Category Archives: virtual heritage

UNESCO Chair in Cultural Heritage & Visualisation at Curtin University of Technology

Announcements, archaeology, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, heritage, PhD, Postdoc, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, ,

Just received this by email, last night:

Establishment of a UNESCO Chair in Cultural Heritage and Visualisation at Curtin University of Technology. Third Parties: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

So the agreement is signed and I will hear from Human Resources regards the provision of two PhD students and a contracted Research Fellow. The majority of their work will be in providing workflows and tutorials and repository guidelines for the storage and deployment and educational use of 3D heritage models/site simulations. I will have to find other avenues of funding for my major line of research, game-like simulation design of heritage sites and historical events and processes.

The specific objectives of this Chair are to:

  • create a Cultural Heritage and Visualisation network to use and advise on 3D models of World Heritage Sites, as well as to show how 3D models can be employed in teaching and research;
  • build capacity through community workshops and learning materials and distribute the teaching resources digitally at no cost to the end user, as well as train research students, post-doctorate scholars and visiting fellows;
  • recommend long-term archive guidelines and ways of linking 30 models to scholarly publications and related scholarly resources and infrastructures;
  • disseminate the results of research activities at conferences and workshops, via online papers, applications and learning materials; and,
  • cooperate closely with UNESCO on relevant programmes and activities, as well as with other relevant UNESCO Chairs.

CAA 2017 Other session “Mechanics, Mods and Mashups” ACCEPTED!

Announcements, archaeology, digital heritage, heritage, Presentation, Symposium, virtual heritage, visualisation, , ,

My proposal to the 2017 Computer Applications and Quantitive Methods in Archaeology (CAA) international conference, March 14th and 16th, 2017 at Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA) has been accepted.The below will be updated when I speak to the co-organisers but we are thinking of a morning presentation and (possible) game pitch, and an aftertoon work on key ideas..

CAA2017 Atlanta: Other Session

Mechanics, Mods and Mashups: Games of the Past for the Future Designed by Archaeologists
Organizers: Erik Champion, Michael Nitsche, Natalie Underberg-Goode

Are you a fan of Assassin’s Creed but upset over how it could have made history exciting without having to employ and manipulate central historical characters? Love Lara Croft: Tomb Raider if only the tomb-raiding (stealing) mechanics could be replaced by something more meaningful? Wish that the Total War Series allowed you to employ agent modeling to test competing archaeological theories of migration, colonization and invasion or just to improve its historical accuracy? Dream you could use the language, graphic vision and immersion of Far Cry Primal in the classroom to explain (through engaging interaction) the Mesolithic rather than primarily use it as a backstage to fight semi- believable creatures? Then this workshop is for you. Correction. This workshop is BY you.

Archaeologists and people of a historical persuasion:

  • Either take a game with an inspiring concept, technique or mechanic..
  • OR extrapolate a current or past game to a game or simulation of the future
  • OR they share their vision of a game or simulation that reveals, expresses or augments their own research.At the workshop the writers will either:
  • Bring their own designs, video cut-scenes, and illustrations and media depicting what this new vision would look like
  • OR have some form of play-testing demonstration, cards, or illustrations or physical play-throughs (preferably involving the CAA workshop audience) revealing how this new level, mod or gameplay episode COULD be experienced or how it could be revealed.The writers will:
    Ask the audience to play through or role-play the actions that would be in the creative piece.

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

    Potential tools:
    Gameplay cards, game prototyping tools, scenes or videos from a 3D editor or game editor (Unity, Unreal, Blender), board games as prototypes, playing cards, physical artifacts that are role-played by the presenter, illustrations, slideshows, game editors (like the SIMS: https://www.thesims.com/en_GB) used to make films (Machinima), roleplaying videos, flowcharts, interactive fiction (like https://twinery.org/). We will provide a fuller list of tools and examples to potential attendees before the workshop.

    Equipment:
    PC with sound and display, some floor space to move around in for physical re-enactments. Tables or some form of desk to provide written or graphical feedback.

    Length:
    Participants: 26 maximum (ideally) where 6 present. We require half an hour a presenter so three hours for 6 presenters, 6 hours a whole day if we want to go to 12 presenters.
    Ideally the non-presenting audience is not too large, preferably up to 20.

    Outcome:
    We will approach a creative publisher (Liquid Books, University of Michigan Press or other) to provide an online or printable output of the demonstrations and the audience feedback.
    We would also like to invite presenters – if they can make it – to a workshop at DIGRA2017 Melbourne Australia to test out their demonstrations and play-throughs to game academics.

