Category Archives: Academic

Authenticity and Communicating the Past

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

Day 1 of #ComPDA conference (program) at the University of Cologne and authenticity is a big topic in Q&A

I wonder if

  1. a workshop session on writing a charter/guidelines on Authenticity in Digital and Interactive media would be of interest.
  2. A gane idea where exoloring and avoiding or collecting the most authentic would be part of the gameplay
  3. A tool inside a game/VE to show levels of contestation/interpretation/historical authenticity can reveal the schema/paradata postplay or preplay..

Xavier from Edinburgh is now talking about the exciting non educatonal aspects of Assassin’s Creed (Origins vs Odyssey for example) – I wonder if someone has done a survey of the game assets/narratives and scored/compared their educational/authentic-inauthentic/’fun’ levels and areas. Are fun and education really always directly opposed in these sort of games?

References

Assassin’s Creed

General

Game prototyping workshop in Turin

Academic, Digital Humanities, summer school, , , ,

At the Politecnico di Torino, Turin Italy, I gave a talk on Monday in their summer school on Cities Cultural heritage and Digital Humanities, on Virtual heritage and publication issues.

Yesterday I ran a workshop on game prototyping especially for history and heritage games.

The slides from the workshop are here

I am particularly interested in developing the conceptual framework for teaching this, on slides 3-4 (with a better diagram!)

New Journal article out in print

Academic, Journal, , ,
  • Champion, E. (2018). Computer Games, Heritage and Preservation. Preservation Education & Research, published by the National Council for Preservation Education, USA. URL: http://www.ncpe.us/about-ncpe/ Not yet online.

Abstract

The video game industry is a profitable one. Juniper Research predicted that worldwide it would pass 100 billion dollars in revenue in 2017 (Graham 2017). Virtual heritage (sometimes defined as the application of virtual reality to cultural heritage), has been an academic field of research for at least twenty years (Addison 2001). In recent years, there has been increasing synergies between video games and virtual reality, thanks to increasingly powerful computers and the development of consumer-priced head mounted displays (HMDs), see-through augmented reality HMDs (such as the Microsoft HoloLens or Meta’s Meta 2), and smart-phone based augmented reality systems. In archaeology there has been recent investigations of “archaeogaming”, defined as “the archaeology in and of video games” (J. Aycock & Reinhard 2017), while virtual heritage designers are moving away from the principle goal of photo-realism, towards the potential of interpretation and conceptual learning (Roussou 2005).

What is in an Acronym?

Digital Humanities

 

I once worked in a department at a huge IT firm, where no one knew what the letters stood for, OMC I think it was. We found out in a few days, but I have forgotten it again, it was surprisingly not memorable.

A more relevant insight might be the gap between digital humanists and people in the field of VR. When I was associated with DARIAH EU, Matt Munson, one of the researchers at the Göttingen Centre For Digital Humanities, was researching VREs.

To me a VRE was a virtual reality environment (granted it is not commonly used now but it is still used: https://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality-environments/) but to Matt and the Digital Humanists it was a Virtual Research Environment, portal (well, web platform) for all the digital tools a scholar from a specific discipline might wish to use.

Good idea in theory, but my point is the gap between so many in DH and VR, both use the same acronym for not quite the same thing and are totally oblivious to what it means in the other field. And it also reveals how elastic the term Virtual is.

Landscape Data Art & Models as Linked Open Data

Conference, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, Linked Open Data, , , ,

A free event on Linked Open Data and related Digital Humanities Projects will be taking place on 27 July.

Landscape Data Art & Models as Linked Open Data

The HIVE, (inside John Curtin Gallery) | Building 200A, Curtin University | Kent Street, Bentley | Perth, WA 6102 | Australia

Friday, 27 July 2018 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm (Australian Western Standard Time)

Venue: The HIVE (inside John Curtin Gallery), Curtin University

Speakers (alphabetical order, program later), with provisional title and topic

Please note, if you do not know what RDF (Resource Description Framework), Semantic Web, or Linked Open Data is, we will have an intro workshop on this (and current Digital Humanities projects including Virtual Reality) in the Curtin Library Makerspace, Level 5, 3-4:30PM 26 July 2018. The working title is Linked Reality, Mixed Reality but a link to the free workshop will be provided from this page.

augmented reality, Conference, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, heritage, HIVE, Virtual Reality, visualisation

The Screen Tourism VR and Cultural Heritage event will take place Monday at the HIVE, Curtin University.

