Category Archives: heritage

PhD scholarship available

Announcements, augmented reality, HCI, heritage, PhD, serious games, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, ,
A Framework for Developing Educational Games in and with Australian Museums

This PhD project focuses on reviewing challenges and successes in Australian museums (MOD, National Maritime Museum and the South Australian Museum) with the aim to develop a participatory open-ended game framework to encourage greater engagement, wider audiences, and increased visitation, as well as reuse of content, data, and related media.

The successful candidate will focus on either the evaluation and framework based on interviews, surveys and workshops with museum experts, or on developing overall game mechanics examples (game prototypes) showcasing best practice game techniques for showcasing Australian museum content, promoting reuse.

This project is funded for reasonable research expenses. Additionally, a living allowance scholarship of $28,854 per annum is available to Australian and New Zealand citizens, and permanent residents of Australia, including permanent humanitarian visa holders. A fee-offset or waiver for the standard term of the program is also included. For full terms and benefits of the scholarship please refer to our scholarship information.

URL here.

Immersive Challenges for Museums & Heritage Sites

3D and game editors, Announcements, augmented reality, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, heritage, serious games, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, Web GIS

I will give a talk tonight via Zoom to UniSA IVE colleagues on the above topic.

Time: 4PM

2022 IVE Research Seminar Series

Please join our next IVE Seminar.

Presenter:


Prof. Erik Champion

Enterprise Fellow, UniSA Creative


Title:
Immersive Challenges for Museums and Heritage Sites


Abstract:

This talk will cover recent and persistent challenges facing museums, practical issues with the implementation of virtual reality, games and gamification, and some case studies exploring potential solutions, particularly in the area of cultural heritage.

Bio:

Erik Champion is currently Enterprise Fellow (Architecture, Creative) at the University of South Australia; Emeritus Professor at Curtin University; Honorary Research Professor at ANU; and Honorary Research Fellow at UWA. He was recently a chief investigator on 4 Australian Research Council grants, Curtin University’s first UNESCO Chair (of Cultural Visualisation and Heritage) and Visualisation theme leader and Steering Committee member of the Curtin Institute for Computation. 

https://people.unisa.edu.au/Erik.Champion

Date & Time: 5 April 2022 (Tuesday) 4pm (Adelaide ACST — Australian Central Standard Time UMT +9 hours 30 minutes)

Where: Zoom

CAA 2022, Oxford

Academic, archaeology, augmented reality, Conference, Digital Humanities, heritage, Virtual Reality

This year the Computing Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Conference is running in person in Oxford, UK and virtually. CAA2022 will be held 8-11 August 2022.

If you are interested, CAA2022’s first session is calling for papers on cultural presence. Elaine contacted me about this for the last CAA (that was postponed) and it sounds very interesting so, hopefully, some of you can make it. You can also submit individual papers to CAA2022.

S01: iN Deep: Cultural Presence in Immersive Educational Experiences (Other)

Elaine A Sullivan, University of California Santa Cruz

Sara Perry, Museum of London Archaeology

Paola Derudas, Lund University

Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (XR) technologies are increasingly incorporated into university classrooms and public education in the GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums). The potential to use these technologies to engage students and the public with archaeological knowledge (such as site reconstructions, artefacts, or re-imagining the activities of past peoples) is exciting, but these forms of representation, including the use of individual headsets, tablets, and personal mobile phones, come with particular challenges. In his book Critical Gaming (2015), Eric Champion argued that virtual realities should express ‘cultural presence,’ the meaning and significance of a time, place, or object to people of the past.

Hyper-reality, photogrammetry, and ever-increasing levels of ‘accuracy’ in 3D models do not inherently convey aspects of cultural significance and meaning, and many VR/AR/XR experiences fall dramatically short of the goal of expressing the importance of past places and things to
their original communities. Emphasis on technological and (especially) hardware innovation often deflects attention from critically engaging with questions of meaning-making.


This panel asks those creating or intensely using Archaeology VR/AR/XR to focus NOT on software, hardware, or the latest technical innovations, but on how we as archaeologists can better design, create, or curate experiences that inspire and educate students and the public on the cultural importance of archaeological spaces, objects or themes.

What are successful techniques to aid a visitor to better understand the original context of an object now placed in a (often far off) museum or gallery? How can university instructors incorporate the (problematically individual) headset or mobile experiences into pedagogy to provide meaningful and active student learning? How can complex data be usefully layered or curated so that multiple types of museum visitors or classes could find it informative and emotionally resonant? How can we turn these increasingly popular technologies into serious spaces of cultural learning and curiosity, moving beyond the initial ‘wow’ factor

Format
Instead of traditional 20 minute talks, we request that participants present 8-10 minutes in depth on one VR/AR/XR experience they have designed and/or utilized in a university or GLAM setting (not a general review of multiple types of work). We ask participants to present and explain aspects of design and interaction and their intent in that experience; or, if the content was not designed by the presenter, how content was incorporated, curated, or enhanced for the classroom or GLAM experience.

