The General Assembly for the International Council on Monuments and Sites is in Sydney 31 August to 9 September: https://icomosga2023.org/ and I am presenting and co-chairing the Digital Heritage session (Tuesday 5th and Thursday 7th September), hope to see you there!
Early bird registration is still available.
Assassin’s Creed in the Classroom: History’s Playground or A Stab in the Dark, an edited book with co-editor Juan Hiriart, is in process, contract sent/signed with De Gruyter…
Image Credit: Midjourney.
Between 1-9 September I visit ICOMOS General Assembly in Sydney as a co-chair of the Digital Heritage session (the schedule is up on https://icomosga2023.org/).
Somewhere between September and December (or even into 2024), I will be invited to Trondheim in Norway by a dear friend and leader of echoing.eu archaeologist Aleka Angeletaki to give a talk on my latest book (well, 2nd edition, Playing With The Past: Into The Future) and also a workshop on game prototyping. Dates have not been set yet but I believe they will let me take a short side trip.
Sorry I have been distracted by a Cooperative Research Centre application (plus two books in press and one book proposal under review) but normal service will resume shortly.
Speaking of which, these should be out relatively shortly:
Books:
Champion, E. (2022: in press). Playing with The Past: Into the Future. 2nd edition. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer-Nature. ISBN: 978-3-031-10931-7. Due 30.10.2022. Edit: may be 19 Nov 2022 according to the HCI book series website.
Champion, E., Stadler, J., Lee, C., and Peaslee, R. (Ed). (2023: in press). Screen Tourism and Affective Landscapes: The Real, The Virtual, and the Cinematic. Routledge Cultural Heritage and Tourism Series. Contracted. ISBN 9781032355962. Due 30.12.2022.
Book chapter:
Champion, E., Nurmikko-Fuller, T., & Grant, K. (2022: invited). Chapter 12 Alchemy and Archives, Swords, Spells, and Castles: Medieval-modding Skyrim. In R. Houghton (Ed.), Teaching the Middle Ages through Modern Games, UK: De Gruyter Oldenbourg. https://doi.org/doi:10.1515/9783110712032. To be published 24 October 2022. (Some content seems available online already or via academic institutions).
ICOMOS GA 2023 Scientific Symposium abstracts are due 23 September [update: now 30 September].
I’m looking for reviewers in the digital heritage theme to help with abstracts-English and / or French and / or Spanish readers.
Those interested in reviewing Digital Heritage abstracts can email me for more information.
It looks like I am being (ZOOM) interviewed this week on the future of virtual travel by RMITV show The Cutting Room “Our show explores issues and topics in the world of screen media, and this week’s episode is themed around Virtual Reality.”
If all goes to plan I think the episode will be on C31 (Melbourne community TV) and then straight to RMITV’s YouTube channel next Monday (6 June).
Draft of latest book chapter (before revisions) by the editors. Now onto the next book chapter!
Ranging from modified adaption of commercial games (game mods) to multi-million-dollar 3D visualizations and web-based projects, virtual heritage projects have showcased cutting-edge technology and provided insight into understanding past cultures. Virtual heritage has the potential to safeguard unique cultural treasures from the ravages of war and neglect, with interaction techniques to communicate knowledge across time and linguistic divides.
Despite these advantages, at its core, Virtual Heritage (virtual reality and related immersive and interactive digital technology applied to cultural heritage) implies something not real, but an illusion simulated or artificially projected. It typically relies on highly specialized capture, rending and hosting technology created by highly trained individuals, running on high-powered equipment manufactured at great environmental cost. And the original material it simulates can be sacred, stolen, or contested. There are consequences and ethical implications for this illusory but expensive medium of cultural heritage (and, typically, “cultural heritage” means other peoples’ cultures), whether complicitly generated or not. While the research field of virtual heritage is several decades old, its specific ethical issues have not been extensively addressed (Hepworth and Church, 2018, de Broglie, 2018, Frischer, 2019), and specific challenges are not often covered by, say, digital archaeological ethics discussion (Dennis, 2021, Dennis, 2020).
