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.
Just received a big compliment from a US academic/architect I respect on my (Nordic) organic architecture book, Organic Design in Twentieth-Century Nordic Architecture. Chuffed. The foreword is by Professor Adrian Carter, Bond University, inaugural Director of the Utzon centre, Aalborg, Denmark.
Ideas that led to the 1991-3 thesis that led to this 2019 book actually helped me in terms of thinking about place in virtual environments
Sorry I have not had time to insert the 150 images or so into the free preprint book version on research gate: https://researchgate.net/publication/331240106_Organic_Design_in_Twentieth-Century_Nordic_Architecture
The editor of Virtual Archaeology Review has kindly created a shout out to our recent article “Survey of 3D digital heritage repositories and platforms” (in Vol. 11 no. 23, 2020):
Cultural Heritage Infrastructures in Digital Humanities (2017) is free to access for one week, get free access to the book (via this link) for 7 days.
After this 7-day period, you can buy a copy for £10/$15!
You can also visit the official Routledge History, Heritage Studies etc. Twitter page
and thanks to Routledge editor Heidi Lowther.
Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage (2015 edition) is in a Routledge campaign for May (2020), which allows anyone to register and get free access to the book (via this link) for 7 days. After this 7-day period, they can buy a copy for £10/$15! *Trust me this is a lot cheaper than before!
Also check out the official Routledge History, Heritage Studies etc. Twitter page
Is there a catch? I honestly don’t know but don’t think so!
February 17-18, 2020, The CREASE
University of South Australia, Kaurna Building Level 2, City West Campus
This workshop will explore examples of how the application of digital technologies in the humanities, built environment, creative arts and design are affecting how heritage environments are studied, preserved, shared and celebrated. The advent of technologies such as LIDAR (Laser scanning of natural and built environments), Virtual and Augmented Reality and immersive interactive environments, in areas such as site data collection, site visualisation and heritage exhibitions, are transforming how we study heritage environments and experience them both in situ and elsewhere. These changes have implications in diverse domains, including archaeology, anthropology, museology, tourism, architecture, restoration and education.
Day 1 Monday February 17, 2020
13:00 Welcome to Country
A/Prof. Jane Lawrence, Head: School of Art, Architecture and Design
13:15 Introduction to the day, Prof. Simon Biggs
13:30 Keynote: Prof. Erik Champion, Curtin University, Perth (Chair: Prof. Ning Gu)
Prof. Champion is UNESCO Chair of Cultural Heritage and Visualisation, and Professor of Media Culture and Creative Arts, in the Humanities Faculty of Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia.
14:45 Q&A
15:00 coffee and networking – Catered by Folk Lore
15:30 Burra Digital Heritage Project: Dr. Julie Nichols and Darren Fong
16:30 Discussion
17:00 Drinks at West Oak Hotel
Day 2 Tuesday February 18, 2020
09:00 coffee and networking – Catered by Folk Lore
09:30 Presentation 1 – Dr. Aida Eslami Afrooz – Time Layered Cultural Map project
10:15 Presentation 2 – CAD Walk – immersive environments for heritage simulation
11:30 Presentation 3 – Dr. Gun Lee – Augmented Reality in Outdoor Experience
12:15 Discussion
12:30 Lunch – Catered by Folk Lore
13:30 Presentation 4 – Sahar Soltani – The HYVE (in the HYVE)
14:15 Presentation 5 – Ben Keane and Alex Degaris Boot – AR for Heritage (in CCS)
15:00 coffee and networking
15:30 Discussion
16:00 end.
The amount of digital cultural heritage data produced by cultural heritage institutions is growing rapidly. Digital cultural heritage repositories have therefore become an efficient and effective way to disseminate and exploit digital cultural heritage data. However, many digital cultural heritage repositories worldwide share technical challenges such as data integration and interoperability among national and regional digital cultural heritage repositories. The result is dispersed and poorly-linked cultured heritage data, backed by non-standardized search interfaces, which thwart users’ attempts to contextualize information from distributed repositories. A recently introduced geospatial semantic web is being adopted by a great many new and existing digital cultural heritage repositories to overcome these challenges. However, no one has yet conducted a conceptual survey of the geospatial semantic web concepts for a cultural heritage audience. A conceptual survey of these concepts pertinent to the cultural heritage field is, therefore, needed. Such a survey equips cultural heritage professionals and practitioners with an overview of all the necessary tools, and free and open source semantic web and geospatial semantic web platforms that can be used to implement geospatial semantic web-based cultural heritage repositories. Hence, this article surveys the state-of-the-art geospatial semantic web concepts, which are pertinent to the cultural heritage field. It then proposes a framework to turn geospatial cultural heritage data into machine-readable and processable resource description framework (RDF) data to use in the geospatial semantic web, with a case study to demonstrate its applicability. Furthermore, it outlines key free and open source semantic web and geospatial semantic platforms for cultural heritage institutions. In addition, it examines leading cultural heritage projects employing the geospatial semantic web. Finally, the article discusses attributes of the geospatial semantic web that require more attention, that can result in generating new ideas and research questions for both the geospatial semantic web and cultural heritage fields.
