Tag Archives: Curtin

UNESCO CHAIR Projects (September 2016-June 2019)

Digital Humanities, heritage, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, workshop, , , ,

2019 Time-layered cultural map of Australia (Erik Champion and research assistant): 2018 ARC LIEF LE190100019  grant (hosted by Newcastle), $420,000 awarded GIS Programming and VR/MR mapping. URL: https://www.arc.gov.au/news-publications/media/research-highlights/australian-cultural-and-historical-data-be-linked-new-research-infrastructure

2019 GIS AR and mapping (Curtin Institute for Computation grant) (Erik Champion, David McMeekin, Hafizur Rahaman). Linked Open Data for 3D Heritage ARC grants Moviemap Geolocated Datasets and XR-Makerspace, Workflow and Web Portfolio Platform Development), $30,263.88.

2018 PhD project (Ikrom Nishanbaev): 3D/GIS Semantic Web-3D repository and Website-interface for cultural heritage objects and associated paradata.

2019 MCASI grant (Hafizur Rahaman, Michelle Johnston): AR-triggered language guide (mobile device to recognise 3D objects, play associated sounds and display associated text helping a user to understand a language) $2000.

2018 Erik Champion With Research Fellow (Dr Hafizur Rahaman). Open source photogrammetry to 3D digital models to augmented and mixed reality.

Mafkereseb Bekele (centre) winning a Young CAADRIA 2019 award (Hafizur Rahaman L and Marc Schnabel R).

2017 PhD project (Mafkereseb Bekele): Collaborative Learning with Microsoft HoloLens (sites: WA Museum-Xantho steam engine and Duyfken)-, can augment scale and create interactive map-based historical journeys as well. Featured in papers at CAADRIA (best student paper: Mafkereseb Bekele) and Computer Applications in Archaeology (Erik Champion).

2018 Summer intern (Corbin Yap). Latest Unreal game engine ported to 4 stereo and non-stereo displays of Curtin HIVE VR centre.

2017 Software Engineering project (with co-mentor Dr Karen Miller) gesture-based interface to Minecraft and other game engines.

PhD Scholarships for S American Students

Announcements, PhD, , ,

South American students wishing to study for a PhD at Curtin or 3 other Australian technical universities please read this

https://www.atn.edu.au/scholarships-grants/atn-latam-scholarships/

Applicants must be a citizen of: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru or Uruguay.

Applications close 31 January 2019.

ATN-South American Scholarships

The Australian Technology Network (ATN) is pleased to announce the ATN-LATAM Research Scholarship Scheme.

This will provide a minimum of 10 scholarships for eligible applicants to undertake PhD research at one of the four ATN universities in Australia. These are Curtin University, University of South Australia, University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and RMIT University.

The scholarship provides:

  • Full research tuition fee scholarship for 3 years with possible extension to 3.5 years
  • Stipend valued at a minimum of AUD 30,000 per year, for 3 years with possible extension to 3.5 years
  • Contribution to relocation costs to Australia
  • Overseas Student Health Cover (OSHC) insurance

Awardees must be able to commence studies in 2019

Eligibility

Applicants must be a citizen of one of the following countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru or Uruguay.

When applying to your University of choice, please ensure you mention this scheme.

Applications close 31 January 2019.

The Australian Technology Network of Universities (ATN) brings together five of the most innovative and enterprising universities in Australia and is recognised as a global leader of a new generation of universities focused on industry collaboration, real-world research with real-world impact and produce work-ready graduates to become global thinkers in business and the community.

UniversityCityResearch Degree Admission InformationResearch Scholarship Information
Curtin University PerthFind more information hereFind more information here
RMITMelbourneFind more information hereFind more information here
UniSAAdelaideFind more information hereFind more information here
UTSSydneyFind more information hereFind more information here

Curtin Cultural Makathon 11 Nov 2016

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

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

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

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

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

Registration: Free via eventbrite

For more information visit the Curtin Cultural Makathon website.

