Category Archives: virtual heritage

upcoming virtual public talk, Uppsala

Announcements, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, virtual heritage,

25 November 2020 (virtual invited talk to Uppsala University Sweden)

Virtual Humanities

From virtual museums to virtual worlds, the word “virtual” is both a popular and a vague term. Although popularised by computer science and science fiction, the field of virtuality is also of interest to the humanities, and especially to historians and heritage experts. Yet there are few courses in the area, and few accessible examples of successful virtual humanities projects. Why? And what can be done?

 public seminar series for the research network Digital Humanities Uppsala:

25 November 2020 10.15-12 Swedish time (GMT+1)

The seminar will be held on Zoom. Link: https://uu-se.zoom.us/j/66954058750

Titles are misleading

virtual heritage,

Professor Jeremy Huggett has published an article drawn, I understand, from a talk he gave at Virtual Heritage Ireland in 2015.

It quotes 2 or 3 of my earlier publications and I am not sure on certain points if he agrees or disagrees with me/Laia Tost so I will have to read it more slowly later, but if you are interested in my publications he is writing on a similar topic and you might find it thought-provoking.

Hugget, J. (2020). Studies in Digital Heritage. Virtually Real or Really Virtual: Towards a Heritage Metaverse, 4(1).

When are titles misleading? When they say they will direct you towards something but are actually sceptical that there is a direction at all.

Huggett (p.9):

Although we have made tremendous strides forward in the intervening twenty-two years in terms of data capture, modelling, and presentation, I would suggest that we are more often than not still at the stage of generating ingenious, largely passive imagery designed to be viewed and consumed – and this is equally as true of current consumer virtual reality headsets as it is of more traditional three-dimensional heritage representations. We have yet to fully rise to the challenge and potential offered by virtual reality, and consequently virtual heritage has yet to realize its potential for engaging with and understanding the past.

I’d point the reader to my book Rethinking Virtual Places but Indiana University Press are still printing it.

Perhaps, then, this article, which tries to explain why and how virtual heritage can be entertaining:

Champion, E. (2015). Entertaining The Similarities And Distinctions Between Serious Games and Virtual Heritage Projects. Entertainment Computing 14. DOI: 10.1016/j.entcom.2015.11.003 or researchgate

New Paper for EuroMed2020 Virtual Conference

Academic, Conference, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation,

The paper “Time-Layered Gamic Interaction with a Virtual Museum Template” by Erik Champion, Rebecca Kerr, Hafizur Rahaman and David McMeekin will be presented virtually at EuroMed 2020 Conference next week. The project is part of the ARC funded project Time Layered Culture Map (tlc). Registration is free.

Abstract. This paper discusses a simplified workflow and interactive learning opportunities for exporting map and location data using a free tool, Recogito into a Unity game environment with a simple virtual museum room template. The aim was to create simple interactive virtual museums for humanities scholars and students with a minimum of programming or gaming experience, while still allowing for interesting time-related tasks. The virtual environment template was created for the Oculus Quest and controllers but can be easily adapted to other head-mounted displays or run on a normal desktop computer. Although this is an experimental design, it is part of a project to increase the use of time-layered cultural data and related mapping technology by humanities researchers.

VR silos and weak onsite mobile-based virtual heritage experiences

3D and game editors, digital heritage, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, , ,

Has anyone written on gaps (in power, features, or connection, etc.) between offsite (desktop virtual environments (VEs), and headset VEs) and mobile device-based AR/MR that augments the experience onsite?

Seems to me the offsite desktop environments (and headset VR) experiences are often silos while the onsite/mobile (phone or tablet) AR/MR experiences are typically limited, break down easily, and don’t fully leverage connectivity potential.

I have seen papers on either platform, of course, but not papers explaining why we are missing great potential synergy between the two: offside VR/VE and onsite XR (MR AR).

