: a playcentric approach to creating innovative games: CRC press.
  6. Lewis-Evans, Ben. 2012. “Introduction to Game Prototyping & research.” Slideshare, Last Modified 16 December 2012, accessed 24 January. http://www.slideshare.net/Gortag/game-prototyping-and-research.
  7. Manker, Jon. 2012. “Designscape–A suggested game design prototyping process tool.” Eludamos. Journal for computer game culture 6 (1):85-98.
  8. Neil, Katharine. 2015. “Game Design Tools: Can They Improve Game Design Practice?” PhD, Signal and Image processing. Conservatoire national des arts et metiers, CNAM.
  9. Neil, Katharine. 2016. How we design games now and why. Gamasutra. Accessed 24 January 2017.
  10. Reinhard, A., 2015. Excavating Atari: Where the Media was the Archaeology. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 2(1), pp.86-93.
  11. Schreiber, Ian. 2009. ““I just found this blog, what do I do?”.” Game Design Concepts – An experiment in game design and teaching, 9 September 2009. https://gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/level-2-game-design-iteration-and-rapid-prototyping/.
  12. Unver, Ertu, and Andrew Taylor. 2012. “Virtual Stonehenge Reconstruction.” In Progress in Cultural Heritage Preservation: 4th International Conference, EuroMed 2012, Limassol, Cyprus, October 29 – November 3, 2012. Proceedings, edited by Marinos Ioannides, Dieter Fritsch, Johanna Leissner, Rob Davies, Fabio Remondino and Rossella Caffo, 449-460. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

TO CONTACT THE ORGANIZERS

Erik Champion, Curtin University Australia, email erik.champion@curtin.edu.au
Michael Nitsche, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, email michael.nitsche@gatech.edu

 

UNESCO Chair-the fun begins

Announcements, virtual heritage, , , , , , ,

Announced via our internal Curtin University website:

Partnership with UNESCO

Curtin recently signed a contract to establish the University’s first UNESCO Chair of Cultural Heritage and Visualisation for Professor Erik Champion (School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts). The Chair will cooperate closely with UNESCO on programs and activities, and facilitate new projects and collaborations with other UNESCO chairs and scholars, particularly in the field of digital cultural heritage. Two related PhD Scholarships and a Research Fellow position will shortly be advertised and there will be a program to invite visiting fellows from around the world.

At the partnership signing with Professor Alan Dench, Associate Professor Michele Willson and Professor Erik Champion of the Faculty of Humanities.

Current Projects

Announcements, publication, , ,

Grants

UNESCO Chair in Cultural Visualisation and Heritage

  • UNESCO and CURTIN signed.
  • Now writing up Research Fellow and 2 PhD positions
  • Will re-contact proposed advisory board
  • Drafting up specs for PCs/MACs, Blog post here.

GLAMVR project (MCCA School Strategic Research grant, $12,700, CI., with colleagues from MCCA)

  • Digital Heritage: Workflows & issues in preserving, exporting & linking digital collections (especially heritage collections for GLAM.
  • Scholarly Making: Encourage makerspaces & other activities in tandem with academic research.
  • Experiential Media: Develop AR/ VR & other new media technology & projects esp. for humanities.

The symposium/workshop is now over (my blog post here, EVENTBRITE details here, twitter feed here), cultural hackathon next. VR equipment has already started to arrive.

ARC-Linkage Grant Proposal

Working on proposal with Dr Stuart Bender and A. Prof Michael Broderick (Murdoch), based on Fading Lights.

WAND

Small Grant WAND application, advisor:  (submission by Michael Ovens, CI., UWA). See Michael’s blog https://thineenemyproject.wordpress.com/

DAAD

https://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/global-engagement/international-collaboration/international-agreements-and-activities/Australia–Germany-Joint-Research-Cooperation-Scheme#.V1Y5xOckjuA

Submitted “Travelling heritage – exploring mixed realities for the digital reuse of cultural materials” application with colleagues and U of Hamburg and Leuphana. Results due November.