Curtin Cultural Makathon

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

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

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

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

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

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

Registration: Free via Eventbrite

For more information visit the Curtin Cultural Makathon website.

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

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

Supporting digital scholarship in the humanities

Digital Humanities, Presentation, , , ,

31 August, I was part of a panel in Curtin’s research week to discuss digital scholarship. And from my notes I was asked to email here are some of my suggestions that might be of some interest and not just for library makerspaces..

In my brief chat I said when I was the project leader of Dighumlab for 4 universities (and now 2 libraries) in Denmark, I asked myself the following questions (abridged):

  • What is a research infrastructure?
  • What do we mean by a laboratory – is there only one?
  • What kind of databases do we have?
  • What about funding?
  • Who is the audience?
  • What should we deliver and when?
  • What are the goals for success after the 5 year period (our contract period) and how do we measure it?

I suggested that genuine infrastructures invest and support not just equipment but also people, skills, training, exchanges, enthusiasm.
Most DH centres are resource based or centre-based, few are distributed. But the most important thing is to work out who you want to work for and with and what resources and profile you hope to focus around.
For our discussion in research week I was not sure if people are talking about a cluster, centre, lab, and for learning, scholarship or support. Perhaps all three but I suggest to focus on one or two but ensure knowledge is carried on past individuals and some of the research aims to evaluate maintain and improve the quality or quantity of that information (it should not just be a pipeline, the pipeline itself should also be an area of research).
I did say some form of meeting space is important (like Curtin Library Makerspace!), archives are important (our Library has that but perhaps it needs to start looking at new more public focussed ones as well), and there are related degrees. So you could tackle any one of those three areas I mentioned, learning, scholarship and support.

For example with this UNESCO chair I have 3 years of workshop funding and 4 years of visiting fellowship funding. Rather than invite people who arrive talk and leave I think it best for me to build it around the makings a 3D archive, invite experts* in the first year to help us survey and build best practice, invite people to help us build it, invite experts in year 3 to help us evaluate it with local communities etc.. AND build a summer workshop or senior class around the visiting experts and workshop funding.

*With DIGHUMAB in 2012 I organised a 1 day conference, invited 4 experts from Nordic/UK countries and 2 infrastructure leaders (CLARIN and DARIAH), in areas we wanted to learn more about or connect with, to come and talk.
What did we get out of that? DARIAH helped DIGHUMLAB academics find partners for an EU project application and asked to host a meeting in Copenhagen, CLARIAH received ERIC EU status with a strong Danish leadership component, Sweden (HUMLAB) invited two of us to their conference; Oslo invited me for a talk and so did Aalto U (Finland), and Lorna Hughes helped bring NeDiMAH people to Copenhagen in 2013 for a conference on cultural heritage tools and archives, and a book (Cultural Heritage Digital Tools and Infrastructures, Routlege 2017 or 2018, google books?) will come out of that. All from a one day conference with just 6 invited and 4 local speakers! Oh, breakout time helps.

See also

 

 

 

 

Current Projects

Announcements, publication, , ,

Grants

UNESCO Chair in Cultural Visualisation and Heritage

  • UNESCO and CURTIN signed.
  • Now writing up Research Fellow and 2 PhD positions
  • Will re-contact proposed advisory board
  • Drafting up specs for PCs/MACs, Blog post here.

GLAMVR project (MCCA School Strategic Research grant, $12,700, CI., with colleagues from MCCA)

  • Digital Heritage: Workflows & issues in preserving, exporting & linking digital collections (especially heritage collections for GLAM.
  • Scholarly Making: Encourage makerspaces & other activities in tandem with academic research.
  • Experiential Media: Develop AR/ VR & other new media technology & projects esp. for humanities.

The symposium/workshop is now over (my blog post here, EVENTBRITE details here, twitter feed here), cultural hackathon next. VR equipment has already started to arrive.

