Category Archives: visualisation

Invited Talk in Austria (virtually)

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

I’m giving a virtual lecture for DHGraz Wednesday 6 October 2021 (tomorrow): “We’re delighted to welcome @nzerik this Wednesday, who will open our Lunchtime Lecture series with an online talk on “Games as Serious Visualisation Tools For Digital Humanities, Cultural Heritage and Immersive Literacy”
More info: https://informationsmodellierung.uni-graz.at/de/neuigkeiten/detail/article/online-lunchtime-lecture-30.-juni-2021-1200-uhr/

Not recorded but slides are here https://www.slideshare.net/nzerik/games-xr-dhgraz-talk-06102021

update: ‘Rethinking Virtual Places’ Proof Approved

Academic, Announcements, archaeology, Architecture, augmented reality, Book, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, publication, Virtual Reality, visualisation, , , ,

I mentioned in the below post that I was on the home stretch with this book (in the Indiana University Press Spatial Humanities series), final proof was approved by me this week. I also noticed it was over 107,000 words. Thanks to Dean and Professor Marc Aurel Schnabel for the comments on the back.

“An essential contribution to a very current topic.” —Marc Aurel Schnabel, Victoria University of Wellington

If anyone wishes to review or consider ‘Rethinking Virtual Places‘ for courses please contact Indiana University Press or email me.

Final touches to next book

Virtual Heritage: A Guide

3D and game editors, Academic, Announcements, archaeology, augmented reality, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, Open Access, publication, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, , , , , , , , ,

“Virtual Heritage: A Guide” is published and open access!

Why did we write it? For all those interested in an introduction to virtual heritage, but facing steep purchase costs for academic books, so it is especially suitable for university undergraduate courses. Download what you need, for free.

And given it was written from go to whoa in less than a year and to a tight word limit, I am very grateful to the authors for their time…

Cite: Champion, E. M. (ed.) 2021. Virtual Heritage: A Guide. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://lnkd.in/gNkNWiB. License: CC-BY-NC.

digital games and intangible heritage

3D and game editors, Academic, archaeology, Architecture, digital heritage, game, heritage, serious games, UNESCO Chair, virtual heritage, visualisation

If you have or know of digital games that helped in the “regeneration” of intangible heritage, as well as related organizations, projects and websites or organizations, please let me know…I have been asked to present on this topic on Monday 5 July to overseas gaming companies and academics..

Here was my initial beginning list (woefully incomplete but will soon expand):

Heritage organisations

  • UNESCO Chairs … I am investigating, most lists of Chairs and Networks are a little out of date and a few seem to have changed or expanded their remit.
  • Historic Urban Landscapes [UNESCO-associated]-none I know of use digital games but I think that would be useful…
  • ICOMOS none I know of but it is a huge association.
  • Europeana/CARARE/ARIADNE are more into digital archives/preservation?

Game organisations

Universities Research or Courses

Games

I am going to include Never Alone. There are at least 6-12 in my head that I need to review to see if they really were “regenerating” intangible heritage..

#CFP Web3D

3D and game editors, Academic, Announcements, cfp, Conference, Virtual Reality, visualisation

CFP Web3D: “A Shared 3D Workspace” Virtual Conference (web3d.siggraph.org)

The goal of the conference is to share innovative and creative ideas about web-based interactive 3D applications, including content creation, 3D printing, fabrication, publishing technologies, web tools, annotation, VR/AR, rendering, and many others. This year the conference will be held in full virtual mode, next November 8-12, 2021. 

Here the important dates:

July 30 submission deadline
August 2 bidding deadline 
August 31 reviews assignment
September 1 reviews due

Click to access Web3D_2021_Call_For_Papers.pdf

https://web3d.siggraph.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Web3D_2021_Call_For_Papers.pdf

“Rethinking Virtual Places” can be ordered in September

Academic, Announcements, archaeology, Architecture, augmented reality, Book, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, publication, serious games, Virtual Reality, visualisation, , ,

Out in November, purchasable in September. Contact IUP for reviewer copies “Rethinking Virtual Places” (in the IUP Spatial Humanities series) https://iupress.org/9780253058355/rethinking-virtual-places

update: “Virtual Heritage: A Guide”

3D and game editors, Academic, Announcements, archaeology, augmented reality, Book, book chapter, digital heritage, game, heritage, infrastructure, Open Access, publication, UNESCO Chair, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation,

Dear Rosa and Andrea (and Michael)

Thanks to the colleagues and co-authors who helped inspired me to edit a concise book for students that will be open access (i.e. free PDF downloads).

