“Learning GIS with Game of Thrones” free book

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gvSIG blog

Have you decided to learn to work with a Geographic Information System and you don’t know how to start? Now that the premiere of the new season of Game of Thrones series will be in a few days, we recommend you do it using the book that we have just published: “Learning GIS with Game of Thrones“.

This book compiles a series of post with practical exercises that have been published in the gvSIG project blog previously. The objective is that anyone, without previous knowledge and through a series of practical exercises, learn to handle a GIS in an entertaining and funny way.

Everything necessary to follow the course is available free of charge, including gvSIG Desktop software – a free GIS used in more than 160 countries – as well as the data (download links are available in the book) and this tutorial, distributed…

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hardware, software, simple coding

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Time for a quick update on recent tech offerings

Rough Outline on Architected Place

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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.

 

Conferences for 2017-2018

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*START* DUE CONFERENCE THEME LOCATION
22-Oct-17 12-Jul-17 UIST ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology-posters Quebec City, Canada
31-Oct-17 15-Jun-17 VSMM2017 23rd Int’l Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia Dublin Ireland
08-Nov-17 ? Chacmool The Future of Archaeology: How Technology Can Influence a Discipline Calgary Canada
08-Nov-17 30-Jun-17 VRST Virtual Reality Software and Technology Gothenburg Sweden
28-Nov-17 16-Jun-17 ozchi17 OzCHI 2017 – Human-Nature Brisbane Australia
01-Dec-17 21-Jul-17 DCH2017 Digital Cultural Heritage Manchester UK
04-Dec-17 31-Jul-17 dha 4th Digital Humanities: Data First! Innsbruck Austria
05-Dec-17 10-Jul-17 GALA 2017 Games and Learning Alliance conference Lisbon Portugal
07-Dec-17 01-Jun-17 Postcolonial Post colonial memory Amsterdam Netherlands
18-Dec-17 25-Aug-17 TAG UK Theorectical Archaeology Group Cardiff Wales
17-Mar-18 29-Sep-17 CRDH Current Research in Digital History Arlington, VA
19-Mar-18 ? CAA2018 Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Tübingen, Germany
21-Apr-18 12-Sep-17 CHI2018 Computer Human Interaction Montreal, Canada
24-Apr-18 ? CAA2019 Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Kraków, Poland
02-May-18 ? Best Practices Best Practices in World Heritage: Archeology Menorca Spain
09-Jun-18 ? DIS Designing Interactive Systems Hong Kong
19-Jun-18 ? IDC2018 ACM Interaction Design and Children Trondheim, Norway
24-Jun-18 ? DH2018 Digital Humanities 2018 Mexico City, Mexico
12-Aug-18 ? SIGGRAPH18 SIGGRAPH Vancouver Canada
01-Sep-18 31-Mar-17 2018achs Heritage Across Borders (sessions) Hangzhou China
19-Sep-18 01-Feb-18 eCAADe2018 computing for a better tomorrow Lodz Poland
14-Oct-18 ? ? ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology Berlin Germany
 
START *DUE* CONFERENCE THEME LOCATION
08-Nov-17 30-Jun-17 VRST Virtual Reality Software and Technology Gothenburg Sweden
05-Dec-17 10-Jul-17 GALA 2017 Games and Learning Alliance conference Lisbon Portugal
22-Oct-17 12-Jul-17 UIST ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology-posters Quebec City, Canada
01-Dec-17 21-Jul-17 DCH2017 Digital Cultural Heritage Manchester UK
04-Dec-17 31-Jul-17 dha 4th Digital Humanities: Data First! Innsbruck Austria
18-Dec-17 25-Aug-17 TAG UK Theorectical Archaeology Group Cardiff Wales
21-Apr-18 12-Sep-17 CHI2018 Computer Human Interaction Montreal, Canada
17-Mar-18 29-Sep-17 CRDH Current Research in Digital History Arlington, VA
19-Sep-18 01-Feb-18 eCAADe2018 computing for a better tomorrow Lodz Poland

new project 2: 3D and GIS

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The following was a successful grant, funded by the Curtin Institute of Computation.

Title: Leveraging Low-Cost and Free Linked Open Data and Hybrid GIS/3D For Cultural Heritage Visualisation (6 months)

The program/research plan:

The two ECRs with the help of the two Curtin Professors will investigate the use of an application, possibly the Pelagios Framework (http://commons.pelagios.org/), an online portal that can combine maps, charts, documents, pictures and dynamic data, to create interactive visualisations and predictive cartographic analysis tools.

pelagios.pngFigure 1: Pelagios

This pilot study will explore whether the application can accept, display and dynamically link to 3D models and their subcomponents, using GIS Data so that maps and 3D models can be displayed and interacted with online. This specific application theoretically accepts simple 3D stl models but three.js and web3D models have not been investigated. Existing related examples: see http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/arc/mayagis.html

The two ECRS will derive a 3D model with GIS related data and design an online Pelagios Commons framework (or similar) for viewing a 3D model of a heritage site, preferably in Australia, that controls place elements in a side-located text document or an online map or chart and vice versa.

http://pleiades.stoa.org/ shows some of the possibilities of Linked Open Data, but not how 3D can interact with a LOD GIS platform.

Proposed engagement of external and community groups

  1. Firstly, we will collaborate with the following non-CIC staff at Curtin to develop the Curtin University workshop.
  2. Secondly we will invite members to test the prototype and provide feedback and potentially collaboration and grant opportunities.
  3. We will test the prototype with archaeologists, heritage specialists or architects in another Australian city. The longer-term aim is to engage them in applying for a linkage to design a more permanent and larger collection and online portal for a more highly featured, user-friendly and robust design.

For an interesting potentially related interface please see http://www.impa.br/opencms/en/

new project 1: HMD Augmented Reality Heritage Trail study

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The following was a successful grant, funded by the Curtin Institute of Computation.

The program/research plan:

In 2016 the Chief Investigator (CI) organized a one day talk and workshop on cultural heritage visualization, (“GLAM-VR”, Curtin HIVE, http://slides.com/erikchampion/glamvr16-26-08-2016 ) and helped facilitate a related makerspace event (“Cultural Makathon at Curtin Library Makerspace”, URL: http://slides.com/erikchampion/deck-4#/fullscreen#/ ). All groups of students finished their projects apart from one single individual group encountering trouble designing inside a 3D game engine. For the Augmented Reality 2016 makerspace tutorials, there was similar difficulty in finding suitable tutorial material. Unfortunately, there are few tutorials and examples for augmented reality and 3D game engines for hackathon or makathon events. There is even less material for cultural heritage augmented reality tours. And there is no academic feature list survey and comparison of recent augmented reality headsets for cultural heritage tours, where one walks along a heritage trail using the augmented reality headset (HMD) for augmented information.

This 2017 pilot study will aim to resolve this issue by providing an exemplar, online resources, a white paper and

  1. The two ECRS will develop a simple digital 3D environment prototype which reveals cultural heritage assets, artefacts and landmarks when viewed inside a portable head-mounted display (HMD) or augmented reality HMD.
  2. We will compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of the above HMDs, run an evaluation on test subjects of preferred display, time required to navigate and to wayfind, and record participants’ task performance and memory recall.
  3. We will create a white paper for this, including suggested workflows and appropriate tools.
  4. From the above findings we will provide an online available training course for developing Augmented Reality cultural heritage tours for head Mounted Displays.
  5. There will be a pilot workshop at CURTIN LIBRARY MAKERSPACE