ARC-Linkage Grant Proposal

Working on proposal with Dr Stuart Bender and A. Prof Michael Broderick (Murdoch), based on Fading Lights.

WAND

Small Grant WAND application, advisor:  (submission by Michael Ovens, CI., UWA). See Michael’s blog https://thineenemyproject.wordpress.com/

DAAD

https://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/global-engagement/international-collaboration/international-agreements-and-activities/Australia–Germany-Joint-Research-Cooperation-Scheme#.V1Y5xOckjuA

Submitted “Travelling heritage – exploring mixed realities for the digital reuse of cultural materials” application with colleagues and U of Hamburg and Leuphana. Results due November.

OTHER

CAA ‘Other’ Session (CAA2017, Atlanta)

Title “Mechanics, Mods and Mashups: Games of the Past for the Future Designed by Archaeologists” and blog post here.

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).

PENDING PUBLICATIONS

Books

  1. Benardou, A., Champion, E, Dallas, C., and Hughes, L., (). (2017: In press). Cultural Heritage Digital Tools and Infrastructures. Routledge, UK. https://www.routledge.com/products/9781472447128. ISBN 9781472447128.

Book chapter

  1. Champion, E. (2017: in press). “The Role of 3D Models in Virtual Heritage Infrastructures” in Benardou, A., Champion, E, Dallas, C., and Hughes, L. (Eds.). (2017). Cultural Heritage Digital Tools and Infrastructures. Routledge, UK. https://www.routledge.com/products/9781472447128. ISBN 9781472447128.

Book review

  1. Champion, E. (2016). Heritage and Social Media: Understanding heritage in a participatory culture [Book Review]. Heritage & Society, 8(2). In press.

Journal article

  1. Champion, E. (2016: accepted). Digital Humanities is Text-heavy, Visualization-light and Simulation-poor. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (DH2015 Special issue).
  2. Champion, E. (2016: in press). Bringing Your A-Game To Digital Archaeology: Why Serious Games And Virtual Heritage Have Let The Side Down And What We Can Do About It. SAA Archaeological Record: Forum on Digital Games & Archaeology (special issue).
  3. Champion, E. (2016: accepted, I think!). Worldfulness, Role-enrichment & Moving Rituals: Design Ideas for CRPGs. Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association (ToDIGRA), (special issue, selected DiGRA2015 conference papers). URL: http://todigra.org/index.php/todigra/index
  4. Champion, E. (2016: accepted). Ludic Challenges For New Heritage and Cultural Tourism. International Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology & Archaeometry, (special issue, selection of VAMCT2015 conference papers). URL: maajournal.com International Journal MAA (ISI Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Thomson Reuters, USA; Scopus) scheduled for Dec 2016, Vol.16, No.5.

Conference paper/session

  1. Champion, E. (2017: accepted). “Mechanics, Mods and Mashups: Games of the Past for the Future Designed by Archaeologists”. Other session, Computer Applications and Quantitive Methods in Archaeology (CAA), Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 14-16 March, 2017. URL: http://caaconference.org/
  2. Champion, E. (2016: accepted). Virtual Heritage Infrastructure. 14th EUROGRAPHICS Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage, 5-7 October 2016, Genova, Italy. URL: http://gch2016.ge.imati.cnr.it/.

Upcoming talks

  1. Talk at Aula Silvio Trentin (Aula Magna) of Ca’ Foscari University, in Palazzo Ca’ Dolfin, organized by Ca Foscari University, Venice, 3 October.
  2. The EUROGRAPHICS GCH conference as above, in Area della Ricerca di Genova, Via De Marini 6, 16149 Genova (Genoa), 5-7 October.
  3. Talk at Spazju Kreattiv (the National Centre for Creativity), Malta, 12 October.

STILL TO FINISH WRITING

Books

  1. Champion, E. (2017: in process). Phenomenology, Place and Virtual Place. Routledge.
  2. Champion, E. (2017: accepted). DESIGNING THE ‘PLACE’ OF VIRTUAL SPACE. Indiana University Press, Spatial Humanities series.
  3. Champion, E. (2017: contracted). Organic Design in Twentieth-Century Nordic Architecture, Routledge.