    References
    Champion, E. (2012) Game Mods: Design, Theory and Criticism. Entertainment Technology Centre Press.

#GLAMVR16

Academic, augmented reality, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, heritage, HIVE, Presentation, respositories, Symposium, talks, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation,

Well #GLAMVR16 was the twitter hashtag for Friday 26 August’s event held at the HIVE Curtin university, Perth. In the morning two invited speakers (Assistant Professor Elaine Sullivan and Mr Conal Tuohy) gave talks on Digital Karnak and Linked Open Data. They were followed by myself and my colleagues at the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts, then a workshop on Trove data feed into UNITY game engine dynamically (Mr Michael Wiebrands) and Augmented Reality, Vueforia>Unity (Mr Dominic Manley).

There were three themes/reasons for the morning talks and afternoon workshops.

1.Digital Heritage: Workflows & issues in preserving, exporting & linking digital collections (especially heritage collections for GLAM.

2.Scholarly Making: Encourage makerspaces & other activities in tandem with academic research.

3.Experiential Media: Develop AR/VR & other new media technology & projects esp. for humanities.

The event was part of a strategic grant received from the School of Media Culture and Creative Arts, so thanks very much to MCCA!

Schedule and links to slides

Session title and links to slidesharePRESENTER
IntroductionsEar Zow Digital
Digital KarnakElaine Sullivan, UCSC USA
Linked Open Data VisualisationConal Tuohy, Brisbane
MORNING TEAmorning TEA
Making collections accessible in an online environmentLise Summers
Digital scholarship, makerspaces and the libraryKaren Miller
Digital Heritage Interfaces and Experiential MediaEar Zow Digital
Simple Biometric Devices for Audience EngagementStuart Bender
Usability of interactive digital multimedia in the GLAM sectorBeata Dawson
Emotive Media – Visualisation and Analysis of Human Bio-Feedback DataArtur Lugmayr
Visualising information with RAM iSquaresPauline Joseph
LUNCH
digital workflows (UNITY) Michael Wiebrands
Introduction to Augmented RealityDominic Manley
final questions/social networking/ SUNDOWNERCentre for Aboriginal Studies Foyer

GLAM-VR

Academic, augmented reality, Conference, Digital Humanities, Symposium, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, , , , , , ,

 Event: GLAMVR short talks and workshop (Friday 26 August, THE HIVE, from 9:00AM)

On Friday 26 August (just before Curtin Research week) a School of Media Culture and Creative Arts academics, Curtin University Library and friends will host at the HIVE a morning series of short presentations.

The main themes are:

  • Digital Heritage: Workflows and issues in preserving, exporting and linking digital collections (especially heritage collections).
  • Scholarly Making: How to encourage makerspaces & other activities in tandem with academic research.
  • Experiential Media: How to learn and develop AR/VR and other new media technology and projects especially for the humanities.

Primary Objectives:

  1. To encourage humanities and especially digital humanities research, connecting research project ideas with an idea of possible equipment and the skills required.
  2. To get people together to discuss their projects and get feedback
  3. To help push forward prototypes and proof-of-concepts
  4. To uncover potential design ideas and available datasets for the Cultural Hackathon later in the year (see below).

Friday Morning: Short Presentations (on Digital Heritage, Scholarly Making & Experiential Media)
Speakers include

  • Assistant Professor Elaine Sullivan, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA, who will speak on Digital Karnak.
  • Mr Conal Tuohy, software developer from Brisbane, will speak on digital collections, visualisation and Linked Open Data.
  • Short presentations from academics at Curtin and there may be a few slots available to others in Perth.

Friday Afternoon: Digital Workflows/Augmented Reality WORKSHOP (3-3.5 hours)

In the afternoon Mr Michael Wiebrands will present workflows on importing digital records and other media assets into the UNITY game engine and he will be followed by Mr Dominic Manley, who will demonstrate Augmented Reality (AR) technology and how to use AR in research projects.

 

Cultural Hackathon, October/November 2016

In October or November we plan to host a CULTURAL HACKATHON. Academics propose ideas, and provide datasets (and so can Libraries, Galleries, Archives and Museums). Hobbyists, programmers, students will spend the entire day in teams working on application prototypes using that data and the VR/AR equipment provided. Proof of concept ideas will be presented and the best project will win a prize and the chance to work with the academics in the near future.

