Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Beyond Text, Past Instruction

Conference

The long-winded (and probably not published in such a lengthy form) abstract for my talk at “Digital Humanities Pedagogy” UNSW Sydney Friday 26 June..

Initially, thanks to Sportronic’s version of Pong, but particularly from around 1982 to today, I have been fascinated by computer game design. Not so much the games for their own sake, but the complicit power they exert over players. How can we design fragmented systems that allow others to create their own imaginative worlds, their own procedural fictive realities? Later, teaching game design, I was struck by how difficult it can be to encourage students to move beyond repeating the standard tropes and clichés of commercial computer games.

My own solution, which is still a work in progress, was to encourage the students to evaluate the group work of their classmates in order to better understand others, and provide examples of critical thinking to help students concentrate more on the underlying principles while predicting the needs and demands of a future audience. For I believe the changing nature of what is the audience of today and tomorrow is a crucial emerging component of Digital Humanities, and the nature of a university as a collaborative testing and invention space of a focused strategic community is a vital if dwindling resource.

So game design teaching reflects a larger problem. How can we, in this fast changing world of digital technology, re-establish the relevance and usefulness of the university, while helping our students to prepare for a tomorrow that is not defined by a discipline or industry skill today?

Having now worked more directly in or around the field (if it is a field) of Digital Humanities, I am continually struck with the issue of learning by following or by teaching, how to reconcile individual scholastic achievement with the benefits of collaborative work, and the yawning gap between start up projects and what is desperately required at an infrastructure level. I will discuss some current and upcoming research that will hopefully tackle these issues.

That said, while my PhD evaluated learning in virtual environments, I am not a pedagogical expert. So my talk will be based on my observations and suggestions for dealing with some of the above issues, but I would also be very happy to hear how these ideas parallel or lie outside of your experiences.

digital heritage models

digital heritage, respositories, virtual heritage, , , , ,

Digital Archaeology and virtual heritage are not exactly equivalent but I have not seen a paper putting forward a clear definition and relationship. Perhaps that is why a Digital Heritage conference could be attended by archaeologists, archivists, museum experience people, interaction designers, programmers, scanning experts, librarians or museum people. Seldom are they all together, let alone in the same sessions.

If UNESCO and related organizations wish to preserve digital cultural heritage they will have to clearly distinguish between CAD model repositories and online web models (one can have both in one but is it too much of a compromise?)

Another issue is that charters developed for digital heritage, UNESCO digital heritage charter, London Charter, Seville Principles, Burra charter, ICOMOS Venice charter, are read but not used in the creation and storage of most projects.
My solution would be to build a template that is both a heuristics and an information collector that would be used to create suitable meta-tags and classification, based on a hybrid practical implementation of the charters as a query form that helps relate models to ontologies and to other digital collections.

Curtin Research Fellowships

Academic, Announcements, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, Postdoc, , ,

For research fellows and other scholars who have a PhD awarded after 1 March 2010, please consider applying for a Curtin Research Fellowship (there are also indigenous and senior research fellowships for those with a PhD awarded before 1 March 2010):

http://research.curtin.edu.au/conducting-research/curtin-research-fellowships/

The internal expression of interest deadline is June 4 (the head of a school or centre has to support the application).
Please note this is a very competitive scheme.

I’m particularly interested in talking to researchers who focus on virtual heritage, digital archaeology, game design, VR evaluation, machinima, digital humanities, interaction design or similar subjects that could take place in the Humanities..

Ideas on how to adapt Kinect camera tracking for 3D presentations in archaeology

3D and game editors, Academic, Biofeedback, Hand tracking, heritage, HIVE, , , ,

I did not mention all these in my 22 May presentation at Digital Heritage 3D conference in Aarhus (http://conferences.au.dk/digitalheritage/)

But here are some working notes for future development:

How Xbox Kinect camera tracking could change the simulated avatar:

  1. Avatars in the simulated world change their size clothing or inventories – they scale relative to typical sizes and shapes of the typical inhabitants, or scale is dependent on the scene or avatar character chosen.
  2. Avatars change to reflect people picking up things.
  3. Avatars role-play – different avatars see different things in the digital world.
  4. Narrator gestures affect the attention or behavior of the avatar.