It is fully booked but the programme is now:

DRAFT SCHEDULE (HIVE opens at 12:30pm)

PROGRAM SESSION 1 (Chair: Dr Tod Jones (Curtin University))

1.00–1.05pm: Welcome by Dr Tod Jones

1.05–1.40pm: Mr Ian Brodie (http://www.ianbrodie.net/)

1.40–2.00pm: Dr Christina Lee (Curtin University)

2.00–2.20pm: Professor Ear Zow Digital (Curtin University)

2.20 – 2.45pm: Q&A

2.45–3.15pm: Coffee/tea break at Aroma Café

SESSION 2 (Chair: Erik Champion)

3.15–3.20pm: Introductions

3.20–3.40pm: Mr Mike Dunn (Phimedia)

3.40–3.50pm: Mr Mat Lewis (South West Development Commission)

3.50–4.00pm: Mr Nathan Gibbs (Screen West)

4.00–4.30pm: Q&A then sundowner (see below).

VENUE

HIVE (VR Centre), John Curtin Gallery, Kent Street, Curtin Bentley campus WA 6102

https://humanities.curtin.edu.au/research/centres-institutes-groups/hive/

Phone: (08) 9266 9024 (HIVE).
Map link https://goo.gl/maps/FZu8FaEaULt (in John Curtin Gallery opposite Aroma Café)

PARKING (https://properties.curtin.edu.au/gettingaround/parkingzones.cfm

You can pay in a visitor’s carpark (there are parks near John Curtin Gallery/the HIVE) or you can download a phone app and pay in the yellow signed curtin parks at a much cheaper rate. Closest zone is D3 off Kent St then Beazley Avenue, park as close as you can to John Curtin Library.

CANCELLATIONS

If you cannot make the event please cancel your ticket at Eventbrite as we have people on the waiting list

TEA/COFFEE

We hope to have tea or coffee provided for attendees at the nearby outside Aroma cafe during the coffee break, please bring your Eventbrite ticket number.

SUNDOWNER AFTER THE EVENT

If you would like to speak to Ian or Mike or the other speakers after the event from 4:30PM or so we hope to offer a small sundowner at the meeting space of Innovation Central, Level 2, Engineering Pavilion Building 216. More details at the event but just a note you can also find it at http://properties.curtin.edu.au/maps/

 

Imagined Spaces in Real Places

augmented reality, Digital Humanities, Symposium, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, ,

If you are in Perth 11 June please sign up on EventBrite to this free event:

Imagined Spaces in Real Places (Screen Tourism, VR & Cultural Heritage)

There is a burgeoning global tourist trade for places – both real and imaginary – inspired by cultural texts and their creators. While Stratford-upon-Avon has long been a mecca for Shakespeare enthusiasts, (popular) cultural tourism has now extended the bucket list of travel destinations to include the likes of Westeros (aka Dubrovnik, Croatia; Game of Thrones) and Middle-earth (aka New Zealand; The Lord of the Rings). This Symposium brings together scholars and presenters from industry to discuss how screen-based tourism (film, television) can be a generative force in local economies, in region/nation branding, and as a way of promoting cultural heritage. The potential and practical application of technology – specifically virtual reality, locative apps and interactive media – in facilitating an immersive touristic experience, visualising place and creating narrative will also be explored.

DETAILS

Monday 11 June 20181-4:30PM (Presentations start at 1pm, finish approx. 4:30pm. HIVE opens at 12:30pm).
Venue: Curtin University HIVE (VR Centre), John Curtin Gallery, Kent Street, Curitn Bentley campus WA 6102
Event organisers: Christina Lee, Erik Champion

Keynote speaker: Ian Brodie (http://www.ianbrodie.net/)

Other presenters include: Dr Christina Lee, Professor Erik Champion, Mat Lewis (Southwest Development Commission), Professor Sue Beeton (teleconference).

Venue: https://humanities.curtin.edu.au/research/centres-institutes-groups/hive/

Phone: (08) 9266 9024 (HIVE).
Map link https://goo.gl/maps/FZu8FaEaULt (in John Curtin Gallery opposite Aroma Café)

Microsoft Academic Search

Academic, publication, ,

LSE has written positively about the “bibliometric super power” potential of https://academic.microsoft.com/

It took me a while to collate papers and it is not quite as exhaustive in finding citations as Google Scholar (for me, at least) but it lists conferences etc you have published in and direct links to papers that have recently cited you (Google Scholar does not, directly). So, all in all, quite good I thought.

https://academic.microsoft.com/#/profile/ErikChampion is my initial test.

 

Digital Humanities Research Infrastructures in Australia

Digital Humanities, infrastructure, respositories, , , ,

Thanks to Curtin’s Faculty of Humanities and Computational Institute I attended the Australian Academy of Humanities 2 day Humanities Arts and Culture Data Summit, 14-15 March, hosted by the AHA https://www.humanities.org.au/ at the National Film and Sound Archive (NSFA), Canberra.