PLEASE NOTE: The event is free for attendees but they will have to register at EVENTBRITE (link to follow) for either the morning presentations or the afternoon workshop. We recommend people register and attend both but having separate registrations is to encourage those who can only make one session. Numbers will be limited.

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.

Publications Available for Download

heritage, Journal, publication, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, , ,

Fo those interested, many of my publications are available for download at

https://curtin.academia.edu/ErikChampion

Also, the following paper passed its embargo period so feel free to download that one as well.

Defining Cultural Agents for Virtual Heritage Environments

(Presence, Vol. 24, No. 3, Summer 2015, 179–186, doi:10.1162/PRES_a_00234, 2015, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Abstract
This article describes the primary ways in which intelligent agents have been employed in virtual heritage projects and explains how the special requirements of virtual heritage environments necessitate the development of cultural agents. How do we distinguish between social agents and cultural agents? Can cultural agents meet these specific heritage objectives?

Curtin Research Fellowship scheme open

Academic, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, Postdoc, virtual heritage

Applications for the Curtin Research Fellowship scheme are now open. Early career, senior researcher and Indigenous researcher fellowships are available, but please note that applications require a well-developed research proposal, support from a mentor in the relevant School, and support from the School. The Fellowships are highly competitive.

Please forward this message to researchers who may be eligible and interested in applying for a Fellowship. The attached flyer has more information, as does the webpage:research.curtin.edu.au/guides/fellowships.cfm. Applications close at 9am on Monday 8th August.

-I am happy to give feedback and or mentorship in the area of serious games, digital humanities research infrastructures (preferably 3D) and virtual heritage).

Counterfactual, Counterfictional, Counterfutural: Games of the Future Designed By Archaeologists (the book idea)

3D and game editors, archaeology, Conference, virtual heritage, visualisation, ,

Like Assassin’s Creed but upset over how it could have made history exciting without having to employ and manipulate central historical characters? Love Lara Croft: Tomb Raider if only the tombraiding (stealing) mechanics could be replaced by something more meaningful? Wish that the Total War Series allowed you to employ agent modelling to test competing archaeological theories of migration, colonisation and invasion or just to improve its historical accuracy? Dream you could use the  language, graphic vision and immersion of Far Cry Primal in the classroom to explain (through engaging interaction) the Mesolithic rather than primarily use it as a backstage to fight semi-believable creatures? Then this book is for you. Correction. This book is BY you.

Brief: Archaeologists and historians either take a game with an inspiring concept, technique or mechanic and extrapolate it to a game or simulation of the future OR they share their vision of a game or simulation that reveals, expresses or augments their own research.

1. This becomes an edited book. But wait…

The writers could meet at a workshop, bring their own designs, video cutscenes, and illustrations and media depicting what this new vision would look like or how it could be experienced or how it could be revealed. Or other writers or the public or even budding game designers could provide their own illustrations, walkthroughs, PLAYABLE DEMOS, diagrams or audio recordings of what the original author’s vision could be experienced as.

2. This becomes an online sensory experience mixed in with online chapters of the book. But wait..

3. There can also be a dynamically compiled new online game created from tagged elements of #2. The reader can either choose to read the book, to read and experience the multimedia book chapters online OR select their favourite mechanics, scenarios, techniques, illustrations etc from any or all of the chapters and then the online website automatically creates a multimedia collection to suit the tags of the chosen components..the reader has now designed, experimented, or played with a whole new potential game or scenario of archaeology, history and heritage in the future..

But wait…

4. The game designers who helped in the workshop are so inspired they help the archaeologists design these new ludic visions of the future..

UNESCO “Cultural Heritage and Visualisation” AIMS

digital heritage, virtual heritage, ,

As it draws closer here is what I need to work on for four years (create a network, build community capacity, recommend archival guidelines, disseminate research, cooperate with UNESCO):

The purpose of the Chair shall be to promote an integrated system of research, training, information and documentation on virtual heritage sites, science, sustainable development, social and ethical challenges, cultural diversity, intercultural dialogue, culture of peace, information and communication. It will facilitate collaboration between high-level, internationally-recognized researchers and teaching staff of the University and other institutions in Australia, Europe and North America and in other regions of the world.

