Category Archives: Academic

Art History, Heritage Games, and Virtual Reality chapter

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

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

To cite the article (in APA format):

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

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

Preprint chapter:

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

Rethinking Virtual Places

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

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

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

Chapter titles are:

1 A Potted History of Virtual Reality
2 Dead, Dying, Failed Worlds
3 Architecture: Places Without People
4 Theories of Place & Cyberspace
5 Rats & Goosebumps-Mind, Body & Embodiment
6 Games are not Interactive Places
7 Do Serious Gamers Learn From Place?
8 Cultural Places
9 Evaluating Sense of Place, Virtual Places & Virtual Worlds
10 Place-Making Interfaces & Platforms
11 Conclusion

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

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

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

Cultural Heritage Infrastructures in Digital Humanities (2017) is free to access for one week, get free access to the book (via this link) for 7 days.

After this 7-day period, you can buy a copy for £10/$15!

You can also visit the official Routledge History, Heritage Studies etc. Twitter page

and thanks to Routledge editor Heidi Lowther.

free Critical Gaming eBook for 7 days

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

Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage  (2015 edition) is in a Routledge campaign for May (2020), which allows anyone to register and get free access to the book (via this link) for 7 days. After this 7-day period, they can buy a copy for £10/$15!  *Trust me this is a lot cheaper than before!

Also check out the official Routledge History, Heritage Studies etc. Twitter page

Is there a catch? I honestly don’t know but don’t think so!

Virtual Heritage Book Proposal Reviewers

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

Calls for articles in 2020

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

ETC press: Well Played

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

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

Change over time Journal

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

MIT Presence

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

JOCCH

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

World History Connected

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

 

 

 

 

Changing review affiliations

Journal

Looking at my resume at long last I noticed I am so much busier for some journals than for others and review for others-quite a lot! Time to trim, scale down and maybe talk to a new journal. Ideas are only fresh for so long. I also notice most of the journals are not digital heritage-related and quite a few are not serious games-related!

In the last year or so have been asked to (blind) review for Computers & Graphics, Entertainment Computing, Nature, Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (and book proposals for Routledge, MIT, Oxford..) and I am sure I missed quite a few..

Hmm, quite a few are Elsevier journals..hmm..

Program Committees, Conference Reviews & Journal Boards

Editorial Board member of

  1. The Journal of Computing Applications in Archaeology (I finish my term this month)
  2. Digital Creativity (been a reviewer for a decade I think? Review a lot for them)
  3. Games & Culture (not sure what happened there)
  4. Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds (still review occasionally for them)
  5. The Journal of Interactive Humanities (not sure what happened there)
  6. Studies in the Digital Humanities (not sure what happened there)
  7. Journal of Media Critiques (not sure what happened there, they are busy enough, probably don’t need me
  8. Editorial board member of new Explorations in Heritage Studies book series, Berghahn Books. URL: http://www.berghahnbooks.com/series.php?pg=expl_heri (but never asked to review books. Time to leave officially?)
  9. Invited Scientific Committee member Journal of Virtual Reality and Broadcasting (JVRB) (nice people, but not asked to review many articles).

WAS

  • Loading editorial member (I recommend them, nice group of people)
  • 2011-2018 Editorial board member, International Journal of People-Oriented Programming.
  • International Journal of Architectural Computing (IJAC) editorial board for 2009-2014.
  • Invited Scientific Committee of Virtual Heritage Network: Ireland.
  • Invited Foundation member, China-Australia Writing Centre, Curtin University.
  • Co-editor of special issue (“Games and Virtual Worlds for History and Heritage”) for Games and Culture, 2011.
  • EU COST trans-domain application reviewer (2013-2015).
  • Invited editor-in-chief of the 2010 CAADRIA special issue, International Journal of Architectural Computing (IJAC).
  • Special Issue editor or co-editor of Techné: Real and Virtual Places, International Journal of Heritage Studies: Sense(s) of Place, Leonardo: Creative Data.
  • Book/Book Chapter Reviewer: Oxford, Routledge, Bloomsbury, MIT Press, UNPE, and Springer.
  • Past Book Review Co-editor of the International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations (IJGCMS).

Member of

  1. CIC-The Curtin Institute for Computation, Programme Leader of Visualisation, http://computation.curtin.edu.au/ and on the Steering Committee. [Will leave in September]
  2. ICOMOS-International Council on Monuments and Sites (New Zealand branch) and Was ICIP (ICOMOS International Committee on Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites) member, think they left me off the list. Time to leave ICOMOS?
  3. VSMM-On the Board of Directors, Virtual Systems and Multimedia Society (http://vsmm.org/about/leadership/).
  4. Explore-AT   International Steering Committee. ExploreAT! Exploring Austria’s culture through the language glass is a 751,000€ European research project. (1.4.2015-31.3.2019). Hmm, finished!
  5. ARC Indigenous Discovery Advisory Group member: https://news.curtin.edu.au/media-releases/new-biodiversity-research-project-aims-to-heal-land-and-people/ Healing Land, Healing People: Novel Nyungar Perspectives, a 5 year project led by Mr Darryl Kickett (2020-2025).
  6. 2020 European Architectural History Network member.
  7. Past (invited) member of Virtual Heritage Network’s Scientific committee, Ireland (http://www.vhnireland.org/).
  8. Ex-AAPI Australia Asia Pacific Institute, Curtin University (2014-2018, the year of its closure).
  9. Ex ACM member.

Past history (ongoing and one-off reviews)

2021     Invited committee member, Australian Museums & Galleries Association (AMaGA) National Conference (Perth).

2020     Reviewed for Digital Humanities 2020, CAA2020. Reviewer for Journal of Aesthetics and Culture and Computers & Graphics Journal.

2019     Invited reviewer: ISEA-International Symposium on Electronic Art (South Korea); CAA (Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology) (Krakow); CAADRIA 2019 (New Zealand); ILRN -Immersive Learning Research Network (London); ACM SIGGRAPH International Conference on Virtual Reality Continuum and Its Applications in Industry (VRCAI 2019); International Conference on Entertainment Computing and Joint Conference on Serious Games; The Fourth International Conference on Economic and Business Management (FEBM2019) (China), http://www.febm.org/.
Invited journal article reviewer for International Journal of Heritage Studies; invited external reviewer for New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF), Canada; reviewed Australian Research Council (ARC) applications.

2018     Invited reviewer: Digital Heritage 2018 (San Francisco), ICADL-International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries (Hamilton), ISEA-International Symposium on Electronic Art (Durban), Web3D ’18 (Poznań), eHeritage (Brasov). Invited reviewer: Journal of Cultural Heritage, Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage.

2017     Invited reviewer for Journal of Archaeological Science. Invited respondent for Current Anthropology (“3D Virtual Replicas and Simulations of the Past: ‘Real’ or ‘Fake’ Representations?” by Fabrizio Galeazzi). Reviewer for DiGRA2017 (Melbourne).
Local Programme Committee co-chair www2017 (Perth), ISEA 2017 (Columbia), CAA2017 (Atlanta) track director, CAADRIA (China), eCAADE2017 (Rome), web3D 2017 tutorials co-chair conference (Brisbane), iLRN2017 (Coimbra), local organizing committee co-Chair, www2017 (Perth), ILRN 2017, Portugal.

