Category Archives: Digital Humanities

National Research Infrastructure (NRI)

Digital Humanities, ,

Thinking about the above for a meeting with 19 other people in a few weeks at an organization I have never been to, with people I don’t think I know..to discuss NRI. For humanities and social sciences.

There was criticism from the Australian Academy of Humanities President on the Australian Government 7 May 2018 response (to the 2016 report), entitled FACILITIES FOR THE FUTURE UNDERPINNING AUSTRALIA’S RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

Funding will enable greater integration and modern accessibility of datasets available through the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN) and the Atlas of Living Australia.
Investments will ensure the preservation of the National Collections maintained by CSIRO through the construction of a new and purpose-built building to consolidate the housing of existing national insect, wildlife and plant collections to ensure their long term preservation. A scoping study will be undertaken to identify the technology platform and capabilities needed to establish HASS and Indigenous research platforms.

CSIRO stands for Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. So not obviously Humanities or Social Sciences (HASS). Yet many of their projects and infrastructure have implications for communities. Perhaps an opportunity wasted, or perhaps still waiting to be explored.

So where does this leave my planning for the workshop? It seems to me funding and recognition typically boils down to machines, centres, or investment/competition/start up plans. With Digital Humanities in Australia, one can argue there is no clear equivalent say to the European EU DH infrastructures/meta groups; nor an equivalent to the US NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities).

  • HASS research could better sell potental impacts and benefits. The UK quantify research impact/engagement; do other countries?
  • There is no single NRI to achieve this, one meta infrastructure would squeeze out the smaller disciplines/projects.
  • We are currently limited by lack of international funding/collaboration; cost of travel; siloization of research into non OA journals;  lack of Media/Public interest (arguable, I guess); and being excluded from the National Science and Research Priorities (compare it to Europe or NZ). And no, when you apply for a national grant, you ARE supposed to propose something addressing these highly applied, production-oriented, applied outcomes and priorities. Priorities, one might argue, that should already be driving businesses, not the entire academic body of  universities.  HASS needs to get on the board here.
  • Consider the discussion outcomes, and the implications for the Draft Terms of Reference for the HASS scoping study.
  • NB “The 2016 National Research Infrastructure Roadmap is officially underway with the release of the Terms of Reference.”

 

 

 

 

CAA 2019 presentations

archaeology, augmented reality, Conference, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, heritage, Presentation, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, , ,

More for my own use, here are two papers accepted for CAA2019 in Krakow Poland, 23-27 April, 2019.

Author Erik M Champion (Mafi?)

Title Mixable reality, Collaboration, and Evaluation (S36: User Experience Design in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage)

If we are to move past one hit AR wonders like Pokémon Go, scalable yet engaging content, stable tools, appropriate evaluation research, long-term and robust infrastructure, are essential. Formats like WebVR and Web XR show promise for sharing content across desktop and head-mounted displays (without having to download plugins), but there is also a non-technological constraint: our preconceptions about virtual reality. For example, in a 2018 Conversation article “Why virtual reality cannot match the real thing” by Professor of Philosophy Janna Thompson) she argued that virtual reality (and virtual heritage in particular) attempts to provide accurate and equivalent realistic interactive simulations of the existing real world.
VR is not only a possible mirror to the current world. As Sir David Attenborough noted about the Natural History Museum’s “Hold the World” VR application, it provides a richer understanding of process, people can move and view virtual objects that are otherwise fragile, expensive or remote. And it allows people to share their mashups of reality, mixable reality. Collaborative learning can compel us to work in groups to see the bigger picture… your actions or decisions can be augmented and incorporated into the experience. However, there are few studies on collaborative learning in mixed reality archaeology and heritage. This presentation will discuss two projects, (one using two HoloLens HMDs, one a game where two people with different devices must share and control one character,) the theories adopted, and the range of possibilities for evaluating user experience in this collaborative mixed reality.

This is related to part of an article on VR for tourism that was submitted to the online Conversation website, this abstract will be further modified and updated.