How Xbox Kinect camera tracking could change the simulated world or digital objects in that world:

  1. Multiple players are needed to lift and examine objects.
  2. Objects move depending on the biofeedback of the audience or the presenter.
  3. Interfaces for Skype and Google hangout – remote audiences can select part of the screen and filter scenes or wire-frame the main model.
  4. Levels of authenticity and time layers can be controlled or are passively / indirectly affected by narrator motion or audience motion / volume / infrared output.

The fictional use of reality

digital heritage, heritage, Journal,

The above could be the title of my next writing on virtual heritage..

Over their lifetime should every academic write at least one thing that threatens their very career? Just a (Wittgensteinian?) thought!
In digital heritage there is a great deal of talk about authenticity and how to maintain it. What if that approach is completely mistaken?

Ok I think I have the start of a very controversial journal article but writing the article may be easier than finding the appropriate journal to publish it in..

new book chapter in “The Egyptian Oracle Project Ancient Ceremony in Augmented Reality”

Book, Digital Humanities, heritage, ,

Editor(s): Robyn Gillam, Jeffrey Jacobson, Published: 30-07-2015 Format:PDF eBook

See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/au/the-egyptian-oracle-project-9781474249256/#sthash.HybJBxFg.dpuf

For more than 2,000 years, between 1500 BCE and 600 CE, the Egyptian processional oracle was one of the main points of contact between temple-based religion and the general population. In a public ceremony, a god would indicate its will or answer questions through the movements of a portable cult statue borne by priests or important members of the community.

The Egyptian Oracle Project is an interactive performance that adapts this ceremony to serve as the basis for a mixed-reality educational experience for children and young adults, using both virtual reality and live performance. The scene is set in a virtual Egyptian temple projected onto a wall. An oracle led by a high priest avatar (controlled by a live human puppeteer) is brought into the presence of a live audience, who act in the role of the Egyptian populace. Through the mediation of an actress, the audience interacts with the avatar, recreating the event.

The series of carefully focused essays in this book provides vital background to this path-breaking project in three sections. After a brief introduction to educational theatre and virtual reality, the first section describes the ancient ceremony and its development, along with cross-cultural connections. Then the development of the script and its performance in the context of mixed-reality and educational theatre are examined. The final set of essays describes the virtual temple setting in more detail and explores the wider implications of this project for virtual heritage.

Table Of Contents

Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Background to the Project and This BookIntroduction (Robyn Gillam, York University, Canada, and Jeffrey Jacobson, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, USA)PART I The Egyptian Oracle
Chapter 1: Historical Foundations (Robyn Gillam)
Chapter 2: Cross-Cultural Analysis (Robyn Gillam)
Chapter 3: The Virtual Temple of Horus and Its Egyptian Prototypes (Robyn Gillam)

PART II The Performance
Chapter 4: Technical Description (Jeffrey Jacobson)
Chapter 5: Mixed Reality Theater and the Oracle (Josephine Anstey and David Pape, University of Buffalo, New York, USA)
Chapter 6: Educational Purpose and Results (Jeffrey Jacobson)

PART III The Technology
Chapter 7: Puppetry and Virtual Theater (Lisa Aimee Sturz, Red Herring Puppets, Asheville, North Carolina, USA)
Chapter 8: Introduction to Virtual Heritage (Erik Champion, Curtin University, Perth, Australia)
Chapter 9: The Virtual Temple: Construction and Use (Jeffrey Jacobson)

Conclusion (Robyn Gillam and Jeffrey Jacobson)

call: 6 month TRAME Fellowship in Digital Humanities – Florence

Digital Humanities, ,

TRAME Fellowship in Digital Humanities Funded by the Zeno Karl Schnindler Foundation, 6 months in Florence!

The Lab. activities – promoting the interoperability of scholarly resources and exploring the possibilities that digital tools and methods offer for innovative research in Digital History, Digital Literature, Digital Philology etc. – are linked to the development of the TRAME initiative (http://www.trame.fefonlus.it) that is part of major international DH projects, such as CENDARI (http://www.cendari.eu) and PARTHENOS (http://www.parthenos-project.eu).

