Category Archives: UNESCO Chair

digital games and intangible heritage

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If you have or know of digital games that helped in the “regeneration” of intangible heritage, as well as related organizations, projects and websites or organizations, please let me know…I have been asked to present on this topic on Monday 5 July to overseas gaming companies and academics..

Here was my initial beginning list (woefully incomplete but will soon expand):

Heritage organisations

  • UNESCO Chairs … I am investigating, most lists of Chairs and Networks are a little out of date and a few seem to have changed or expanded their remit.
  • Historic Urban Landscapes [UNESCO-associated]-none I know of use digital games but I think that would be useful…
  • ICOMOS none I know of but it is a huge association.
  • Europeana/CARARE/ARIADNE are more into digital archives/preservation?

Game organisations

Universities Research or Courses

Games

I am going to include Never Alone. There are at least 6-12 in my head that I need to review to see if they really were “regenerating” intangible heritage..

update: “Virtual Heritage: A Guide”

3D and game editors, Academic, Announcements, archaeology, augmented reality, Book, book chapter, digital heritage, game, heritage, infrastructure, Open Access, publication, UNESCO Chair, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation,

Dear Rosa and Andrea (and Michael)

Thanks to the colleagues and co-authors who helped inspired me to edit a concise book for students that will be open access (i.e. free PDF downloads).

Virtual Heritage: A Guide will be available on Thursday 22 July 2021 at https://www.ubiquitypress.com

I’d appreciate any feedback from staff or students for future editions.

Free access: paper on AR-ph app talking flower guide

Announcements, augmented reality, Digital Humanities, UNESCO Chair

Limited free paper on AR that speaks native names of flora back to you, “Audio-augmented arboreality: wildflowers and language”, published in Digital Creativity, Volume 32 Issue 1. First 50 copies are free.

Audio-augmented arboreality: wildflowers and language (2021). Digital Creativity: Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 22-37.tandfonline.com

(Image by Dr Hafizur Rahaman).

UNESCO Chair of Cultural Heritage and Visualisation

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The 2016-2020 UNESCO Chair of Cultural Heritage and Visualisation has ended. First UNESCO Chair at Curtin. Less than 4 years, but various awards/prizes, media releases and press interviews, 3 Australian Research Council (+international) grants, some grant applications still pending.

The next big publication, in February 2021, will be an edited book on virtual heritage, published by Ubiquity Press, edited by Erik Champion. Online chapters will be open access, and suitable for university course reading lists.

Papers available at https://computation.curtin.edu.au/research/groups/unesco-chair-cultural-heritage-visualisation/ but needs updating.

I’d like to thank Hafizur Rahaman, our two PhD students Mafkereseb Bekele and Ikrom Nishanbaev, and the many collaborators and colleagues we met on the journey.

Rethinking Virtual Places

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I mentioned this before (it went through 3 years of reviews) but the (updated) Rethinking Virtual Places book (97,000 words, approx 30 images) will be published by Indiana University Press in The Spatial Humanities series. Probably in 2021.

1-A Potted History of Virtual Reality
2-Dead, Dying, Failed Worlds
3-Architecture: Places Without People
4-Theories of Place & Cyberspace
5-Rats & Goosebumps-Mind, Body & Embodiment
6-Games are not Interactive Places
7-Do Serious Gamers Learn From Place?
8-Cultural Places
9-Evaluating Sense of Place, Virtual Places & Virtual Worlds
10-Place-Making Interfaces & Platforms
11-Conclusion

Spatial Humanities mini-symposium

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caption, Dr. Juan Hiriart, PhD game project, Communicating the Past, Cologne, 2018.

Space, Place, People and Culture

This free mini-symposium of talks from leading UK NZ and Australian experts will explore recent developments and intriguing challenges in spatial and platial design involving aspects of both culture and technology.

10:00 Dr Stuart Dunn, Head of The Department of Digital Humanities King’s College London, UK

10:40 Dr. Juan Hiriart, Senior Lecturer in Interactive Media Art and Design, Salford University, Manchester, UK.

11:20 Mr Chris McDowall, Geographer, New Zealand, independent consultant.

12:00 Ms Nat Raisbeck-Brown, Experimental Spatial Scientist, Indigenous Ecological Knowledge Project, Atlas of Living Australia, CSIRO, Perth.

12:20 Dr David McMeekin, Senior Research Fellow, Spatial Sciences, Curtin University and member of the Ancient Itineraries project.

12:40 Professor Erik Champion, UNESCO Chair of Cultural Heritage and Visualisation, Curtin University.

NB Some details may change.

VENUE Chemistry Building 500, “Exhibition Space” Theatre, Room 1102ABex, Manning Road entrance, Curtin University Bentley Campus, Perth, WA, 6102

DATE Friday 10:00-13:00, 21 February 2020

Digital Heritage: Presenting Futures Past

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I gave a keynote Monday 9 December at Dhdownunder 2019, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia. The title was Digital Heritage: Presenting Futures Past

The slides can be viewed and downloaded in the nzerik directory at slideshare.

MAIN POINTS

  1. Digital heritage, Virtual Heritage, Extended Reality (XR): what are they?
  2. Can gaming, AR or MR provide insight to the past?
  3. OR: Are they a waste of money, expensive new technology?
  4. Could, for example, digital heritage pose a threat to culture?
  5. Ziauddin Sardar 1995: “Cyberspace is a giant step forward towards museumization of the world: where anything remotely different from Western culture will exist only in digital form.”
  6. Digital Heritage highlights and challenges (interactive + immersive examples).

To cut over 80 slides short, my answers to the initial questions are

  1. VR: “reality”: untapped potential, save the IxD!! (We should preserve and disseminate the interaction design and experience, academic papers are not the answer here).
  2. Gaming, AR, MR provides insight to the past-but learning more from designing.
  3. High-technology gets in the way.
  4. Digital Heritage poses a threat to culture, if we don’t clearly consider “culture”.
  5.  Sardar: Cyberspace a symptom not a cause, museumization a partially necessary evil, Western culture is a vague target.
  6. Digital Heritage communicates, seldom preserves, more end-user involvement required.

I suggest future research and potential solutions are

  • Flexible formats, agreed standards, sensory interfaces
  • New mechanics, cultural significance and care
  • Levels of resolution, access layers
  • 3D infrastructure links to data, research, community, XR
  • Encourage creative re-use by end-users

 

New UNESCO chair website

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UNESCO Chair of Cultural Heritage and Visualisation news and projects will be listed at https://computation.curtin.edu.au/research/groups/unesco-chair-cultural-heritage-visualisation/ for the immediate future, and we hope to connect our prototype GIS+3D model website to that as well (when they work out access for me, hopefully soon).

Image by Professor Lisa French (RMIT). Dinner at ANU Canberra before meeting of Australian UNESCO Chairs: Erik Champion (Curtin), David Gibson (Curtin), Gary Bouma (Monash), Kerrie Wilson (QUT), Ana Filipa Vrdoljak (UTS), Lisa French, (RMIT), Imogen Bartlett (OPTUS), Gregory Andrews (Assistant Secretary, International Organizations Branch (DFAT)), Quentin Grafton (ANU), Ms. Sue Moore, (Secretary General of the Australian Commission for UNESCO).