Authors: Erik M Champion, Hafizur Rahaman

Title: 3D Models: Unwanted, Unknown, Unloved (Session S37: 3D Publishing and Sustainability: Taking Steps Forward)

Given the importance of three-dimensional space and artefacts to archaeology and to heritage studies, one might therefore assume that publications in the area of virtual heritage are heavily reliant on providing scholarly argument based on 3D models.

To corroborate this hypothesis, we reviewed virtual heritage proceedings of five major digital heritage conferences one could expect to be focused on projects incorporating 3D models. A total number of 264 articles across 14 proceedings were studied, and the results will be tabulated and presented.

The lack of accessible 3D models, usable projects, or ways in which the 3D model could be used and critiqued in a scholarly argument is of great concern to us. We suggest that long-term usage and preservation of virtual heritage models are worrying and persistent issues, and their scholastic impact is severely compromised. We suggest there are least three critical issues: we lack accessible, durable and complete infrastructure, which is essential for storage and preservation; we still don’t have a shared understanding of how to develop, integrate and demonstrate the research value of 3D heritage models; we also lack robust, long-term publication systems that can integrate and maintain both the 3D models and their relevance and functionality in terms of both community engagement and scholarship. We recommend seven practical steps for ensuring that the scholarship going into the development of 3D virtual heritage models, and arising from 3D virtual heritage models, can be fully implemented.

$420,000 ARC LIEF grant awarded

digital heritage, Digital Humanities, visualisation

Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities 2018 round 1 [LE190100019]

Time-layered cultural map of Australia
Administering Organisation: The University of Newcastle
Investigators

  1. Prof Hugh Craig (Chief Investigator)
  2. Prof Deb Verhoeven (Chief Investigator)
  3. Prof Paul Arthur (Chief Investigator)
  4. Prof Andrew May (Chief Investigator)
  5. Prof Rosalind Smith (Chief Investigator)
  6. Prof Ning Gu (Chief Investigator)
  7. Prof Erik Champion (Chief Investigator)
  8. A/Prof Mark Harvey (Chief Investigator)
  9. Prof Victoria Haskins (Chief Investigator)
  10. Prof Lyndall Ryan (Chief Investigator)

The Time-layered cultural map (TLCMap) of Australia is an online research platform that will deliver researcher driven national-scale infrastructure for the humanities, focused on mapping, time series, and data integration. The TLCMap will expand the use of Australian cultural and historical data for research through sharply defined and powerful discovery mechanisms, enabling researchers to visualise hidden geographic and historical patterns and trends, and to build online resources which present to a wider public the rich layers of cultural data in Australian locations. TLCMap is not a singular project or software application with a defined research outcome, but infrastructure linking geo-spatial maps of Australian cultural and historical information, adapted to time series and will be a significant contribution to humanities research in Australia. For researchers, it will transform access to data and to visualisation tools and open new perspectives on Australian culture and history. For the public, it will enable increased accessibility to historical and cultural data through visualisations made available online and in print.
URL: https://www.arc.gov.au/grants-and-funding/apply-funding/rms-funding-announcements-web-page

Free Workshop: 3D to Mixed Reality: From Regard3D to HoloLens (23.11.2018)

Announcements, augmented reality, Conference, Digital Humanities, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, workshop, , , , ,

3D to Mixed Reality: From Regard3D to HoloLens

(register on Eventbrite) Friday 23 Nov 2-4PM Curtin University Library Level 5

3D models adopted/generated from image-based modelling techniques are increasingly used in research, shared online, incorporated into digital archives, and developed as assets for 3D games and for Virtual Reality applications. On the other hand, various HMDs (Head-Mounted-Display) offer Mixed Reality experiences; help us to experience and interact with virtual environments and objects via gesture, speech, gaze, touch and movement. This workshop will demonstrate how to make 3D models from photographs with free and open source software (FOSS, Regard3D), how to import a 3D model to a specific Mixed Reality HMD (Microsoft HoloLens), and you will also learn how the HoloLens can interact with the 3D model in mixed reality.