The specific objectives of this Chair are to:

  1. create a Cultural Heritage and Visualisation network to use and advise on 3D models of World Heritage Sites as well as to show how 3D models can be employed in teaching and research etc.;
  2. build capacity through community workshops, learning materials including distributing the teaching resources digitally at no cost for the end user, training of research students and post-doctorate scholars and visiting fellows;
  3. recommend long-term archive guidelines and ways of linking 3D models to scholarly publications and related scholarly resources and infrastructures;
  4. disseminate the results of research activities at conferences and workshops, via online papers, applications and learning materials; and,
  5. cooperate closely with UNESCO on relevant programmes and activities.

CFP: Virtual Reality Games, International Journal of Computer Games Technology

3D and game editors, augmented reality, Conference, game, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality

We are currently accepting submissions for our upcoming Special Issue titled “Virtual Reality Games,” which will be published in International Journal of Computer Games Technology in April 2017. The Special Issue is open to both original research articles and review articles, and the deadline for submission is November 25, 2016. You can find the Call for Papers at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcgt/si/787829/cfp/.

International Journal of Computer Games Technology has been accepted for coverage in the Emerging Sources Citation Index, which is a new edition of the Web of Science that was launched in November 2015. This means that any article published in the journal will be indexed in the Web of Science at the time of publication. The journal is a peer-reviewed, open-access publication, which means that all published articles are made freely available online at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcgt/ without a subscription and authors retain the copyright of their work.

Please read over the journal’s author guidelines at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcgt/guidelines/ for more information on the journal’s policies and the submission process. Manuscripts should be submitted online to the Special Issue at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/ijcgt/vrga/.

3D models: Advanced challenges, UCLA

3D and game editors, archaeology, Architecture, augmented reality, Conference, digital heritage, heritage, infrastructure, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, ,

Daisy-O’lice I. Williams, University of Oregon, presents to the insitute on day 1, 20 June 2016, UCLA.

I was very fortunate to be invited to the NEH-funded Advanced Challenges in Theory and Practice in 3D Modeling of Cultural Heritage Sites Institute, hosted at University of Massachusetts in 2015 and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) 20-23 June 2016.
Some points I noticed reoccurring over the four days (and which I also added to the #neh3D twitter stream) were:

  1. People are still inventing the wheel when it comes to interaction in virtual environments. But you all knew that anyway.
  2. There is still a gap between educators and libraries who just want to get projects made, students engaged, and assets saved and those who talk about the big metadata / ontology questions. Nobody apart from Piotr used CIDOC-CRM for example and as he and I agreed, there needs to be more useful examples for archaeologists and architects.
  3. We still need an open source augmented reality platform: Content providers will try to lock you in to their own devices (http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/602484/google-building-its-own-smartphone-report-says/) and AR software is commercial, risky and when the AR company disappears so does your augmented reality project! To add insult to injury many AR software apps store you models offline or in a secure cloud so you cannot directly access them even though you made them.[I have just heard of ARGON, will have to investigate].
  4. There is no suitable 3D model+scholarly journal, the editor in chief of Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, Bernard Frischer, admitted their 3D solution was not yet a fully usable solution plus Elsevier say they own the model. Actually, I think the ownership of the scholarly content is as much an issue as the lack of a suitable 3D viewer. Other journals that may offer similar issues but 3D model potential are http://intarch.ac.uk/ (“All our content is open access”) and ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH). However at the workshop one of the founders of SCALAR expressed interest in exploring 3D for SCALAR so hopefully something eventuates with this working party.

Many thanks to Alyson Gill (UMass) and Lisa Snyder (UCLA) for the opportunity to hear about US developments and the really cool CULTURAL HERITAGE MARKUP LANGUAGE CIDOC_CRM project that Piotr Kuroczyński (Herder Institute Germany) presented.

Proceedings of the Digital Humanities Congress 2014 NOW online

3D and game editors, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, Proceedings, virtual heritage, visualisation, , , , , ,

The Proceedings of 2014 are now live!! Finally!!

http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/openbook/book/dhc2014

My article:Ludic Literature: Evaluating Skyrim for Humanities Modding
Related slides of presentation are on slideshare.net

This article evaluates the practical limitations and dramatic possibilities of modding (which means modifying) the commercial role-playing game Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for the visualization and exploration of literature. The latest version of a 20 year-old game franchise, Skyrim has inspired various writings and musings on its relation to Digital Humanities. Digital Humanities has moved to a more immersive, participative, tool-making medium, a recent report on digital archives has proposed digital tools integrate with history curricula (Sampo, 2014) and that “digital history may narrow the gap between academic and popular history”. Can games also be used to promote traditional literary mediums as well as experiential and immersive archives?