2016     ILRN reviewer. Board of Reviewers for CAA (Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology). CAADRIA 2016 reviewer. Programme Committee and Local Organizing Committee for JCSG 2016: Joint Conference on Serious Games 2016, Brisbane 26-27 September 2016. Reviewer: DiGRA 2016. Invited Committee member, CAADRIA 2016 Melbourne, Web3D 2016 Los Angeles, USA and TEEM 2016, Salamanca Spain (also as Scientific Committee member).

Invited book submission reviewer, University Press of New England (UNPE). JCSG 2016 (7th Serious Games Development & Applications (SGDA 2016) and 6th GameDays 2016) conference, Brisbane.

2015     Board of Reviewers for CAA. Reviewed for Slactions 2015, ILRN 2015 International Co-Chair Asia Pacific. ECGBL2015. Invited committee member, VIRTUAL ARCHAEOLOGY: Museums & Cultural Tourism (VAMCT: Delphi, Greece) and Digital Heritage 2015 (Granada, Spain), Electronic Visualisation and the Arts Australasia 2015 (EVAA 2016: Canberra, Australia), and CHINZ2015: New Zealand Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (Waikato, NZ), Virtual Heritage Network (VHN) Ireland conference.

2014     On editorial board of DiRT (Digital Research Tools) wiki: http://dirt.projectbamboo.org/about.
Invited reviewer for Journal of Cultural Heritage and Computing, ECGBL 2014, CHi2014, ICEC Entertainment Computing 2014, and CAADRIA 2014 Postgraduate Committee. On the committee of Digital Humanities Australia 2014. Invited reviewer for Architectural Design Research Symposium, 20-21 November 2014, Venice. http://www.victoria.ac.nz/fad/research/architectural-research-through-design

2013     Invited conference reviewer for ACM CHI2013: Changing Perspectives, CAADRIA 2013 (and proceedings), ACM Creativity and Cognition 2013 and Slactions 2013. Book proposal reviewer for Routledge. Invited book reviewer for Understanding Machinima (MIT Press), and Heritage and Society (journal).

2012     Invited conference reviewer for the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2012). Invited by the ICOMOS ICIP chair onto the Program Committee of High-Tech Heritage: How Are Digital Technologies Changing Our Views of the Past? Conference, May 2-4, 2012 Amherst, MA USA. (http://www.umass.edu/chs/news/conference2012.html). Invited conference reviewer for Digital Humanities 2012 and IHCI 2012(declined), CAADRIA 2012. Invited conference reviewer for CHINZ 2012, VSMM2012, OZCHi2012, Creativity & Cognition 2012.

2011     Program committee member, 39th Annual Conference of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA2011), Beijing, and CAAD Futures 2011, Belgium, Annual ACM SIGCHI NZ Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (CHINZ 2011), Waikato NZ, Creativity and Cognition 2011 (CC2011), United States, IADIS Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction 2011 (IHCI 2011), Rome.

Reviewer: ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI2011, Vancouver, Canada.

Invited book chapter reviewer for Alkhalifa, Eshaa and Gaid, Khulood, (Eds.). Cognitively Informed Interfaces, IGI Global Publishers, 2012.

Program committee member, IADIS Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction 2011.

2010     Invited onto the editorial board of International Journal of People-Oriented Programming.
Co-Programme chair of Computer Human-Interaction New Zealand (CHINZ 2010) in Auckland. Programme Chair Interactive Entertainment 2010 (ie2010), Wellington. Invited Scientific Committee member, 11th VAST International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, Paris, and European Computer Game-Based Learning (ECGBL 2010), Copenhagen and Digital Media and its Applications in Cultural Heritage 2010 (DMACH), Jordan. Committee member, Interactive Entertainment 2010 (ie2010), New Zealand. Invited paper reviewer, special issue “Graphics for Cultural Heritage”, Computers & Graphics (Elsevier).

2009     Invited to be editor of special issue of International Journal of Architectural Computing (IJAC). Invited as Committee reviewer for Virtual Systems and Multimedia (VSMM 2009), Vienna and for European Computer Game-Based Learning (ECGBL 2009), Austria. Invited Programme Committee and Conference Reviewer, (CAADRIA 2009), Taiwan. Invited onto Scientific Committee, International Journal of Virtual Reality and Broadcasting. Committee member, 10th VAST International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archeology and Cultural Heritage, Malta.

2008     Invited onto the Best Presentation Award Committee at CAADRIA 2008 in Chiang Mai. Invited onto the editorial board of Games & Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media (Sage Journal) and International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations. Invited technical committee member for Digital Media and its Applications in Cultural Heritage 2008 (DMACH), Jordan; for Interactive Entertainment 2008 (IE2008), Brisbane; and committee member, Australasian Computer-Human Interaction Conference 2008 (OZCHI), Townsville. Conference paper reviewer, ECGBL 2008.

2007     Invited co-editor for Leonardo Special Issue, MIT Press, and for The International Journal of Heritage Studies. Special issue editor of Techné (2007). On the editorial board of Loading…: The Journal of the Canadian Games Studies Association. Reviewer for The Journal of Virtual Reality and Broadcasting (JVRB), as well as Digital Humanities Quarterly. Invited book proposal reviewer for Routledge. Invited program committee member for OZCHI 2007 Adelaide, Creativity and Cognition 2007 Washington DC, DIMEA 2007 Perth, VSMM 2007 Sydney, Interactive Entertainment (IE2007) Melbourne. Program Committee member, ECGBL 2007: The European Conference on Games Based Learning, Scotland. Invited paper reviewer for DiGRA Situated Play conference, (Digital Games Research Association) Japan, and INTERACT 2007 Conference-Socially Responsible Interaction, Brazil.

2006     Invited panellist for Gaming and Education panel, Greater Brisbane Chapter, IGDA, International Game Developers Association, Sunday, 5 November 2006, http://www.igda.org/brisbane/education_report.html Invited program committee member /reviewer for Digital Interactive Media Entertainment & Arts (DIME 2006) Thailand, OzCHI2006 Sydney; VSMM 2006 China; Interactive Entertainment 2006, New Media and Heritage conference 2006 Hong Kong, SAHANZ 2006, Perth. Paper reviewer for Virtual Reality Journal (Springer). Invited external reviewer for Master’s Thesis examination, Creative Arts, RMIT.

2005     Invited Panellist for VSMM 2005. Journal and chapter reviewer for Enhancing Learning Through Technology (2006), Encyclopedia of Virtual Communities and Technologies (2005), Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage (2007). Invited program committee member for International Conference on Virtual Storytelling 2005 conference, France; OzChi2005 conference, Canberra, Interaction Entertainment 2005 Conference, UTS, Sydney. Programme Committee member VSMM2005, Belgium.