To provide an overview of these ethical issues, four issues will be discussed in this chapter. Who determines the content, cultural ownership and overall decision-making; how both the depiction of personal or sacred assets and traces of people no longer with us, obsessions with photorealism rather than the complex topic of authenticity, and the dangerous allure of gamification; what needs to be preserved and related environmental issues; where and when the audience should be involved, motivated, and their feedback fed back into current and future projects.
Keywords: Cultural heritage, virtual heritage, virtual reality, serious games.
On cleaning up old email I found these cursory ideas in 2013 when I was invited to Curtin.
Here are notes I jotted down as part of a sketch for a Centre of Excellence idea but here I am only listing the (then) resources
WE HAD (in 2013)…
MAIN MISSION
AREA
OPPORTUNITIES
LOOKING BACK
Now 9-10 years later, after a UNESCO chair (first for the University), involvement in the Computation Institute, grants, talks, workshops, involvement in other research centres and institutes, and a fairly long list of publications, completed PhD theses, grants, and some key projects (camera tracking in 3D, photogrammetry, mixed and augmented reality, Linked Open Data, GIS apps and systems, serious games and virtual environments), I look back at this and think about what happened in the end , my part, what didn’t eventuate, and why. The ideas aren’t useful any more (at least in their original form) but the reasons why some of them were not developed is worth pondering a bit further, maybe in a new post.
Regards my latest book “Rethinking Virtual Places”-Indiana University Press have kindly offered a 30% discount just by using this URL (but only for customers “outside US, Canada and Latin America”): https://combined-academic.myshopify.com/discount/CSV21RVP?redirect=%2Fproducts%2Frethinking-virtual-places-1
A new open-access article by Mr Mafkereseb Bekele, a PhD student at Curtin University and his three supervisors (myself, Dr David McMeekin and Dr Hafizur Rahaman): “The Influence of Collaborative and Multi-Modal Mixed Reality: Cultural Learning in Virtual Heritage” https://mdpi.com/1390992#mdpimti via @MDPIOpenAccess
Studies in the virtual heritage (VH) domain identify collaboration (social interaction), engagement, and a contextual relationship as key elements of interaction design that influence users’ experience and cultural learning in VH applications. The purpose of this study is to validate whether collaboration (social interaction), engaging experience, and a contextual relationship enhance cultural learning in a collaborative and multi-modal mixed reality (MR) heritage environment. To this end, we have designed and implemented a cloud-based collaborative and multi-modal MR application aiming at enhancing user experience and cultural learning in museums. A conceptual model was proposed based on collaboration, engagement, and relationship in the context of MR experience. The MR application was then evaluated at the Western Australian Shipwrecks Museum by experts, archaeologists, and curators from the gallery and the Western Australian Museum. Questionnaire, semi-structured interview, and observation were used to collect data. The results suggest that integrating collaborative and multi-modal interaction methods with MR technology facilitates enhanced cultural learning in VH.
Keywords: mixed reality; virtual heritage; collaborative interaction; multi-modal interaction; engagement; cultural learning
I’m giving a virtual lecture for DHGraz Wednesday 6 October 2021 (tomorrow): “We’re delighted to welcome @nzerik this Wednesday, who will open our Lunchtime Lecture series with an online talk on “Games as Serious Visualisation Tools For Digital Humanities, Cultural Heritage and Immersive Literacy”
More info: https://informationsmodellierung.uni-graz.at/de/neuigkeiten/detail/article/online-lunchtime-lecture-30.-juni-2021-1200-uhr/
Not recorded but slides are here https://www.slideshare.net/nzerik/games-xr-dhgraz-talk-06102021
Latest book chapter in the works:
Virtual Heritage: How Could It Be Ethical? Invited chapter for The Routledge Handbook of Heritage Ethics, Andreas Pantazatos, Tracy Ireland, John Schofield and Rouran Zhang (eds.), Routledge, 2023.
Ranging from modified adaption of commercial games (game mods) to multi-million dollar 3D visualizations and web-based projects, virtual heritage projects have showcased cutting-edge technology and provided insight into understanding past cultures. While the research field of virtual heritage (virtual reality and related immersive and interactive digital technology applied to cultural heritage) is several decades old, its specific ethical issues have not been extensively addressed.