Virtual Heritage: A Guide will be available on Thursday 22 July 2021 at https://www.ubiquitypress.com

I’d appreciate any feedback from staff or students for future editions.

ISMAR workshop MrICHE

archaeology, augmented reality, Conference, digital heritage, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, workshop, , ,

#CFP I was invited onto the program committee for IEEE International Workshop on “Mixed Reality Implications on Cultural Heritage Experience (MrICHE)”.

The workshop will be held in conjunction with the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2021, https://ismar21.org), 4-8 October 2021, Bari, Italy.

Submit: 4-8 page papers by 23 June! IEEE format. https://fcrlab.unime.it/calls/mriche2021 #ismar #culturalheritage #mixedreality #augmentedreality

3D and game editors, Academic, Architecture, board game, Conference, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, publication, virtual heritage, visualisation, workshop, , , , ,

“Workshopping Board Games for Space, Place, and Culture” revised chapter, authored with Juan Hiriart, for “Playing Place” (edited by Medina Lasansky and Chad Randl, MIT Press) sent off today. Each chapter has a 1000 word limit, I believe. Took me some time to trim this! Great to work with Juan on a chapter, I think our different strengths blend well. When (or if?) the book appears on MIT Press I will add another post, the list of authors and topics looks really good, possibly essential reading if you are into boardgames, or are not, but want to know why so many people are …

Workshopping Board Games for Space, Place, and Culture

Conveying built heritage values and historical knowledge through boardgame design may seem an odd decision. Communicating space, place, and culture through play is a challenge let alone through a medium inherently incapable of evoking the direct experience of inhabitation and architecture as a spatial art. Boardgames are engaging, social, quick to make, and fast to learn, intuitive or nuanced. From the complex to the spontaneous, boardgames can be effective, visceral tools for cultural immersion, challenging cultural assumptions and preconceptions, encouraging discussion and collaboration between players, provoking insight and enjoyment with simple props or intricate rules.

The following explains our experience hosting participative design workshops with historians, archaeologists, and heritage professionals. In small groups of three to four people, participants determine the design decisions, discussing and solving problems that often arise in an iterative process where historical research, game design, and play-testing both blend and butt heads.

update on immersive literacy

augmented reality, Virtual Reality, visualisation

I received a distinction on my essay so I will extend it back to its draft length and send that either to a journal or add it to my 2022 book proposal on theoretical VR. My next essay to write is on hacking in VR and some of the issues on authenticity, reality, and linking to / critiquing Jean Baudrillard’s dystopic warnings (which I read 30 years ago, amazing to think how relevant they still are, with some caveats).

But I also have some book proofing sessions to undergo.

Ideally, all my major writing will be finished this week as next week, lockdown lifts pending, I hope to travel (sadly, not for a holiday).

From Digital Literacy to Immersive Literacy: Learning Experiences with XR Frameworks For Serious Game Workshops

3D and game editors, augmented reality, Digital Humanities, Virtual Reality, visualisation

The below is an essay for a digital learning futures class. If the paper receives good feedback and interest I may try to develop it for a journal (or subsection of a book I am planning on critical virtual reality).

Abstract

This essay suggests a modification of theoretical digital literacy frameworks to ensure they are suitable for designing educational (serious) games for the GLAM sector (using libraries as my initial focus). While not a librarian, I train people to create game prototypes for more engaging ways of communicating history, heritage, and digital collections (often found in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums-the GLAM sector).

I wish to develop a framework for game design to better assess what is learnt by end-users (game prototype participants) and game prototype designers (in this case, librarians). My concept of immersive digital literacies is discussed and applied to a review of software tools for the development of serious game prototypes.

Paper and Proceedings Published

Academic, Announcements, infrastructure, Journal, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation

EuroMed2020 conference proceedings have been published by Springer.

Ioannides, M., Fink, E., Cantoni, L., Champion, E. (Eds.). Digital Heritage. Progress in Cultural Heritage: Documentation, Preservation, and Protection. 8th International Conference, EuroMed 2020, Virtual Event, November 2–5, 2020, Revised Selected Papers. Springer.