Fellows will develop a critical understanding of digital technologies and research in the arts and humanities, as well as first-hand experience in how to do Digital Humanities, through a very strong practical component including the concrete creation of digital resources and tools for the study of specific disciplines, within a network of scholars and other professionals linked to the DARIAH-ERIC (www.dariah.eu) initiatives, such as the Medeivalist’s Sources Working Group (www.medievalistsources.eu).

The grant will allow to spend a period of 6 (six) months in Florence, at the SISMEL Digital and Multimedia Lab., seeking the development agenda of the TRAME project, with a monthly stipend of 2,500 Swiss francs (CHF).

Link to DARIAH website for call. Applications due 1 June to start in September.

CFP: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts Australasia Conference 5-6.03.2016

Conference

March 5th & 6th, 2016
Canberra, Australia

Call for Papers & Workshops

Deadline for papers: 1st August, 2015.
Deadline for workshop proposals: 1st October, 2015

Electronic Visualisation and the Arts Australasia (EVAA) 2016 is the inaugural Australasian conference for people interested in the application of information technology to the cultural and especially the visual arts field. It is a sister conference of the highly successful EVA London<http://http//eva-london.org/> conference which is now into its 25th year. EVAA 2016 will be held at the University of Canberra in Canberra, Australia on the weekend of the March 5th and 6th, 2016.

We invite proposals for scholarly papers, and workshops, and we are very keen to see a mix of participants from academic, industry and government sectors.

We especially invite presentations on topical subjects, and the newest and cutting edge technologies and applications. Demonstrations and presentations from industry, not-for-profit or government sectors are welcome as are more formally presented papers.

About the conference

EVAA is a 2-day conference hosted at University of Canberra Inspire Centre<http://www.inspire.edu.au/>. In 2016 the conference will coincide with the Canberra Enlighten festival<http://enlightencanberra.com.au/>.

The conference will appeal to scholars, professionals and practitioners working at the intersection of culture and computation, with a particular focus on visualisation and data. It is by nature multidisciplinary and we would like to see a diverse range of disciplinary responses to the conference themes. Papers may present works in progress or completed research, and may present original or empirical or critical research.

Conference Themes

We are interested in papers that present completed or in-progress scholarly work related to one or more of the following themes:

* Data as cultural material: data plays an increasingly large role in many aspects of our lives – in industry, government, even the quantisation of our personal lives through, for example, fitness tracking apps. What are the implications for arts and culture of thinking about data as a cultural material?
* Bigger, faster, more: Edward Tufte has said “I view high resolution pretty much like being smart<http://www.npr.org/2013/01/18/169708761/edward-tufte-wants-you-to-see-better>“. What are the implications for data and visualisation of ubiquitous high-bandwidth connections, massive storage, fast processing and gigapixel displays?
* Critical approaches and critical language: if data and visualisation is now part of our cultural landscape, what language and intellectual tools do we have for critiquing them?
* Tangible data: digital fabrication and the maker movement have seen digital materials rendered as physical objects. How are designers and makers utilising the digital to produce visualisations made of atoms rather than bits?
* Digital public sphere: as government becomes wired and data becomes open and accessible, the possibility of digital public sphere emerges; but this not not just about the technology, it’s a question for the humanities – what is a digital public sphere, what should it be, how it is represented, and what is its culture?

Format of papers

We are looking for authors to submit full papers of approximately 8 pages, or 2,000 words. A template and guidelines for submission are available on the conference web site (http://evaa.com.au/).

Papers accepted for EVAA will be published in the online proceedings. All submitted papers will go through a double-blind peer review process. We will be looking into publishing selected papers in a special edition of a journal.

