Category Archives: Academic

Rough Outline on Architected Place

Academic, Book, Conference, design, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, ,

I am finishing a chapter (Chapter 3: ‘Architected’ Places) for my own book on Virtual Places, but the structural arc has escaped me until now. It will be polemical and controversial so I need to rewrite it to show that I realize this, there will be gaps and generalizations.

The basic premises are:

  1. Architectural theory is essentialist.
  2. Architectural tools are instrumentalist, architects don’t work on or near the site, as they need specialist tools connected to databases not to experiences.
  3. Architectural media is loath to include people and architectural spaces don’t work as places without people (Marseilles, by Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion, architectural masterpieces tend to be pavilions).
  4. Architects are not trained in user experience design and evaluation.
  5. Nor are architects trained in interactive media, their tools (see argument 2) are instrumentalist and passive.
  6. Traditional architectural craft is embodied, sited, takes time and records care. This is less and less the case.
  7. So applying theories of architecture, or practices of architectural design to interactive digital media in order to create virtual places, may well leave some gaps. How to resolve these in the design of virtual places? Corruption? Fancy theory? Post modernism? No, through embodiment, multimodality, role-play (and thematic affordances), allowing user-infill, environmental change to affect the design environment, and digital personalized patinas, materials that show the effect of time, wear and care.

 

3D Digital Heritage, Berlin program

Academic, archaeology, Architecture, Conference, Digital Humanities, , , ,

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.

 

Book series in Digital Humanities and Digital Heritage

archaeology, Digital Humanities, Open Access, press, publication, virtual heritage, , , , , , ,

Digital Heritage/Archaeology

Digital Humanities

See also https://adho.org/publications which lists

Books and Book Series

NB Is UWM also a Digital (book series) publisher? http://dc.uwm.edu/arthist_mobilizingthepast/1/

Research Infrastructures

Conference, Digital Humanities

I found myself in a meeting yesterday on the above. It reminded me of the DH2014 workshop that I wrote the call for and then couldn’t get to go to.

The points below, I feel I have to return to:

1. What are the objectives of each digital infrastructure project, and what are its intended users?
2. What are the functionalities and outcomes it aims to provide, and how do they serve the overarching goal of supporting and transforming humanities research?
3. To what extent were the needs of humanities researchers considered, and how is the digital humanities research community involved in the project?
4. Are there potential synergies, and actual collaboration, with other infrastructure projects? Conversely, are there any overlaps?
5. What are the main lessons learned from the life of the project so far? What are the pitfalls and potential failures, and what improvements could be achieved?

LUDIC PASTS workshop at DiGRA2017 Melbourne

Academic, Conference, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, virtual heritage, visualisation, workshop, , , , ,

LUDIC PASTS: “Game Simulations of Past Cultures and Places” Workshop

ORGANIZERS:

Erik Champion, Curtin University Australia, email erik.champion@curtin.edu.au
Michael Nitsche, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, email michael.nitsche@gatech.edu

The fusion of archaeology and gaming has become known as archaeogaming, although this term covers several approaches. For example, Reinhard (Reinhard 2015) wrote: “I had originally thought of Archaeogaming as a framework around studying how archaeology and archaeologists are portrayed by game developers, and how they are received by gamers. I was also curious to see how (or even if) I could apply real-world archaeological methods to virtual spaces, studying the material culture of the immaterial.” However, this is not simply a workshop about archaeogaming, there are other related fields interested in the ludic simulation of past places and past cultures (art history, museum studies, media studies, anthropology, sociology, urban design, geography, to name a few). There may be specific issues that distinguish, say heritage-based games (Champion 2015) from history-based games (Chapman 2016) but there are also common themes, authenticity, accuracy, imagination and how interaction helps learning.

Despite increasing interest in archaeogaming theory, there is little discussion of the field in terms of actual game design. And despite the increasing range and quality of courses (Schreiber 2009), books (Fullerton 2014) and presentations (Lewis-Evans 2012) on game design and game prototyping, there is still a paucity of available game design tools and techniques specifically for capturing and communicating the past (Manker 2012) (Neil 2016, 2015). In addition, we face a lack of venues for archaeogaming developers and related experts to present, pitch, playtest and perform their game prototypes (Ardito, Desolda, and Lanzilotti 2013, Unver and Taylor 2012, Ardito et al. 2009). Hence content experts in history and heritage-related fields often lack the experience or knowledge to test game ideas, and, conversely, game studies scholars may not be aware of discipline-related problems in history, heritage, museum studies and archaeology.