Open Access publications

Academic, Announcements, Digital Humanities, Open Access, Proceedings, publication, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, ,

I am often asked to mail commercial books, sorry I normally have to refuse. However, there are recent-ish publications that are open access. allowed via institutional repositories or were free to download, that I have written down here:

Open access or available articles, chapters, etc

Books

  1. Champion, E. (2012). (). Game Mods: Design, Theory and Criticism, Pittsburgh: Entertainment Technology Center Press. 978-1-300-54061-8. URL: http://www.etc.cmu.edu/etcpress/content/game-mods

Book Chapters

  1. Champion, E. (2020). Games People Dig: Are They Archaeological Experiences, Systems, or Arguments? In S. Hageneuer (Ed.), Communicating the Past in the Digital Age: Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Methods in Teaching and Learning in Archaeology (12-13 October 2018) (pp. 13-25). London: Ubiquity. https://www.ubiquitypress.com/site/chapters/10.5334/bch.b/
  2. Champion, E. (2019). From Historical Models to Virtual Heritage Simulations. In P. Kuroczyński, M. Pfarr-Harfst, & S. Münster (Eds.), Der Modelle Tugend 2.0 Digitale 3D-Rekonstruktion als virtueller Raum der architekturhistorischen Forschung Computing in Art and Architecture (pp. 337-351). Heidelberg, Germany: arthistoricum.net. https://doi.org/10.11588/arthistoricum.515
  3. Champion, E. (2017). “Single White Looter: Have Whip, Will Travel” in Angus A.A. Mol; Csilla E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke; Krijn H.J. Boom; Aris Politopoulos, (Eds.)., The Interactive Past: Archaeology, Heritage, and Video Games, Sidestone Press, pp.107-122. URL: http://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/the-interactive-past-50944.html ISBN: 9789088904370.

Journal articles

  1. Rahaman, H., & Champion, E. (2019). To 3D or Not 3D: Choosing a Photogrammetry Workflow for Cultural Heritage Groups. Heritage, 2(3), 1835-1851. Retrieved from https://www.mdpi.com/2571-9408/2/3/112
  2. Champion, E., & Rahaman, H. (2019). 3D Digital Heritage Models as Sustainable Scholarly Resources, Sustainability: Natural Sciences in Archaeology & Cultural Heritage, 11(8). MDPI. Editor, Ioannis Liritzis. Open Access. Invited article. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/8/2425
  3. Nishanbaev, I., Champion, E., & McMeekin, D. A. (2019). A Survey of Geospatial Semantic Web for Cultural Heritage. Heritage, 2(2), 1471-1498. https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage2020093
  4. Bekele, M., & Champion, E. (2019). A Comparison of Immersive Realities and Interaction Methods: Cultural Learning in Virtual Heritage. Frontiers in Robotics and AI | Virtual Environments: Emergent Technologies for Cultural Heritage and Tourism Innovation. doi:10.3389/frobt.2019.00091
  5. Champion, E. (2017). Bringing Your A-Game to Digital Archaeology: Issues with Serious Games and Virtual Heritage and What We Can Do About It. SAA Archaeological Record: Forum on Digital Games & Archaeology, 17 No.2 (special section: Video Games and Archaeology: part two issue), pp. 24-27. March issue. URL: http://www.saa.org/Portals/0/Record_March_2017.pdf
  6. Champion, E. (2016). A 3D PEDAGOGICAL HERITAGE TOOL USING GAME TECHNOLOGY. International Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology & Archaeometry, (special issue, selection of VAMCT2015 conference papers). International Journal MAA (ISI Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Thomson Reuters, USA; Scopus) Vol.16, No.5, pp. 63-72.URL: http://maajournal.com/Issues2016e.php DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.204967
  7. Champion, E. (2016). Worldfulness, Role-enrichment & Moving Rituals: Design Ideas for CRPGs. Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association (ToDIGRA), Volume 2 Issue 3 (special issue, “Diversity of play: Games – Cultures – Identities” selected DiGRA2015 conference papers). URL: http://todigra.org/index.php/todigra/index
  8. Champion, E. M. (2016). Digital humanities is text heavy, visualization light, and simulation poor. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (DH2015 Special issue). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqw053 URL: http://dsh.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/11/07/llc.fqw053
  9. Champion, E. (2016). Entertaining the Similarities and Distinctions between Serious Games and Virtual Heritage Projects. Special Issue in the Journal of Entertainment Computing on the theme of Entertainment in Serious Games. Vol. 14, May: 67–74. Elsevier. Online. DOI: 1016/j.entcom.2015.11.003. PDF available at Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284930065_Entertaining_The_Similarities_And_Distinctions_Between_Serious_Games_and_Virtual_Heritage_Projects
  10. Champion, E. (2015). Defining Cultural Agents for Virtual Heritage Environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments-Special Issue on “Immersive and Living Virtual Heritage: Agents and Enhanced Environments,” Summer 2015, Vol. 24, No. 3: 179–186, MIT Press. URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/pres/24/3 PDF available at Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284930065_Entertaining_The_Similarities_And_Distinctions_Between_Serious_Games_and_Virtual_Heritage_Projects

Conference paper

  1. Champion, E. (2016). Worldfulness, Role-enrichment & Moving Rituals: Design Ideas for CRPGs. Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association (ToDIGRA), Volume 2 Issue 3 (special issue, “Diversity of play: Games – Cultures – Identities” selected DiGRA2015 conference papers). URL: http://todigra.org/index.php/todigra/index

 

 

 

New chapter: “Art History, Heritage Games, and Virtual Reality”

Announcements, Book, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, publication, virtual heritage, , , , ,

Traditionally, art history has been viewed as a concern about the context of creation, curation, critique, and classification of art, but its range and focus is seldom agreed on. A conventional view of art history may suggest that, as a field, it is dedicated to issues of classification and the development of related expertise in curation and critique. Yet, if we follow the arguments of the nineteenth-century philosopher Konrad Fiedler, 1 knowledge of historical form does not necessarily entail a knowledge of art, while knowledge of the history of art does not necessarily give one an understanding of art objects themselves, the material and symbolic qualities of an object of art, or deeper questions relating to the ontology of art.

update: we are allowed to upload author preproofs of our chapter and given the book is 524 pages, 34 authors and $319.20 Australian dollars in hardback format, that should make it more accessible. I will provide a link here when accepted at Curtin research espace.

 

Notes from DH2015 presentation

3D and game editors, Academic, Digital Humanities, Proceedings, publication, respositories, , ,

Infrastructure Requirements For A World Heritage Archival Infrastructure

Conference: DH2015 UWS Sydney

Here are notes from a short talk at Digital Humanities 2015 conference, Sydney. Never published. Writing a new paper on digital and virtual heritage infrastructures at the moment. So much of the below to update!

Abstract

  • This short presentation describes a project to survey, collate and develop tools for heritage sites and related built environments, focusing initially on Australia
  • Consolidate and disseminate 3D models and virtual environments of world heritage sites
  • Host virtual heritage examples, tutorials, tools and technologies involving community involvement and groups in policy formulation (plus PhDs and postdocs)
  • Evaluation and further application of 3D digital environments and digital models for classroom use and general visualisation projects

Digital heritage disappearing faster than the real heritage

  • “In the very near future some critical issues will need to be addressed; increased accessibility to (and sharing of) heritage data, consistent interface design for widespread public use and re-­‐presentations of work, the formalization of a digital heritage database, establishment of a global infrastructure, institutionalized, archival standards for digital heritage and most importantly the on-­‐going curation, of work forward in time as the technology evolves so that our current digital heritage projects will not be lost to future generations. We cannot afford to have our digital heritage disappearing faster than the real heritage or the sites it seeks to ‘preserve’ otherwise all of our technological advances, creative interpretations, visualizations and efforts will have been in vain.” [Thwaites, Harold. “Digital Heritage: What Happens When We Digitize Everything?” Visual Heritage in the Digital Age. Springer London, 2013. 327-­‐348.]
  • Virtual heritage==oxymoron

Virtual Heritage Environments (VHEs) should help the public to

  • Create, share and discuss hypothetical or counterfactual places.
  • Meet virtually in these places with colleagues to discuss them.
  • Contextually understand limitations forced on their predecessors.
  • Develop experiential ways to entice a new audience to both admire the content and the methods of their area of research.