Pre-conference Workshops

We are interested in proposals for one-day or half-day workshops that engage with the conference themes. Workshops are opportunities to share knowledge, learn from others and to develop networks. We welcome submissions for practical workshops as well as research workshops. These might include:

* practical workshops – practical workshops that provide participants with hands-on experience in production, construction, design or development of digital artefacts, computational tools and/or techniques, working with data or digital cultural materials
* research workshops – workshopping concepts and ideas for research, networking with others in your field, presenting early research ideas and obtaining feedback

More Information

Web: http://evaa.com.au/
Facebook: http://facebook.com/evaa2016
Twitter: https://twitter.com/evaa2016

#cfp: 4th International Conference of Games and Learning Alliance 2015 (GALA 2015) Rome Italy

Conference

in December 2015 we organize the fourth International Conference of Games and Learning Alliance 2015 (GALA 2015), in Rome Italy: www.galaconf.org

It is a great pleasure to invite you to submit a contribution on your research subject within GALA 2015.
The conference proceedings will be published on Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) and a selection of the best papers in a special issue of the International Journal of Serious Games (journal.seriousgamessociety.org/).
The conference is an international event dedicated to the science and application of serious games. The conference aims at bringing together researchers, developers, practitioners and stakeholders. The goal is to share the state of the art of research and market, analyzing the most significant trends and discussing visions on the future of serious games.
The conference also includes an exhibition, where developers can showcase their latest products.
The conference is organized by the Serious Games Society (www.seriousgamessociety.org), which is building a scientific community at international level for shaping future research in the field. This community represents a significant blend of industrial and academic professionals committed to the study, development and deployment of serious games as really useful and effective tools to support better teaching, learning, training and assessment.
We are seeking original contributions that advance the state of the art in the technologies and knowledge available to support development and deployment of serious games. Experimental studies are strongly encouraged. See an extensive list of possible topics on our conference website: www.galaconf.org/2015/index.php/call-for-paper

Important dates:

· Papers (10 pages) submission deadline: July 10, 2015

· Notification date for Papers: September 11, 2015

· Camera Ready Papers and Registration Due: October 28th 2015

Phenomenology and Place

Architecture, Book, design, , , ,

I wrote the below as an email to a small* group of writers/philosophers/academics I’ve found really helpful in my own thinking on phenomenology and place.
I won’t write their names (indeed, I have not even given them any time to respond yet) but I thought I would share my [redacted] email to them in case a reader here

  1. Totally disagrees with my premises and can help me improve them and/or..
  2. Believes they would have something worthy and useful to write in a potential book chapter on the topic.

Dear [insert your favorite live phenomenologist name here]…

For many years I have tried to understand place in virtual environments, how to understand how people experience it, and how to discover and communicate if there are elements of place missing from virtual environments and how to address that through criticism and through design.
My personal interest is in history and heritage (and cultural presence for archaeology simulations) but the problem is wider, and deeper than just virtual places.

I still feel that a possible help and a major problem comes from discussions of phenomenology, namely these:

  1. The role of phenomenology in philosophy is avoided by many philosophers (at least it was a problematic term when I wanted to study it in a philosophy department).
  2. Many outside philosophy use the word without clarifying or helping to clarify where and how it is best used and understood and its limitations (if any).
  3. Many of these papers lack critical analytical reflection and especially are not amenable to extrapolation beyond either the self or calls to authority (authority here usually means dead phenomenologists who are invoked for areas they never actually wrote about directly or perhaps for new discoveries that did not even exist in their time).
  4. In the Presence research area of virtual environment evaluation this is particularly evident yet the laboratory control conditions for Presence evaluations and their extremely generic yet vague questionnaires. Here phenomenology or some related ethnographic method could and should have an important role to play but because of its stigma (not helped by papers which haven’t always been the best examples of phenomenology) virtual environments (virtual reality environments, games, architectural simulations, virtual worlds) lack many of the rich interesting and engaging aspects and potential of place.

Sorry for the longish intro. My suggestion in brief, is probably an edited book: that compiles, describes and especially clarifies major techniques, conditions and limitations of phenomenology and how they could be used or adapted or critiqued for place design (and by extension, for virtual environments). The audience: I’d hope more for an audience of place interested designers and academics than philosophers per se.

*There were more people I had in mind to write to, but will extend the circle if I get a good response from the initial correspondents.

Perth Georabble #8 Review

Conference

I discovered this write up two years late but thank you!