This half-day (4 hour) workshop brings together researchers and designers interested in evaluating and tackling issues in the simulation of past places, events and cultures through computer game interaction. The format will combine the presentations with a discussion centered on the question of how games can support cultural heritage. Each participant will present on a particular theme, challenge or case study.

We invite contributions from any domain, including game analysis, interaction design, digital humanities, play studies, among others. In the second part, we will identify key issues arising from the presentations and in small groups will suggest a game design scenario that could address the issue in an interesting way. We are also interested in theoretical papers that examine and suggest answers for issues in converting history, heritage and general archaeology projects into potential games.

SUBMISSION:

  1. Please email a one page proposal to champion@curtin.edu.au, with the title “DIGRA workshop-LUDIC PASTS-<your surname>”.
  2. Provide a short but descriptive title.
  3. A description of the issue that you wish to present, whether it is a theoretical theme, design challenge or case study
  4. Mention any examples that exist.
  5. Outline any potential solutions or ideas that you wish to discuss.
  6. Is there anything you would like to bring, show or demonstrate?
  7. In one short final paragraph please explain your related background, why this issue is significant to you and which audience would be interested in a potential solution, is it specific to a field or of wider interest and impact in game studies?
  8. Lastly include contact details, your name, job title and any affiliated institute or organization.

 DEADLINES:

  • 6 March 2017                      deadline for papers
  • 10 March 2017                    announce selected authors
  • 3 July 2017                            LUDIC PASTS workshop, DIGRA2017, MELBOURNE (http://digra2017.com/)

WORKSHOP GOALS:

  • Critical discussion from multiple related domains of archaeogaming.
  • Design sketches indicating possible approaches to address them.
  • We will discuss a potential shared book publication about the topic.

THE FORMAT AND ACTIVITIES PLANNED FOR THE WORKSHOP:

  • Individual presentations of key challenges.
  • Identify shared themes and concerns to form small groups developing game sketches for archeogaming and related fields.
  • Presentation of the concepts and conclusion.

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE (4 hour workshop, 240 minutes total):

  1. 160 minutes: 8 presentations, each a maximum of 20 minutes long (including questions).
  2. 60 minutes: work on game scenarios (scene) in one of 4 groups.
  3. 20 minutes: summarize and report findings to all attending.

POTENTIAL TOOLS:

Whiteboard, pen and paper. If there is a video projector or large screen, then digital game scenarios/sketches could be shown as well.

 AUDIENCE

  • Of interest to content experts in history and heritage-related fields, game studies scholars, game designers and developers.
  • Ideal size of audience: up to 32 not including the 8 speakers

PUBLICATION

We will discuss approaching a creative publisher (Liquid Books, University of Michigan Press or other) to provide an online or printable output of the demonstrations and the audience feedback.

 If you are interested in submitting a chapter, but cannot attend the workshop, please email the organizers a proposal similar to the 1 page workshop proposal outlined above.

CITATIONS AND REFERENCES

  1. Ardito, Carmelo, Paolo Buono, Maria Francesca Costabile, Rosa Lanzilotti, and Antonio Piccinno. 2009. “Enabling Interactive Exploration of Cultural Heritage: An Experience of Designing Systems for Mobile Devices.” Knowledge, Technology & Policy 22 (1):79-86. DOI: 10.1007/s12130-009-9079-7.
  2. Ardito, Carmelo, Giuseppe Desolda, and Rosa Lanzilotti. 2013. “Playing on large displays to foster children’s interest in archaeology.” DMS.
  3. Champion, E. 2015. Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage.
  4. Chapman, A. 2016. Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice.
  5. Fullerton, Tracy. 2014. Game design workshop: a playcentric approach to creating innovative games: CRC press.
  6. Lewis-Evans, Ben. 2012. “Introduction to Game Prototyping & research.” Slideshare, Last Modified 16 December 2012, accessed 24 January. http://www.slideshare.net/Gortag/game-prototyping-and-research.
  7. Manker, Jon. 2012. “Designscape–A suggested game design prototyping process tool.” Eludamos. Journal for computer game culture 6 (1):85-98.
  8. Neil, Katharine. 2015. “Game Design Tools: Can They Improve Game Design Practice?” PhD, Signal and Image processing. Conservatoire national des arts et metiers, CNAM.
  9. Neil, Katharine. 2016. How we design games now and why. Gamasutra. Accessed 24 January 2017.
  10. Reinhard, A., 2015. Excavating Atari: Where the Media was the Archaeology. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 2(1), pp.86-93.
  11. Schreiber, Ian. 2009. ““I just found this blog, what do I do?”.” Game Design Concepts – An experiment in game design and teaching, 9 September 2009. https://gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/level-2-game-design-iteration-and-rapid-prototyping/.
  12. Unver, Ertu, and Andrew Taylor. 2012. “Virtual Stonehenge Reconstruction.” In Progress in Cultural Heritage Preservation: 4th International Conference, EuroMed 2012, Limassol, Cyprus, October 29 – November 3, 2012. Proceedings, edited by Marinos Ioannides, Dieter Fritsch, Johanna Leissner, Rob Davies, Fabio Remondino and Rossella Caffo, 449-460. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