OTHER

CAA ‘Other’ Session (CAA2017, Atlanta)

Title “Mechanics, Mods and Mashups: Games of the Past for the Future Designed by Archaeologists” and blog post here.

Archaeologists and people of a historical persuasion:

  • Either take a game with an inspiring concept, technique or mechanic
  • OR extrapolate a current or past game to a game or simulation of the future
  • OR they share their vision of a game or simulation that reveals, expresses or augments their own research.

At the workshop the writers will either:

  • Bring their own designs, video cut-scenes, and illustrations and media depicting what this new vision would look like
  • OR have some form of play-testing demonstration, cards, or illustrations or physical play-throughs (preferably involving the CAA workshop audience) revealing how this new level, mod or gameplay episode COULD be experienced or how it could be revealed.

The writers will:
Ask the audience to play through or role-play the actions that would be in the creative piece.

The audience will:
Give the writers feedback ideas and nominate the best presentation in terms of fun and engagement, imaginative ideas, and archaeological relevance (in promoting archaeology, teaching archaeology or extending archaeological scholarship).

PENDING PUBLICATIONS

Books

  1. Benardou, A., Champion, E, Dallas, C., and Hughes, L., (). (2017: In press). Cultural Heritage Digital Tools and Infrastructures. Routledge, UK. https://www.routledge.com/products/9781472447128. ISBN 9781472447128.

Book chapter

  1. Champion, E. (2017: in press). “The Role of 3D Models in Virtual Heritage Infrastructures” in Benardou, A., Champion, E, Dallas, C., and Hughes, L. (Eds.). (2017). Cultural Heritage Digital Tools and Infrastructures. Routledge, UK. https://www.routledge.com/products/9781472447128. ISBN 9781472447128.

Book review

  1. Champion, E. (2016). Heritage and Social Media: Understanding heritage in a participatory culture [Book Review]. Heritage & Society, 8(2). In press.

Journal article

  1. Champion, E. (2016: accepted). Digital Humanities is Text-heavy, Visualization-light and Simulation-poor. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (DH2015 Special issue).
  2. Champion, E. (2016: in press). Bringing Your A-Game To Digital Archaeology: Why Serious Games And Virtual Heritage Have Let The Side Down And What We Can Do About It. SAA Archaeological Record: Forum on Digital Games & Archaeology (special issue).
  3. Champion, E. (2016: accepted, I think!). Worldfulness, Role-enrichment & Moving Rituals: Design Ideas for CRPGs. Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association (ToDIGRA), (special issue, selected DiGRA2015 conference papers). URL: http://todigra.org/index.php/todigra/index
  4. Champion, E. (2016: accepted). Ludic Challenges For New Heritage and Cultural Tourism. International Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology & Archaeometry, (special issue, selection of VAMCT2015 conference papers). URL: maajournal.com International Journal MAA (ISI Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Thomson Reuters, USA; Scopus) scheduled for Dec 2016, Vol.16, No.5.

Conference paper/session

  1. Champion, E. (2017: accepted). “Mechanics, Mods and Mashups: Games of the Past for the Future Designed by Archaeologists”. Other session, Computer Applications and Quantitive Methods in Archaeology (CAA), Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 14-16 March, 2017. URL: http://caaconference.org/
  2. Champion, E. (2016: accepted). Virtual Heritage Infrastructure. 14th EUROGRAPHICS Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage, 5-7 October 2016, Genova, Italy. URL: http://gch2016.ge.imati.cnr.it/.

Upcoming talks

  1. Talk at Aula Silvio Trentin (Aula Magna) of Ca’ Foscari University, in Palazzo Ca’ Dolfin, organized by Ca Foscari University, Venice, 3 October.
  2. The EUROGRAPHICS GCH conference as above, in Area della Ricerca di Genova, Via De Marini 6, 16149 Genova (Genoa), 5-7 October.
  3. Talk at Spazju Kreattiv (the National Centre for Creativity), Malta, 12 October.