Specifically, we ask presenters to think thoughtfully and critically about how we might collectively learn to use these technologies in more informed ways, including: What types of interactions with students or the public have shown promise, and how might we build on those successes? What practices have not worked, and how might we learn from our failures? What particular aspects of archaeological and cultural heritage knowledge are best emphasized in the VR/AR/XR experience? What is key to re-using content created by others, including content created by non-archaeologists?

The session will be divided into four sections:

  • 1st group of presentations, ~five presenters (10 minutes per presentation)
  • a ~30 minute ‘hands-on’ period** where participants and the audience will be able to engage/interact directly with the presented content from both presentation groups
  • 2nd group of presentations, ~five presenters (10 minutes per presentation)
  • concluded by a ~30-minute Q&A session for the full group of presenters and audience

We hope this format will allow the audience to engage directly with the content before opening up the session for questions and comments. The goal is to turn this session into a workshop that helps all present work more critically with VR/AR/XR content and improve how we communicate scholarly information at the university and GLAM setting.

**We therefore ask participants to commit to bringing their discussed content uploaded or downloadable in some format that can be shared directly with others: including (but not limited to) VR headsets, Google cardboard, AR apps pre-installed on tablets or smart phones, etc.

References
Champion, E. (2015). Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

PhD scholarships at UniSA in South Australia

Announcements, Digital Humanities, heritage, job, PhD, serious games

There are two PhD scholarships at the University of South Australia, in Built Environment and Design, that may interest Australian or NZ citizens or Australian permanent residents:

https://www.unisa.edu.au/research/degrees/research-projects/#design-thinking-for-supporting-sustainable-bu

Details of the supervisors are listed against the projects.

No, I am not a supervisor for either, I am currently helping PhD students at my last university submit their theses (two passed so far, three to go!)

To offer a PhD scholarship-supported project at UniSA, I have to propose and have accepted a project, then students can apply. For self-funded PhD study, students can apply straight away.

CAA2022 potential session

Academic, archaeology, Conference, Digital Humanities, heritage, infrastructure, Presentation, workshop

Despite COVID, lack of travel resources etc, (especially to the UK from Australia), I’ve been thinking about proposing a panel/session at CAA2022 about “what is lost in the digits”-which elements, features, beliefs or interpretations are left behind or overlooked when scanning / digitally simulating…and what we can or should do about it (with a nod to @EthanWatrall). A short twitter discussion (with many points by Anton Scoetzee) followed.

So, if I think it is feasible, I will apply to CAA2022 before 17 January and post the proposal here. I can see it morphing into an open access, dialogue-friendly edited book.

https://2022.caaconference.org/call-for-sessions/

Living Digital Heritage 2021

Academic, Announcements, archaeology, augmented reality, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, heritage, infrastructure, serious games, Symposium, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation

I was given the honour of opening Living Digital Heritage conference with a keynote today and full congratulations to Frederik Hardtke and the other organizers at Macquarie University’s Centre for Ancient Cultural Heritage & Environment (twitter @cachemq) in Sydney, a great range of papers, all presented on Zoom. Finishing Sunday 7 November (when I fly to South Australia to take on a new role so I may miss a little of it).

If you are interested you may be able to follow via the above twitter links, I don’t know if they still accept registration but it was free.

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.

Advisory Board setup

3D and game editors, heritage, serious games, virtual heritage, ,

A major game company (I’d say a global company, not in Australia) invited me to quote/ setup an international advisory board in relation to intangible heritage and digital games to meet annually or biannually virtually or in reality. It is a bit of a challenge looking forward to estimate the budget in this time of pandemics, lockdowns, and border control issues.

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..

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.

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.

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

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.

New Journal Article!

Academic, Announcements, digital heritage, heritage, publication, serious games, virtual heritage

Champion, E. (2020). Culturally Significant Presence in Single-player Computer Games. Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, 13(4). doi:10.1145/3414831. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3414831

Cultural presence is a term used to explain and evaluate cultural learning in virtual heritage projects but is less frequently used for video games. Given the increasing importance of video games to cultural heritage, this article investigates explanations of cultural presence that could be communicated by games, especially concerning UNESCO and ICOMOS definitions of cultural significance. The aim is to determine if cultural presence can be communicated via video games and across a range of game genres.

Observations derived from game prototyping workshops for history and heritage aided the development of a teachable list of desirable game elements. To distinguish itself from the vagueness surrounding theories of cultural presence, a theory of culturally significant presence is proposed. Culturally significant presence requires three components: culturally significant artifacts and practices; an overarching framework of a singular, identifiable cultural viewpoint; and awareness by the participant of both the culturally significant and the overarching cultural framework and perspective (which gives sites, artifacts, and practices their cultural significance and relational value).

