I am speaking at 3D Heritage Exploring Virtual Research Space for Art, 19 -20 June 2017, Berlin. Program here

Address:Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Humboldt Graduate School,Luisenstr 56, 10117, Berlin

A Scholarly Ecosystem for 3D Digital Heritage Simulations
Ear Zow Digital

Major impediments to the development of high quality and effective virtual heritage projects has been technological constraints or insufficient audience evaluation methods. That said, this talk proposes that a more fundamental issue has been with the design, circulation and use of the digital models themselves as components of scholarly arguments or as vehicles to communicate hypotheses to the wider public.

In Australia, we have proposed to UNESCO that we run a project to survey, collate and develop tools for heritage sites and related built environments, focusing initially on Australia. The aim is to consolidate and disseminate 3D models and virtual environments of world heritage sites, host virtual heritage examples, tutorials, tools and technologies so heritage groups and classrooms could learn to develop and maintain 3D models and virtual environments, and act as advisor on policy formulation for the use, evaluation and application of these 3D digital environments and digital models for use in the classroom and for general visualisation projects.

The resulting UNESCO Chair project will implement and advise on 3D models of World Heritage Sites, how 3D models can be employed in teaching and research, investigate ways to host both the digital models and related paradata and publications, and transfer formats (for desktop use, mobile computing etc.), ideally with UNESCO, and we will leverage research facilities at Curtin and at partner institutes and research facilities like the HIVE (Figure 1).

The primary goal is to help educate the public in the area of world heritage sites via interactive collaborative digital media, with an emphasis on free and open source software, and a secondary goal is to examine virtual heritage and related digital simulations as components of scholarly arguments. The UNESCO Chair’s project team will also critique, integrate and extend existing and new infrastructure to support this learning material and the overall integration of scholarly publications, publicly available media and online directories and repositories of digital 3D simulations of world heritage sites and related artefacts as a scholarly ecosystem.