We will be using the following software:

  • Regard3D
  • MeshLab
  • Unity3D
  • HoloToolkit

What to bring:

You can just register and attend the workshop. However, it is better to bring your own laptop/device, preferably with the following software pre-installed (installation may take an hour but is free of charge):

Please register to secure your place, and cancel your ticket if you are no longer able to attend, as places are limited!

The Phenomenology of Real and Virtual Places

Academic, Announcements, Architecture, augmented reality, Book, Digital Humanities, publication, Virtual Reality, , , ,

New edited book out 8 November:

Champion, E. (Ed.). (2018). The Phenomenology of Real and Virtual Places. The Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy series. Routledge. 08 November 2018 (ebook 26 October 2018 9781315106267). ISBN 9781138094079

Feel free to ask Routledge for a review form and book copy..

This collection of essays explores the history, implications, and usefulness of phenomenology for the study of real and virtual places. While the influence of phenomenology on architecture and urban design has been widely acknowledged, its effect on the design of virtual places and environments has yet to be exposed to critical reflection. These essays from philosophers, cultural geographers, designers, architects, and archaeologists advance the connection between phenomenology and the study of place. The book features historical interpretations on this topic, as well as context-specific and place-centric applications that will appeal to a wide range of scholars across disciplinary boundaries. The ultimate aim of this book is to provide more helpful and precise definitions of phenomenology that shed light on its growth as a philosophical framework and on its development in other disciplines concerned with the experience of place.

Foreword byJeff Malpas
Introduction by Erik Champion
1. The Inconspicuous Familiarity of Landscape by Ted Relph2. Landscape Archaeology in Skyrim VR by Andrew Reinhard

3. The Efficacy of Phenomenology for Investigating Place with Locative Media by Leighton Evans

4. Postphenomenology and “Places” by Don Ihde

5. Virtual Place and Virtualized Place by Bruce Janz

6. Transactions in virtual places: Sharing and excess in blockchain worlds by Richard Coyne

7. The Kyoto School Philosophy on Place: Nishida and Ueda by John W.M. Krummel

8. Phenomenology of Place and Space in our Epoch: Thinking along Heideggerian Pathways by Nader El-Bizri

9. Norberg-Schulz: Culture, Presence and a Sense of Virtual Place by Erik Champion

10. Heidegger’s Building Dwelling Thinking in terms of Minecraft by Tobias Holischka

11. Cézanne, Merleau-Ponty, and Questions for Augmented Reality by Patricia Locke

12. The Place of Others: Merleau-Ponty and the Interpersonal Origins of Adult Experience by Susan Bredlau

13. “The Place was not a Place”: A Critical Phenomenology of Forced Displacement Neil Vallelly

14. Virtual Dark Tourism in The Town of Light by Florence Smith Nicholls

Authenticity and Communicating the Past

3D and game editors, archaeology, Digital Humanities, virtual heritage, visualisation

Day 1 of #ComPDA conference (program) at the University of Cologne and authenticity is a big topic in Q&A

I wonder if

  1. a workshop session on writing a charter/guidelines on Authenticity in Digital and Interactive media would be of interest.
  2. A gane idea where exoloring and avoiding or collecting the most authentic would be part of the gameplay
  3. A tool inside a game/VE to show levels of contestation/interpretation/historical authenticity can reveal the schema/paradata postplay or preplay..

Xavier from Edinburgh is now talking about the exciting non educatonal aspects of Assassin’s Creed (Origins vs Odyssey for example) – I wonder if someone has done a survey of the game assets/narratives and scored/compared their educational/authentic-inauthentic/’fun’ levels and areas. Are fun and education really always directly opposed in these sort of games?

References

Assassin’s Creed

General

Game prototyping workshop in Turin

Academic, Digital Humanities, summer school, , , ,

At the Politecnico di Torino, Turin Italy, I gave a talk on Monday in their summer school on Cities Cultural heritage and Digital Humanities, on Virtual heritage and publication issues.

