Tag Archives: Archives

The Spatial Nature of Archives

Academic, Architecture, Digital Humanities, ,

if we entertain the notion of a book as being distinct from text in an ‘universal’ library (http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3237/3416) and if we consider that early libraries could be spatially memorable forms of archives and churches to be early examples of walk-through books..

Refer The_Gothic_Cathedral_An_Immersive_Information_Visualization_Space

This has changed
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/entering-the-flow-museum-between-archive-and-gesamtkunstwerk/
“However, the relationship between internet and museum radically changes if we begin to understand the museum not as a storage place for artworks, but rather as a stage for the flow of art events..And on the internet, the museum functions as a blog. So the contemporary museum does not present universal art history, but rather its own history—as a chain of events staged by the museum itself. But most importantly: the internet relates to the museum in the mode of documentation, not in the mode of reproduction. Of course, the museums’ permanent collections can be reproduced on the internet, but the museum’s activities can only be recorded.”

Could it be possible that the spatial and physical even architectural organization and appearance of an archive could actually help organize, assist retrievability of the stored collection? I am sure research has been done on this throughout history, but knowing where to start is the question!

NB Please note I am not asking about archives of spatial data, I am asking if there are archives that were themselves physically, platially, spatially organized.

Video mashup tools for online multimedia archives

Conference, Presentation, respositories, ,

Just collating some tools for the above purpose, I hope to help an academic here create an online authoring/mashup tool of pre-rendered videos, audio-video interviews and images so that an audience particularly children can create their own narratives and presentations using the online multimedia archive (yet to be uploaded).

Leading contender

Looks interesting

Other

Other video remixers

http://mashable.com/2006/03/07/eyespot-all-hail-the-video-mashups/#rwZQ_lZ8Umq8

Virtual Heritage Models: in Search of Meaningful Infrastructure

Book, infrastructure, virtual heritage, , , ,

Above is title of book chapter being revised/reviewed for Ashgate’s Cultural Heritage Creative Tools and Archives (edited book).

At 7,799 words I hope I am not asked to revise upwards!

Alternative title: Preserving the Heritage Component of Virtual Heritage

Abstract:
Teaching virtual heritage through the careful inspection, contextualization and modification of 3D digital heritage models is still problematic. Models are hard to find, impossible to download and edit, in unusual, unwieldy or obsolete formats, and many are standalone 3D meshes with no accompanying metadata or information on how the data was acquired, how the models can be shared (and if they can be edited), and how accurate the scanning or modeling process was, or the scholarly documents, field reports, photographs and site plans that allowed the designers to extract enough information for their models. Where there are suitable models in standard formats that are available from repositories, such as in Europeana library portal, they are encased in PDF format and cannot be extended, altered or otherwise removed from the PDF. Part of the problem has been with the development of virtual heritage; part of the problem has been with a lack of necessary infrastructure. In this chapter I will suggest another way of looking at virtual heritage, and I will promote the concept of a scholarly ecosystem for virtual heritage where both the media assets involved and the communities (of scholars, shareholders and the general public) are all active participants in the development of digital heritage that is a part of living heritage.

—About 7000 words later —

Conclusion: A New Virtual Heritage Infrastructure

I hope I have been clear about three major points. I have argued that virtual heritage will not successful as digital heritage if it cannot even preserve its own models and it will not be effective if it cannot implement digital technologies great advantages: real-time reconfiguration to suit the learner, device and task at hand; individual personalization; increased sense of agency; automatic tracking and evaluation mechanisms; and filtered community feedback. My suggestion is to implement not so much a single file format but to agree upon a shared relationship between assets. For want of a better word, I have described the overall relationship of components of virtual heritage infrastructure as a scholarly ecosystem.

Secondly, in this new age of digital communication the 3D model must be recognized as a key scholarly resource (Di Benedetto et al., 2014). As a core part of a scholarly ecosystem the model should be traceable, it should link to previous works and to related scholarly information. I suggest that the model should be component-based so that parts can be directly linked and updated. Web models would be dynamically created at runtime. The model should be engaging so extensive playtesting and evaluation is required to ensure it actually does engage its intended audience. As part of a scholarly infrastructure, the 3D model format (and all related data formats) should be easy to find and reliable. It should not require huge files to download or it should at least provide users with enough information to decide whether and what to download. Metadata can also help record the completeness, measurement methodology and accuracy of the models and Linked Open Data can help connect these media assets in a sensible and useful way.