Examples:

  1. Renaissance-Blaxun..GONE! Except in paper: An Authoring Tool for Intelligent Educational Games, Massimo Zancanaro, Alessandro Cappelletti, Claudio Signorini, Carlo Strapparava, *Buy eBook. We discuss the need of an authoring environment clearly separated by the game in order to allow a technical staff without any skill in either AI or Computer Science to encode the “intelligence” of the game..”
  2. Ancient Rome now ancient history.. GONE, REMOVED!
    http://www.openculture.com/2009/03/ancient_rome_in_3d_on_google_earth.html  OR http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqMXIRwQniA
    Image: http://www.virtualtripping.com/google-earths-rome-reborn/  2008:“The original provider of the data asked that it be removed.”
  3. Beyond Time and Space..GONE! http://www.geek.com/news/expore-the-virtual-forbidden-city-courtesy-of-ibm-593731/ OR http://www.beyondspaceandtime.org/
    Long story short, according to Mure Dickie writing in the October 10, 2008 Financial Times: “A virtual Forbidden City offering the kind of immersive and interactive online experience pioneered by multiplayer role-playing games such as Second Life.”

Missing infrastructures

  • “Archaeology is messy, and it deals with three-dimensional artifacts in four-dimensional space-time. Its publications should reflect that.” Reference: Publishing Archaeological Linked Open Data: From Steampunk to Sustainability
  • “Museums must work together to combat cultural destruction”-Julian Raby
  • ‘You’re never going to be able to put the originals back – not only because they’ve been dispersed but because they would be prone to further destruction. We need to start thinking differently about how we activate the objects in our collections. We need to contextualise them, but also to think about how material that’s been dispersed can become a collective resource.;
    URL: http://www.apollo-magazine.com/museums-must-work-together-to-combat-cultural-destruction/#.VZPR9ZFOPao.twitter

The museums of tomorrow

https://twitter.com/plevy/status/433058523836985344/photo/1

Digital Preservation Does Not Mean Digital Safety

IBM estimates 90% of the world’s data has been created in last 2 years alone.. Minecraft Denmark created at 1:1 (1tb data,  4000 billion bricks) but blown up by US hackers, refer http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/07/07/reproducible-computing-rctrack-big-data-challenge/

Learning problems: how to

  • preserve and integrate 3D/multimedia
  • access and ownership of models, sites & paradata
  • lack of guidelines and shared procedures
  • no shared standardised evaluation data
  • audience issues

DH involves community and collaboration

Digital Humanities and Open Access: An Interview with Brett Bobley of the National Endowment for the Humanities

  • I’ve often said that digital humanities (or DH for short) is just an umbrella term – a term of convenience –that refers to a whole bunch of activities happening where the humanities interacts with technology.
  • Perhaps one skill that most (but not all) scholars may find helpful is the ability to work collaboratively. The vast majority of the DH grants we make are to teams of people from different disciplines working together.
  • ..we’re seeing more Internet-based humanities resources, databases, scholarly editions, and digital libraries that make incredible resources available for free.
  • http://www.righttoresearch.org/blog/digital-humanities-and-open-access-an-interview-wi.shtml

Bad citation rates

Check out the citation rates for different fields especially humanities at the bottom.

Recomposing Scholarship: The critical ingredients for a more inclusive scholarly communication system, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/10/25/gray-recomposing-scholarship/

  • Scholarship is not just about publication, but about interaction, interpretation, exchange, deliberation, discourse, debate, and controversy.
  • Plato writes of understanding as being a kind of flash that occurs between two people trying to come to terms with something from different viewpoints, a flash that arises from the friction of discussion and momentarily floods everything with light.
  • The value of a piece of scholarly text is in the interaction it has with its readers, in the sparks it generates, the friction and light that it produces – whether tomorrow, or in a hundred years time.

Research transcends disciplines, geography, institutions and stakeholders

  • Stakeholder Governed – a board-governed organisation drawn from stakeholder[s]…
  • Non-discriminatory membership
  • Transparent operations – achieving trust … best achieved through transparent processes and operations in general..
  • Cannot lobby – the community should collectively drive regulatory change.
  • Living will – publicly describe a plan addressing the condition under which an organisation would be wound down, how this would happen..
  • Formal incentives to fulfil mission & wind-down – infrastructures exist for a specific purpose… incentives to deliver on the mission and wind down.

Infra-infrastructure

Cultural heritage tools and archives 2013 workshop

Digital Heritage 2013

note: digital heritage 2015 Granada Spain 5-9 Oct

APA Bologna model

Blender (interactive in OpenSceneGraph)

International efforts

  • 3D Icons (3D HOP) in CIDOC CRM
  • Europeana
  • Smithsonian Institute X3D BETA
  • Fraunhoefer (X3DOM ON GITHUB)
  • Ariadne
  • CARARE
  • EU EPOCH
  • V-MUST
  • DARIAH, CLARIN, DASISH

2 year workshops-collab project

NEH idea: Hold two workshops a year apart, with technical support working on projects discussed in the interim..

UCLA VSim real-time exploration of highly detailed, 3D computer models

  • Supports interaction with content generated in free modeling software (e.g., SketchUp andBlender) using the common COLLADA format.
  • Mechanisms fto annotate their 3D work, embed & categorize comments about modeled environment
  • Mechanism for embedding spatially aware links to URLs and primary and secondary resources
  • Supporting the creation of academic arguments within the virtual environments either as a linear narrative or as a sequence of annotations encountered during user-driven exploration.
  • Providing a mechanism to package the 3D environment, associated narratives, and embedded resources into a single file for distribution
  • Accommodating citation of project content at model, narrative, node, & embedded resource levels.

Australia

  • Funding bodies (?)
  • Data Capture (CSIRO, iVEC)
  • Organisations (ICOMOS, CAA, ICOM, AIA)
  • Shareholders (education, spatial, tourism, GLAM)
  • Previous and current work (TROVE, HUNI, MUKURTU, Vanuatu Cultural Centre db, Canning Stock Route)

[Australia] historic collections could be lost to ‘digital dinosaurs’

  • Brunig: 5billion industry, 25% digitised, 629km of archives
  • MUST shift to open access models and greater collaboration with the public
  • Explore new approaches to copyright management that stimulate creativity and support creators
  • Build on aggregation initiatives such as the Atlas of Living Australia
  • Answer: exploiting the potential of Australia’s Academic and Research Network (AARNet) and the National Broadband Network (NBN) for collection and collaboration
  • http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Media/Australian-museums-risk-becoming-digital-dinosaurs.aspx OR 
https://theconversation.com/historic-collections-could-be-lost-to-digital-dinosaurs-31524

Australasian world heritage

  • 19 UNESCO WH listed sites, oldest rainforests + 1/3 world’s protected marine areas.
  • Iconic: Great Barrier Reef , Wet Tropics, Daintree Rainforest (QLD); Greater Blue Mountains (NSW); NTs’ Kakadu + Uluru/Kata Tjuta National Parks; WA’s Purnululu National Park (Kimberley) + Ningaloo coast.
  • 3 m hectare Tas. Wilderness World Heritage Area=7 criteria, most on planet.
  • Many remote: Australian Fossil Mammal Sites-Naracoorte SA and Riversleigh QLD.
  • Whole islands: QLD Fraser Island; entire Lord Howe Island Group NSW; and Macquarie, Heard and McDonald Islands in the sub-Antarctic region off the coast of Tasmania.
  • Harrowing histories: 11 World Heritage Australian Convict Sites.
  • Buildings: Sydney Opera House, Royal Exhibition Buildings + Carlton Gardens VIC.