Yesterday I ran a workshop on game prototyping especially for history and heritage games.

The slides from the workshop are here

I am particularly interested in developing the conceptual framework for teaching this, on slides 3-4 (with a better diagram!)

What is in an Acronym?

Digital Humanities

 

I once worked in a department at a huge IT firm, where no one knew what the letters stood for, OMC I think it was. We found out in a few days, but I have forgotten it again, it was surprisingly not memorable.

A more relevant insight might be the gap between digital humanists and people in the field of VR. When I was associated with DARIAH EU, Matt Munson, one of the researchers at the Göttingen Centre For Digital Humanities, was researching VREs.

To me a VRE was a virtual reality environment (granted it is not commonly used now but it is still used: https://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality-environments/) but to Matt and the Digital Humanists it was a Virtual Research Environment, portal (well, web platform) for all the digital tools a scholar from a specific discipline might wish to use.

Good idea in theory, but my point is the gap between so many in DH and VR, both use the same acronym for not quite the same thing and are totally oblivious to what it means in the other field. And it also reveals how elastic the term Virtual is.

Landscape Data Art & Models as Linked Open Data

Conference, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, Linked Open Data, , , ,

A free event on Linked Open Data and related Digital Humanities Projects will be taking place on 27 July.

Landscape Data Art & Models as Linked Open Data

The HIVE, (inside John Curtin Gallery) | Building 200A, Curtin University | Kent Street, Bentley | Perth, WA 6102 | Australia

Friday, 27 July 2018 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm (Australian Western Standard Time)

Venue: The HIVE (inside John Curtin Gallery), Curtin University

Speakers (alphabetical order, program later), with provisional title and topic

Please note, if you do not know what RDF (Resource Description Framework), Semantic Web, or Linked Open Data is, we will have an intro workshop on this (and current Digital Humanities projects including Virtual Reality) in the Curtin Library Makerspace, Level 5, 3-4:30PM 26 July 2018. The working title is Linked Reality, Mixed Reality but a link to the free workshop will be provided from this page.

augmented reality, Conference, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, heritage, HIVE, Virtual Reality, visualisation

The Screen Tourism VR and Cultural Heritage event will take place Monday at the HIVE, Curtin University.

It is fully booked but the programme is now:

DRAFT SCHEDULE (HIVE opens at 12:30pm)

PROGRAM SESSION 1 (Chair: Dr Tod Jones (Curtin University))

1.00–1.05pm: Welcome by Dr Tod Jones

1.05–1.40pm: Mr Ian Brodie (http://www.ianbrodie.net/)

1.40–2.00pm: Dr Christina Lee (Curtin University)

2.00–2.20pm: Professor Ear Zow Digital (Curtin University)

2.20 – 2.45pm: Q&A

2.45–3.15pm: Coffee/tea break at Aroma Café

SESSION 2 (Chair: Erik Champion)

3.15–3.20pm: Introductions

3.20–3.40pm: Mr Mike Dunn (Phimedia)

3.40–3.50pm: Mr Mat Lewis (South West Development Commission)

3.50–4.00pm: Mr Nathan Gibbs (Screen West)

4.00–4.30pm: Q&A then sundowner (see below).

VENUE

HIVE (VR Centre), John Curtin Gallery, Kent Street, Curtin Bentley campus WA 6102

https://humanities.curtin.edu.au/research/centres-institutes-groups/hive/

Phone: (08) 9266 9024 (HIVE).
Map link https://goo.gl/maps/FZu8FaEaULt (in John Curtin Gallery opposite Aroma Café)

PARKING (https://properties.curtin.edu.au/gettingaround/parkingzones.cfm

You can pay in a visitor’s carpark (there are parks near John Curtin Gallery/the HIVE) or you can download a phone app and pay in the yellow signed curtin parks at a much cheaper rate. Closest zone is D3 off Kent St then Beazley Avenue, park as close as you can to John Curtin Library.