The below is from a brief report but may be of interest to those who’d like a quick guide to what is happening regards digital humanities research infrastructures at a National level in Australia.

SUMMARY:

Quick guide to social sciences/sciences platforms and RIs

  • Dr John La Salle, Director, Atlas of Living Australia https://www.ala.org.au/ biodiversity data
  • Dr Merran Smith, Chief Executive, Population Health Research Network http://www.phrn.org.au/
  • Andrew Gilbert, General Manager, Bioplatforms http://www.bioplatforms.com/andrew-gilbert/
  • Professor Bert Roberts, Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, 1 year into Centre of Excellence https://epicaustralia.org.au/  “Now is the time to tell a culturally inclusive, globally significant human and environmental history of Australia. We like to call it, Australia’s Epic Story. The ARC Centre of Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) will undertake research that will safeguard our national heritage, transform research culture, connect with communities and inform policy.”

Humanities

  • Professor Linda Barwick FAHA, University of Sydney – PARADISEC http://www.paradisec.org.au/ has funding issues but well respected, may require more computing to scale. “PARADISEC (the Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures) is a digital archive of records of some of the many small cultures and languages of the world”
  • Professor Julian Meyrick, Flinders University – AusStage http://www.flinders.edu.au/ehl/firth/focus/digitalhumanitiesanderesearch/ausstage.cfm “AusStage provides an accessible online resource for researching live performance in Australia. Development is led by a consortium of universities, government agencies, industry organisations and collecting institutions with funding from the Australian Research Council and other sources.”
  • Professor Mark Finnane FASSA FAHA, Griffith University – Prosecution Project https://prosecutionproject.griffith.edu.au/ “The criminal trial is the core of the Australian criminal justice system. It is the product of police investigation and its outcomes include the sentences of imprisonment that populate our prisons.” It is an impressive historical database. Overseas law researchers and historians (UK etc.) use it because it is better than theirs, apparently.
  • Alexis Tindall, Research Engagement Specialist – Humanities and Social Sciences Data Enhanced Virtual Lab (HASS DEVL https://www.ersa.edu.au/1-1-million-funding-humanities-arts-social-sciences-data-enhanced-virtual-lab/ “Humanities, Arts and Social Science researchers will get access to cutting-edge online tools and services thanks to $1.1 million in new funds for a collaborative virtual laboratory project. The Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Data Enhanced Virtual Lab (DEVL) will bring together fragmented data, tools and services into a shared workspace.”

Others included (but there were more)

  • Adam Bell https://aiatsis.gov.au/ (very good talk on problems funding and running archives), Canberra. “The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) is a world-renowned research, collections and publishing organisation. We promote knowledge and understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, traditions, languages and stories, past and present.”
  • Roxanne Missingham, University Librarian, Australian National University, showed the library books destroyed by flood, said to applause that infrastructure included people.
  • Alison Dellit, Assistant Director-General, National Collections Access, National Library of Australia. Discussed the National Library’s Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au/ “Find and get over 569,383,366 Australian and online resources: books, images, historic newspapers, maps, music, archives and more”)
  • Professor Rachel Fensham, Chief Investigator Social and Cultural Informatics Platform, University of Melbourne https://scip.unimelb.edu.au/about “SCIP responds to current demand and future growth in the digital humanities, arts, and social sciences by providing the necessary informatics skills and technology platforms to support researchers, research students and strategic research activities.”

AAH-HAC-Data-Summit-Program(2).pdf

AAH-HAC-Data-Summit-Discussion-Paper.pdf

Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships FREE preprint chapters

Academic, Announcements, Book, Digital Humanities, Open Access, publication, ,

Preprint versions of chapters appearing in Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships: A Critical Examination of Labor, Network, and Community. Eds. Robin Kear and Kate Joranson. Chandos, 2018.