TO CONTACT THE ORGANIZERS

Erik Champion, Curtin University Australia, email erik.champion@curtin.edu.au
Michael Nitsche, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, email michael.nitsche@gatech.edu

 

report on trip to Italy, Malta (abridged)

Conference, Digital Humanities, talks, , , , ,

Erik Champion was awarded a small school grant of $2000 to present conference papers at Genoa Italy in October 2016.

GENOA ITALY
He presented two conference papers which are now in the Eurographics Digital Library.

  1. Champion, Erik Malcolm; Qiang, Li; Lacet, Demetrius; Dekker, Andrew. https://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.2312/2630933/browse?value=Champion%2C+Erik+Malcolm&type=author3D in-world Telepresence With Camera-Tracked Gestural Interaction (The Eurographics Association, 2016) While many education institutes use Skype, Google Chat or other commercial video-conferencing applications, these applications are not suitable for presenting architectural or urban design or archaeological information ..
  2. Champion, Erik Malcolm, The Missing Scholarship Behind Virtual Heritage Infrastructures (The Eurographics Association, 2016). This theoretical position paper outlines four key issues blocking the development of effective 3D models that would be suitable for the aims and objectives of virtual heritage infrastructures. It suggests that a real-time …

At the presentation in Genoa he was invited to discussion collaboration with the world heritage lab: HIVE, University of California Merced:

VENICE ITALY
He was also invited to present at Ca Foscari Venice (picture above) -apart from being the guest speaker on a digital humanities panel at the academic year opening of Ca Foscari, University of Venice and he was interviewed by their student paper.
VALETTA MALTA
He was also invited to present at the National Centre of Creativity, organised by the University of Malta and the talk was announced in the national paper, Times of Malta. He also met Heritage Malta and another institute who are keen to collaborate in cultural heritage projects.

He’d like to thank MCCA-Curtin, Arianna and Milena for organising his talks in Venice and Malta respectively and Eurographics for the GCH conference in Genoa.

CFP: PRESENCE Call for Papers – “VR/AR in Culture and Heritage” (deadline March 2017)

Announcements, augmented reality, game, Journal, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, ,

A new Call for Papers:

This special issue will be highly interdisciplinary in nature, and submissions which promote collaboration between science and engineering and arts and humanities will be welcomed. The Call is attached in .pdf fom, and is also accessible from the PRESENCE home page:

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/pres

PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments
An MIT Press Science & Technology Journal
Visit us at mitpressjournals.org/loi/pres

==========
Scope and Topics
Virtual heritage is a testament to the impact of digital transformation in the arts and humanities, and a driving force for technological innovation generated through the arts and humanities’ increasing appetite for digital technology. In this special issue, we aim to examine present trends in culture and heritage within the context of virtual reality and augmented reality. The scope of the special issue includes the following topics:

• New approaches in culture and heritage applications and interpretations
• Responsive, adaptive and evolvable behaviors in immersive virtual environments that capture culture and tangible and intangible heritage
• Multiuser virtual environments
• Mixed reality and the experience of real and virtual environments
• Presence and phenomenology in culture and heritage applications
• High definition imaging, stereoscopic displays, interactive cinema
• Intelligent and High Performance Computing for Virtual Cultural Heritage
• Ubiquitous computing and new forms of culture and heritage representations via VR and AR
• VR and AR in Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums
• Interactive Exhibits in Public Spaces
• Digital Transformations of Museums with Immersive & Interactive Time Machines
• VR and AR as a narrative
• Education in culture and heritage via VR and AR
• Tools, techniques, frameworks and methodologies
• Virtual environments case studies

Schedule
• Manuscript submission deadline: March 1, 2017
• Final revisions: September 1, 2017
• Planned publication: PRESENCE 27-1 (Early 2018)

Submissions
Manuscripts should conform to the journal’s submission guidelines:
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/page/sub/pres

Authors, please note that audio and video files can be hosted as supplementary onlinematerial accompanying published articles. For more information about multimedia file formats and submission guidelines, please contact presence@mit.edu.