Virtual Heritage in Focus

Digital Humanities, virtual heritage

It is a working title (so will change, no doubt, any suggestions?) but here is the working chapter structure sent off for review today (hopefully) with an expected audience, undergraduate digital archaeology/museum studies/heritage students (open access version online):

 Foreword: Classrooms and ProjectsTo be advised
0Virtual Heritage: What is it?Professor Erik Champion
13D Archaeological Reconstructions: The Art of Reasoned SpeculationMr. Robert Barratt
2Photogrammetry: What, How and WhereDr Hafizur Rahaman
3Animating the PastDr Michael Carter
4Mapping Ancient Heritage With Digital ToolsAssoc. Prof Anna Foka, Dr David McMeekin / et al.. 
5Hybrid Interactions in Museums: Why Materiality Still MattersProf Luigina Ciolfi
6Video Games as concepts and experiences of the pastDr Aris Politopoulos, Dr Angus Mol
7Mixed Reality: A Bridge or a Fusion between Two Worlds?Mr. Mafkereseb Bekele
8Getting it Right and Getting it Wrong in Digital Archaeological EthicsDr L. Meghan Dennis (to be added)
9Evaluation in Virtual HeritageAssoc. Prof Panayiotis Koutsabasis
10Authenticity in PreservationProfessor Erik Champion

Not actually published yet, but accepted

Academic, archaeology, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, Journal, publication, serious games, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, , , , ,

I’m very happy that my rather large article “Culturally Significant Presence
In Single-Player Computer Games” has been accepted for the ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage. This is despite its 12,587 words covering 4 major games, and attempting to be more conceptual and provocative than normal in a traditional ACM IT-oriented journal..

Very good reviewers too, actually. They made me work hard. I think my abstract is a bit over JOCCH length so that may change but at moment it is:

Cultural presence is a term that researchers have used to explain and evaluate cultural learning in virtual heritage projects, but less frequently in video games. Given the increasing importance of video games to cultural heritage, this paper investigates explanations of cultural presence that could be communicated by games, especially concerning UNESCO and ICOMOS definitions of cultural significance. The aim is to determine if cultural presence can be communicated via video games and across a range of game genres.

Observations derived from game prototyping workshops for history and heritage were incorporated to help develop a teachable list of desirable game elements. To distinguish itself from the vagueness surrounding theories of cultural presence, a theory of culturally significant presence is proposed. Culturally significant presence requires three components: culturally significant artifacts and practices; an overarching framework of a singular, identifiable cultural viewpoint; and awareness by the participant of both the culturally significant and the overarching cultural framework and perspective (which gives cultural heritage sites, artifacts and practices their cultural significance and relational value).

As awareness of cultural presence requires time to reflect upon, single-player games were chosen that were not completely dependent on time-based challenges. Another criterion was cultural heritage content, the games must simulate aspects of cultural heritage and history, communicate a specific cultural framework, or explore and reconstruct a past culture. Four games were chosen that simulate a culture, explain archaeological methods, portray indigenous intangible heritage, or explain historical-based ecosystems of the past based on educational guidelines. The games are Assassin’s Creed: Origins (and its Discovery Tour); Heaven’s Vault; Never Alone; and a Ph.D. game project: Saxon. Their genres could be described as first-person shooter/open world/virtual tour; dialogue-based puzzle game; 2D platform game; and turn-based strategy game.

The aim is not to evaluate the entire range of interactive and immersive virtual environments and games, but to examine the applicability and relevance of the new theory, and to ascertain whether the four games provided useful feedback on the concept and usefulness of culturally significant presence. A more clearly demarcated theory of cultural presence may not only help focus evaluation studies but also encourage game developers to modify or allow the modification of commercial games for classroom teaching of digital heritage. Game content, core gameplay, secondary gameplay, and game mechanics could be modified to engagingly compel players to consider cultural heritage values and perspectives that are not their own.

Assassin’s Creed: What is it doing in the history class?

Academic, AI, Book, book chapter, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, publication, serious games, virtual heritage, visualisation

I’ve been thinking of asking historians, art historians and archaeologists, if they would like to contribute to a new edited book, primarily (or only) on Assassin’s Creed. How do they or could they use it for teaching and research. What new features would they love to see? Could we get some of the professional historians who advised on the series to write their thoughts, advice, and experiences? Perhaps even one of the game designers who worked on the series?

What would be a good title?

  • Assassin’s Creed for Academics: What We Wrote in the Shadows? (What We Taught in the Shadows?)
  • Assassin’s Creed: Academics Take Aim
  • Assassin’s Creed: An Educated Stab in the Dark
  • Assassin’s Creed in the Classroom: Have Eagle, Will Travel
  • update: Alex Butterworth suggested Under the Hood

References

Virtual Archaeology Review journal (recommended)

Announcements, digital heritage, Journal, Open Access, publication, virtual heritage

Dr Hafizur Rahaman and I will have an article on virtual /digital 3D heritage repositories published/in press at open-access journal Virtual Archaeology Review – they have interesting articles in press I recommend the journal.

