Category Archives: design

New book cover

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

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.

Board games expose the triple-layering of mechanics

design, game, serious games, ,

I’ve been thinking, one of the problems with the concept of game mechanics is it is not always clear who the mechanics work for, and at what level. Mechanics can refer to and include:

  1. The designer’s intentions.
  2. The actual consequences and results of the system-based code in the wild.
  3. The understanding and intentions of the player.
  4. The staging and real-world unfolding of events due to code, circumstance, and player’s decisions.

Tabletops (physical boardgames) remove the abstraction of code and system-based rules.

  1. The designer’s intentions.
  2. The staging and real-world unfolding of events due to code, circumstance, and player’s decisions.
  3. The understanding and intentions of the player.

I want to move from simple prototypes to playable boardgames to digital implementations of serious games. Creating reactive rather than reflective players, for this purpose, extrinsic learning, would not be ideal.

And adding the missing layer of code to the playability and immediateness of physical games/boardgames/physical prototypes should not get in the way of engagement and understanding. But it often does. SO: understanding how to add rather than destabilize with that fourth step, CODE, would be of use to me.

 

New Journal Article Out

design, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, heritage, Journal, virtual heritage, , , , ,

Another journal article is out:

Dawson, Beata, Pauline Joseph, and Erik Champion. 2019. “The Story of the Markham Car Collection: A Cross-Platform Panoramic Tour of Contested Heritage.” Collections 15 (1): 62-86. OR https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1550190619832381

In this article, we share our experiences of using digital technologies and various media to present historical narratives of a museum object collection aiming to provide an engaging experience on multiple platforms. Based on P. Joseph’s article, Dawson presented multiple interpretations and historical views of the Markham car collection across various platforms using multimedia resources. Through her creative production, she explored how to use cylindrical panoramas and rich media to offer new ways of telling the controversial story of the contested heritage of a museum’s veteran and vintage car collection. The production’s usability was investigated involving five experts before it was published online and the general users’ experience was investigated. In this article, we present an important component of findings which indicates that virtual panorama tours featuring multimedia elements could be successful in attracting new audiences and that using this type of storytelling technique can be effective in the museum sector. The storyteller panorama tour presented here may stimulate GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) professionals to think of new approaches, implement new strategies or services to engage their audiences more effectively. The research may ameliorate the education of future professionals as well.

hardware, software, simple coding

3D and game editors, design, Virtual Reality, visualisation, , , , , , ,

Time for a quick update on recent tech offerings

Rough Outline on Architected Place

Academic, Book, Conference, design, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, ,

I am finishing a chapter (Chapter 3: ‘Architected’ Places) for my own book on Virtual Places, but the structural arc has escaped me until now. It will be polemical and controversial so I need to rewrite it to show that I realize this, there will be gaps and generalizations.

The basic premises are:

  1. Architectural theory is essentialist.
  2. Architectural tools are instrumentalist, architects don’t work on or near the site, as they need specialist tools connected to databases not to experiences.
  3. Architectural media is loath to include people and architectural spaces don’t work as places without people (Marseilles, by Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion, architectural masterpieces tend to be pavilions).
  4. Architects are not trained in user experience design and evaluation.
  5. Nor are architects trained in interactive media, their tools (see argument 2) are instrumentalist and passive.
  6. Traditional architectural craft is embodied, sited, takes time and records care. This is less and less the case.
  7. So applying theories of architecture, or practices of architectural design to interactive digital media in order to create virtual places, may well leave some gaps. How to resolve these in the design of virtual places? Corruption? Fancy theory? Post modernism? No, through embodiment, multimodality, role-play (and thematic affordances), allowing user-infill, environmental change to affect the design environment, and digital personalized patinas, materials that show the effect of time, wear and care.

 

Curtin Cultural Makathon

3D and game editors, archaeology, Architecture, Biofeedback, design, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, Open Access, respositories, Symposium, visualisation, workshop, , ,

Thanks to a Curtin MCCA Strategic Grant six reseachers and Library staff at Curtin University bought Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality equipment and ran two events to help staff develop digital prototypes and experiences using cultural data resources and digital humanities tools and techniques

  1. 26/08/2016 (AM) GLAM VR: talks on Digital heritage, scholarly making & experiential media (26/08/2016 (AM) 49 registrations-twitter: #GLAMVR16
    THEN Cultural Datasets In a Game Engine (UNITY) & Augmented Reality Workshop 6/08/2016 (PM) 34 registrations
  2. Curtin Cultural Makathon (11/11/2016) 20 registrations-twitter: #ccmak16 OH and before the Makathon, there was a TROVE API workshop! Or read Kathyrn Greenhill’s notes.