Arrived last week, I think the paperback version may be nicer to hold and read than the hardcover version! Definitely cheaper.. available in Australia or internationally.
Organic Design in Twentieth-Century Nordic Architecture presents a communicable and useful definition of organic architecture that reaches beyond constraints. The book focuses on the works and writings of architects in Nordic countries, such as Sigurd Lewerentz, Jørn Utzon, Sverre Fehn and the Aaltos (Aino, Elissa and Alvar), among others. It is structured around the ideas of organic design principles that influenced them and allowed their work to evolve from one building to another. Erik Champion argues organic architecture can be viewed as a concerted attempt to thematically unify the built environment through the allegorical expression of ongoing interaction between designer, architectural brief and building-as-process. With over 140 black and white images, this book is an intriguing read for architecture students and professionals alike.
I was the second-author of two papers presented at CAADRIA 2019: INTELLIGENT & INFORMED in Wellington New Zealand, and they are now published in CUMINCAD. The primary authors were Mafkereseb Bekele for the first paper (he won a Young CAADRIA award) and Hafizur Rahaman for the second paper, both are colleagues at Curtin University, Mafkereseb is a PhD student here and Hafizur is a Research Fellow.
The primary objective of this paper is to present a redefinition of Mixed Reality from a perspective emphasizing the relationship between users, virtuality and reality as a fundamental component. The redefinition is motivated by three primary reasons. Firstly, current literature in which Augmented Reality is the focus appears to approach Augmented Reality as an alternative to Mixed Reality. Secondly, Mixed Reality is often considered to encompass Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality rather than specifying it as a segment along the reality-virtuality continuum. Thirdly, most common definitions of Augmented Reality (AR), Augmented Virtuality (AV), Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MxR) in current literature are based on outdated display technologies, and a relationship between virtuality and reality, neglecting the importance of the users necessarily complicit sense of immersion from the relationship. The focus of existing definitions is thus currently technological, rather than experiential. We resolve this by redefining the continuum and MxR, taking into consideration the experiential symbiotic relationship and interaction between users, reality, and current immersive reality technologies. In addition, the paper will suggest some high-level overview of the redefinition’s contextual applicability to the Virtual Heritage (VH) domain.
To validate the hypothesis that virtual heritage papers are reliant on providing scholarly argumentation based on 3D models, and convenient access is provided to these models where relevant, this study reviewed 264 articles from the last three available proceedings of major digital heritage events and conferences (14 in total). The findings revealed this was not the case, few contain references to accessible 3D models. We discuss why this may be so, and we outline recommendations for ensuring that virtual heritage 3D models can be preserved and accessed.
I am not sure why but I have been asked to attend a potential university Living Labs meeting tomorrow.
I think of not just architecture offices and theatres but also the Curtin Library Makerspace, the HIVE, the lecture rooms and computer labs and airport-lounge the Library is mutating into and think…
I recall how inspired I was visiting the Aalto’s home and office in Munkkiniemi Helsinki, and also their living lab/cottage, experimental house, in Muuratsalo, (which you can visit in an Unreal game engine mod, if only I can find it again).
Actually, this meeting will no doubt be about equipment and power sources and data servers. And I’d have quite a bit to say on how I would have changed / extended our current lab.
But I can dream, Mr Aalto, upon your drawing table in the photo above, I can dream!
(And no, a Living Lab is not to be confused with a Library Lab. Or should it?)
Finally! It arrived, surprisingly small book for 148 or so photos and about 85,000 words:
So it is real, this is a photo from my office table.
In 1986, a group of Spanish architects decided to physically recreate an icon of modernist architecture. Mies van der Rohe’s German pavilion for the Barcelona World Expo of 1929 was at the cutting edge of spatial and structural innovation but its influence was limited to what we understand through drawings, photographs, limited film footage and historical interpretations. We can now physically visit the pavilion and experience it but what of all the other pavilions by famous (and less famous) architects that are no more? It would be costly and time consuming to physically rebuild all of them, however virtual reality (VR) technologies and human computer interaction (HCI) methods can bring them back to life. International expo pavilions are temporary structures designed to be at the cutting edge of structural and material technology but what makes them unique and inspirational is seldom preserved directly, their architectural insights, experiential richness and cultural significance are easily lost. This paper asks: How might immersive digital experiences of space help us to recapture ‘authentic’ experiences of history and place? What implications does this have for architectural history, heritage and conservation?
The authors offer some answers to these questions by presenting preliminary results from a larger project entitled ‘Learning from Lost Architecture’: a virtual reconstruction of the Italian Pavilion at the Paris Expo of 1937. Firstly, we will contextualise the practice of digital cultural heritage and present its potential for immersive, investigatory architectural experiences. Secondly, we will critique our own practice to better evaluate the potential of virtual reconstructions to affect architectural learning, discovery and historiography.
de Kruiff, A., Marcello, F., Paay, J., Champion, E. and Burry, J. (2018) 'Learning from Lost Architecture: Immersive Experience and Cultural Experience as a New Historiography'. SAHANZ 2018: HISTORIOGRAPHIES OF TECHNOLOGY AND ARCHITECTURE, The 35th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Wellington NZ, 4-7 July 2018. Wellington NZ: SAHANZ, 113-126.