The article is called Survey of 3D Digital Heritage Repositories and Platforms, update: an early version is online:

Champion, E., & Rahaman, H. (2020). Survey of 3D Digital Heritage Repositories and Platforms. The Virtual Archaeology Review (VAR), 11(23). https://doi.org/10.4995/var.2020.13226

 Despite the increasing number of three-dimensional (3D) model portals and online repositories catering for digital heritage scholars, students and interested members of the general public, there are very few recent academic publications that offer a critical analysis when reviewing the relative potential of these portals and online repositories. Solid reviews of the features and functions they offer are insufficient; there is also a lack of explanations as to how these assets and their related functionality can further the digital heritage (and virtual heritage) field, and help in the preservation, maintenance, and promotion of real-world 3D heritage sites and assets. What features do they offer? How could their feature list better cater for the needs of the GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) sector? 

This article’s priority is to examine the useful features of 8 institutional and 11 commercial repositories designed specifically to host 3D digital models. The available features of their associated 3D viewers, where applicable, are also analysed, connecting recommendations for future-proofing with the need to address current gaps and weaknesses in the scholarly field of 3D digital heritage. Many projects do not address the requirements stipulated by charters, such as access, reusability, and preservation. The lack of preservation strategies and examples highlights the oxymoronic nature of virtual heritage (oxymoronic in the sense that the virtual heritage projects themselves are seldom preserved). To study these concerns, six criteria for gauging the usefulness of the 3D repositories to host 3D digital models and related digital assets are suggested. The authors also provide 13 features that would be useful additions for their 3D viewers. 

Virtual Heritage book

Academic, Announcements, archaeology, augmented reality, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, heritage, Open Access, publication, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation

Hello, with eight authors for eight chapters I am proposing a concise guide on virtual heritage to publishers. I believe I have been allowed UNESCO chair/Curtin funding to pay publishing open access fees (so the book can be free as online PDFs) and hopefully reasonably priced to purchase.

I believer we now have two recommendations for external reviewers but we still need to get all author chapter abstracts ready and the proposal to the publisher for approval. Each chapter will be a taut 3500 words with 1-3 images.

Given the book is aimed at graduate or senior undergraduate students who may not be familiar with an overview or specific topics of virtual heritage, what title is best?

Virtual Heritage in Focus?

Virtual Heritage: A Concise Guide?

Also, are we missing an important chapter/theme subject?

Foreword: Classrooms and Projects

Preamble

  1. Past Worlds: Creating and Animating
  2. Gaming Heritage: archaeology and Minecraft
  3. Mixed Reality
  4. Mapping Meaningful Journeys From Ancient Pasts
  5. Photogrammetry at Scale
  6. Photogrammetry for the People: Towards VR
  7. Hybrid Interactions in Museums
  8. Evaluation in Virtual Heritage

Glossary

Australian Research Council Grants

Announcements, virtual heritage

Below are the 3 Australian Research Council grants I am currently a Chief Investigator on. The information is publicly available on the ARC website.

LE190100019 — The University of Newcastle

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

  • Administering Organisation: The University of Newcastle
  • Scheme Name: Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities
  • Lead Investigator: Prof Hugh Craig
  • Current Funding: $420,000.00
  • Announced Funding: $420,000.00
  • Funding Commencement Year: 2019
  • Status: Active
  • Primary FoR: 2103 – Historical Studies
  • Anticipated End Date: 21 October 2020

LE200100123 — The University of Western Australia

The Digitisation Centre of Western Australia (Phase 1). All five Western Australian Universities, the WA State Library and the WA Museum will collaborate to establish a world-class archival quality Digitisation Centre. There is no existing facility of this kind in WA. During this 12 month project all digitisation equipment will be acquired, installed and used to digitise a diverse range of cultural objects so as to ensure its ability to address the full spectrum of research needs. The Digitisation Centre will form a major piece of national research infrastructure with a prominent international profile and significance. The Centre will have the capacity to digitise all significant Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) research collections held by participating institutions within a decade.

