Yesterday at a meeting for digital humanities / 3D makers at https://maker.library.curtin.edu.au/ we were set a project brief to promote the makerspace.

We want something thematic to

• encourage guerrilla (i.e. low-cost but accessible) digital humanities learning, skills, resources AND using the makerspace facilities and digital skills of our library staff and resources at the Library Makerspace
• something funny yet memorable
• something flexible but not subject to strict copyright restrictions (looking at you MagicCastleLand)
• appealing to adults and children and young adults alike
• communal and community based
• ideal for environment-sensing and ecological projects (we have an Internet of Everything and iBeacons plus we can teach sensor-based project making)
• capable of being built using a variety of materials, permanent and less permanent
• suitable for immediate or long-term use past the dates of the workshop
• anything that builds on Perth and Western Australia yet of interest and customisation-friendly for overseas staff and students

I suggested GNOMES. We would run courses around designing and building GNOMES, But they could have additional features and magical powers.

• There are 3D Gnomes ready to print on the internet so we can teach 3D printing skills and scanning skillets scan themselves in 3D (http://structure.io/) and using free 3D software they can create halfGNOME halfPerson statues. Plus they can help teach crafting skills (very important for digital humanities).
• something funny yet memorable. Self-evident: http://www.gardenfun.com/garden-gnomes.html Plus the potential for puns is gnomormous.
• something flexible but not subject to strict copyright restrictions, but we can use the course to discuss creative commons and 3D objects: https://creativecommons.org/2016/04/19/attribute-3d-printed-objects/
• appealing to adults and children and young adults alike: Self-evident really! Gnomes can be all shapes and sizes, and their rounded contours mean they can be easy (or difficult) to carry. They can be part of treasure hunts and quizzes or projection shows/outdoor displays for orientation days or themed meetings.
• communal and community based: students can design the gnomes for hospital and senior citizen gardens, the best could be kept on campus, and promoted at Orientation Day (O-Day, henceforth known as Gnome Day).
• ideal for environment-sensing and ecological projects: Gnomes can have slots and cavities for sensors, arduino or other. Plus the Gnomes can feature augmented reality trackers but the information will be stored in the cloud. Also, the silhouette of the Gnome could also perhaps be an AR tracker! Will need to build the ARGnome app though.
• capable of being built using a variety of materials, permanent and less permanent: Gnomes are often found in gardens. 3D Gnome patterns would be a great exercise for our design, art and engineering students. Solar power and low-energy power for circuits in various interactive Gnomes would be an interesting engineering project (perhaps contact with the Gnome base could create some form of friction and very low levels of energy?) Patchwork gnomes could be given to visitors.
• suitable for immediate or long-term use past the dates of the workshop: Gnomes are often of concrete, metal or masonry. We need to look at durable plaster/plastercine as well.
• anything that builds on Perth and Western Australia: we already have a giant and mysterious Gnome Valley 2 hours south of Perth! http://www.fergusonvalley.net.au/gnomesville.html

What is stopping us? People laughing at us basically. Also too many Gnomes get abducted or end up in strange places.
Oh and I also have an idea for a text to speech bot garden Gnome that reflects on deep philosophical questions. Gnome Chomsky.

Other ideas for garden-variety digital humanities:

• Scarecrows that sense fertiliser-deficiency but are 3D printed with politicians faces.
• Or garden trolls that sense weather conditions and then tell you the exact opposite.

Ingoglia, R. T. (2014). Playing with the past: Digital games and the simulation of history. Choice, 51(8), 1463. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/docview/1534099023?accountid=10382

Missing, however, is solid evidence that people who play these games have a deeper understanding of, or even a desire to probe deeper into, the imagined past (besides purchasing another video game).

Three conference presentations or panels arriving in next three months, Los Angeles, Beijing and Singapore:

• Champion, E. (2016). Attending as panellist and critic, NEH Humanities Heritage 3D Visualization: Theory and Practice Summer Institute. 3-day symposium, 6-9 June 2016, University of California Los Angeles USA. National Endowment of the Humanities Grant. URL: http://advancedchallenges.com/
• Champion, E. (2016). Invited speaker for The 4th International Symposium on Cultural Heritage Conservation and Digitization (CHCD 2016), 7-9 August 2016, Beijing, China. URL: http://www.chcd2016.org/eng/.
• Champion, E. (2016). Invited/funded speaker for Presenting Cultural Specificity in Digital Collections, Workshop at the National University of Singapore 12-14 August 2016, Singapore.

I co-supervised an honours student, Susannah Emery, who was funded by the NINTI One project. She used the Sims as machinima to show how local indigenous communities could develop their own cultural heritage-influenced games. She received a first class honours and was a Winnovation finalist.

I am very proud to announce that I have received the award of First Class Honours from Curtin University for my honours thesis entitled ‘We are Stronger Together/Nganana Tjungurringkula Nintirrintjakunana: a collaborative approach to telling Anangu stories through video games.’

Well done Susannah! As part of her research helped form an article on indigenous cultural heritage games. The article, for playwright, is called

You’re never alone in Never Alone: game mechanics as cultural metaphor

Then about a month ago i was invited to the final report/findings of the Remote Education Systems/NINTI ONE Project.

The Remote Education Systems project aims to find out how remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities can get the best benefit from the teaching and learning happening in and out of schools. It is doing this by engaging with members of communities, schools, government agencies and other end users who want to find ways of improving outcomes for students in remote Australia.

My takeaway on the most important element for children’s’ learning to be successful was parental buy in- not surprising but good to see it researched. Also, local staff are an important factor, class attendance is related to income, qualifications do not necessarily reveal the best teacher, successful projects incorporate the assets of students, families and communities, and the presenter said “ownership will be a priority.”

I am looking forward to the report going on the website.

Right now it really seems to me self-evident that our field is missing focused dialogue.
It would have saved me quite some time as a PhD student and designer (and evaluator) to find an edited book where authors discuss a single problem in creating history and heritage inside a game or game-like experience.

On reading https://memetechnology.org/2016/02/12/the-problems-with-game-based-history/ it seems to me a major problem is agency. Matthew Tyler-Jones is I think correct to say that a magical component of games is that it is really about us (the player). I think I am also right in saying this is a problem with history-based games (the historical world is not just about you, an individual). And it is also a problem with virtual worlds that also wish to be experienced as games.

So agency is one chapter issue.
Another is mechanics.
A third might be aesthetics: designers always want reconstructions to be immersive, artistically impressive etc. A fourth might be about missing or uncertain knowledge.
A fifth might be about extensibility and preservation.
A sixth might be about personalisation.
A seventh might revolve around: what are we really learning here…

I was telling how Ian Mune a famous director down under, once said in a public talk to budding young film directors to bypass the film commission, buy a good DSLR camera (at consumer not prosumer prices), plus a hard drive, and just start filming.I was interrupted by a ‘strategic project consultant’ who apparently had not heard of Ian Mune and did not believe me that Hollywood could ‘stoop so low’.

Anyway I found the whole topic quite interesting, and so without further ado, here are some references:

Hollywood movies using DSLR cameras
http://www.videomaker.com/videonews/2012/02/hollywood-shows-what-can-be-done-with-a-prosumer-dslr
http://www.cnet.com/au/news/shoot-a-movie-on-dslr-this-australian-film-shows-how-its-done/
http://petapixel.com/2011/07/29/shooting-a-big-budget-hollywood-film-with-canon-dslr-gear/
http://www.imdb.com/list/ls059550382/ Movies Filmed with Canon and Nikon DSLR Cameras
http://nofilmschool.com/2010/01/10-examples-of-stunning-dslr-cinematography