Six issues will be discussed in this chapter: cultural ownership; the depiction of humans no longer with us; obsessions with photorealism rather than the complex topic of authenticity; environmental costs; accidental social alienation; and the gamification of serious, traumatic, or personal content.
I mentioned in the below post that I was on the home stretch with this book (in the Indiana University Press Spatial Humanities series), final proof was approved by me this week. I also noticed it was over 107,000 words. Thanks to Dean and Professor Marc Aurel Schnabel for the comments on the back.
“An essential contribution to a very current topic.” —Marc Aurel Schnabel, Victoria University of Wellington
If anyone wishes to review or consider ‘Rethinking Virtual Places‘ for courses please contact Indiana University Press or email me.
Taking inspiration from the ‘small is beautiful’ mantra of the
1970s which provoked counter-cultural economic and scientific expertise in the name of planetary survival, this symposium invites scholars working on computational methods in the arts, humanities and social sciences to discuss their research with ‘small data’.
Big data is often characterised by the volume, speed and aggregation made possible by automated and intensive computational systems, and over the last decade, data scraping methods and ‘large N’ studies have become dominant trends in socio-cultural digital research. Conversely, small data may be characterised by their limited volume or greater diversity of anomalous patterns, case studies, and research collected manually to answer specific questions.
This concept of “small is beautiful” has a distinctive history and place in the humanities and creative arts, producing specific (if not unique) works and critical commentary in archives tied to the authorial or artistic signature. From a social science perspective, small data may be associated with some forms of qualitative methods, marginalia, ephemera, data that ‘glows’ or narrative analysis of ‘small stories’.
Moreover digital platforms with readily accessible technologies are recomposing scale in unprecedented ways. Such approaches giverise to new possibilities for mass circulation of intimate gestures and the affordances of transnational and first person voices that may not identify with colonising structures or professional institutions of art, culture and political organisation.
Hosted by the Australian Cultural Data Engine, the Narrative Network and the Victorian College for the Arts, this interdisciplinary symposium seeks to nurture and advance our understanding of small data that involves human-scale analyses, thinking about aesthetics, and exploring how narratives emerge from data patterns and their anomalies.
Key questions guiding the event are: how do interactions with small data shape and inspire transformations of knowledge in the twenty-first century? Who collects, owns and curates small data? And when and where does small data hold power? What kind of actions, or play, are possible with small data? Which stories can be told with small data?
Proposals are invited for a two-day symposium with panels, presentations and demonstrations at the Digital Studio, University of Melbourne and online.
Topics may include:
• Collecting as little as possible: how small is small?
• Data domestics
• Fragmented or aberrant data
• Data as ritual, data as performance
• Bio-data, body data
• ‘Smart’ data
• Disruptions from data instances
• Small data art and aesthetics
• Small data industries
• Small data and subjectivity
• Miniaturisation of digital means
• Histories of small data curation
• Small data ethics
November 12-13, 2021 at the Digital Studio, Arts West building, University of Melbourne, Australia
FORMAT: The symposium will include a mix of in-person and online formats. Keynote presentations and some panels will be scheduled online for the morning sessions (AEST) with other sessions face to face in Melbourne in the afternoon of November 12 and 13 (COVID restrictions permitting).
We hope to facilitate a sense of shared understanding and conversation over the two days, and for this reason preference will be given to those who are able to attend both days of the event.
ABSTRACT SUBMISSION: please send a 250 word-abstract and bio marked “Small Data” to: digital-studio@unimelb.edu.au before September 30, 2021.
The conference fee is $50 full and $25 students and which will cover catered lunches and afternoon tea. There are a small number of bursaries for interested participants without the financial means to attend (conditions apply).
Registration details will be circulated at a later date.
“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.
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.
The editor of Virtual Archaeology Review has kindly created a shout out to our recent article “Survey of 3D digital heritage repositories and platforms” (in Vol. 11 no. 23, 2020):
Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage (2015 edition) is in a Routledge campaign for May (2020), which allows anyone to register and get free access to the book (via this link) for 7 days. After this 7-day period, they can buy a copy for £10/$15! *Trust me this is a lot cheaper than before!
Also check out the official Routledge History, Heritage Studies etc. Twitter page
Is there a catch? I honestly don’t know but don’t think so!
Erik Champion 