Maintenance issues

  • Australia-short term funding
  • Conflicting or redundant organisations
  • Management model
  • Unforeseen costs
  • Data management planning
  • Compatibility and access issues
  • Interactive vs purely static archive formats

Options

  • Re-record everything (3D capture) accurately or agree on labelling.
  • Template or provide framework to support / record sites (from charter?)
  • Immersive explanation of every 3D site.
  • Policies to encourage use/re-use of 3D models.
  • Collection and dissemination network.
  • Store models, base components, paradata, or embed exes? See https://olivearchive.org/ “for long-term preservation of software, games, and other executable content.”

Incentives

  • provide showcases; critical mass for funding
  • use in teaching; wider range of audiences;
  • prizes awards or other recognition
  • long-term depository
  • citation and dynamic linking may be possible
  • Modification of CC for 3D models and sites
  • Changes to copyright system based on levels of detail or components

Format issues

  • Anyone who has worked in the field of computer graphics for even a short time knows about the bewildering array of storage formats for graphical objects. It seems as though every programmer creates a new file format for nearly every new programming project.
  • The way out of this morass of formats is to create a single file format that is both flexible enough to anticipate future needs and that is simple enough so as not to drive away potential users.
  • http://paulbourke.net/dataformats/ply/

References-software

Conclusion

 

PhD scholarship-University of York and Museum of London

Announcements, archaeology, digital heritage, PhD, virtual heritage

PhD Studentship: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD in Archaeology: Digital Recording, Fieldwork and Craft at Museum of London Archaeology

Anticipated start date for project: 1 October 2020

Closing date for applications: 1 May 2020 (was 1 April)

(interviews w/c 17 May)

Project description:

This Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) PhD, Digital Recording, Fieldwork and Craft at MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) investigates the impact of digital methods on the documentation, interpretation, publication, and dissemination in archaeological knowledge production. The proposed PhD will evaluate digital recording strategies for commercial archaeological units, using MOLA as a primary case study and with consultation from the Archaeology Data Service. Previous studies of digital recording have focussed on academic projects that do not have the scope, impact or challenges of the large, ongoing projects such as those performed regularly at MOLA. This research also examines the process of how archaeologists interpret remains, understand the past and how we may better transmit this understanding to others. Work in this area is emerging and applicable to broader questions of learning.

Potential research questions:

  • Do digital recording strategies impact the interpretation of archaeological remains?
  • Can digital recording be used to improve working conditions and enskilling of archaeologists?
  • How does data captured in the field feed into collaborative analysis projects that are already primarily digital?
  • How do digital recording methods in the field sit within the context of the wider use of digital data capture by finds and environmental specialists?
  • Can digital recording strategies enable broader public engagement, reuse or creative synergies outside of the traditional archaeological audience?

These are potential research questions for the student to undertake; the successful applicant will be able to shape the PhD with the support of the student’s supervisors.

This project will be jointly supervised by Dr Colleen Morgan (University of York) and Louise Fowler (MOLA). The student will be expected to spend time at both York and MOLA, as well as becoming part of the wider cohort of CDP funded students across the UK.

Funding notes: 

AHRC CDP doctoral training grants fund full-time studentships for 45 months (or part-time equivalent). The studentship has the possibility of being extended for an additional 3 months to provide professional development opportunities, or up to 3 months of funding may be used to pay for the costs the student might incur in taking up professional development opportunities.

The studentship covers  (i) a tax-free annual stipend at the standard Research Council rate (£15,285 for 2020-2021), (ii) an allowance of £1000/year to enable collaboration with the partner organisation (as they are based in London), (iii) an additional allowance of £1000/year for expenses incurred in undertaking research, and (iv) tuition fees at the UK/EU rate.

Entry requirements: Students with, or expecting to gain, at least an Upper Second Class Honours degree, or equivalent, are invited to apply. The interdisciplinary nature of this research project means that we welcome applications from students with backgrounds in any relevant subject that provides the necessary skills, knowledge and experience for the project, including archaeology, user-experience design and computing, anthropology, and digital sociology. We endeavour to be inclusive and flexible regarding applicants with caring obligations, disabilities and other considerations.

Nationality restriction: 

Candidates must have a relevant connection with the UK to qualify for a full AHRC award, i.e. they must have been ordinarily resident in the UK throughout the three-year period preceding the date of application, or have settled status in the UK. Non-EU candidates who have not been ordinarily resident in the UK for the last three years, or who were resident wholly or mainly for the purposes of education, are not eligible to apply.

Candidates from EU countries are eligible for full awards if they have been resident in the UK, for education or other purposes, for at least three years prior to the start of their programme. Candidates from EU countries who have not resided in the UK for three years prior to the start of their programme will normally be eligible for a fees-only award.

The University is committed to promoting a diverse and inclusive community – a place where we can all be ourselves and succeed on merit. We offer a range of family friendly, inclusive employment policies, flexible working arrangements, staff engagement forums, campus facilities and services to support staff from different backgrounds.

We particularly encourage applications from BAME, LGBTQ+ and disabled candidates, who are currently under-represented within the University of York in Archaeology.

How to apply:

Application is by covering letter, CV and online application form, and should be made through the University of York online application system.

Please read the ‘How to apply’ tab before submitting your application: http://www.york.ac.uk/archaeology/postgraduate-study/research-postgrads/application/

Further Enquiries

For further enquiries, please contact Colleen Morgan (colleen.morgan@york.ac.uk).

Writing Your Own Position Description

Academic, Digital Humanities, job, virtual heritage, visualisation

More than a decade ago I was asked to write my own (ideal) job description.

A lot has changed since then but it was an interesting exercise, and I recommend it. In a few weeks I might even write my own new ideal job description.

Position description for <insert University research centre here>

Job title: Director of Research into Virtual Places

Duties

  1. Help <the centre> structure research agenda and aims.
  2. Develop research resources; establish academic and professional terminology, evaluation strategies, rigorous research methods and innovative case studies that are likely to be of use to other researchers.
  3. Advise on, direct and augment the publication record and reputation for <the centre> as mentor for junior researchers and in own research field.
  4. Chair and advise <the centre> research committee on new and emerging research trends, events, gaps, and issues.
  5. Help mentor and coordinate (and in some cases, supervise), students who can combine innovative technological research with theoretically polished writing that reveal constructive but critical thinking.
  6. Develop some or all of the below research themes via collaboration and personal research.
  7. Help develop research-industry collaborations, and associated industry links (in digital media, tourism, digital entertainment, etc).

Address the Below Research Themes as A Researcher

  1. Virtual places, theory, definition, and design.
  2. Meaningful Interaction in virtual places (appropriate inbuilt evaluation, public and specialist annotation methods, serious gaming and instructional design issues of virtual places, natural mapping for thematic interfaces and peripherals to afford improved platial experiences).
  3. Presence (especially cultural presence) in virtual places: terminology and experimental validation (clarify the relationships between place, presence, and intentional/non-intentional interaction).
  4. Prototyping virtual places and environments: develop and evaluate new techniques and procedures.
  5. Research Methodologies for virtual places: internal and external, pre and post-experience, emic and etic methods and tools for virtual or otherwise digitally mediated places.