Our Curtin Cultural Makathon, great fun, four finished projects, excellent judges and data mentors, fabulous colleagues and atmosphere, plus pizza! Must do again but with more 3D and entertainment technology! Slides: http://slides.com/erikchampion/deck-4#/

There are also GLAMVR16 slides: http://slides.com/erikchampion/glamvr16-26-08-2016#/

Yes you can control the slides.com slides from your phone! if you like the slides.com technology, check out http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js/

Want Western Australian / Australian datasets for your own hackathon? http://catalogue.beta.data.wa.gov.au/group/about/curtin-cultural-makathon

 

Curtin Cultural Makathon 11 Nov 2016

3D and game editors, Announcements, Competition, design, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, heritage, visualisation, , , , ,

Hack/slash/cut/bash/scrape/mod/mash – it’s a culture thing
Join the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts and Curtin Library Makerspace to hack cultural datasets and heritage information.

Use government, institutional research data portal, gallery, library, archive and museum information as data sources. Experiment with data for a research project or proposal; create something accessible, beautiful and/or useful using craft, games, virtual reality, apps or something else: it’s up to you.

Date:
Thursday 10 November 2016  (5pm – 7pm launch / team registration) &
Friday 11 November 2016 (8.30am – 6pm)

Location:
Lounge @ your Library, Level 2
Robertson Library (Building 105)
Curtin University
Kent Street, Bentley

Registration: Free via eventbrite

For more information visit the Curtin Cultural Makathon website.

Curtin Cultural Makathon

Academic, augmented reality, Biofeedback, design, digital heritage, game, heritage, infrastructure, respositories, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, workshop, , , , ,

Hack/slash/cut/bash/scrape/mod/mash – it’s a culture thing

Join the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts and Curtin Library Makerspace to hack cultural datasets and heritage information.

Use government and institutional research data, gallery, library, archive and museum information as data sources. Experiment with data for a research project or proposal; create something accessible, beautiful and/or useful using craft, games, augmented or virtual reality, apps or something else: it’s up to you.

Date:    Thursday 10 November 2016 (afternoon) & Friday 11 November 2016 (9am – 5pm)

Location: Makerspace, level two, Robertson Library (building 105), Curtin University,  Kent Street, Bentley

Registration: Free via Eventbrite

For more information visit the Curtin Cultural Makathon website.

To volunteer to assist with data or to sponsor a prize please contact Dr Lise Summers or Dr Karen Miller.

Curtin Cultural Makathon is funded by a MCCA strategic grant. For more details on the project contact Professor Erik Champion.

How do you create past-ness through place?

I remember walking though Berlin once. I didn’t know the exact history of where I was but I could ‘feel’ it. That night I researched where I had been and the associated events. I was right, I had been in very ‘dark’ places which now just appeared to be civic areas.
My little blog post isn’t about Berlin though. It is about those places you visit where you feel there is ‘history’ there, a past-ness.
Totally subjective, misguided? Perhaps. But I am sure I am not the only one who occasionally encounters this sensation.
And if some or many people encounter this experience, how can we also encounter it in virtual worlds? Or is that impossible? I was wondering if I could find thoughts on this from exhibition designers, amusement park builders, neo-ancient architects.
I know E.G. Asplund of Sweden (1885-1940)  used techniques to make the buildings seem older but I’ll also have to find others.
So much to think upon.

Digital Heritage, Scholarly Making & Experiential Media

3D and game editors, Announcements, augmented reality, Biofeedback, design, digital heritage, game, heritage, HIVE, Presentation, Symposium, talks, tracking, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, , , , , , , ,

Our internal small grant (School of Media Culture and Creative Arts, Curtin University) was successful!

