I am not sure, but it appears the reason for my use of the word “realms” in “Explorative Shadow Realms of Uncertain Histories“* may not be clear to people who quote me.

In “Negotiating ‘Culture’, Assembling a Past: the Visual, the Non-Visual and the Voice of the Silent Actant” [http://hdl.handle.net/2077/30093] Jonathan Westin wrote:

In the introduction to article 2, my co-author Thommy Eriksson and I write:

“Our cultural heritage is increasingly experienced as a virtual heritage, a space, or realm as Champion puts it (2008), consisting of representations.
Three-dimensional scanning through photogrammetry and laser, virtual reality, augmented reality, photorealistic computer graphics and interactive displays; all these are technologies that in days to come will shape the profession of both archaeology and museology” (article 2, p. 87-88).

I used realm in the sense of an area where the social rules/laws have as much influence on people as physical ones. My intention was to suggest this is not a common feature of virtual heritage environments, but to explain culture, perhaps it could and should be. I was not trying to suggest a field or that digital technology is creating a culturally meaningful or completely inclusive “world” (in the past I have defined virtual worlds in at least three markedly different ways). Virtual reality does not only have to mirror physical reality. Physical reality is not a 1:1 relationship to experienced reality.

There is another passage which may or may not correlate to what I thought I meant by uncertainty, Westin wrote:

I consider the communication of uncertainty to be a key element, and in two of the articles my co-authors and I propose different visual signifiers conveying insufficient data (article 1 and 2). For an exchange to be productive, both parties have to be able to communicate uncertainty. To return to the example above, the exact, certain, image representation of a banister appears to be non-negotiable, even though it may be based on insufficient data, while a representation that communicates its uncertainty invites other actants to question its form.

1. Not sure an image can only be certain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit%E2%80%93duck_illusion or http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150624-arts-most-famous-illusion)
2. An image that communicates uncertainty (and here I am not sure if it is communicating uncertainty of the source or other uncertainties) does not necessarily invite us to question its form.

I have however, in Critical Gaming, and in Playing With the Past, wrestled with notions of realm, world, and uncertainty. I hope to write a chapter in an upcoming book, on authenticity. But, in short, I probably will have to go back to this term and write a clearer summary.

*The 2007 Explorative Shadow Realms book chapter (for New Heritage, Kalay et al) is the same content as the 2006 conference paper.