Expected <Research Centre> Outcomes

  1. A strong international academic profile through advising on, directing and augmenting the publication record and reputation for <the centre>.
  2. A strong web presence.
  3. A flourishing staff-student research culture.
  4. The research committee has been helped by the research director to create and maintain a lucid and coherent ethical clearance procedure for proposed experimental designs involving user testing and the general public.

Expected Technical Skills

  1. Some experience in digital media skills (including web design).
  2. 3D and related design skills in creating virtual places.
  3. Experience in creating or supervising prototypes.
  4. Ability to run, mentor or advise on experimental designs, case studies, and evaluations.

Suitable Background

  1. Related academic qualifications in architecture, philosophy, engineering, or HCI.
  2. Familiarity with the research fields of virtual environments/ VR, virtual heritage, place theory, the design and use of online places, architectural theory of place, philosophy and aesthetics and place, and presence research.
  3. Experience in developing and or supervising virtual environment research, digital media research, and methodological studies into appropriate research methods (especially spatial design research) at tertiary level.
  4. Experience in game design may be beneficial.
  5. Experience with Instructional design and user documentation (for procedures, methods, and terminology.
  6. Some experience in digital media skills (including web design).
  7. 3D and related design skills in creating virtual places.
  8. Understanding of scripting issues in creating virtual places.
  9. Experience in creating or supervising prototypes.
  10. Experience with both academic studies in the area and industry practices in IT.
  11. International academic profile and reputation for research, speaking, and publication in cultural presence, meaningful interaction, and virtual places.

Suitable Aptitudes/Skillsets

  1. Ability to work with different skill sets, cultural backgrounds, professional perspectives, and disparate disciplines.
  2. Ability to work individually and as a member of a team.
  3. Work experience in different countries and cultures.
  4. Ability to source research material, write high quality academic publications, and deliver/edit online articles for  <the centre> website.
  5. Analytical mind.
  6. Experience in public speaking.

 

Conferences, Journals: h-index, Impact

Academic, Conference, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, Journal, Proceedings, publication, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, , , , , ,

Cultural heritage journals, especially digital heritage journals (and a few related conferences) don’t fare well at SJR-Journal Search. Compare their H-index and Quartiles to games journals and conferences. In the more VR side of things, Presence still does quite well but Virtual Reality journal is not doing as well as I expected.*

*CAVEAT: In many cases the latest figures seem to be from 2017 or 2018.

“Rethinking Virtual Places” on track

Academic, augmented reality, Digital Humanities, publication, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, ,

Final internal review for my latest book draft was highly complementary so if given final  permission by the board, it should be published in IUP’s Spatial Humanities Series next year…

It becomes clear that the work stands on the shoulders of the research conducted by the author of many years. The topic of the manuscripts intersects greatly with many scholars’ research. It is hence of significant importance to many who engage in the generation and designing of places in virtual environments. The manuscript undoubtedly makes an impressive contribution to learn the author’s standpoint and see through his lens the research and developments of the field.C

Chapter Summaries

Chapter One explores the innovation and wilder inventions of early virtual environments and computer games. Have these developments, along with the increasing popularity of science fiction, promulgated fertile concepts of virtual places? I will suggest they have not.

Chapter Two explores the early development of virtual worlds, and game-worlds. Despite the hype of early virtual worlds, they, along with virtual museums (Huhtamo 2010), have seldom managed to capture and retain worthwhile visitor numbers (Styliani et al. 2009). What were the main features and attractions of virtual museums? Why have they gone in and out of fashion and have they actually been of any benefit to real-world museums? I will specifically look at how they use or change the use of space, and which if any place affordances were used in their design. I will then look briefly at the changing commercial and community virtual worlds that were developed, grew and fell during the last two decades.

Chapter Three discusses the representation-orientated and essentialist nature of major architectural theories. The second half of this chapter describes related design tools and asks a question of the training of architects for designing virtual places. If architects are not trained in usability and interaction design principles, how can they design engaging and profound interaction in these virtual worlds? Are traditional devices and technologies for designing, experiencing, and reflecting on place in danger of being lost in this digital era?

Chapter Four summarizes relevant philosophical exploration of real places and extrapolates them to virtual places and to notions of cyberspace. Related concepts discussed include the notion of VR as control, realism, authenticity and presence.

Chapter Five overviews select recent developments in neuroscience and how they may help our understanding of how people experience, store and recollect place-related experiences. Can these discoveries help our design of virtual places? Do philosophical explanations of memory and place (Ihde 2002, Tavanti and Lind 2001) reflect recent discoveries in scientific experiments (Farovik et al. 2015)? Can science help us better design virtual places (Johnson 2013, Moore 2005)? Do they explain how people navigate and orient themselves in virtual places (Cockburn 2004, Zimring and Dalton 2003)? The second part of Chapter Five discusses the importance of affordances and the confusion surrounding them.

Understanding game mechanics is of great relevance to virtual place designers, Chapter Six summarizes conflicting definitions of game mechanics and an explanation of different types of game mechanics suited to differing design purposes. This chapter also briefly discusses gamification.

Chapter Seven asks “Do Serious Gamers Learn from Place?” We could summarize this concern in the following three questions: do we know if learning has taken place, if it has taken place effectively, and if the knowledge that resulted from the learning is transferable? In contrast to James Gee (Gee 2003) I do not believe that all games are good games, and that all games are therefore good learning environments but in I will discuss procedural rhetoric and whether serious games help people engage with pedagogical objectives of humanities subjects.

Chapter Eight focuses on the relationship of culture to place. This chapter revisits definitions of culture, explores how culture can be communicated and understood in virtual places (transmissions), and determines whether there are specific requirements with virtual worlds. I also discuss the importance of roles, rituals and agents. In order to measure how closely culture can be observed, appreciated or understood through virtual environments, I have suggested that cultural presence be defined as the feeling of being in the presence of a similar or distinctly different cultural belief system (Champion 2011).

Chapter Nine explores evaluation methods (both traditional and recent), which address the complicated problem of understanding how people evaluate places, and whether this knowledge can be directly applied to the evaluation of virtual places. How do they get around the problem of the newness of virtual reality or the subjectivity/objectivity debates surrounding immersion and presence? Are they inspired by related but highly theoretical fields such as phenomenology, or has philosophy in general been left behind in the practical evaluation of place?

Chapter Ten discusses the emerging platforms and related tools that claim to help distribute, store and preserve virtual places Understanding the significance of the latest research is not enough, we also need to understand the significance and issues of the software, hardware and platforms that can be used for the design and experience of virtual places. There is an increasing trend to the more accessible, portable and component-based, does this mean we are on the brink of Convergent Cultures? In particular, I suggest that virtual heritage has focused more on communication than on preservation. We cannot afford to have our digital heritage disappearing faster than the real heritage or the sites it seeks to “preserve,” Otherwise all of our technological advances, creative interpretations, visualizations and efforts will have been in vain.