GeoRabble

Around 170 people were a part of Perth’s biggest rabbling ever, with MC John Bryant leading the evening.  The event was held at Crown Burswood as a part of the WALIS Forum. Thanks to our sponsors SIBA (Spatial Industries Business Association) and WALIS Forum for having us there.

Brett Madsen was the first speaker, and it was a privilege to have a founding GeoRabble kick-starter from the East join us. His tale of where he has come from kept the audience captivated. Rules of GeoRabble may have almost been broken when services and business were hinted at –come on @DARKspatialLORD you should know better!

Darren gives Brett the slide clicker in return for a beer

Perth’s own GeoRabble committee member Darren Mottolini took over the microphone to let us in on distorting maps and how to get a message communicated through map distortions. Ending with zombie maps, what was not to enjoy in Darren’s…

View original post 314 more words

Ideas workpad

3D and game editors, game, , , , , ,

I am not even sure (given my current role) I am allowed to put in proposals for our internal strategic round but hey! Research ideation is fun and I should start seeking out NGOS and ICT companies on

  1. Environment: the full surround 2 person immersive environment developed with Paul Bourke of University of Western Australia (time to scope it back and provide scenarios and re-budget the original estimates)
  2. Mapping: the A5 device-sized hybrid 2D/3D mapping system prototype I had at in 2001(!) at the University of Melbourne
  3. Presentation tool: talk to Google or Microsoft about the semi-immersive and mimetic-friendly motion and gesture controlled 3D world/tele presentation device (I think it is a good PhD project)
  4. Lit survey: a survey of virtual heritage worlds, their format, data, and provenance info—where are they? What are they? Possibly a masters project
  5. ToolEnvironment: A sensor of things built into props for archaeological role playing or LARP (head controlled). Have the psychologist contact.
  6. Historic RPG: The cultural turing test (time to build a historical prototype!) Needs more historic scenarios than just Marco Polo, Vasco de Gama and Richard Burton (no not him, the explorer), Louis de Freycinet’s wife,
  7. Tool/App: Historic Shipwrecks and Augmented Reality
  8. Training: (English) Training materials for CHESS and for APA reusable game – could be Masters I guess or if I have time..what other interaction strategies work best with heritage artefacts and AR?
  9. Environment/Arch-gaming: Minecraft and Arduino (not http://www.aucklandmuseum.com/whats-on/exhibitions/gallipoli-in-minecraft but something else!) and Darth Vader’s skill Have the psychologist connection again.
  10. n.b. the Mauritius-Curtin connection to Ashmore is fascinating ((http://www.geographicus.com/blog/tag/antique-map/), time to re-explore cultural geography, interface design and gamic historic adventures

International CIPA Summerschool, 12-19 July 2015, Paestum (Italy)

heritage, summer school, virtual heritage, , , ,

The CIPA (http://cipa.icomos.org) summer school on “Cultural Heritage 3D Surveying and Modeling” gives the opportunity to scholars, PhD students, researchers and specialists in the surveying and heritage fields to deepen their knowledge and expertise with reality-based 3D modeling techniques. The summer school consists of theoretical lectures (surveying, photogrammetry, active sensors, etc.) and practical work, in the field and in the lab. The participants will learn the basics in surveying and data acquisition (with digital cameras, laser scanning sensors and UAV platforms) as well as practice with data processing methods for 3D models and metric products generation. The summer school is organized within the research project PAESTUM (http://paestum.fbk.eu/) and by CIPA within its dissemination and technology transfer activities and with the financial support of the CIPA sustaining members. VENUE: The location of the school is Paestum, 50 km south of Salerno (Italy). Paestum can be reached by car or train. The closest international airports are Rome or Naples. The event will take place in the Hotel Villa Rita (http://www.hotelvillarita.it) and inside the archaeological area and museum of Paestum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paestum). REGISTRATION FEE and PARTICIPATION: The registration fee for the participation is 600 Eur. The fee includes: lecture material, entrance to the site and museum, full-board hotel, welcome party, social dinner. For the participation, please send a CV to Fabio Remondino – remondino – before June 5th, 2015. The max number of participants is 24. The participant selection will be done according to the CV and order of arrival of the request.