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.
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
For those interested in the above, please keep Friday 27 July 2018, open for an all-day free event in Perth.
We will be inviting speakers to talk on Australia-specific cultural issues and digital (geo) projects in relation to the above event.
More details to follow shortly and announced via http://commons.pelagios.org/:
So there is an Australian working group for Pelagios – Linked Open Data. We will run an event on 27 July at Curtin. News to follow.
Australia LAMLOD Group: led by Erik Champion (UNESCO Chair of Cultural Visualisation and Heritage, Curtin University) and Susan Fayad (City of Ballarat), this WG seeks to address the problem of linking materials between academic research and cultural heritage in an Australian context. This is not so much about extending Pelagios linked data practice to an entirely new continent, though that is important; the problem this WG seeks to address is the multi-layered and contentious representation of cultural heritage, namely: the vast scale of Australian landscapes and historic journeys; the local and highly specific Aboriginal ways of describing, navigating and experiencing the landscapes with hundreds of different languages; and the specific problem of integrating UNESCO designated built and natural heritage with its surrounding ecosystems. The LAMLOD WG will create landscape data and visualisation displays, investigate related cultural artefact knowledge (Indigenous and colonial), and build towards the integration of linked open data and 3D models.
Learning from essentialism in architecture:
Essentialist Polemics in Architectural History, 2006:
…major architectural theories are fundamentally representational, and can be summarized as theories of semiotics, empathic projection, material symbolism (as tectonic glorification, or territorial protectionism), or as reflections of a community (and the related notion of archaeological structuration). This paper will argue that even if there are particular features of architectural design not shared by other related disciplines, that the above major theories, (as well as non-representational formalist theory), are all open to an accusation of impoverished essentialism…I suggest the followingargument: that with one notable exception, major architectural theories are fundamentally re-presentational. These theories can be summarizedas theories of semiotics, empathic projection, ma-terial symbolism (as tectonic glorification, or territo-rial protectionism), or as reflections of a community(and the related notion of archaeological structu-ration).The above classification of these theories is to high-light problems common to architectural aesthetics
One does not have to be essentialist about essentialist theories in architecture, one can mix match and modulate
These theories avoid discussing architecture intertwined with a sense of place, they concentrate on representation and form (see Wittgenstein, Family Resemblance argument).
19thC architectural theory started addressing changes in style and the role of empathy but was overtaken by industrialization, painting and sculpture and light-weight furniture, industrial, portable, stackable.
(Mention in passing the advantages and disadvantages of Horta, and Gaudi).
When you consider all the aspects of building buildings and how so many other disciplines are involved, it is still hard to extract the relationship and inter-relationship of architecture as building meaningful places and inter-places.
Architecture also pioneered the use of transition spaces, interstitial places, and objects that created transitional viewing and acting spaces/translucent and perforated visual barriers and so on (mention here Villa Mairea, Asplund’s diaphanous work inspired by Strindberg’s set design in A Ghost Play.., the transitional wall in Utzon’s housing estates)
Virtual places typically lack transitional spaces, breathing areas, the diaphanous, the moulded, in brief, the interplaces. They concentrate on form, colour, light.
Corbin is my summer intern, looking at
1. Kinect-Minecraft v2: a software framework for non-programmers to create their own gestures for Minecraft interaction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09tc3nLgx9w
See also: https://maker.library.curtin.edu.au/2016/08/02/creating-a-gui-for-kinect-v-2/
2 Kinect-Unity pointer software:
3. Point clouds with a Head Mounted Display (HMD) /Unreal. Status: exploratory.
See also CAA2017 slides from Damien Vurpillot: https://www.academia.edu/30171751/Exploring_massive_point_clouds_how_to_make_the_most_out_of_available_digital_material
4. Corbin will narrow down the above into one main investigation. Evaluate: sharing virtual experiences across different displays (cylindrical versus HMD): to uncover similar papers with a collaborative learning focus. Ideally there will be a comparison of Unity versus Unreal.
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.
I’m writing a book, DESIGNING THE ‘PLACE’ OF VIRTUAL SPACE, Indiana University Press, Spatial Humanities series.
My notes include the following:
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
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
Notes to self on the above game.
How can the parkour mechanic of Assassins Creeed be better utilised?
References
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/253678/The_world_design_of_Assassins_Creed_Syndicate.php
Chris Kerr (2015, September 18). The world design of Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. Gamasutra, http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012306/Designing-Assassin-s-Creed. During the production of Assassin’s Creed 2, the design team faced the challenges of an enormous scope, one of the biggest development teams ever assembled and a limited time frame. This session is about sharing our best practices to ship high quality games through a focused and rigorous Design Process while maximizing the output of production.
Patrick, Ploude. This talk demonstrates why identifying core game mechanics is critical to improving the quality of your title. It also shows how a solid Documentation process can made sure that your team follows a clear path throughout production. GDC 2010. URL: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012895/Designing-Assassin-s-Creed
Ear Zow Digital