STILL TO FINISH WRITING

Books

  1. Champion, E. (2017: in process). Phenomenology, Place and Virtual Place. Routledge.
  2. Champion, E. (2017: accepted). DESIGNING THE ‘PLACE’ OF VIRTUAL SPACE. Indiana University Press, Spatial Humanities series.
  3. Champion, E. (2017: contracted). Organic Design in Twentieth-Century Nordic Architecture, Routledge.

Book Chapters

  1. Champion, E. (2017: invited). 3D models and cultural heritage. Open access book chapter with Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung. Details to be updated.
  2. Champion, E. (2017: invited). “State of the Art: A Critical Review of Games and Game-Like Simulations Relevant to Digital Archaeology and Digital Cultural Heritage” in Jimenez, D. (Eds.). (2017). Title to be confirmed, redTDPC, Mexico.
  3. Champion, E. (2017: in process). “The Missing Theory of Virtual Places”In Malpas, J. (Ed). Virtuality and Place. Provisional. In discussion with Bloomsbury/Malpas.

Increasing the Life & Usage of Virtual Heritage Models

Conference, digital heritage, virtual heritage, , , ,

Following on rather nicely from my last blog, the below abstract was accepted yesterday so hopefully will be in Beijing at Tsinghua University 7-10 August (then invited to NUS, Singapore 12-14 August).

Initial abstract for the 4th International Symposium on Cultural Heritage Conservation and Digitization (CHCD 2016), entitled “Re-vive: Heritage Coming Back to Life”.

TITLE: Increasing the Life and Usage of Virtual Heritage Models

KEY WORDS: Virtual heritage, infrastructure, models, mechanics, interaction, preservation, evaluation, simulations, digital scholarly ecosystem.

ABSTRACT:

For many years academics have argued that a major issue in the development of high quality and effective virtual heritage projects has been a corresponding lack of evaluation methods (Economou and Pujol, 2008, Champion, 2006, Tost and Economou, 2009, Karoulis et al., 2006, Tan and Rahaman, 2009). Despite two decades of research and advancing technological sophistication, and the widespread proliferation of virtual heritage conferences, the same problems are still evident.

While the issue of meaningful evaluation is no doubt a serious problem, this paper proposes that a more fundamental issue has been with the design and circulation of the digital models themselves. The problem is at least sixfold. Firstly, digital heritage models are typically frozen products, they do not easily scale, they aren’t typically component-based, they are difficult to add to and otherwise edit. There is a problem of standards (of authenticity, software and hardware standards, operating guidelines, and adherence to charters that dictate best practice in virtual heritage). Digital heritage model formats are not standardised nor created specifically for preservation (let alone separate their archival function from presentation purposes). Digital heritage models are typically models rather than simulations, they are not predicative tools, they don’t create, convey or question hypothetical. The interaction design patterns (and mechanics) are not standardised, and not preserved, let alone separated from the 2D and 3D media assets. Finally, these projects typically do not link to digital scholarly resources (publications, image databases, online maps and so forth).

I propose that virtual heritage community needs to debate and adopt a scholarly ecology, an overall system and community that provide feedback, management and impact for virtual heritage research. This requires political coordination and social organisation beyond the scope of this paper but I will also review some more technical proposals that may help address the above problems.

For theme C: Cultural heritage exhibition and interpretation of digital technology: virtual reality, augmented reality, digital museum

References

CHAMPION, E. M. 2006. Evaluating Cultural Learning in Virtual Environments. PhD, University of Melbourne.

ECONOMOU, M. & PUJOL, L. 2008. Educational tool or expensive toy? Evaluating VR evaluation and its relevance for virtual heritage. New Heritage: New Media and Cultural Heritage, London, Routledge, 242-260.

KAROULIS, A., SYLAIOU, S. & WHITE, M. 2006. Usability evaluation of a virtual museum interface. Informatica, 17, 363-380.