Here is a synopsis of the application (redacted):

Digital Heritage, Scholarly Making & Experiential Media

We propose

  • A one-day workshop [Friday 26 August 2016, HIVE] with 3D, Digital APIs, UNITY and Augmented Reality workshops.
  • We will present our projects at that workshop and a month later meet to review progress and each other’s publications and grants.
  • Then we will organize with the Library and other GLAM partners a cultural hackathon in Perth where programmers and other parties spend a day creating software prototypes based on our ideas from the workshop. The best project will win a prize but the IP will be open source and contestants may be invited into the research projects or related grant applications.
  • Equipment to build prototypes and showcases for future grants. Part of the money will also go into Virtual Reality headsets, and Augmented Reality equipment that can be loaned out from the MCCA store to postgraduates and students.

The above would help progress the below research projects:

  • Another need is to develop the maker-space and digital literacy skills in information studies and the Library Makerspace, to develop a research area in scholarly making.
  • Another project is to integrate archives and records with real-time visualisation such as in the area of digital humanities scholarship, software training in digital humanities, and hands on workshops and crafting projects at the Curtin University Library.
  • Another project is to explore how SCALAR can integrate 3D and Augmented Reality and create a framework for cloud-based media assets that could dynamically relate to an online scholarly publication and whether that journal in printed form, with augmented reality trackers and head mounted displays could create multimedia scholarly journals where the multimedia is dynamically downloaded from the Internet so can be continually updated. Can this work inform future developments of eSPACE and interest in ‘scholarly making’ and makerspaces?
  • There is potential to create an experiential media research cluster with the new staff of SODA, to explore immersive and interactive media that can capture emotions and affects of participants or players. This requires suitable equipment.

MINECRAFT VR/3D/3D python programming tutorials

3D and game editors, AI, archaeology, Architecture, design, Virtual Reality, visualisation,

MODELS/TERRAIN

We are looking at creating a projected/tracked 3D environment of Perth and Curtin for Curtin Library’s makerspace using Digital Elevation Models (DEM) from sites like

  1. http://vterrain.org/Locations/au/ e.g. http://www.simmersionholdings.com/customers/stories/city-of-perth.html
  2. Then, import into minecraft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJf2_pQo0dQ
  3. Or from Google Earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wha2m4_CPoo

Python

We are looking at creating Python for archaeologists & historians in Minecraft:

Minecraft in a high end game engine and vice versa

Minecraft projection

Minecraft & Oculus & gear

Minecraft in 3D?

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/492117/3d-vision/minecraft-does-minecraft-work-in-3d-/

potential paper in Forum on Video Games and Archaeology

3D and game editors, design, digital heritage, game, virtual heritage, ,

Title: Serious Games and Virtual Heritage Have Let Archaeology Down

Wandering around museums or visiting art galleries and school fairs a relatively impartial observer might notice the paucity of interactive historical exhibitions. In particular there is a disconnect between serious games masquerading as entertainment and the aims and motivations of archaeology. Surely this is resolved by virtual heritage projects, interactive virtual learning environments? After all we have therapy games, flight simulators, online role-playing games, even games involving archaeological site inspections (Lara Croft:Tomb raider). Unfortunately we have few successful case studies that are shareable, robust, and clearly delivering learning outcomes.

Out soon: My book “Critical Gaming: Interactive History & Virtual Heritage”

3D and game editors, Architecture, design, Digital Humanities, game, virtual heritage, visualisation, , , ,

Review:

If you would like to review the book please check out this page for contact details: https://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=2253 …

Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage

Purchase:

The book will be available via http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781472422910

or Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Gaming-Interactive-Heritage-Humanities/dp/1472422929

This book explains how designing, playing and modifying computer games, and understanding the theory behind them, can strengthen the area of digital humanities. This book aims to help digital humanities scholars understand both the issues and also advantages of game design, as well as encouraging them to extend the field of computer game studies, particularly in their teaching and research in the field of virtual heritage.By looking at re-occurring issues in the design, playtesting and interface of serious games and game-based learning for cultural heritage and interactive history, this book highlights the importance of visualisation and self-learning in game studies and how this can intersect with digital humanities. It also asks whether such theoretical concepts can be applied to practical learning situations. It will be of particular interest to those who wish to investigate how games and virtual environments can be used in teaching and research to critique issues and topics in the humanities, particularly in virtual heritage and interactive history. Contents: Introduction; Digital humanities and the limits of text; Game-based learning and the digital humanities; Virtual reality; Game-based history and historical simulations; Virtual heritage and digital culture; Worlds, roles and rituals; Joysticks of death, violence and morality; Intelligent agents, drama and cinematic narrative; Biofeedback, space and place; Applying critical thinking and critical play; Index.