  • Administering Organisation: The University of Western Australia
  • Scheme Name: Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities
  • Lead Investigator: Prof Benjamin Smith
  • Current Funding: $1,100,000.00
  • Announced Funding: $1,100,000.00
  • Funding Commencement Year: 2020
  • Status: Active
  • Primary FoR: 2102 – Curatorial and Related Studies
  • Anticipated End Date:31 December 2020

LP180100284 — Curtin University

Photogrammetric Reconstruction for Underwater Virtual Heritage Experiences. This project aims to enable significant underwater cultural heritage sites such as shipwrecks to be recreated in immersive underwater virtual heritage experiences. Photogrammetric 3D reconstruction techniques will be used to generate complex digital 3D models of shipwreck sites from hundreds of thousands of underwater images. This will allow vivid experiences to be created which explain the stories of these wrecks. The project will conduct audience engagement studies to recommend the most appropriate methods to implement underwater virtual heritage experiences for Australian audiences. The sites which will be used as test datasets are some of the most significant Australian shipwreck sites, including HMAS Sydney (II) and HMAS AE1.

  • Administering Organisation: Curtin University
  • Scheme Name: Linkage Projects
  • Lead Investigator: Dr Andrew Woods
  • Current Funding: $473,814.00
  • Announced Funding: $461,783.00
  • Funding Commencement Year: 2019
  • Status: Active
  • Primary FoR: 0909 – Geomatic Engineering
  • Anticipated End Date: 27 January 2023

The Philosophy in the Computing

virtual heritage, Virtual Reality,

I just received an article submission back with major revisions required. For a computing related journal. I actually appreciated the comments but that is not the point of the post. What struck me was a comment that my article was a bit philosophical / theoretical for an applied computing-related journal.

Deciding what is or should be computational is actually a very deep decision.

I wonder how many of the people who work with computers (especially virtual reality) have read this article, written a mere 75 years ago..

As We May Think

“Consider a future device …  in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.“

-”Vannevar Bush, July 1945 Issue, The Atlantic

Featured image is from https://www.defense.gov/observe/photo-gallery/igphoto/2001104527/

Art History, Heritage Games, and Virtual Reality chapter

Academic, Announcements, book chapter, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, publication, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, ,

According to Routledge’s online article “Publishing Open Access Books: Chapters” I am allowed to archive a preprint copy on my own site or the site of my institute (but not the published version). Please remember there may be slight variations to the published chapter. My thanks to Associate Professor Anna Foka, (Humlab and Uppsala University) for being such a wonderful co-author and collaborator.

To cite the article (in APA format):

Champion, E., & Foka, A. (2020). Art History, Heritage Games, and Virtual Reality. In K. J. Brown (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities and Art History, (pp. 238-253). Oxford, UK: Routledge.

DOI is: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429505188

Preprint chapter:

digital-humanities-and-art-history-017Download
Figure 17.2 The Virtual Reality environment and avatar in 2D, digitizing ancient dance 2016, Humlab.

VR travel and tour apps

digital heritage, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, , , , , , , , ,

The Financial Times has published an article entitled “Could this be the moment virtual-reality travel finally takes off?” (You may have to answer a survey to read the article):

“The cartoonish game is less R&R, “more a place of decompression as action”, says Andrew Eiche, chief technology officer at Vacation Simulator’s developer, Owlchemy Labs. He is sceptical that today’s VR headsets are powerful enough to deliver truly realistic recreations of places such as the Sistine Chapel. “Is it really any different to looking at it on a monitor?” he says. “You need to go beyond looking to acting — that is where VR really excels.”

Examples include https://grandtour.myswitzerland.com/ and https://www.virtualyosemite.org/ especially https://www.virtualyosemite.org/virtual-tour/

What are the best VR tours and travel apps? This is a small subset of the best VR apps (the best VR apps according to digital trends).

A company has also made a VR (well, Cinematic/360 VR) of Antarctica (“VR in the freezer”) that is touring Australian museums, and will tour internationally.

CULTURAL HERITAGE

A travel and leisure online article has already suggested VR tours can help relieve the boredom of pandemic lockdowns:

But there is a way to get a little culture and education while you’re confined to your home. According to Fast Company, Google Arts & Culture teamed up with over 2500 museums and galleries around the world to bring anyone and everyone virtual tours and online exhibits of some of the most famous museums around the world..

Two months ago the Guardian reviewed the world’s best virtual museum and art gallery tours.