Our paper: Champion, E., Kerr, R., McMeekin, D., & Rahaman, H. (2020, 29 October-3 November). Time-Layered Gamic Interaction with a Virtual Museum Template. Paper presented at the EuroMed 2020 Conference, Nicosia, Cyprus (online).

Virtual Archaeology Review’s Paper of the Year

3D and game editors, Academic, Announcements, archaeology, digital heritage, heritage, infrastructure, Journal, Open Access, publication, respositories, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation

Virtual Archaeology Review declared my and Dr Rahaman’s 2020 paper “Survey of #3D digital heritage repositories and platforms” their paper of the year.

https://twitter.com/VARjournal/status/1348357190801780738

Audio-augmented arboreality: wildflowers and language

Announcements, augmented reality, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, visualisation,

New article

Hafizur Rahaman, Michelle Johnston & Erik Champion (2021). Audio-augmented arboreality: wildflowers and language, Digital Creativity, DOI: 10.1080/14626268.2020.1868536 free for first 50 people:

Before colonization, there were over 250 languages spoken in Australia. Today only thirteen Indigenous languages are still being taught to children). Language has an important part to play in cultural maintenance and ‘closing the gap’ in terms of First Peoples’ cultural heritage, identity, and sense of belonging. In this work, we aim to develop an engaging and easy way to teach and learn the local Indigenous names of wildflowers using a mobile device. This paper presents the development of a phone application that runs on a local machine, recognizes local wildflowers through its camera, and plays associated sounds and displays associated text in the Noongar language. The prototype mobile application has been developed with MobileNets model on the TensorFlow platform. The dataset is derived from Google searches, while the sound files are generated from label text by running an apple script. UI and interactivity have been developed by using Vuforia and the Unity game engine. Finally, the Android Studio is used to deploy the app. At this point in time, the prototype can only recognize ten local flowers, with 85%∼99% of accuracy. We are working with a larger dataset towards developing the full application.

New book cover

3D and game editors, Academic, Announcements, archaeology, Architecture, augmented reality, Book, design, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, publication, serious games, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation

Was one of two book covers possible and I think due to some email confusion they didn’t choose my preferred cover but I really appreciate permission by Dr Anthony Masinton to use his rendered image. The publisher of Rethinking Virtual Places will be Indiana University Press, via their Spatial Humanities Series.

Assassin’s Creed in the Classroom

3D and game editors, Academic, Book, book chapter, game, serious games, visualisation, ,

Have sent out a proposal to people who use the above game series in the classroom and/or write about it. Have spoken to Ubisoft about this so possibly can work with historians and archaeologists working with Ubisoft as well.

Authors: Will be an ongoing negotiation process, from abstract/title to publisher and external reviews (depending on the publisher).

Audience: Would be useful if it can be used in a classroom (perhaps university-level undergraduate) but with some thoughtful articles.

Content: How Assassin’s Creed evolved in terms of history and simulation, how it is seen (inside and outside Ubisoft) in terms of its potential in education, heritage and tourism. Indeed a book I am co-editing has a chapter on Assassin’s Creed and screen tourism and I have been tasked to write it! But for this project, I would be very happy to get a conversation going between game designers, consultants, historians, academics and game design teachers.

Focus: How could Assassin’s Creed change or create more flexibility for use and reuse and input from these sectors? How do the scholars and designers see new ways of using games to learn about aspects of history that would be of interest to Ubisoft in particular and game companies in general?

Language: I think I should find a co-editor and possibly French-speaking, would it make sense to have French language chapters and or a French version?

Publisher: I don’t have funds for open access publisher fees but ideally it would be (at least in part) free on the web so it could easily be picked up by classrooms. Update: have received some interest already.

Timing: We are looking at a mid to late 2021 final submission by authors so the book might have to appear in 2022.

virtual museum kitset/template paper

Academic, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, serious games, visualisation,

My slides for the below EuroMed2020 paper presentation yesterday are on slideshare. We were told the publications will be available at latest in January 2021.

Time-Layered Gamic Interaction with a Virtual Museum Template

Erik Champion, Rebecca Kerr, Hafizur Rahaman and David McMeekin

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.

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.

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