Contact
Dr. Eugene Ch’ng, Director, NVIDIA Joint-Lab on Mixed Reality, University of Nottingham (China Campus). Email: eugene.chng@nottingham.edu.cn

Further information: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/pres
==========

Digra2015 paper in TODIGRA journal

Conference, game, Journal

Free online at http://todigra.org/index.php/todigra

Worldfulness, Role-enrichment & Moving Rituals:

ABSTRACT

Roles and rituals are essential for creating, situating and maintaining cultural practices. Computer Role-Playing games (CRPGs) and virtual online worlds that appear to simulate different cultures are well known and highly popular. So it might appear that the roles and rituals of traditional cultures are easily ported to computer games. However, I contend that the meaning behind worlds, rituals and roles are not fully explored in these digital games and virtual worlds and that more needs to be done in order to create worldfulness, moving rituals and role enrichment. I will provide examples from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion andThe ElderScrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda, 2006, 2011) to reveal some of the difficulties in creating digitally simulated social and cultural worlds, but I will also suggest some design ideas that could improve them in terms of cultural presence and social presence.

Full Text: PDF

 

Curtin Cultural Makathon

3D and game editors, archaeology, Architecture, Biofeedback, design, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, Open Access, respositories, Symposium, visualisation, workshop, , ,

Thanks to a Curtin MCCA Strategic Grant six reseachers and Library staff at Curtin University bought Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality equipment and ran two events to help staff develop digital prototypes and experiences using cultural data resources and digital humanities tools and techniques

  1. 26/08/2016 (AM) GLAM VR: talks on Digital heritage, scholarly making & experiential media (26/08/2016 (AM) 49 registrations-twitter: #GLAMVR16
    THEN Cultural Datasets In a Game Engine (UNITY) & Augmented Reality Workshop 6/08/2016 (PM) 34 registrations
  2. Curtin Cultural Makathon (11/11/2016) 20 registrations-twitter: #ccmak16 OH and before the Makathon, there was a TROVE API workshop! Or read Kathyrn Greenhill’s notes.

Our Curtin Cultural Makathon, great fun, four finished projects, excellent judges and data mentors, fabulous colleagues and atmosphere, plus pizza! Must do again but with more 3D and entertainment technology! Slides: http://slides.com/erikchampion/deck-4#/

There are also GLAMVR16 slides: http://slides.com/erikchampion/glamvr16-26-08-2016#/

Yes you can control the slides.com slides from your phone! if you like the slides.com technology, check out http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js/

Want Western Australian / Australian datasets for your own hackathon? http://catalogue.beta.data.wa.gov.au/group/about/curtin-cultural-makathon

 

New Journal Article Published

Digital Humanities, Journal, visualisation

I have a new article out online:

Digital humanities is text heavy, visualization light, and simulation poor, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Oxford Journals, http://dsh.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/11/07/llc.fqw053 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqw053 First published online: 11 November 2016. Issue , 7 November 2016.

Abstract
This article examines the question of whether Digital Humanities has given too much focus to text over non-text media and provides four major reasons to encourage more non-text-focused research under the umbrella of Digital Humanities. How could Digital Humanities engage in more humanities-oriented rhetorical and critical visualization, and not only in the development of scientific visualization and information visualization?

Curtin Cultural Makathon 11 Nov 2016

3D and game editors, Announcements, Competition, design, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, heritage, visualisation, , , , ,

Hack/slash/cut/bash/scrape/mod/mash – it’s a culture thing
Join the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts and Curtin Library Makerspace to hack cultural datasets and heritage information.

Use government, institutional research data portal, gallery, library, archive and museum information as data sources. Experiment with data for a research project or proposal; create something accessible, beautiful and/or useful using craft, games, virtual reality, apps or something else: it’s up to you.

Date:
Thursday 10 November 2016  (5pm – 7pm launch / team registration) &
Friday 11 November 2016 (8.30am – 6pm)

Location:
Lounge @ your Library, Level 2
Robertson Library (Building 105)
Curtin University
Kent Street, Bentley

Registration: Free via eventbrite

For more information visit the Curtin Cultural Makathon website.