CANCELLATIONS

If you cannot make the event please cancel your ticket at Eventbrite as we have people on the waiting list

TEA/COFFEE

We hope to have tea or coffee provided for attendees at the nearby outside Aroma cafe during the coffee break, please bring your Eventbrite ticket number.

SUNDOWNER AFTER THE EVENT

If you would like to speak to Ian or Mike or the other speakers after the event from 4:30PM or so we hope to offer a small sundowner at the meeting space of Innovation Central, Level 2, Engineering Pavilion Building 216. More details at the event but just a note you can also find it at http://properties.curtin.edu.au/maps/

 

Imagined Spaces in Real Places

augmented reality, Digital Humanities, Symposium, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, ,

If you are in Perth 11 June please sign up on EventBrite to this free event:

Imagined Spaces in Real Places (Screen Tourism, VR & Cultural Heritage)

There is a burgeoning global tourist trade for places – both real and imaginary – inspired by cultural texts and their creators. While Stratford-upon-Avon has long been a mecca for Shakespeare enthusiasts, (popular) cultural tourism has now extended the bucket list of travel destinations to include the likes of Westeros (aka Dubrovnik, Croatia; Game of Thrones) and Middle-earth (aka New Zealand; The Lord of the Rings). This Symposium brings together scholars and presenters from industry to discuss how screen-based tourism (film, television) can be a generative force in local economies, in region/nation branding, and as a way of promoting cultural heritage. The potential and practical application of technology – specifically virtual reality, locative apps and interactive media – in facilitating an immersive touristic experience, visualising place and creating narrative will also be explored.

DETAILS

Monday 11 June 20181-4:30PM (Presentations start at 1pm, finish approx. 4:30pm. HIVE opens at 12:30pm).
Venue: Curtin University HIVE (VR Centre), John Curtin Gallery, Kent Street, Curitn Bentley campus WA 6102
Event organisers: Christina Lee, Erik Champion

Keynote speaker: Ian Brodie (http://www.ianbrodie.net/)

Other presenters include: Dr Christina Lee, Professor Erik Champion, Mat Lewis (Southwest Development Commission), Professor Sue Beeton (teleconference).

Venue: https://humanities.curtin.edu.au/research/centres-institutes-groups/hive/

Phone: (08) 9266 9024 (HIVE).
Map link https://goo.gl/maps/FZu8FaEaULt (in John Curtin Gallery opposite Aroma Café)

Digital Humanities Research Infrastructures in Australia

Digital Humanities, infrastructure, respositories, , , ,

Thanks to Curtin’s Faculty of Humanities and Computational Institute I attended the Australian Academy of Humanities 2 day Humanities Arts and Culture Data Summit, 14-15 March, hosted by the AHA https://www.humanities.org.au/ at the National Film and Sound Archive (NSFA), Canberra.

The below is from a brief report but may be of interest to those who’d like a quick guide to what is happening regards digital humanities research infrastructures at a National level in Australia.

SUMMARY:

Quick guide to social sciences/sciences platforms and RIs

  • Dr John La Salle, Director, Atlas of Living Australia https://www.ala.org.au/ biodiversity data
  • Dr Merran Smith, Chief Executive, Population Health Research Network http://www.phrn.org.au/
  • Andrew Gilbert, General Manager, Bioplatforms http://www.bioplatforms.com/andrew-gilbert/
  • Professor Bert Roberts, Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, 1 year into Centre of Excellence https://epicaustralia.org.au/  “Now is the time to tell a culturally inclusive, globally significant human and environmental history of Australia. We like to call it, Australia’s Epic Story. The ARC Centre of Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) will undertake research that will safeguard our national heritage, transform research culture, connect with communities and inform policy.”