TAN, B.-K. & RAHAMAN, H. 2009. Virtual heritage: Reality and criticism. Tidafi, T. et Dorta, T., éditeurs: Joining Languages, Cultures and Visions: CAAD Futures, 130.

TOST, L. P. & ECONOMOU, M. 2009. Worth a thousand words? The usefulness of immersive virtual reality for learning in cultural heritage settings. International Journal of Architectural Computing, 7, 157-176.

Proposed keynote for INAH talk, December 4 Mexico

3D and game editors, Academic, Conference, digital heritage, , , , ,

The Red Tematica de Tecnologías Digitales para la Difusión del Patrimonio Cultural (Research Network on Digital Technologies for the Dissemination of Cultural Heritage) invited me to Mexico City on December 4 for their conference Human-Computer Interaction, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Interaction Design), I was asked to talk about the following:

We expect you to deliver a 45 minutes presentation, followed by 15 mins questions. It would be great if you can focus on your concept of interactive history and virtual reality, serious games, etc. The audience is composed by cultural heritage professionals (archaeologists, curators, museum personnel, librarians, etc.).

Does my below abstract sound like it is answering the above? I am not too sure:

Virtual Heritage Projects versus Digital Heritage Infrastructure

In this talk I provide my definition and perspective on Virtual Heritage and an overview of its major problems: obsolete, unreliable or overly expensive technology, a critical lack of evaluation studies, restricted interaction, low-impact pedagogical outcomes and limited community involvement. Despite two decades of research and advancing technological sophistication, the same problems are still evident. This suggests a more serious underlying issue: virtual heritage lacks a scholarly ecology, an overall system and community that provide feedback, management and scalability to virtual heritage research.

For example, in the call for the recent http://www.digitalheritage2015.org/ conference call (“The largest international scientific event on digital heritage”), evaluation is not a central issue, listed under Computer Graphics and Interaction, not under Analysis and Interpretation.  And where is the focus on the user experience or examples of long-term infrastructure with feedback from the community and not just from IT professionals?  Neither archaeologist nor technology expert is necessarily trained in user experience design. The projects described in papers are too often inaccessible and even less frequently preserved and the needs of the projected audience are seldom effectively evaluated.

As an antidote I will present some reflective ideas and methods, plus case studies that resolve or promise to help resolve some if not all of these issues. One way to address the importance of virtual heritage is to redefine it. I suggest virtual heritage is the attempt to convey not just the appearance but also the meaning and significance of cultural artefacts and the associated social agency that designed and used them, through the use of interactive and immersive digital media. As it has been a focus of my research I will also cover the usefulness but also danger of applying game-based design and game-based learning ideas to the development and preservation of Virtual Heritage.

reviews of Critical Gaming book before it is even published

3D and game editors, Announcements, Book, Digital Humanities, heritage, publication, virtual heritage, , , , , , , ,

It was a very nice surprise to discover the 3 reviews on Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage at
http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781472422910
I tried for a more conversational style that sprang from simple ideas as starting points so I was very happy to hear from people that it  has helped them in their projects and grant applications-even if only as a primer.
I am indebted to the reviewers!
-Erik

Reviews: ‘If anyone doubts that games, gamification, and play do not provide a serious and essential path to creativity and knowledge-production about the past, then Erik Champion’s book will surely change their minds. The book is a must for teachers, historians, archaeologists, and museum and cultural heritage professionals interested in critically using games and virtual reality as tools for teaching and research.’
Ruth Tringham, University of California, Berkeley, USA

‘Champion’s newest work represents a treasure trove of ideas for both scholars and practitioners in the field of digital heritage. Digital media designers will find a plethora of design ideas while researchers will encounter as many useful evaluation suggestions, both with the goal of creating virtual environments that convey a sense of cultural presence and facilitate cultural learning.’
Natalie Underberg-Goode, University of Central Florida, USA

‘By emphasizing the new cultural role of serious games, game-based learning, and virtual heritage in making scholarly arguments, this book demonstrates the relevance of visualization, interaction and game design in a contemporary humanities discourse. It will be of great use to scholars and educators who want to include new digital methods in their research and courses while it will provide indispensable digital literacy, references, and case studies to 21st century students in humanities and heritage-related fields.’
Nicola Lercari, University of California, Merced, USA

next trip: Digital Densities, Melbourne, 26-27 March 2015

talks, virtual heritage, , , , , , ,

Digital Densities 
A symposium examining relations between material cultures and digital data
26th – 27th March 2015, The University of Melbourne.