Book Chapters

  1. Champion, E. (2017: invited). 3D models and cultural heritage. Open access book chapter with Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung. Details to be updated.
  2. Champion, E. (2017: invited). “State of the Art: A Critical Review of Games and Game-Like Simulations Relevant to Digital Archaeology and Digital Cultural Heritage” in Jimenez, D. (Eds.). (2017). Title to be confirmed, redTDPC, Mexico.
  3. Champion, E. (2017: in process). “The Missing Theory of Virtual Places”In Malpas, J. (Ed). Virtuality and Place. Provisional. In discussion with Bloomsbury/Malpas.

the Curtin Data Visualisation Facility (CDVF)

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

The Curtin Data Visualisation Facility (CDVF) is unusual in that a great deal of strategic direction comes from the Faculty of Humanities, but it will be open to all academics at Curtin University.
It is also part of the John Curtin Gallery, on the Curtin University main campus (Bentley). The launch is planned for the second week of November.

What will it be used for? To “meet a broad demand for visualisation, virtualisation and simulation infrastructure and capability in Western Australia. It will enable significantly better training environments and improved interpretation of research data across the university’s core areas of research.” (Curtin University website).

Currently being installed are:

  • A 4X3 high resolution tiled display.
  • A half-cylindrical stereo display (8 metres in diameter).
  • A wedge (2 high resolution stereo display screens at an angle to each other-the angle can be adjusted).
  • A truncated dome.

The inventor, Associate Professor Paul Bourke, Director of iVEC@UWA, tells me it is not an iDome, as it uses fish eye projection and it is a truncated spherical dome, but it currently lacks a catchy name.
You can see some of Paul Bourke’s visualisation work featuring Gigapixel, 360 Ladybug panoramas and iDome scientific visualisation here: http://paulbourke.net/papers/curtin2013/slides.pdf
NB We are also part of iVEC, iVEC@Curtin, so we can borrow iVEC’s high quality recording and rendering equipment and access their services.

The CDVF is staffed by 2 technical assistants and an expert in Stereoscopic projection, Mr Andrew Woods, the Managing Director of CDVF.
Much of the content design will be handled at various creation nodes on campus.
At the School of Media Culture and Creative Arts I have access to the following new postgrad research lab, featuring dual screen MacPros and iMacs.

Computer Lab, Room 211B, Building 208, Curtin University

Do I have enough project ideas? Yes!
Next step: grants, partners, and students! If you any of the three, please contact me!

moving to Curtin University Australia

job, , , , ,

I am no longer at DIGHUMLAB Denmark but now in Perth, Western Australia, and will start work  Monday 15 July as Professor of Cultural Visualisation at Media Culture and Creative Arts, Curtin University, Australia.

Please direct questions on DIGHUMLAB.dk and DARIAH Denmark to dighumlab@gmail.com                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       next week, Monday 15 July. Please direct all DIGHUMLAB and DARIAH queries to dighumlab@gmail.com

 

personal bit of information and apology

Conference, Digital Humanities, , , , ,

I am sorry I have not had much time to update the site lately, I have been very busy with organizing a workshop in Copenhagen
http://dighumlab.dk/news/single-news/artikel/cfp-cultural-heritage-creative-tools-and-archives-workshop/

The programme will appear soon and I am very happy with it, I think it will be a great event.

However June will probably not see much activity on this site as I will be tidying up loose ends here in Denmark before moving to Curtin University in Western Australia in July to start a new role. I am sorry in many ways to be leaving Europe but this is probably the right time to do so and some wonderful opportunities await.

In particular I am looking forward to working with iVEC, supervising PhD students, facilitating a new masters in visualisation for Curtin, and also help them develop new facilities such as this one for research into Cultural Visualisation (amongst other things).