Final versions of all chapters appear in the published version of the book, available here:

Introduction, Robin Kear and Kate Joranson: http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/33818/

Chapter 2: “Our Marathon: The Role of Graduate Student and Library Labor In Making The Boston Bombing Digital Archive” by Jim McGrath and Alicia Peaker. http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M62Z8Fht

Chapter 3: “Digital Humanities as Public Humanities: Transformative Collaboration in Graduate Education.” by Laurie N. Taylor, Poushali Bhadury, Elizabeth Dale, Randi K. Gill-Sadler, Leah Rosenberg, Brian W. Keith, Prea Persaud: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00048267/00001

Chapter 4: “Exploring the Moving Image: The Role of Audiovisual Archives as Partners for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage Institutions” by Adelheid Heftberger. In Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships: A Critical Examination of Labor, Network, and Community, edited by Robin Kear and Kate Joranson, Chandos, 2018, 45-57. http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M66S19

Chapter 6: Glass, E. R. (2018). Engaging the knowledge commons: setting up virtual participatory spaces for academic collaboration and community. In Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships: A Critical Examination of Labor, Network, and Community. UC San Diego. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6zp934sm

Chapter 7: Miller, Karen, Erik Champion, Lise Summers, Artur Lugmayr, and Marie Clarke. 2018. “Chapter 7 – The Role of Responsive Library Makerspaces in Supporting Informal Learning in the Digital Humanities.” In Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships, 91-105. Chandos Publishing. Retrieved from https://maker.library.curtin.edu.au/book-chapter-published/

Chapter 10: “Digital Humanities as Community Engagement: The Digital Watts Project” by Melanie Hubbard and Demrot Ryan: http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/librarian_pubs/93/

Chapter 11: Russell, Beth. “The Collaborative Project Management Model: Akkasah, an Arab Photography Project.” Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships: A Critical Examination of Labor, Network, and Community, edited by Robin Kear and Kate Joranson, Chandos, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2451/41680

Visiting fellowships in digital humanities/heritage/serious games

Academic, Announcements, heritage, job, Postdoc, virtual heritage

I may have the chance to take a short break from Perth and apply for a visiting fellowship or scholarship, preferably in digital humanities, digital heritage (3D), or serious games (history and heritage).

I asked on twitter if there were links, URLs and did not hear back so I had a little search of my one, hope these may help others. I do not necessarily need a salary etc but some of these might include a stipend:

 

Australia

UK and Eire

Europe

USA

Early career or postdoc

More general

 

 

When Academics Don’t Get Interaction Design

Academic, Conference, Digital Humanities, visualisation, , 

Prototype of city square that creates music when city-goers run around the moving circular "tracks" of a giant turntable and camera tracking turns their arm gestures into music beats per audio track (image by Danish architect at our MAB workshop in 2012, Aarhus).

Actually this is more a plea.

Consider this imagined scenario. You are an academic having coffee with a colleague. They do interaction “design-y” stuff and you ask them what they are working on. When they give you a broad overview of the technology and interaction, you might say”Well, that is all well and good but I need to research practical and useful things.” If they know what your focus (tunnel vision) is on, chances are they will then explain how a modification or redirection of the interaction design they were just describing will allow you and your content to do X. “Oh, that I can use” you might say.

Just hold on a minute here. They described an application, tool or service with more generic potential, and then had to use their creative imagination that you didn’t bother tapping into, to show how it could work for you. After you had poured mild scorn on their research. Seems to me they had the brainpower to

a. come up with a generically useful, hopefully transferable idea, concept, tool..

b. be able to summarize your research

c. understand how this new idea, concept or tool could apply to your context in a way that you could understand, AND

d. not be offended that you still didn’t grasp the exemplar they provided you was only a subset of what they had invented to start with.

I am not sure step d would happen though. And I wouldn’t blame the interaction designer if they didn’t have coffee with you again.

 

 

Abstract Components As A Pie Chart

Academic

I was reading Your essential ‘how-to’ guide to writing good abstracts

… and then I wondered, would a simple (clumsy) graphic pie chart help make the breakdown of components more memorable? I just used Excel so a proper graphic program would make something a little cuter, but yes I think the principle may have some relevance, then again, is it just because I had to think and retype and categorize the abstract components?

Well, basically every component (Literature research, describing methods etc) is 1/6th of the total, just weigh methods and sources by a factor of 2, as I have or 3, a 1/2, if possible). Simples. Don’t really need a chart for that.

Information component
Components of a Good Abstract %Number of words (for a 300 word abstract)
Lit.research 1/6No more than 50-60 words
Distinctive Theory 1/6At least 50 words
Methods/Data Sources 1/3From 50 words minimum to 150 maximum
New Facts 1/6As many words as possible within your limit
Originality 1/6At least 30 to 50 words
Total100%

Fidus Writer

Academic, Digital Humanities, Open Access, publication

This is an online writing app that allows you to automatically reference then export into various academic-friendly format. Collaborative editing. Open source as far as I can see.

Fidus Writer is an online collaborative editor especially made for academics who need to use citations and/or formulas. The editor focuses on the content rather than the layout, so that with the same text, you can later on publish it in multiple ways: On a website, as a printed book, or as an ebook. In each case, you can choose from a number of layouts that are adequate for the medium of choice.