Hosted by the Digital Humanities Incubator (DHI) in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne.

Presenters include Sarah Kenderdine, Paul Arthur, Erik Champion, Miguel Escobar, Rachel Fensham, Gillian Russell, Nick Thieberger and Deb Verhoeven.

  • Keynote Address: Prof. Sarah Kenderdine. Thursday 26th March 2015, 6-8pm McMahon Ball Theatre, Old Arts Building
  • Registration 8.45am.
  • Friday 27th March 2015, 9am – 5.30pm Linkway, 4th Floor John Medley Building

Admission is free. Bookings are Required. Seating is limited.

My abstract (and I am happy to meet and network with people the day before):

Title: Intangible Heritage, Material Culture and Digital Futures
Our experience with the material culture of situated heritage is typically embodied, personal, and unique. On the other hand, our literary understanding of the past as developed through reading of scholarly texts is typically linear, monovocal, and aplatial.  Our experience and our literary understanding are two modes of knowledge that seldom meet.
Digital humanities has/have promised to provide alternative visions to metanarrative, to frozen information, and to disembodied experiences. Digital technology has offered to destroy distance and difference. My research on the other hand, aims to restore an appreciation of distance and difference, though creating cultural constraints in immersive visualizations through both the limitations and affordances of digital technologies. Now I have proposed to UNESCO to combine game engine capabilities and consumer-level capture technologies with open access 3D cultural heritage content in new and community-maintained online archives. Can this project provide material weight to the virtual?

CFP: Workshop at Digital Humanities 2014, Lausanne, 8 July 2014

Academic, Conference, Digital Humanities, , , , , , , , ,

Are we there yet? Functionalities, synergies and pitfalls of major digital humanities infrastructures

DH2014 Workshop: Maximum Number of Participants: 30 (flexible)
Date: Tuesday, July 8th 2014, 13.00-16.00
Facilitator(s):

  • Agiatis Benardou, Research Associate, Digital Curation Unit, IMIS-Athena Research Centre, Athens, Greece
  • Erik Champion, Professor of Cultural Visualisation at Media Culture and Creative Arts, Humanities Faculty of Curtin University, Perth, Australia
  • Lorna Hughes, University of Wales Professor and Chair in Digital Collections, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, United Kingdom

Overview:
This workshop aims to bring together leading scholars involved in major digital scholarly infrastructure projects such as DARIAH, NeDiMAH, Europeana Cloud, ARIADNE, 3D ICONS, EHRI, DASISH, LARM, CLARIN, DiRT and DHCommons, in dialogue with practising digital humanists. Topics to be addressed include cultural heritage and digital media infrastructures, tools and services; the creation and curation of humanities digital resources; social and institutional issues of Digital Humanities infrastructures; and finally, lessons learnt from the role of digital humanities in pedagogy and academic curricula. It will provide an opportunity for humanists to find out about cutting edge developments on major digital infrastructure initiatives in Europe and beyond, and to make their views matter on future developments in this field.
The workshop aims to go beyond a description of project presentations. It will seek to provide an analytical framework that could contribute to a critical understanding of the current state of digital infrastructures vis-à-vis the potential of digital archives, tools and services for humanities scholarship, by addressing the following questions:
1. What are the objectives of each digital infrastructure project, and what are its intended users?
2. What are the functionalities and outcomes it aims to provide, and how do they serve the overarching goal of supporting and transforming humanities research?
3. To what extent were the needs of humanities researchers considered, and how is the digital humanities research community involved in the project?
4. Are there potential synergies, and actual collaboration, with other infrastructure projects? Conversely, are there any overlaps?
5. What are the main lessons learned from the life of the project so far? What are the pitfalls and potential failures, and what improvements could be achieved?