URL: http://paestum.fbk.eu/node/14

Immersive Humanities

Conference

I am writing a book proposal for an academic press, (which I hope to complete by end of June), on Immersive Humanities (theories techniques and issues in Virtual Reality Virtual Worlds and Game Design that can or will apply to Digital Humanities research and teaching, and vice versa).
A very schematic structure so far is:

  1. Introduction
  2. Definitions of Immersion, Immersivity and Presence
  3. Historical Survey of Immersive Humanities Projects and Case Studies
  4. Tools Techniques Platforms and Theories of Immersive Environments
  5. Methodologies and Evaluation
  6. Conclusion

The four main chapters should be 8,000-10,000 words each.
Any major related themes I have missed? Other ideas?
What is the best target audience to aim for, final year undergraduates, postgraduates, or colleagues?

Some key references I will need to consider, contrast with:

DiGRA 2015 in Germany 14-17 May 2015

3D and game editors, Conference, heritage, , , , ,

Looking forward to returning even if briefly to Europe, I will be presenting the below paper (which I just sent off, hopefully complete) for the proceedings of the 8th international conference of the Digital Games Research Association taking place May 14th-17th at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Title: Role-playing and Rituals For Heritage-Oriented Games Abstract: Roles and rituals are essential for creating, situating and maintaining cultural practices. Computer Role-Playing games (CRPGs) and virtual online worlds that appear to simulate different cultures are well known and highly popular. So it might appear that the roles and rituals of traditional cultures are easily ported to computer games. However, I contend that the meaning behind worlds, rituals and roles are not fully explored in these digital games and virtual worlds and that more work needs to be done to create more moving rituals, role enrichment and worldfulness. I will provide examples from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda, 2006, 2011) to reveal some of the difficulties in creating digitally simulated social and cultural worlds, but I will also suggest some design ideas that could improve them in terms of cultural presence and social presence.

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).

Uploaded some older papers: Virtual Places, and The Limits of Realism

Architecture, virtual heritage, , ,

Virtual Places
Article. From: Encyclopedia of virtual communities and technologies, 2006, Idea Group Reference

Communities identify and are identified by not just the clothes they wear or by the language they speak, or even by the way they greet each other. Communities are often identified by where their activities take place, how they use spaces to construct meanings, and the traces left by their social interactions. These “trigger” regions are thus not just points in space; they are also landmarks, havens, homes, ruins, or hells. Communities, then, are identified and identify with or against, not just space but place. For places do not just organize space; they orient,
identity, and animate the bodies, minds, and feelings of both inhabitants and visitors.

The Limits of Realism in Architectural Visualisation
Conference paper.
FOR: LIMITS XXIst annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand Melbourne, Australia (SAHANZ) 26–29 September, 2004 website: http://sahanz04.tce.rmit.edu.au/
ABSTRACT
In March 2004 the eminent scholar Professor Marco Frascari presented an informal seminar at the University of Melbourne in which he argued computer reconstructions of architecture were far too exact and thus too limited in conveying the mood and atmosphere of architecture. With all due respect to Professor Frascari, this paper will argue the converse: that recent developments in interactive technology offer new and exciting ways of conveying ‘lived’ and experientially deepened notions of architectural placemaking. Using current research findings in virtual presence studies, archaeological theory and site reports, as well as usability evaluations; this paper will examine the above issues in relation to a recently created and evaluated virtual reconstruction of a Mesoamerican cityLIMITS XXIst annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand Melbourne, Australia (SAHANZ) 26–29 September, 2004

A fragmented manifesto on (meta) game theory

game, , ,

Good critical gaming theory is

  • Falsifiable and verifiable
  • Extensible and scalable
  • Reconfigurable
  • Helps design and prediction
  • Does not confuse prescription with description
  • Is useful (even if wrong) for finding new methods and questions
  • Understands distinction between method and methodology
  • Is clear and honest about its central aims objectives tasks targets/milestones
  • Attempts for validity and soundness of purpose of argument
  • Bridges (or at least offers something of value to) academia, the profession and the public/fans

I will have to justify (and provide examples for) each of these propositions..