What are the Big (not only Grand) Challenges in Virtual Heritage?

3D and game editors, archaeology, Conference, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, heritage, respositories, virtual heritage, visualisation

Seems to me we leave this sort of topic to keynote speakers who almost accidentally argue for a field/issue/method/tool that they themselves (research centre, department) and associates are currently working on.
Human nature. But if people who are currently not working on defined projects/tools/applications/sites met and discussed the issues what would they say? I’ll stick my neck out and say

1 Impossible to find, access and use/re-use the models, tools, paradata.
2 No consistant, standard framework.
3 No best practices, prizes*, competitions (but plenty of surveys and state of the art papers-only they read to me more as literature reviews).
4 Interaction is not saved ( not just user data but the game mechanics and interactive tools and techniques).

How would this lead to challenges?

  • Are there tools or portals that can scrape the web and auto-retrieve not just 3D models but 3D heritage models?
  • Are the aims, objectives, paradata clearly available and could we create metadata wizards that coax this into the project?
  • What incentives are needed to convince content creators to link to, record or even deposit their models and related assets?
  • Can grant agencies (with their increased focus on data management) convince applications to deposit the models and provide ranked, hierarchical, freemium levels of access and reuse?
  • Can community tools and web portals (Mediawiki, Sketchfab, Archivematica) be sharpened as kit sets for communities?

*Best of heritage? I had high hopes but I met an organiser who told me this is not primarily what Best of heritage does. It isn’t a ranking/rating/critical appraisal system but a communication of what is happening in the (museum) field.

Book Chapter Abstract

archaeology, Digital Humanities, virtual heritage, , , , ,

Book Chapter For Book On Computational Archaeology, redTDPC, INAM, Mexico

Title: A Schematic Division of Game-Learning Strategies Relevant to Digital Archaeology and Digital Cultural Heritage

Abstract

How can we transmit the values and interpretations of cultural heritage (using virtual reality) which is low-cost, contextually appropriate, educationally effective, and collaborative? While much excellent research has been undertaken on social presence in virtual environments (Swinth, 2002), research on the design and evaluation of cultural presence, the perception another culture is portrayed and experienced in a virtual environment, lags behind. Where cultural presence has been explored, it has not been directed towards the experiencing of culturally significant heritage (Riva et al., 2002), and organizations such as UNESCO have not prescribed how to determine if the user experience achieved the goals of the designers and shareholders. One possible solution for digital archaeology is to deploy commercial games that allow themselves to be modded (as in modified). This chapter will provide a simple classification of the ways in which game-based examples may help communicate digital archaeology and related content, and argue that there are at least four major areas of research that need to be investigated further.

Curtin Cultural Makathon

Academic, augmented reality, Biofeedback, design, digital heritage, game, heritage, infrastructure, respositories, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, workshop, , , , ,

Hack/slash/cut/bash/scrape/mod/mash – it’s a culture thing

Join the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts and Curtin Library Makerspace to hack cultural datasets and heritage information.

Use government and institutional research data, gallery, library, archive and museum information as data sources. Experiment with data for a research project or proposal; create something accessible, beautiful and/or useful using craft, games, augmented or virtual reality, apps or something else: it’s up to you.

Date:    Thursday 10 November 2016 (afternoon) & Friday 11 November 2016 (9am – 5pm)

Location: Makerspace, level two, Robertson Library (building 105), Curtin University,  Kent Street, Bentley

Registration: Free via Eventbrite

For more information visit the Curtin Cultural Makathon website.

To volunteer to assist with data or to sponsor a prize please contact Dr Lise Summers or Dr Karen Miller.

Curtin Cultural Makathon is funded by a MCCA strategic grant. For more details on the project contact Professor Erik Champion.

How many journals should you review for?

Academic, archaeology, Conference, Journal, Open Access, publication

If like me you are asked every week or so to review for a journal, then I have the following suggestion (for both of us).

  1. Write to the best journal in your field that you wish to support (after all, you are contributing your time and risking your academic reputation by association so considering the accessibility of the journal is important).
  2. Offer your services.
  3. Stick with them as long as the arrangement is mutually beneficial.
  4. Quality not quantity.

NB Ensure you know whether the journal will republish your material without informing you – this has happpened to me.