Generally these are 360 panoramas, not true VR, but there are convenient tools to help you create your own panoVR (cinematic VR).

Lifewire has listed “7 Great Virtual Reality Travel Experiences”. One example of note is the VR Museum of Fine Art.

There are also projects taking off using live guides through the web with a camera, or who take you on a tour of a real museum with a real but physically remote guide/curator so that museums can still be quasi-open during lockdown.

An example of remote tourism is by the Faroes Islands, a very isolated Scandinavian island nation. They also explain their project:

Via a mobile, tablet or PC, you can explore the Faroes’ rugged mountains, see close-up its cascading waterfalls and spot the traditional grass-roofed houses by interacting – live – with a local Faroese, who will act as your eyes and body on a virtual exploratory tour.
The local is equipped with a live video camera, allowing you to not only see views from an on-the-spot perspective, but also to control where and how they explore using a joypad to turn, walk, run or even jump!

Via a mobile, tablet or PC, you can explore the Faroes’ rugged mountains, see close-up its cascading waterfalls and spot the traditional grass-roofed houses by interacting – live – with a local Faroese, who will act as your eyes and body on a virtual exploratory tour.
The local is equipped with a live video camera, allowing you to not only see views from an on-the-spot perspective, but also to control where and how they explore using a joypad to turn, walk, run or even jump!

VR focus has an interesting article on the development of VR for tourism, and the Virtual Segovia project sounds like it is worth keeping tabs on.

Now before we look at the commercial VR content stores, there are cultural heritage organizations with VR tour/travel content. Some are available via Google .

Europeana

An online portal of major European libraries and museum collections, they have vintage stereo VR and examples of how to create stories and lessons with the stereoVR prints.

Google

For example, Google Earth and Google Earth Voyager (with sections on editors picks, games, layers, quizzes, nature, travel, education).

There is Google Earth VR https://arvr.google.com/earth/ for VIVE and OCULUS headsets (HMDs).

Even Google Streetview can be viewed in Google VR https://www.blog.google/products/google-vr/get-closer-look-street-view-google-earth-vr/

“The new version of Earth VR is available today for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. And if you don’t have one of those systems, you can still check out Street View in VR with your phone—just download the Street View app for Daydream and Cardboard.”

https://artsandculture.google.com/ is a wonderful sight and also has scavenger hunts, at, for example the British Museum.

There are also “virtual tours” based on Google Street View. For example, you can “virtually” visit Chernobyl. Here is an abandoned roller coaster.

An open source alternative to Google Maps is Open Street Map (OSM). There is a youtube video explaining how OSM data can be used with WebVR (“2019: VR Map: Using OSM Data In a WebVR Environment VRmap on Github”) and the app vrmap can be downloaded via Github.

Online/VR Models for Cultural Tourism/Travel

You can also visit online and via VR headsets repositories of 3D models of buildings and landscapes.

The Smithsonian allows you to view tour and download 3D artefacts and has interesting content, such as the Virtual Tour and the VR Hangar.

Sketchfab

But the biggest online 3D/VR repository is arguably Sketchfab. Sketchfab has a Cultural Heritage + History section.

Eg Hagios Aberkios (Theotokos) Monastery Church 9th from Cultural Heritage and History Top 10 – 2020 wk 21
Sketchfab also has a places and travel section.

CYARK is a volunteer organization that has scanned major cultural heritage monuments uses Sketchfab to present their models.

Minecraft VR

For something lighter, families can also visit Minecraft VR “PLUNGE INTO THIS NEW MINECRAFT DIMENSION ON OCULUS RIFT, WINDOWS MIXED REALITY, AND GEAR VR” and a trailer is on Youtube.

Games

Commercial game companies like Ubisoft have explored creating escape game VR and virtual tours inside physical exhibitions such as

Assassin’s Creed VR – Temple of Anubis. Gamasutra has explained their design process for these VR escape rooms.

“At XRDC in San Francisco today Ubisoft Dusseldorf’s Cyril Voiron took to the stage to talk a bit about his work on Ubisoft’s Escape Games, virtual reality experiences that challenge players to escape virtual puzzle rooms.”


NB Trotech exhibited a physical location VR game demo in 2018.

Like brains on your journeys? Not exactly tourism, but some VR games have an element of real-world tourism.