Audience:
The half-day workshop is expected to be of interest both to those involved in digital research infrastructure work, and to digital humanists who may benefit from the use and contribute to shaping the plans for future developments of digital infrastructures, tools and services.
Proposals should consist of an abstract of up to 500 words and a short bio which should be submitted by e-mail to: a.benardou@dcu.gr
The submission deadline is April 30th 2014.
The proposals will be evaluated and selected by a program committee of international experts. The length allocated to each contribution (10-15 minutes) will be decided by the program committee, depending on the number of contributions and the strength of the proposals.
Notifications regarding the acceptance of proposals will be sent out by May 14th, 2014

The Tyranny of Distance Panel at DHA2014, Perth Australia 2014

Digital Humanities, visualisation, , , , , , , , , ,

Digital Humanities And The Tyranny of Distance for http://dha2014.org/ Wednesday 19 March, 2014, Hosted at University of Western Australia, Perth Australia

Slides

Talk 1 (virtual): No Panacea: How Can Virtual Research Environments Enhance Distance Research-Matt

After a recent report on virtual research environments (VREs) from the Joint Information Systems Council in the UK (JISC) found that, even after 6 years of funding and study by JISC, “the ‘emergent community of practice’ has failed to grow significantly beyond the pool of practitioners in direct receipt of JISC project funds,”[1] perhaps it is time to step back and consider whether VREs truly can be a useful addition to humanities research and, if so, under what circumstances.  This paper will discuss the areas in which scholars should expect VREs to assist them in distance research (access to the same tools, data, and workflows in a single environment) and the price they will need to pay for these advantages (either significant time and energy to develop their own environment or being satisfied with a pre-existing solution).  This paper will conclude that VREs can be an excellent tool for distance research, but one for which a significant price must be paid given the current state of existing VRE platforms.

Talk 2 (virtual): Collaborative writing in a distributed research consortium: requirements and possible solutions-Christof

This contribution reports on experiences made with collaborative writing in the DARIAH consortium (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities, www.dariah.eu). DARIAH is a distributed research project involving numerous partners from 12 different European countries and in which tools supporting various collaborative writing and project coordination tasks have been used over a considerable period of time. Despite the fact that collaboration across geographical distance is essential for this and many other projects, the existence of conflicting requirements of scholarly collaborative writing processes make a generic solution very hard to come by. Among these requirements are real-time collaborative writing, flexible word-level commenting, footnote support, version control, access rights management, publishing options and open-source availability of the tool itself. Currently available technical solutions do not meet all of these requirements. Tools discussed in this contribution include Etherpad, Mediawiki/Confluence, GoogleDrive, Dropbox and WordPress. Finally, one promising solution will be discussed which is still in early stages of development, namely Penflip (www.penflip.com), a GitHub front-end for text composition.

Talk 3 (virtual): Recognizing Distance: On Multilingualism in Digital Infrastructures-Toma

Infrastructures are installations and services that function as “mediating interfaces” or “structures ‘in between’ that allow things, people and signs to travel across space by means of more or less standardized paths and protocols for conversion or translation.” [2] By definition, infrastructures are in the business of overcoming distance: they have always been seen as motors of change propelling society into a better and brighter future. Which is why it would be all too tempting — and all too easy — to approach the question of digital research infrastructures uncritically by embracing the master narratives of efficiency and progress without discussing the larger and more complex implications of institutionalizing networked research. A digital infrastructure is not only a tool that needs to be built: it is also a tool that needs to be understood. In this talk, I will address the challenge of multilingualism in research infrastructures evolving against the backdrop of global capitalism in its electronic mode, the so-called “eEmpire” [3] How can we make sure that digital infrastructures — not only the ones we are trying to build now, for ours are baby steps, but the future ones, the ones we hope to see built one day — do not turn from being power grids into grids of (hegemonic, monolingual, monocultural) power?