Thirdly, the community of scholars, students and the wider public should be involved and we must endeavour to meaningfully incorporate their understanding, feedback and participation, this is a core requirement of UNESCO World Heritage status. Community involvement is a must for scholars as well and so I suggest that the virtual heritage projects dynamically link to journals and refereed conference papers and to the list of tools and methods that were used in the project. A robust feedback system could help continually improve the system. Other shareholder issues such as varying levels of learning skills, and varying levels of knowledge required or cultural knowledge that needs to be hidden (privacy and ownership issues) should also be incorporated into the project.

Reflections on Digital Densities

Digital Humanities, , , , ,

Regards the conference and panel at Digital Densities University of Melbourne: Friday 27 March 2015

  • I gave a short paper of some projects and ended with the following points:
    As situated counterfactual simulations, games are open-ended learning experiences but they don’t scale easily and they are not cultural learning experiences.
  • How do we thematically include conjecture and interpretation?
  • How to creatively connect to archives (of media, literature, place event and character references).
  • Solution: To mention later (a digital scholarly ecology): link papers+tools+methods+models+forums:
    explain the difference between method and methodology
    develop a way of substantiating digital heritage creation as academic output
    diagram how the DH ecology would work in terms of critical review, component-based (Unity, Collada, Blender.blend) versus single format (X3D, Collada) versus exportable format (different 3D packages can export to shared format) … but how do you share, archive, export interaction structures?

NB I did  not really mention my aim to bridge the missing links between text and place.

How does this relate to the central material and institutional conditions of the digital archive?  Digital Heritage archives require: alive filterable meta-layerable searchable component based, query-metrics, visual ontological structure, component-based, exportable or bespoke archival formats Sadly, Digital Heritage projects are ad hoc, do not relate to literature and other sources, are not component based but imprisoned in legacy technology But that will have to be for another day. And so will some reflections on density, as there are many aspects to it that I initially and naively took as self-evident.

However, I was also asked to attend a panel (Materiality, the Archive, the Future) at the end of the Digital Densities event. The format was pecha kucha, a format I have never actually presented in before. 20 slides, 20 seconds each, we had 6 minutes 40 seconds to present. You can say (or show) a lot in that time but as I discovered it was too short to say what I had to say. And I wasn’t feeling well so the focus wasn’t up to scratch.
But from the presentations I saw and the questions I was asked, I thought there was something to explore.
The Future (Digital Humanities in the next 10 years):

There are 9 things I believe DH should and will concentrate on, and to explain them requires an essay!
tourism and education
multimodal – self-driven learning
focus on design and usability
critical infrastructure
faster communal publication>>bigger teams
combined degrees with business law ICT media
cottage industry humanities start-ups
a potential turn back to (augmented) craft
tinkering spaces

But what I ran out of time to comment on were my observations of some trends of the day.
1.     Future of the Future of the Book was a concern, what will the book be or has it apparently died so often that it is now a case of the boy who cried wolf?
2.     The question of digital originality: that simulation and digitisation has created the loss of aura scenario predicted by Walter Benjamin.
3.     Completeness and importance of the physical artefact: self-evident, or is it? Many aspects of a historic or heritage artefact cannot be re-experienced or understood or situated.
4.     Care=archives<>databases: many of the scholars and archivists and librarians seem to distinguish between an archive and a database. I wonder if the latter lacks for them a sense of care, or if they simply feel there are no preservation specialists in the latter that are empathic to books and other traditional scholarly media.
5.     Spectator-led narratives archives (museums are more performative?): there was a little discussion of politics and indigenous heritage issues and open access, but I also thought there was some concern over the future of museums and that museums felt the need to be more performative, but how spectators create or augment narrative was not really followed through.
6.     Communal ownership and priority vs. anti-ownership: how could databases protect rather than share local or socially distributed levels of knowledge?
7.     Proprietary technologies and their permanence: more my point than the others, such as the walled garden that keeps people in, not just out, and how some game technologies are outlasting the mainstream VR software products.
8.     Funding for ongoing projects…people seemed to agree with me that funding is often for equipment rather than for (skilled) people, I ran out of time to mention the success of http://v-must.net/ in funding the transfer and exchange of heritage skills and young people (interns, students).

CFP: Cultural Heritage, Creative Tools and Archives Workshop

Academic, Announcements, Conference, Digital Humanities, game, virtual heritage, , , , , , ,

DIGHUMLAB DK and the DIGITAL CURATION UNIT Athens are pleased to invite you to submit to a 2 day workshop on CULTURAL HERITAGE, CREATIVE TOOLS AND ARCHIVES.

The workshop is open to all but we in particular welcome participants drawn in the first instance from the DARIAH, ARIADNE, CENDARI, NeDiMAH and other EU cultural heritage networks. We envisage it will foster the growth of a community of practice in the field of digital heritage and digital humanities, leading to closer cooperation between participants and helping attendees develop tools and methods that can be used by the wider community.