Cybermaps in 3D heritage

digital heritage, Journal, virtual heritage, visualisation, , ,

A journal asked that I respond to a paper that briefly mentions the above. Notes to self include these general questions that I seldom find answers to in virtual heritage papers and not mentioned in my response (the journal has a strict word limit):

  1. Interpretation: It is very hard to extrapolate from VH papers how various interpretations are fostered.
  2. Beginnings: Where do you place a visitor in a virtual site?
  3. Dynamic alterity: How should or could they navigate time, space and interpretation?
  4. Art Versus Scientific Imagination: How should they separate artistic from current reality from interpreted virtuality? What if the artistry is impressive but speculative?
  5. Projects: Where can the projects (that apparently relate to the questions posed in the text), be experienced or otherwise accessed? How will they be preserved?
  6. Interactive Navigation: How do we navigate time, space, interpretation, and task/goal?
  7.  Authenticity, accuracy and artistry: How does one balance all three?

Thank you for sharing

Academic

Though I have been critical of https://www.academia.edu/ I can also see good, and I greatly appreciate the feature where people can comment on why they want to download an author’s paper.

When an author is writing for different audiences or for a new one, comments explaining where and why a publication has been helpful is encouraging and useful feedback. For new academics, these comments can be used for promotion and so on, but even us older academics can appreciate a few words of feedback and even constructive criticism!

Choosing Conference Hosts

Academic, Conference

Did you ever have to choose between prospective conference hosts? I don’t remember ever seeing criteria for choosing potential conference hosts but a few times I have been asked to choose or rank applications and from memory I try to mark them against criteria like the one below. Happy change or replace this if someone has a better system well laid out somewhere. Oh and I have not weighted the criteria against each other but that could be done with some contextual information.

  1. Venue capacity and character (size of plenary room, facilities, exhibition capacity, access to transport)
  2. Organizational competence
  3. Local heritage, tours and ambience
  4. Daily costs and access to venue, city and country (for majority of attendees)
  5. Western/non-western/ethnic balance
  6. Links to related institutes/institutional support
  7. Ability to bring in students, communities, related events and organizations
  8. Local expertise in heritage
  9. Ability to bring in keynote speakers and sponsors

Conference paper: Inside Out: Avatars, Agents, Cultural Agents

archaeology, Conference, Digital Humanities, Presentation, virtual heritage

Paper accepted for Researching Digital Cultural Heritage – International Conference, Manchester UK, Dates: 30/11-1/12/2017 twitter #digheritage17

Keywords:Digitally enabled collaborative, participatory and reflexive approaches in cultural heritage design, research and practice.

If conveying cultural significance is a central aim of virtual heritage projects, can they convey cultural significance effectively without an understanding of the contextual role of cultural knowledge? In this talk I will argue this is very difficult, but even populating virtual environments with others (human-guided or computer-scripted), there are still vital, missing ingredients.

In virtual heritage projects with enough computational power and sophistication to feature intelligent agents, they are primarily used as guides (Bogdanovych et al. 2009). They lead players to important landmarks, or perhaps act as historical guides (revealing past events, conveying situationally appropriate behaviour). Intelligent agents are usually designed for limited forms of conversation and typically help convey social presence rather than cultural presence. For an enhanced “sense of inhabited place”, engaging narrative- related elements, or embodiment, a cultural agent recognizes, adds to, or transmits physically embedded and embodied aspects of culture. They could provide a sense of cultural presence, becoming Aware-Of-Not-Quite-Being-‘There’.

Cultural agents would not be mere conversational agents if they were able to:

  1. Automatically select correct cultural behaviours given specific events or situations.
  2. Recognize in/correct cultural behaviours given specific events, locations, or situations.
  3. Transmit cultural knowledge.
  4. Modify, create, or command artefacts that become cultural knowledge.

To fulfil the above criteria, cultural agents would be culturally constrained. Not just socially constrained; their actions and beliefs would be dependent on role, space, and time. They could understand and point out right from wrong in terms of culturally specific behaviour and understand the history and possibly also the future trajectory of specific cultural movements. In this talk I will discuss three scenarios for cultural agents, their relationship to roles and rituals, and two more missing ingredients. The result? A more situated, reflexive appreciation of cultural significance via virtual heritage.

The latest book that isn’t (yet)

Academic, augmented reality, Book, Digital Humanities, heritage, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality,

The book that isn’t, I just drafted and sent for internal academic/publisher review a book on virtual places. So it may be modified, it may not get finally published (not sure what happens, I signed a contract) but I cannot resist listing some of the issues it tries to cover, hope they are issues for you too..

Continue reading The latest book that isn’t (yet) →