Humanities

  • Professor Linda Barwick FAHA, University of Sydney – PARADISEC http://www.paradisec.org.au/ has funding issues but well respected, may require more computing to scale. “PARADISEC (the Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures) is a digital archive of records of some of the many small cultures and languages of the world”
  • Professor Julian Meyrick, Flinders University – AusStage http://www.flinders.edu.au/ehl/firth/focus/digitalhumanitiesanderesearch/ausstage.cfm “AusStage provides an accessible online resource for researching live performance in Australia. Development is led by a consortium of universities, government agencies, industry organisations and collecting institutions with funding from the Australian Research Council and other sources.”
  • Professor Mark Finnane FASSA FAHA, Griffith University – Prosecution Project https://prosecutionproject.griffith.edu.au/ “The criminal trial is the core of the Australian criminal justice system. It is the product of police investigation and its outcomes include the sentences of imprisonment that populate our prisons.” It is an impressive historical database. Overseas law researchers and historians (UK etc.) use it because it is better than theirs, apparently.
  • Alexis Tindall, Research Engagement Specialist – Humanities and Social Sciences Data Enhanced Virtual Lab (HASS DEVL https://www.ersa.edu.au/1-1-million-funding-humanities-arts-social-sciences-data-enhanced-virtual-lab/ “Humanities, Arts and Social Science researchers will get access to cutting-edge online tools and services thanks to $1.1 million in new funds for a collaborative virtual laboratory project. The Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Data Enhanced Virtual Lab (DEVL) will bring together fragmented data, tools and services into a shared workspace.”

Others included (but there were more)

  • Adam Bell https://aiatsis.gov.au/ (very good talk on problems funding and running archives), Canberra. “The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) is a world-renowned research, collections and publishing organisation. We promote knowledge and understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, traditions, languages and stories, past and present.”
  • Roxanne Missingham, University Librarian, Australian National University, showed the library books destroyed by flood, said to applause that infrastructure included people.
  • Alison Dellit, Assistant Director-General, National Collections Access, National Library of Australia. Discussed the National Library’s Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au/ “Find and get over 569,383,366 Australian and online resources: books, images, historic newspapers, maps, music, archives and more”)
  • Professor Rachel Fensham, Chief Investigator Social and Cultural Informatics Platform, University of Melbourne https://scip.unimelb.edu.au/about “SCIP responds to current demand and future growth in the digital humanities, arts, and social sciences by providing the necessary informatics skills and technology platforms to support researchers, research students and strategic research activities.”

AAH-HAC-Data-Summit-Program(2).pdf

AAH-HAC-Data-Summit-Discussion-Paper.pdf

Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships FREE preprint chapters

Academic, Announcements, Book, Digital Humanities, Open Access, publication, ,

Preprint versions of chapters appearing in Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships: A Critical Examination of Labor, Network, and Community. Eds. Robin Kear and Kate Joranson. Chandos, 2018.

Final versions of all chapters appear in the published version of the book, available here:

Introduction, Robin Kear and Kate Joranson: http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/33818/

Chapter 2: “Our Marathon: The Role of Graduate Student and Library Labor In Making The Boston Bombing Digital Archive” by Jim McGrath and Alicia Peaker. http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M62Z8Fht

Chapter 3: “Digital Humanities as Public Humanities: Transformative Collaboration in Graduate Education.” by Laurie N. Taylor, Poushali Bhadury, Elizabeth Dale, Randi K. Gill-Sadler, Leah Rosenberg, Brian W. Keith, Prea Persaud: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00048267/00001

Chapter 4: “Exploring the Moving Image: The Role of Audiovisual Archives as Partners for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage Institutions” by Adelheid Heftberger. In Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships: A Critical Examination of Labor, Network, and Community, edited by Robin Kear and Kate Joranson, Chandos, 2018, 45-57. http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M66S19

Chapter 6: Glass, E. R. (2018). Engaging the knowledge commons: setting up virtual participatory spaces for academic collaboration and community. In Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships: A Critical Examination of Labor, Network, and Community. UC San Diego. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6zp934sm