As awareness of cultural presence requires time for reflection, single-player games were chosen that were not completely dependent on time-based challenges. Another criterion was cultural heritage content: They must simulate aspects of heritage and history, communicate a specific cultural framework, or explore and reconstruct a past culture. Four games were chosen that simulate a culture, explain archaeological methods, portray indigenous intangible heritage, or explain historical-based ecosystems of the past based on educational guidelines. The games are Assassin’s Creed: Origins; Heaven’s Vault; Never Alone; and a Ph.D. project: Saxon. Their genres could be described as first-person shooter/open world/virtual tour; dialogue-based puzzle game; 2D platform game; and turn-based strategy game.

The aim is not to evaluate the entire range of interactive virtual environments and games, but to examine the applicability and relevance of this new theory and to ascertain whether the four games provided useful feedback on the concept and usefulness of culturally significant presence. A more clearly demarcated theory may not only help focus evaluation studies but also encourage game developers to modify or allow modification of commercial games for classroom teaching of digital heritage.

Metadata in 3D file formats

3D and game editors, heritage, infrastructure, Linked Open Data, respositories

Something to explore at a later date but it seems X3D and Collada are recommended when placing metadata (like exif) in a 3D file.

UNESCO Chair of Cultural Heritage and Visualisation

Academic, Digital Humanities, heritage, UNESCO Chair, , , ,

The 2016-2020 UNESCO Chair of Cultural Heritage and Visualisation has ended. First UNESCO Chair at Curtin. Less than 4 years, but various awards/prizes, media releases and press interviews, 3 Australian Research Council (+international) grants, some grant applications still pending.

The next big publication, in February 2021, will be an edited book on virtual heritage, published by Ubiquity Press, edited by Erik Champion. Online chapters will be open access, and suitable for university course reading lists.

Papers available at https://computation.curtin.edu.au/research/groups/unesco-chair-cultural-heritage-visualisation/ but needs updating.

I’d like to thank Hafizur Rahaman, our two PhD students Mafkereseb Bekele and Ikrom Nishanbaev, and the many collaborators and colleagues we met on the journey.

Not actually published yet, but accepted

Academic, archaeology, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, Journal, publication, serious games, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, , , , ,

I’m very happy that my rather large article “Culturally Significant Presence
In Single-Player Computer Games” has been accepted for the ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage. This is despite its 12,587 words covering 4 major games, and attempting to be more conceptual and provocative than normal in a traditional ACM IT-oriented journal..

Very good reviewers too, actually. They made me work hard. I think my abstract is a bit over JOCCH length so that may change but at moment it is:

Cultural presence is a term that researchers have used to explain and evaluate cultural learning in virtual heritage projects, but less frequently in video games. Given the increasing importance of video games to cultural heritage, this paper investigates explanations of cultural presence that could be communicated by games, especially concerning UNESCO and ICOMOS definitions of cultural significance. The aim is to determine if cultural presence can be communicated via video games and across a range of game genres.

Observations derived from game prototyping workshops for history and heritage were incorporated to help develop a teachable list of desirable game elements. To distinguish itself from the vagueness surrounding theories of cultural presence, a theory of culturally significant presence is proposed. Culturally significant presence requires three components: culturally significant artifacts and practices; an overarching framework of a singular, identifiable cultural viewpoint; and awareness by the participant of both the culturally significant and the overarching cultural framework and perspective (which gives cultural heritage sites, artifacts and practices their cultural significance and relational value).

As awareness of cultural presence requires time to reflect upon, single-player games were chosen that were not completely dependent on time-based challenges. Another criterion was cultural heritage content, the games must simulate aspects of cultural heritage and history, communicate a specific cultural framework, or explore and reconstruct a past culture. Four games were chosen that simulate a culture, explain archaeological methods, portray indigenous intangible heritage, or explain historical-based ecosystems of the past based on educational guidelines. The games are Assassin’s Creed: Origins (and its Discovery Tour); Heaven’s Vault; Never Alone; and a Ph.D. game project: Saxon. Their genres could be described as first-person shooter/open world/virtual tour; dialogue-based puzzle game; 2D platform game; and turn-based strategy game.

The aim is not to evaluate the entire range of interactive and immersive virtual environments and games, but to examine the applicability and relevance of the new theory, and to ascertain whether the four games provided useful feedback on the concept and usefulness of culturally significant presence. A more clearly demarcated theory of cultural presence may not only help focus evaluation studies but also encourage game developers to modify or allow the modification of commercial games for classroom teaching of digital heritage. Game content, core gameplay, secondary gameplay, and game mechanics could be modified to engagingly compel players to consider cultural heritage values and perspectives that are not their own.