Talk 4 (in person): The 3D world is your stage-Erik

How can scholars collaborate in virtual environments in a manner similar to video-conferencing? Which conferencing and distributed modeling tools are particularly appropriate to research and collaboration in the spatial and artefactual humanities? This talk will briefly outline needs, issues and promising services and working prototypes.

Authors

Matthew Munson <mmunson@gcdh.de>

Matthew Munson is a researcher at the Göttingen Centre for Digital Humanities (GCDH) in Göttingen, Germany.  He holds a bachelor’s degree in Education from the University of Kansas and in Theology from Loyola College (now Loyola University) in Baltimore, Maryland, and a master’s degree in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia.  While a student at the University of Virginia, Matthew began working in the digital humanities center there, the Scholars’ Lab, and immediately became interested in the fascinating insights digital methods could give into ancient religious texts.  He received a Scholars’ Lab Digital Humanities Fellowship in 2009-2010 to explore the use of text-mining strategies to identify relationships between the Greek texts of St. Paul in the New Testament and the Hebrew texts of the Old Testament.  At the GCDH, Matthew works in the European project DARIAH (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) and coordinates the DARIAH work package concerning VREs on the German and European level and is also coordinating the development of the DARIAH international digital humanities summer school, planned for August 2014 in Göttingen.  His current research interests lie in the area of semantic drift and methods of calculating the change in the meanings of words from the Old Testament to the New Testament.

Christof Schöch <christof.schoech@uni-wuerzburg.de>

Christof Schöch is a researcher at the Chair for Digital Philology, University of Würzburg, Germany, working in the DARIAH-DE (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) project. He obtained his PhD from Kassel University & Paris-Sorbonne in 2008 with a study published as La Description double dans le roman des Lumières 1760-1800. His interests in research and teaching are French Literature (Enlightenment, contemporary novel, classical drama) as well as digital humanities (scholarly digital editions, quantitative text analysis, digital infrastructure).

Toma Tasovac <ttasovac@humanistika.org>

Toma Tasovac is the director of the Belgrade Centre for Digital Humanities. He has degrees in Slavic Language and Literatures from Harvard and Comparative Literature from Princeton. He works on complex architectures in electronic lexicography, digital editions, and integration of digital libraries and language resources. He is equally active in the field of new media education, regularly teaching seminars and workshops in Germany, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Erik Champion <nzerik@gmail.com>

A Professor of Cultural Visualisation at Curtin University, Erik was previously Project Leader of DIGHUMLAB Denmark, and co-Leader of the Research and Public Engagement part of DARIAH. His research is primarily in virtual heritage, serious games, and 3D applications in the Digital Humanities. He has postgraduate degrees in Architecture, Philosophy, and Engineering (Geomatics). He has written Playing With the Past, edited Game Mods: Design Theory and Criticism (a free download at ETC Press), and is writing Critical Gaming in the Digital Humanities.

[1] Miller, Paul, “JISC VRE Programme: Impact Study,” March 2010:http://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/JISC_UK/J100315M.pdf, p. 21.

[2] Badenoch, Alexander and Andreas Fickers (2010), ‘Europe Materializing? Toward a Transnational History of European Infrastructures’, in Badenoch, Alexander and Andreas Fickers (eds.), Materializing Europe: Transnational Infrastructures and the Project of Europe (Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 11.

[3] Raley, R. (2004). eEmpires. Cultural Critique 57, 132.

personal bit of information and apology

Conference, Digital Humanities, , , , ,

I am sorry I have not had much time to update the site lately, I have been very busy with organizing a workshop in Copenhagen
http://dighumlab.dk/news/single-news/artikel/cfp-cultural-heritage-creative-tools-and-archives-workshop/

The programme will appear soon and I am very happy with it, I think it will be a great event.