Phenomenology and Place

Architecture, Book, design, , , ,

I wrote the below as an email to a small* group of writers/philosophers/academics I’ve found really helpful in my own thinking on phenomenology and place.
I won’t write their names (indeed, I have not even given them any time to respond yet) but I thought I would share my [redacted] email to them in case a reader here

  1. Totally disagrees with my premises and can help me improve them and/or..
  2. Believes they would have something worthy and useful to write in a potential book chapter on the topic.

Dear [insert your favorite live phenomenologist name here]…

For many years I have tried to understand place in virtual environments, how to understand how people experience it, and how to discover and communicate if there are elements of place missing from virtual environments and how to address that through criticism and through design.
My personal interest is in history and heritage (and cultural presence for archaeology simulations) but the problem is wider, and deeper than just virtual places.

I still feel that a possible help and a major problem comes from discussions of phenomenology, namely these:

  1. The role of phenomenology in philosophy is avoided by many philosophers (at least it was a problematic term when I wanted to study it in a philosophy department).
  2. Many outside philosophy use the word without clarifying or helping to clarify where and how it is best used and understood and its limitations (if any).
  3. Many of these papers lack critical analytical reflection and especially are not amenable to extrapolation beyond either the self or calls to authority (authority here usually means dead phenomenologists who are invoked for areas they never actually wrote about directly or perhaps for new discoveries that did not even exist in their time).
  4. In the Presence research area of virtual environment evaluation this is particularly evident yet the laboratory control conditions for Presence evaluations and their extremely generic yet vague questionnaires. Here phenomenology or some related ethnographic method could and should have an important role to play but because of its stigma (not helped by papers which haven’t always been the best examples of phenomenology) virtual environments (virtual reality environments, games, architectural simulations, virtual worlds) lack many of the rich interesting and engaging aspects and potential of place.

Sorry for the longish intro. My suggestion in brief, is probably an edited book: that compiles, describes and especially clarifies major techniques, conditions and limitations of phenomenology and how they could be used or adapted or critiqued for place design (and by extension, for virtual environments). The audience: I’d hope more for an audience of place interested designers and academics than philosophers per se.

*There were more people I had in mind to write to, but will extend the circle if I get a good response from the initial correspondents.

Kinect SDK 2 FINGER TRACKING (etc) for Desktops & Large Screens (VR)

3D and game editors, Architecture, Biofeedback, design, Finger Tracking, Hand tracking, HIVE, , , , , , , ,

We are trying to create some applications/extensions that allow people to interact naturally with 3D built environments on a desktop by pointing at or walking up to objects in the digital environment:

or a large surround screen (figure below is of the Curtin HIVE):

using a Kinect (SDK 1 or 2) for tracking. Ideally we will be able to:

  1. Green screen narrator into a 3D environment (background removal).
  2. Control an avatar in the virtual environment using speaker’s gestures.
  3. Trigger slides and movies inside a UNITY environment via speaker finger-pointing Ideally the speaker could also change the chronology of built scene with gestures (or voice), could alter components or aspects of buildings, move or replace parts or components of the environment. Possibly also use Leap SDK (improved).
  4. Better employ the curved screen so that participants can communicate with each other.

We can have a virtual/tracked hand point to objects creating an interactive slide presentation to the side of the Unity environment. As objects are pointed at information appears in a camera window/pane next to the 3D digital environment, or, these info windows are triggered on approach.

A commercial solution to Kinect tracking for use inside Unity environments is http://zigfu.com/ but they only appear to be working with SDK 1. Which is a bit of a problem, to rephrase:

Problem: All solutions seem to be Kinect SDK 1 and SDK 2 only appears to work on Windows 8. We use Windows 7 and Mac OS X (10.10.1).