Chapter 7: Miller, Karen, Erik Champion, Lise Summers, Artur Lugmayr, and Marie Clarke. 2018. “Chapter 7 – The Role of Responsive Library Makerspaces in Supporting Informal Learning in the Digital Humanities.” In Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships, 91-105. Chandos Publishing. Retrieved from https://maker.library.curtin.edu.au/book-chapter-published/

Chapter 10: “Digital Humanities as Community Engagement: The Digital Watts Project” by Melanie Hubbard and Demrot Ryan: http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/librarian_pubs/93/

Chapter 11: Russell, Beth. “The Collaborative Project Management Model: Akkasah, an Arab Photography Project.” Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships: A Critical Examination of Labor, Network, and Community, edited by Robin Kear and Kate Joranson, Chandos, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2451/41680

Visiting fellowships in digital humanities/heritage/serious games

Academic, Announcements, heritage, job, Postdoc, virtual heritage

I may have the chance to take a short break from Perth and apply for a visiting fellowship or scholarship, preferably in digital humanities, digital heritage (3D), or serious games (history and heritage).

I asked on twitter if there were links, URLs and did not hear back so I had a little search of my one, hope these may help others. I do not necessarily need a salary etc but some of these might include a stipend:

 

Australia

UK and Eire

Europe

USA

Early career or postdoc

More general

 

 

When Academics Don’t Get Interaction Design

Academic, Conference, Digital Humanities, visualisation, , 

Prototype of city square that creates music when city-goers run around the moving circular "tracks" of a giant turntable and camera tracking turns their arm gestures into music beats per audio track (image by Danish architect at our MAB workshop in 2012, Aarhus).

Actually this is more a plea.

Consider this imagined scenario. You are an academic having coffee with a colleague. They do interaction “design-y” stuff and you ask them what they are working on. When they give you a broad overview of the technology and interaction, you might say”Well, that is all well and good but I need to research practical and useful things.” If they know what your focus (tunnel vision) is on, chances are they will then explain how a modification or redirection of the interaction design they were just describing will allow you and your content to do X. “Oh, that I can use” you might say.

Just hold on a minute here. They described an application, tool or service with more generic potential, and then had to use their creative imagination that you didn’t bother tapping into, to show how it could work for you. After you had poured mild scorn on their research. Seems to me they had the brainpower to

a. come up with a generically useful, hopefully transferable idea, concept, tool..

b. be able to summarize your research

c. understand how this new idea, concept or tool could apply to your context in a way that you could understand, AND

d. not be offended that you still didn’t grasp the exemplar they provided you was only a subset of what they had invented to start with.

I am not sure step d would happen though. And I wouldn’t blame the interaction designer if they didn’t have coffee with you again.

 

 

Fidus Writer

Academic, Digital Humanities, Open Access, publication

This is an online writing app that allows you to automatically reference then export into various academic-friendly format. Collaborative editing. Open source as far as I can see.

Fidus Writer is an online collaborative editor especially made for academics who need to use citations and/or formulas. The editor focuses on the content rather than the layout, so that with the same text, you can later on publish it in multiple ways: On a website, as a printed book, or as an ebook. In each case, you can choose from a number of layouts that are adequate for the medium of choice.

Conference paper: Inside Out: Avatars, Agents, Cultural Agents

archaeology, Conference, Digital Humanities, Presentation, virtual heritage

Paper accepted for Researching Digital Cultural Heritage – International Conference, Manchester UK, Dates: 30/11-1/12/2017 twitter #digheritage17

Keywords:Digitally enabled collaborative, participatory and reflexive approaches in cultural heritage design, research and practice.

If conveying cultural significance is a central aim of virtual heritage projects, can they convey cultural significance effectively without an understanding of the contextual role of cultural knowledge? In this talk I will argue this is very difficult, but even populating virtual environments with others (human-guided or computer-scripted), there are still vital, missing ingredients.