Workshop themes

Cultural heritage, for the purposes of this workshop, is taken to consist of a broad spectrum of fields of scholarly research and professional practice relating to the study, management and use of the past, including but not limited to: archaeology, material culture studies, public history, intangible heritage, the visual and performing arts, visual culture, museums, and historical archives. We invite presentations of digital heritage tools and infrastructures, established projects and case-studies, state-of the art surveys, and original research contributions on the following themes:

· Cultural heritage information systems, ontologies and knowledge representation for material and visual culture.

· Data analysis, modeling, simulation, and visualization.

· Metadata, interoperability and integration of research data and scholarly resources.

· GIS, 3D graphic reconstruction and high end imaging.

· Digital preservation and curation of cultural heritage data, archives and documentation resources.

· Digital technology in fieldwork (e.g., archaeological data collecting and representation, excavation and survey data management, recording information “at the trowel’s edge”, processing survey and long series datasets, etc.).

· Digital scholarly publishing and public communication of cultural heritage.

· Sharing data and tools across European countries and partners.

· EU policy in digital heritage infrastructures, research, and cultural resource management.

· Any other topic relevant to the innovative application of digital technology to cultural heritage research, management and communication.

Presentation formats

· Project presentation: 20 minutes.

· Demonstration (of a tool, method, or project): 20 minutes.

· Paper presentation: 20 minutes plus 10 minutes of discussion time. Final papers accepted may be published in a journal (to be advised).

· Panel: 40-60 minutes involving 3-5 speakers.

Submission Information

· Format: At the top of the page include your name, your country, your institutional affiliation, your EU infrastructure/project affiliation (if applicable), the title of your paper, and the suggested format of your paper (project presentation, paper presentation, demonstration, or panel presentation). An AV projector will be provided but please indicate any other requirements.

· Submit: Emailyour proposal in RTF format to dighumlab@gmail.com with the title “Cultural Heritage Workshop”. If you wish to present a formal paper, you should submit an abstract of 500-1500 words, including references. For a project presentation, demonstration or panel you should submit a proposal of 300-500 words. If you wish to present on a panel, please indicate the names and affiliations of other participants (if known) on the submission document.

· Submission date: NEW EXTENDED DATE 1 May 2013, 17:00 Central European Time

Other information:

· Notification date: Wednesday, 24 April 2013 (may change).

· Date of Workshop: Wednesday, 26 and Thursday 27 June 2013.

· Cost of Workshop: free tea and coffee will be provided; we will try to find sponsorship for lunch for both days.

· Venue: National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark.

· For more information please contact: Dr Erik Champion, DIGHUMLAB Denmark, echa@adm.au.dk
Co-organisers: Associate Professor Costis Dallas, University of Toronto & Digital Curation Unit, Athens; Dr Agiatis Benardou, Digital Curation Unit, Athens; and Professor Panos Constantopoulos, Athens University of Economics and Business.

We would like to thank the ALLC: The European Association for Digital Humanities for co-funding and the National Museum of Denmark for hosting the workshop. This is a DARIAH associated event. Other associations with organizations are still to be confirmed.

ALLC small grants award for “Cultural Heritage, Creative Tools and Archives” workshop

Conference, Digital Humanities, virtual heritage, , , , , , ,

Email from today:

Dear Erik,

We are happy to inform you that EADH (formerly ALLC) has decided to grant your proposal for the workshop Cultural Heritage, Creative Tools and Archives.

In a nutshell:

We proposed a 2 day workshop involving speakers from Denmark and Greece and other European countries; participants will be drawn in the first instance from DARIAH, ARIADNE and NeDiMAH, with the addition of leading digital academics from outside these projects. We envisage that the workshop will lead to closer cooperation between members and help attendees develop tools and methods that can be used by the wider community, to address a communication gap in 3Drelated Digital Humanities at a European level. This event will be case-study based, participatory in approach, and workshop-based rather than lecturer-driven. Sessions will be conducted with support from key participants / moderators.

This will be an introductory workshop, suitable for both recently started and experienced digital scholars, and aiming to introduce participants to the main tools, techniques, and resources for digital humanities in the field of digital heritage, tools and archives. Workshop methodology and enabling resources will be standardized so that it can be taught by a number of different scholars, and would last 2 days, with the possibility of a social event the night before (that would be funded by us).

Time of completion: 16-17, 23-24, or 27-28 May 2013.

Venue: Denmark, Copenhagen or Aarhus.