So if anyone can help me please reply/email or comment on this post.

And for those doing similar things, here are some links I found on creating Kinect-tracked environments:

KINECT SDK 1
Kinect with MS-SDK is a set of Kinect examples, utilizing three major scripts and test models. It demonstrates how to use Kinect-controlled avatars or Kinect-detected gestures in your own Unity projects. This asset uses the Kinect SDK/Runtime provided by Microsoft. URL: http://rfilkov.com/2013/12/16/kinect-with-ms-sdk/
And here is “one more thing”: A great Unity-package for designers and developers using Playmaker, created by my friend Jonathan O’Duffy from HitLab Australia and his team of talented students. It contains many ready-to-use Playmaker actions for Kinect and a lot of example scenes. The package integrates seamlessly with ‘Kinect with MS-SDK’ and ‘KinectExtras with MsSDK’-packages.

NB
KinectExtras for Kinect v2 is part of the “Kinect v2 with MS-SDK“. This package here and “Kinect with MS-SDK” are for Kinect v1 only.

BACKGROUND REMOVAL (leaves just player)
rfilkov.wordpress.com/2013/12/17/kinectextras-with-mssdk/

FINGER TRACKING (Not good on current Kinect for various reasons)

  1. http://www.ar-tracking.com/products/interaction-devices/fingertracking/
  2. Not sure if SDK 1 but FingerTracker is a Processing library that does real-time finger-tracking from depth images: http://makematics.com/code/FingerTracker/
  3. Finger tracking for interaction in augmented environments: Finger tracking for interaction in augmented environments OR https://www.ims.tuwien.ac.at/publications/tr-1882-00e.pdf by K Dorfmüller-Ulhaas – a finger tracker that allows gestural interaction and is sim- ple, cheap, fast … is based on a marked glove, a stereoscopic tracking system and a kinematic 3-d …
  4. Video of “Finger tracking with Kinect SDK” see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrUW-Z3fHkk
  5. Finger tracking using Java http://www.java2s.com/Open-Source/CSharp_Free_Code/Xbox/Download_Finger_Tracking_with_Kinect_SDK_for_XBOX.htm
  6. Microsoft can do it: http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/08/kinect-for-windows-finger-tracking/ Might need to contact them though for info

HAND TRACKING FOR USE WITH AN OCULUS RIFT
http://nimblevr.com/ For use with rift
Download nimble VR http://nimblevr.com/download.html Win 8 required but has mac binaries

What makes for a good critical argument in computer gaming?

Academic, design, Digital Humanities, game, virtual heritage, ,

Here are 10 working ideas/guidelines:

Ideally a critical position / argument about computer games should be:

  1. Falsifiable and verifiable. Not such a common feature in the Humanities, and not always relevant, but in my opinion a good argument should be saying where and when it is contestable, and where and when it can be proven or disproven.
  2. Extensible and scalable. We should be able to add to it, extend it, apply it to more research questions and research areas or add it ot current research findings or critical frameworks.
  3. Reconfigurable. Components are more useful than take it or leave it positions.
  4. Is useful even if proven wrong in terms of data, findings, methods, or argument (possibly this heuristic should be combined with number 3).
  5.      Helpful to the current and future design of computer games, and has potential to forecast future changes in design, deployment or acceptance.
  6. Not in danger of conflating describing computer games with prescribing how computer games should be. Several of the arguments cited in this book appear to make that mistake.
  7. Understands the distinction between methods and methodology, the selection or rejection of methods should always be examined and communicated.
  8. Is lucid and honest about the background, context, and motivations as factors driving it.
  9. Aiming for validity and soundness of argument.
  10. Attempting to provide in a longterm and accessible way for the data, ouptut, and results of any experiment or survey to be examinable by others.

“Cultural Heritage in Immersive Displays” talk at the HIVE

3D and game editors, design, Digital Humanities, game, press, virtual heritage, visualisation

On Thursday Dr Jeffrey Jacobson of http://publicVR.org will give a talk at 1PM in the HIVE. A new visualisation facility at John Curtin Art Gallery, Curtin University, Perth

He is one of four visiting fellows who arrived last week to work with me on, projects grants and papers.

I’ll add a video link later of his work with game engines and archaeology and puppeteers.