“Face all the horrors that the living and the dead can offer in this new VR adventure in The Walking Dead universe. Travel through the ruins of walker infested New Orleans as you fight, sneak, scavenge, and survive each day unraveling a city wide mystery within the iconic quarters. Encounter desperate factions and lone survivors who could be friend or foe. Whether you help others or take what you want by force, every choice you make has consequences. What kind of survivor will you be for the people of NOLA?”

Or do you want to explore alien worlds? “The latest update from Hello Games adds a whole host of much-requested features to No Man’s Sky, including full, end-to-end support for PlayStation VR.”

One can even “tour” medieval fantasy worlds, or at least the modifications (mods) that are created using the free game creation tools. Here I am referring to Skyrim VR. Can it handle mods? With certain caveats, yes (on PC that is). You can buy it on Steam. Requires Vive, Rift, Valve Index or Windows Mixed Reality. ($89.95 AUD)

COMMERCIAL STORES

Via stores with content for specific HMDs, you can also find VR travel locations. For example, the oculus store lists travel and tourism apps for the OCULUS Quest, RIFT, GO, Gear VR. Enter “travel” into the search bar for each device.

Oculus Rift/Rift S

For example for the Oculus Rift you can visit the “travel” Pantheon Tallinn, Rome Reborn, Patagonia or in Australia, “Claustral Canyon” in Sydney NSW (Rift, Rift S)

Quest

Enter the quest part of the Oculus website and search for travel.

Examples:

Gear

Navigate to the Gear VR Section of the Oculus site and search for travel.

Specific Examples:

Google App store

Enter travel VR into the search bar or tour VR

  • Google Expeditions (free) The Expeditions app and Cardboard viewer and Cardboard Camera were built to bring immersive experiences to as many schools as possible.
  • Titans of Space Plus ($10) Titans of Space® is a short guided tour of our planets and a few stars in virtual reality. Works with Google Cardboard.

Apple App store (for Apple phones)

Viveport (HTC)

Viveport is an online app store for the primary VIVE and Oculus headsets/Windows and has some travel content VR apps

  • Mona Lisa: Beyond the Glass is the first virtual reality (VR) experience presented by Musée du Louvre. On view from October 24, 2019 to February 24, 2020 in the Napoléon Hall, this VR experience is an integral component of the museum’s landmark Leonardo da Vinci exhibition, which commemorates the 500th anniversary of da Vinci’s death in France. An extended home version of the VR experience is now available for download through VIVEPORT and other VR platforms, including mobile VR on iOS and Android, for audiences across the globe.
  • AWAVENA “For the Amazonian Yawanawa, ‘medicine’ has the power to travel you in a vision to a place you have never been. Hushahu, the first woman shaman of the Yawanawa uses VR like medicine to open a portal to another way of knowing. This stunning VR experience, directed by the legendary Australian artist Lynette Wallworth, follows her Emmy Award-winning VR film “Collisions.””
  • Church art of Sweden.
  • A Glimpse into China.
  • Virtual Touring of DunHuang: Mogao Cave 61
  • MasterWorks: Journey Through History “Travel to three continents and visit some of the world’s most amazing places that span over 3000 years of human history. Discover the fate of the ancient capital of Thailand, the mysteries of a pre-Incan temple in the Peruvian Andes, the astonishing Native American cliff dwellings of Colorado, and the monument [al stone carvings of Mt Rushmore
  • “in South Dakota. The MasterWorks Museum transports you to four fully explorable environments where you can collect artifacts and learn from archaeologists and scientists as you unravel the mysteries of who built these amazing places and learn about the challenges they face today in a rapidly changing climate.” [now supports Tobii Eye-Tracking!]
  • The Holy City Documentary
  • Nefertari: Journey to Eternity
  • VR Angkor Wat Guided Tour – Cambodia

Current HMD costs/availability

Don’t have a suitable Head Mounted Display? Choice au have a useful guide.

Google Daydream standalone or smartphone VR

  1. Google Daydream View runs with an android phone (Galaxy, Pixel, Moto, LG, Zenfone etc) costing around $330-360 AUD on eBay
  2. Google Daydream Standalone VR (coming soon)

Rethinking Virtual Places

Academic, Book, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, publication, serious games, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation,

I have written a book on the above which looks like (touch wood) will go into production.