Taylor and Francis offer the following helpful guide: http://editorresources.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/reviewers-guidelines-and-best-practice/

If you are writing an article there are various suggestions on the web:

Sorry, I had intially titled this post inaccurately, I’ll blame it on jetlag.

talk in Malta tomorrow: ‘Role of computer games in national heritage’

archaeology, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, virtual heritage, ,

if you are in Valetta, stop by at 6PM, I am talking about computer games and history/archaeology.

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20161011/social/Role-of-computer-games-in-national-heritage.627610

Role of computer games in national heritage

A talk linking computer games and culture and heritage is being held tomorrow at St James Cavalier in Valletta, Malta.

Part of Spazju Kreattiv’s programme, the talk will discuss the fundamental challenges and promises of computer game design and interactive media when created to assist the communication and preservation of digital heritage.

Delivered by Erik Champion, a professor at Curtin University, Australia, the lecture will examine serious games designed for history and heritage, definitions and challenges of ‘virtual heritage’ and possible technical and imaginative solutions. It will focus particularly on examples of built heritage.

Research Fellow Opportunity

Announcements, archaeology, Digital Humanities, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, , , , ,

UNESCO Research Fellow in Cultural Heritage & Visualisation, Curtin University.

Direct Link here or at the Curtin University Vacancies, Perth, Western Australia.

The role starts in 2016.

Position Title:UNESCO Research Fellow in Cultural Heritage & Visualisation
Position Number:3553170
Tenure:Full-time, fixed term until 1 September 2020
Salary Range:$97,076 – $115,277 (ALB)
Location:Bentley
Description:Do you have experience with digital archaeology and a passion to join the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts?

Curtin University has, in cooperation with UNESCO, established a Chair in Cultural Heritage and Visualisation. The purpose of the Chair is to promote an integrated system of research, training, information and documentation on virtual heritage sites and facilitate collaboration between high-level, internationally-recognized researchers and teaching staff of the University and other institutions in Australia, Europe and North America and in other regions of the world.

As a Research Fellow, you will work with the UNESCO Chair on a project which aims to survey and promote guidelines, tutorials and open access tools for the design, preservation and teaching of 3D models and landscapes of UNESCO heritage sites, particularly in Australia. You will be expected to contribute to grant writing and research publications.

Along with a relevant doctoral qualification, the ideal candidate would have experience in aspects of digital archaeology, architectural computing, or databases and related programming (especially in the creation and maintenance of online repositories). Evidence of quality research outputs and interpersonal skills are also essential.

Benefits and Remuneration:The salary ranges presented are those which are contained within the University’s Enterprise Agreements; as are the employee benefits which include employer superannuation contribution at the rate of the current Government Superannuation Guarantee amount up to 17 percent, study assistance, a comprehensive salary packaging and wellness programs and flexible and family friendly work practices.
Contact Person:Professor Erik Champion
Contact Email:erik.champion@curtin.edu.au
Valuing Diversity and Affirmative Action:Curtin University embraces diversity and inclusion and invites applications from women, men and intersex individuals who share the University’s values, ethics, international outlook, value diversity and have an informed respect for indigenous people. We are committed to making reasonable adjustments to provide a positive, barrier-free recruitment process and supportive workplace, therefore, if you have any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at time of application. We will then work with you to identify the best way to assist you through the recruitment process. All personal information will be kept confidential in compliance with relevant privacy legislation.
Submit Application:To submit an application, click on the Apply Now button.
Disclaimer:Curtin reserves the right at its sole discretion to withdraw from the recruitment process, not to make an appointment, or to appoint by invitation, at anytime.
Applications Close:5 pm, Monday 24 October 2016 (AWST)

PhD Scholarships at Curtin University

archaeology, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, job, Open Access, PhD, respositories, virtual heritage, visualisation

The call for PhD scholarships (UNESCO Cultural Heritage and Visualisation) at Humanities, Curtin University, has now been extended to 17 October 2016. See https://scholarships.curtin.edu.au/scholarships/scholarship.cfm?id=2782.0

I can be contacted for enquiries or submission but I am away from 1-16 October so email replies may be slow.

 

PhD Scholarships-Cultural Heritage & Visualisation

3D and game editors, Announcements, archaeology, Architecture, Conference, Digital Humanities, PhD, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, , , , , ,

There are 2 PhD scholarships now open at Curtin University, for students interested in 3D models of heritage sites, community participation, heritage issues and preservation of the 3D models themselves:

http://scholarships.curtin.edu.au/scholarships/scholarship.cfm?id=2782.0