Unable to take on new students or staff

Academic, Announcements, job, PhD, Postdoc

Hello I am regularly receiving requests for postgraduate supervision or Postdocs. Apart from one current PhD scholarship which was technically closed (but I am still considering applications), for the foreseeable future I am currently unable to take on new students, research staff or postdocs, I am sorry for this. Best of luck with your applications.

(NB I took the above photo  of Alvar Aalto’s home office in Helsinki, it is not my office).

 

Game Workshop, Turin, September 2019

Conference, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, publication, , , , ,

From a draft for a book chapter I am writing for the Politecnico di Torino. Individual figures have been imitted (chapter not yet published and may change).

Introduction

I was invited to speak and host a game design prototyping workshop at the second and third summer school at the Politecnico di Torino’s Castello del Valentino, in Turin Italy.

2018 Workshop

At the 2018 workshop, I gave a talk on Monday in the summer school “Cultural Heritage in Context, Digital Technologies for the Humanities”, 16-23 September 2018, on Virtual heritage and publication issues, “Virtual Heritage: Techniques to Improve Paper Selection”.

The lecture covered the basics and some of the issues of writing a scholarly paper in the research area of virtual heritage, (such as research challenges; important controversies, debates, issues; techniques to improve paper selection; suggestions to improve the field; publishing; and important journals in the field). It drew on issues I wrote in the book Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage (Champion, 2015). It is a difficult field to write for as the reviewers could be drawn from computer science, cultural heritage, museum studies, usability studies (HCI), architecture, art history, and media studies.

I also ran a workshop on game prototyping especially for history and heritage games. This chapter will focus on the workshops run in 2018 and 2019, as the summer school gave me an excellent opportunity to test out some ideas to teach students how to design simple game prototypes that nonetheless could be modified and adopted into fully functional digital games.

The 2018 summer school allowed me to develop my theories of game design, how to teach the simpler components to students from architecture, art history and archaeology, who are interested in history and in heritage. I was particularly interested in developing the conceptual framework that I first made a rough sketch of for the students in 2018 and re-presented as a new diagram to the students at the 2019 class.

NB the slides from the 2018 workshop are still currently available at http://slides.com/erikchampion/deck-9/

I will concentrate on what I think will be of most interest to the reader, the core elements of the game design workshop, the groups that formed, and the game prototypes that resulted.

The Game Prototyping Schedule

The schedule for both years was roughly as followed (starting 8.30AM, ending 12.30PM).

  1. Introductions for all (10-20 minutes).
  2. Overview: games, gamification (50-40 minutes) finish 9:30.
  3. Discussion of technologies, methods + prototyping (20 minutes).
  4. Group suggest ideas (10 minutes).
  5. Short break/questions (20 minutes).
  6. Selection of teams (10 minutes) Finish at 10:30.
  7. Work on game ideas as prototypes, playtest solutions OR describe how Digital Humanities simulations could be gamified (90 minutes).
  8. Present prototypes/suggestions in class (30 minutes) finish 12:30.

I explained the basic concepts and issues of procedural rhetoric and game mechanics and suggested how Roger Caillois’ four forms (or modes) of game play could be used to construct a basic idea of how a history or heritage piece could be transformed into an entertaining and educational game. According to Caillois, games were (and still are) enticing players to compete, to imitate, to risk, or to overcome feelings of vertigo (and related bodily movement challenges). Games are engaging challenges (not only feedback rule-based systems).

The implied and accepted goal for the player is an essential component. What would be the goal of the player? Once we choose a site with cultural significance and hidden or less well-known features, we could apply one of these modes to the game as an interactive experience, decide on the core gameplay (repeated, characteristic action) that the player must learn to reach their goal, the core mechanics that moves the game along (to the next level or challenge or to its conclusion) and the types of rewards and punishments, affordances and constraints that would stand in the way or help the player.

Before designing a game, it is important to consider the components that make a game playable.

  1. What should be experienced and interacted with, as specifically as possible.
  2. Why create a specific experience in a game? (Our objectives?)
  3. Where will it be played? (What is the environment, the imaginative setting?)
  4. How to convey the experience of the site, artefact or model?
    • Systems, methods, or findings leading to engaging learning experiences?
    • Reveal what is unknown or debated (how knowledge is established or contested)?
    • Interpretative systems or to test, demo, pose or test a scholarly argument?
  5. When will the player receive suitable feedback?

Once answers to the above questions are answered, the basic steps in designing the game are:

  1. Determine cultural, historical or archaeological facts and interpretations of the site or model that are significant, hidden, or otherwise appropriate, engaging or transformative to explore.
  2. Consider the environment it will be played in, not just the type of audience, together, alone, on a bus, in a lecture theatre, at a museum?
  3. Design a game rather than a virtual environment: choose a challenge (Roger Caillois’ modes of game experience or another appropriate theory), and how core game play affects and is affected by the modality of experience. Steps 2 and 3 also give us an idea of a setting and theme.
  4. Define the core gameplay, what does the player typically do? Does the game scale, changing in effectiveness and complexity over time? Increasing complexity keeps interest.
  5. Develop a reward and punishment system; how do the rewards and punishments interact with the core gameplay and move the game along (i.e. trigger its mechanics)?
  6. End meaningfully. What is the end state? How will the game mechanics help us get there? Does reaching the end state create an intentional specific reflection, knowledge development, interpretation, experience or other feeling in the player?

2018 Summer School Game Design Groups

During our workshop in 2018, the students separated into four main groups. Professor Donatella Calabi of Università Iuav di Venezia (Université IUAV de Venise), led a group who prototyped a serious game promoting a more serious and authentic understanding of Venetian culture to foreign tourists.

The second group, led by Professor Rosa Tamborrino, comprising at least three nationalities, scoped out a game designed to teach people the value of artefacts that were stored in Brazil’s national museum. A catastrophic fire destroyed much of the collection, and this game was designed to encourage people to explore and decide on the relative value of its holdings, in order to save the more precious and irreplaceable items before the fire destroyed them.

The third group, led by Associate Professor Meredith Cohen of UCLA, discussed how a serious game could communicate the building technology of Chartres Cathedral.

The fourth group, led by Professor Michael Walsh, from NTU Singapore, led a group exploring how the Saint George of the Greeks Cathedral in Famagusta, eastern Cyprus could be explored via a game.

2019 Summer School Game Design Groups

In 2019 I was invited to run the game prototyping workshop for a second time (Figure 8). The 2019 summer school was entitled “Learning By Game Creation: Cultural Cities, Heritage, and Digital Humanities” (http://digitalhumanitiesforculturalheritage.polito.it/). At the 2019 workshop, I ran a workshop on Tuesday September 3, on Gamification and Cultural Heritage. I also gave a lecture on Friday, September 6, on “Writing a Scholarly History Paper in the Digital Age.”

One group’s initial idea was to develop an environmental educational game for children visiting a museum or gallery. The children were given patchwork fragments representing different ecological zones and their mission was to patchwork their preferred city together to form an environmentally and ecologically pleasant city to live in.

A second group, both archaeologists, developed an underwater prototype platform-style game, where the player would descend levels of a submerged classical city when they managed to solve the clues.

Figure 10: Underwater archaeology game, Brazil: game, DH Summer School, Turin (September 2018).

After the first half-day we were given more time to develop game ideas, but ideally focussed on using archival material such as found in the National Museum of Cinema (Museo Nazionale del Cinema) Turin.