I have about 30 images in the planned book but am wondering if I can or should place there an image (8×11 inches, landscape orientation or portrait if there is an area for the cover page text). Do any of the below look ok? Or should I ask a game company for screenshot permission?

Chapter titles are:

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

Initial image: Microsoft HoloLens in the Duyfken showing mixed reality maps and 3D models (Mafkereseb Bekele PhD project); Ikrom Nishanbaev and Susan at Ballarat Heritage Weekend, Ballarat Town Hall; Ikrom and public member, Ballarat; the HoloLens demo’d at the WA State Archives..

“Cultural Heritage Infrastructures in Digital Humanities” free for 7 days

Announcements, archaeology, Architecture, Book, book chapter, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, HCI, heritage, infrastructure, Open Access, publication, respositories, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, ,

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.

free Critical Gaming eBook for 7 days

Announcements, archaeology, Architecture, augmented reality, Biofeedback, Book, Conference, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, HCI, heritage, infrastructure, Open Access, publication, serious games, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, ,

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!

Virtual Heritage Book Proposal Reviewers

Announcements, Book, book chapter, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, virtual heritage, , , ,
If you’d like to be suggested as a reviewer for an edited book proposal we will send to a publisher on virtual heritage (a concise guide) please let me know and I will tell the editor (I won’t know who the final chosen reviewers will be and I’d rather not re-bother the usual suspects) … with the authors, we are deciding whether to write a very concise 30,000 words or a normal 80,000-word book proposal (but the latter would be more expensive for university students, the primary audience).

Calls for articles in 2020

digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, Journal, virtual heritage, visualisation

ETC press: Well Played

Special Issue Call for Proposals: Well Played: Playable Theatre: For this special issue we invite experiential play-throughs, theoretical papers, critical analyses, and post-mortems by practitioners, across domains from around the world, that explore the many facets of live, interactive experiences. As an interdisciplinary issue, we welcome researchers and creators from theatre, digital and analog game studies, performance studies and related disciplines.

All submissions are 31 May 2020. All submissions and questions should be sent to: well-played (at) lists (dot) andrew (dot) cmu (dot) edu

Change over time Journal

The concept of “integrity” is central to the organizing principles and values of heritage conservation and is frequently evoked in international charters, conventions, and official recommendations. Generally speaking, integrity refers to the wholeness or intactness of a tangible object, place, or property and is a measure by which UNESCO determines the Outstanding Universal Value of a site.1 As a guiding principle of conservation practice, the concept of integrity has evolved from 19th century ideas of the artist’s intent, which located integrity in a moment in time (Viollet le Duc), to 21st century framings of integrity as an emergent condition as proposed by the 2005 Faro Framework Convention which suggests that integrity is neither fixed nor static but is understood through a process of interpreting, respecting, and negotiating complex, and at times, contentious values. Abstracts of 200-300 words are due 5 June 2020. Authors will be notified of provisional paper acceptance by early July 2017. Final manuscript submissions will be due 3 January 2021.

MIT Presence

Guest Editors: GunasekaranManogaran, Hassan Qudrat-Ulla, Ching-Hsien Hsu, Qin Xin Paper Submission Deadline 25-08-2020; Author notification 15-11-2020; Revised papers submission 25-01-2021; Final Acceptance 30-03-2021

JOCCH

ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage – emerging computational and analytical methods and technologies with archival practice (including record keeping), and their consequences for historical, social, scientific, and cultural research engagement with archives. We want to identify potential in these areas and examine the new questions that they can provoke. At the same time, we aim to address the questions and concerns scholarship is raising about issues of interpretation raised by such methods, and in particular the challenges of producing quality – meaning, knowledge and value – from quantity, tracing data and analytic provenance across complex knowledge production ecosystems, and addressing data privacy and other ethical issues.

World History Connected

World History Connected is seeking papers for its next three issues 17.2 ( June 2020), 17. 3  (October, 2020) and 18.1, (February 2021), for special sections that will address new research on, and fresh approaches to, the teaching of 1) the place of the Classical World in World History, from the militarization of Roman elephants to the concept of the Axial Age (deadline for submissions is April  6, 2020); (2) themes in Southeast Asia in World History from Lidar to maritime subjects (deadline for submissions is August 3, 2020) and 3) Games and Simulations in World History, from the use of historical content, to the process of construction and marketing, to use in the classroom (deadline for submissions is November 2, 2020).