EDIT: They have the wrong version uploaded on the Sheffield website. I will add the correct version here:

This is an open access publication with a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. As such, PDF versions can be deposited in institutional repositories. Our specific copyright statement is as follows:
“Copyright of all content is retained by the individual authors who are permitted to re-publish their work elsewhere. Likewise, other sites and media are permitted to re-use the works of authors on condition that they include a citation that references the content’s original publication by HRI OpenBook and an accurate attribution of the author’s IP and copyright.”
Finally, there is a new Call for Papers out for DHC2016, available here: http://hridigital.shef.ac.uk/dhc2016

Cultural Presence (a dangerous answer to an unclear question)

archaeology, virtual heritage, ,

Yes I know I wrote about this topic (although not in my latest book in any great detail) but it the term isn’t my ultimatum to archaeology and heritage studies: use and measure cultural presence or else!

To start with, I said in my PhD thesis and in the related book Playing With The Past (pp12-14), that it was distinct from Social Presence:

“Cultural Presence versus Social Presence..The first problem is what elements of a cultural place are missing from virtual environments. Merely creating a reconstruction of a cultural site does not mean that one is creating a platform for understanding and transmitting locally specific cultural knowledge. We need to understand what distinguishes a cultural site from another site; we need to understand the features of place as a site of cultural learning.”

I also wrote:

“The intended audience that could most benefit from the theoretical part of this research are those who either communicate historical perceptions via digital media, or those who wish for more prescriptive (rather than descriptive) notions of ‘place’ and ‘cultural presence’. The case study of Palenque that I will mention may also interest those designers interested in improving engagement via interactive elements”

Chapters 2 and 3 then try to explain space versus place in a virtual heritage project and cultural presence as being distinct from social presence.

Now, 5-10 years later, I think I will have to retrace and bury some of the assertions and answer some of the questions that refuse to die because of this concept.

In a nutshell,

  • My term cultural presence was to attempt to wrestle away from social presence key terms and meanings that could be evaluated for historians and social scientists.
  • The term cultural presence was an umbrella concept (and my evaluations suggested it was most effective to be evaluated via a series of questions and tasks, there was no one evaluation method for it).
  • Cultural presence is of particular interest and use where we have clear ideas (and cultural traces and signs etc) of a culture that passed away. It is much more suitable for recent cultures with historic material and intangible heritage than it is for situations where we only have traces of settlement but without a rich cultural tapestry for interpretation. The Mayan temple-city of Palenque, Mexico has left us plenty of interesting if sometimes conflicting cultural clues, Neolithic cities, not so much.
  • In the last year (and even last week) I still meet archaeologists and curators who have not seen a need to distinguish between culture and society. I gave some arguments for why I do this in the article Defining Cultural Agents for Virtual Heritage Environments but I need to revisit this issue and deal with once and for all.

Increasing the Life & Usage of Virtual Heritage Models

Conference, digital heritage, virtual heritage, , , ,

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

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

TITLE: Increasing the Life and Usage of Virtual Heritage Models

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

ABSTRACT:

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

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

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

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

References

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

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

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

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

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

Who is this 3D heritage all for?

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

Lorna Richardson on twitter linked to the sketchfab blog with this provocative header.

For the life of me I don’t recall this discussion at Digital Heritage, VSMM, VAST or any of the other virtual heritage conferences I have attended and it reminds me of other problems that someone needs to summarise and dispel:

  • Preservation friendly tools and archives of 3D models: where are they, what are they, and how are they effectively used?
  • Clear and preferably verifiable reasons why 3D visualisations help the spread, democratization and understanding of the heritage objects, the intangible value and the research contribution that led to the 3D digitization
  • Non-jargon explanation of the use of 3D models to 2D humanities types (yes there is an issue).

Not likely to become a book, but perhaps a book chapter somewhere?

Two new full papers added

Academic, publication, virtual heritage, , , , ,

I have been given permission to upload these two journal articles to my website. Click the paper title to go to the PDF in question:

Champion, E. (2015). Defining Cultural Agents for Virtual Heritage Environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments-Special Issue on “Immersive and Living Virtual Heritage: Agents and Enhanced Environments,” Summer 2015, Vol. 24, No. 3: pp. 179–186. MIT Press. URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/pres/24/3

Champion, E. (2015). Entertaining The Similarities And Distinctions Between Serious Games and Virtual Heritage Projects. Special Issue in the Journal of Entertainment Computing on the theme of Entertainment in Serious Games. Volume 14, May 2016, Pages 67–74. Elsevier. Online.