One group developed an augmented reality game for tourists who had an hour to spare exploring Turin, via their smartphones. The quest-based VRecord Phantasmagoria Backstage Access game would entice visitors, alone or in teams, to explore Turin’s historical buildings and there was the potential to role-play historical characters. High-scoring players could also be recorded on the museum website in a virtual hall of fame.

A second group developed another augmented reality game, PockèTO. This game was described as “A Treasure Hunt to Discover Turin.” It was a treasure hunt where teams of players can collect as many treasures as they like but they only had fifteen minutes to collect objects then forty-five minutes to “rebuild the city”.

A third group developed Lost in Time,, a two-dimensional quiz game, where the player was asked to help a historical character who finds himself in modern-day Turin, to find clues to help him to time-travel back to the past.

The fourth group developed the TO game, an elaborate boardgame with QR codes, where the players would be dealt cards and could scan the QR code to be given information about Turin’s historic movies.

Outcomes and observations

If I had the chance to run the workshop again, then I would suggest more coordination with the landscape appreciate and design workshop run by Dominica Williamson, Professor John Martin and Andy Williams. I believe there is great potential synergy in connecting history and heritage to outdoor explorations and to prototyping using local materials.

I would also develop more templates to show how simple games could be brainstormed, and link more directly to augmented reality and virtual reality prototyping tools. I say this even though I am convinced the paper prototyping and board game prototyping tools were very effective in assessing the immediate playability of the game, it would be very useful for the students to have access to tools to develop their own ideas in AR, MR and VR form after the course.

The workshops have also proved to have been wonderful for my research. My next book, Rethinking Virtual Places, may involve a discussion and photograph on game prototyping from one of the workshops. I have also been part of a project team awarded a national three-year grant, and my component will be to supervise a PhD student who will design and evaluate a game design framework for a state museum and a national museum. I have also applied for a four-year national fellowship on this topic. The success rate is very low but I have greatly enjoyed the experience writing it and the workshops were indispensable for testing my ideas, so I am very grateful to the organizers and students of the Summer Schools.

I also used the experience gained from these workshops to run a very similar workshop for the DHDownunder summer workshop at Newcastle University Australia, in December 2019, and it was very popular, all four groups designed interesting and engaging prototypes.

Finally, at least one student from the game design workshop, Manuel Sega, informed me that after the 2019 Summer School, he taught a very similar game design workshop in Colombia, South America. The topic was “what does Colombia need to play?” In all seriousness, I cannot ask for greater take-up than this. Thank you very much!

-Erik Champion

 

REFERENCES

Champion, E. (2015). Critical Gaming: Interactive History And Virtual Heritage (D. Evans Ed.). UK: Ashgate Publishing.

Upcoming 2020-21 Publications

Academic, Book, publication, , ,

Books in press/pending

  • Lee, C. & Champion, E. (Ed). (2021: pending). Screen Tourism and Affective Landscapes. Edited book. Still under review/acceptance process but I am quietly confident.
  • Champion, E. (2021: pending). Rethinking Virtual Places. Indiana University Press, Spatial Humanities series. Also, final internal review.

Book chapters in press/pending

  • Champion, E. & Foka, A. (2020: in press). “Chapter 17: Art History, Heritage Games, and Virtual Reality”, in Brown, K. J. (Ed.). The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities and Art History. Routledge, UK. May 2020. Chapter.
  • Champion, E., Nurmikko-Fuller, T., & Grant, K. 2020 (pending, invited). “Blue Sky Skyrim VR: Immersive Techniques to Engage with Medieval History.” In Games for Teaching, Impact, and Research edited by Robert Houghton, Winchester University. Chapter. Abstract accepted, chapter due end of 2020.
  • Invitation to Austrian Academy of Sciences (Vienna) by Professor Eveline Wandl-Vogt to contribute to manifesto and “Biodiversity and Cultural Diversity: Virtual opportunities” chapter for e-book Biodiversity in connection with Linguistic and Cultural Diversity. 22-23 October 2019. Editors from Austrian Academy of Sciences and Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities; European Citizen Science Association; metaLab (Harvard) etc. Chapter submitted, abstract accepted.
  • Champion, E. (2020: under review). “Not Quite Virtual: Techné between Text and World.” In Texts & Technology: Inventing the Future of the Humanities, edited by Anastasia Salter and Barry Mauer, University of Central Florida, Orlando Florida USA. Chapter. Abstract accepted. Invited.
  • Champion, E. (2020: under review). “Workshopping Game Prototypes for History and Heritage” for Digital Humanities book, Politecnico di Torino, Italy. Aracne Publishing Company. Chapter submitted. Invited.

Conferences (pending/postponed/cancelled)

Upcoming Invitations

Upcoming Visiting Scientist/Professorship

  • One month visiting scientist, University of Padova (Padua), Veneto, Italy. Now on hold. Candidature finanziate.

 

Writing a book proposal

Academic, Book

When you are writing a book proposal, reviewers might be asked:

  • What are the purposes and central argument?
  • Contribution to the field and how significant?
  • What is the competition? How do they differ to this book proposal?
  • Are the premises+conclusion=argument sound and valid?
  • Likely market?
  • How can we improve it, in terms of style, weaknesses, structure?
  • We may ask you to recommend 2-3 experts in the field who we will send it to..

Workshop on Digital Heritage and Humanities

Academic, archaeology, Architecture, Conference, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, Symposium, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, , ,

February 17-18, 2020, The CREASE
University of South Australia, Kaurna Building Level 2, City West Campus

This workshop will explore examples of how the application of digital technologies in the humanities, built environment, creative arts and design are affecting how heritage environments are studied, preserved, shared and celebrated. The advent of technologies such as LIDAR (Laser scanning of natural and built environments), Virtual and Augmented Reality and immersive interactive environments, in areas such as site data collection, site visualisation and heritage exhibitions, are transforming how we study heritage environments and experience them both in situ and elsewhere. These changes have implications in diverse domains, including archaeology, anthropology, museology, tourism, architecture, restoration and education.

Program

Day 1 Monday February 17, 2020

13:00 Welcome to Country

A/Prof. Jane Lawrence, Head: School of Art, Architecture and Design

13:15 Introduction to the day, Prof. Simon Biggs

13:30 Keynote: Prof. Erik Champion, Curtin University, Perth (Chair: Prof. Ning Gu)

Prof. Champion is UNESCO Chair of Cultural Heritage and Visualisation, and Professor of Media Culture and Creative Arts, in the Humanities Faculty of Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia.

14:45 Q&A

15:00 coffee and networking – Catered by Folk Lore

15:30 Burra Digital Heritage Project: Dr. Julie Nichols and Darren Fong

16:30 Discussion

17:00 Drinks at West Oak Hotel

 

Day 2 Tuesday February 18, 2020

09:00 coffee and networking – Catered by Folk Lore

09:30 Presentation 1 – Dr. Aida Eslami Afrooz – Time Layered Cultural Map project

10:15 Presentation 2 – CAD Walk – immersive environments for heritage simulation

11:30 Presentation 3 – Dr. Gun Lee – Augmented Reality in Outdoor Experience

12:15 Discussion

12:30 Lunch – Catered by Folk Lore

13:30 Presentation 4 – Sahar Soltani – The HYVE (in the HYVE)

14:15 Presentation 5 – Ben Keane and Alex Degaris Boot – AR for Heritage (in CCS)

15:00 coffee and networking

15:30 Discussion

16:00 end.