In virtual heritage projects with enough computational power and sophistication to feature intelligent agents, they are primarily used as guides (Bogdanovych et al. 2009). They lead players to important landmarks, or perhaps act as historical guides (revealing past events, conveying situationally appropriate behaviour). Intelligent agents are usually designed for limited forms of conversation and typically help convey social presence rather than cultural presence. For an enhanced “sense of inhabited place”, engaging narrative- related elements, or embodiment, a cultural agent recognizes, adds to, or transmits physically embedded and embodied aspects of culture. They could provide a sense of cultural presence, becoming Aware-Of-Not-Quite-Being-‘There’.

Cultural agents would not be mere conversational agents if they were able to:

  1. Automatically select correct cultural behaviours given specific events or situations.
  2. Recognize in/correct cultural behaviours given specific events, locations, or situations.
  3. Transmit cultural knowledge.
  4. Modify, create, or command artefacts that become cultural knowledge.

To fulfil the above criteria, cultural agents would be culturally constrained. Not just socially constrained; their actions and beliefs would be dependent on role, space, and time. They could understand and point out right from wrong in terms of culturally specific behaviour and understand the history and possibly also the future trajectory of specific cultural movements. In this talk I will discuss three scenarios for cultural agents, their relationship to roles and rituals, and two more missing ingredients. The result? A more situated, reflexive appreciation of cultural significance via virtual heritage.

The latest book that isn’t (yet)

Academic, augmented reality, Book, Digital Humanities, heritage, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality,

The book that isn’t, I just drafted and sent for internal academic/publisher review a book on virtual places. So it may be modified, it may not get finally published (not sure what happens, I signed a contract) but I cannot resist listing some of the issues it tries to cover, hope they are issues for you too..

Continue reading The latest book that isn’t (yet) →

3D Digital Heritage, Berlin program

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

I am speaking at 3D Heritage Exploring Virtual Research Space for Art, 19 -20 June 2017, Berlin. Program here

Address:Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Humboldt Graduate School,Luisenstr 56, 10117, Berlin

A Scholarly Ecosystem for 3D Digital Heritage Simulations
Ear Zow Digital

Major impediments to the development of high quality and effective virtual heritage projects has been technological constraints or insufficient audience evaluation methods. That said, this talk proposes that a more fundamental issue has been with the design, circulation and use of the digital models themselves as components of scholarly arguments or as vehicles to communicate hypotheses to the wider public.

In Australia, we have proposed to UNESCO that we run a project to survey, collate and develop tools for heritage sites and related built environments, focusing initially on Australia. The aim is to consolidate and disseminate 3D models and virtual environments of world heritage sites, host virtual heritage examples, tutorials, tools and technologies so heritage groups and classrooms could learn to develop and maintain 3D models and virtual environments, and act as advisor on policy formulation for the use, evaluation and application of these 3D digital environments and digital models for use in the classroom and for general visualisation projects.

The resulting UNESCO Chair project will implement and advise on 3D models of World Heritage Sites, how 3D models can be employed in teaching and research, investigate ways to host both the digital models and related paradata and publications, and transfer formats (for desktop use, mobile computing etc.), ideally with UNESCO, and we will leverage research facilities at Curtin and at partner institutes and research facilities like the HIVE (Figure 1).

The primary goal is to help educate the public in the area of world heritage sites via interactive collaborative digital media, with an emphasis on free and open source software, and a secondary goal is to examine virtual heritage and related digital simulations as components of scholarly arguments. The UNESCO Chair’s project team will also critique, integrate and extend existing and new infrastructure to support this learning material and the overall integration of scholarly publications, publicly available media and online directories and repositories of digital 3D simulations of world heritage sites and related artefacts as a scholarly ecosystem.

 

Book series in Digital Humanities and Digital Heritage

archaeology, Digital Humanities, Open Access, press, publication, virtual heritage, , , , , , ,

Digital Heritage/Archaeology

Digital Humanities

See also https://adho.org/publications which lists

Books and Book Series

NB Is UWM also a Digital (book series) publisher? http://dc.uwm.edu/arthist_mobilizingthepast/1/