 

A Good Publisher For A Virtual Heritage +3D Open Access Journal

3D and game editors, publication, virtual heritage, , , ,

If I gathered academic colleagues and other partners to produce an Open Access Virtual Heritage/Digital Place Journal with dynamically linked 3D models viewable online or as downloads for computers or Head Mounted Display formats like WebVR perhaps) who would be a good open access publisher?

abstract for 2016 East-West Philosophers’ Conference, Hawaii

Presentation, virtual heritage, visualisation, ,

Conference website: http://hawaii.edu/phil/2016-east-west-philosophers-conference-update/

Paper Title: Philosophical Issues of Place and the Past in Virtual Reality

There are indisputably many good reasons for finding and restoring heritage sites and artefacts with the most impartial and accurate scientific methods and technological advances. Yet the ICOMOS Burra Charter defines cultural significance in terms of the value of a place as it helps people understand the past, as it enriches the present, and educates future generations, these values can be aesthetic, historic, social or spiritual, (and thus not just scientific). Therefore it does not necessarily follow that the best user-experience for members of the public is purely based on a rigorous scientific perspective, because such a perspective does not fully explain the cultural significance of a place as experienced by the originators of the locally situated culture.

On the other hand, evoking cultural significance may be helped by a philosophical consideration of how specific human experiences can be understood and conveyed. The Dictionary of Philosophy says (on p.464) phenomenology “is the attempt to describe our experience directly, as it is, separately from its origins and development, independently of the causal explanations that historians, sociologists or psychologists might give”. While hermeneutics, it says (on p.274-5), “explores the kind of existence had by beings who are able to understand meanings, and to whom the world is primarily an object of understanding (rather than, say, of sense-perceptions)”.

I wish to investigate whether an approach that would best utilise multimedia and the differing multimodal ways in which we learn and experience the outside world would be phenomenological and hermeneutical. In other words it would attempt to understand how the way individual societies experience the world, how they interpret the world to themselves and to each other, how their cultural signs are made, modified, and learnt. It would also attempt to discover how the horizons of current visitors could be nudged out of balance by being either overwhelmed by encounters with genuine alterity (that is, sense of otherness), or by gradually learning how to be accepted in this totally different phenomenological world.

A further pressing issue in the design of virtual places and especially in the design of virtual heritage environments is to avoid the ‘museumization’ and ‘Western’ viewpoint as forewarned by Ziauddin Sardar and others. Can this technology help provide an appropriate sense of alterity and an appropriate situated sense of place?

References

ICOMOS, (1999).‘The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS charter for the conservation of places of cultural significance’, http://www.icomos.org/australia/burracharter.html.

Mautner, T. (2005). Dictionary of Philosophy (Penguin Reference, 2nd edition, Suffolk United Kingdom: Penguin, Books, p. 464 and p.275.

Sardar, Z. (1996). alt.civilizations.faq: Cyberspace as the Darker Side of the West. In Cyberfutures: culture and politics on the information superhighway, ed. Ziauddin Sardar and Jerome Ravetz, 14-41. London: Pluto Press.

VH has to be realistic? Not Necessarily

Digital Humanities, heritage, virtual heritage,

In Ancestor Veneration Avatars, by William Sims Bainbridge, National Science Foundation, USA, he writes:

Some scholars of human-centered computing believe that virtual architecture must be visually very realistic to achieve psychological immersion (Champion, 2011), but in this project the emphasis was placed on realistic function

No, I never said that! I have seen this several times by academics, but I only referred to others who said that the lack of photorealism is an issue in Virtual Heritage (VH). But where in Playing With The Past do I argue for photorealism?

What I actually said, in Chapter 2, (page 20-23), was

Without content relating directly to how we perceive the world, an emphasis on formal realism is not creating a virtual reality, but a storehouse of visually represented objects…Meaningful interaction seems to be a crucial issue here. Research surveys indicate that when presented with realistic visual fidelity users also expect highly realistic interaction in order to be engaged (Mosaker 2001). While others have indicated that meaningful interaction is preferable to photo-realism (Eiteljorg 1998).

Grr.

EDIT: Found an earlier reference to the passage that so irked me, it was in

Archaeology, Heritage, and Civic Engagement: Working Toward the Public Good

By Barbara J Little, Paul A Shackel, page 45.