However June will probably not see much activity on this site as I will be tidying up loose ends here in Denmark before moving to Curtin University in Western Australia in July to start a new role. I am sorry in many ways to be leaving Europe but this is probably the right time to do so and some wonderful opportunities await.

In particular I am looking forward to working with iVEC, supervising PhD students, facilitating a new masters in visualisation for Curtin, and also help them develop new facilities such as this one for research into Cultural Visualisation (amongst other things).

upcoming book “Critical Gaming and Digital Humanities”..what have I missed?

Academic, Digital Humanities, game, virtual heritage, ,

I have been sent a book contract for the above, to be published in the Ashgate Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities series in 2014. I would like to thank the editor Dymphna Evans, and the anonymous reviewers, for some excellent suggestions.

Chapters that we agreed I would write on are as follows. Feel free to add comments on any major chapters or issues that I should focus on, have missed etc.

1.     The Limits of Text in Teaching the Humanities
2.     Game-based Learning and the Digital Humanities
3.     Simulating Culture and Ritual
4.     Fiction Eats Fact: Dilemmas in Virtual Heritage and Digital Archaeology
5.     The Joysticks of Death and Destruction: Violence Morality
6.     Virtual Reality, Visualization, and the Video Game
7.     The Body and the Brain as Game Controller
8.     Interactive Drama and Storytelling
9.     Gaming in the Classroom
10.  Conclusion: Reflective Game Design

CAA UK 2013: Game Issues for Scholarly Discourse or for Public Understanding

Conference, Digital Humanities, game, PhD, slides, virtual heritage, , , ,

I just gave a paper via Google hangout to CAU UK 2013 (Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology – UK Conference 22nd – 23rd February, 2013) in London.

Fullscreen Powerpoint did not seem to work but PDF did. Hmm.

I see some of the problems in Virtual Heritage//Digital Archaeology as how to

  • involve crowdsourcing
  • simulate ritual
  • design suitable and contextual interaction
  • design and evaluate meaningful learning
  • build templates so communities can develop their own interactive 3D environments
  • provide for archaeological scholars and the general public (separate environments, separate levels of detail, separate narratives?)

I forgot to say:

  • You can download related (free) book chapters in the ETC Press Game Mods book here.
  • Aarhus University has a PhD scholarship on Digital Heritage and Virtual Culture for those interested, very lucrative funding!
  • We hope to have a cultural heritage workshop in June on related issues.
  • End of October, Digital Heritage 2013, a vast collection of heritage conferences, will take place in Marseilles.
  • I have a book project on this and very happy to field suggestions about how game studies and game environments can advance to help virtual heritage and digital archaeology.

UPDATE: The slides and audio commentary are online at http://www.lparchaeology.com/caauk/game-issues-for-scholarly-discourse-or-for-public-understanding/

They are also at http://dougsarchaeology.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/game-issues-for-scholarly-discourse-or-for-public-understanding/

I cannot bring myself to listen to my own voice for any length of time (is that what I sound like, at least I did not try to sing) but a big thank you to the organizers.

Open Library of Humanities, Publishing, Future Technologies

design, Digital Humanities, , , , , , ,

I have just joined the Open Library of Humanities, (editorial committee), you can read more about it here in this Times article entitled Fools’ gold? This project was inspired by PLOSone.

With a subgroup from NeDiAMH and DARIAH I also started looking at and extending Unsworth’s concept of Scholarly Primitives, and whether, if you had a directory of online tools contents and methods, you could create a simple but scalable classification system (more an ontology than a taxonomy) which could be dynamically linked by journal articles, blog posts and working papers?

This is where Open Library of Humanities and DHCommons and hopefully DARIAH’s French partner OpenEdition, may be able to share their ideas and create a true community publication framework for Digital Humanities scholars. Or should I say, rather, scholars particularly interested in Digital Humanities-related topics.

And of course there are many alternatives

Scalar looks fascinating, and Liquidbooks offers an interesting collaborative wiki model for publishing http://liquidbooks.pbworks.com/w/page/11135951/FrontPage