erik champion dighumlab...virtual heritage is …the use of computer-based interactive technologies...
TRANSCRIPT
Erik Champion
DIGHUMLAB.DK
ABSTRACT
Academic discourse (of the historical sciences) presupposes a vast domain of related
background knowledge
learnt yet creative technique of extrapolation
But NOT the experiential detective work of experts that visit the real site.
Fact or fiction, History or history
Scholarly knowledge does not easily translate to audience knowledge; nor is scholarly knowledge necessarily the type of knowledge that would best engage the public.
Is it preferable for the audience to learn about a collection of culturally situated past experiences, or a strictly academic procession of historical events?
TRACES OF THE WORLD
VH Data includes the remains, hypotheses, intangible heritage, audience background and motivation
Digitally mediated technology can replicate existing data but also modify the learning experience of through augmentation
filtering
constraining.
BUT Virtual environments are not complex in their interactional history
if VR is “being there”; the past and the present do not intermingle as they do in real places
the many sub/conscious ways that people leave traces in the world are not conveyed in static 3D models.
Discover Ancient Rome in Google Earth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqMXIR
wQniA
Image:
http://www.virtualtripping.com/google-
earths-rome-reborn/ 2008
Virtual heritage is
…the use of computer-based interactive technologies to record, preserve, or recreate artefacts, sites and actors of historic, artistic, religious, of cultural significance and to deliver the results openly to a global audience in such a way as to provide formative educational experiences through electronic manipulations of time and space.
Stone, Robert, and Takeo Ojika. 2000. Virtual heritage: what next? Multimedia, IEEE no. 7 (2):73-74.
We need new ways to engage students and public…
But museums can succeed without the digital…
National museum of
Science Bergamo
Ethnographic Collection
by user, bergamo
Relates to future funding… CARARE Final Conference 7-9.11.12
Europeana,.. Frees 20 m objects, 22 3D
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datab
log/2012/sep/12/europeana-cultural-
heritage-library-europe
http://www.sparpointgroup.com/Blogs/Continental-View/Interview--Dr-Anestis-Koutsoudis---At-the-cutting-edge-of-Greek-3D/ or http://www.67100.gr/
Answers answers answers
Record and integrate
“discovery” process
Use game engines and
game metaphors more
effectively
Develop a better framework
of applied game theory that
is scalable, easily tested and
falsifiable
Game-based-learning promises
1. Technology, graphics and
storage and speed,
(Augmented reality,
nonphysical interaction)
2. Archaeological information
3. Training and ideas
4. Crowd sourcing, LBG, and
social media
5. Interdisciplinary approaches
Game components
allow modification of the visual overlaid interface, the Heads Up Display (HUD)
include avatars with triggered and re-scriptable behaviors and path-finding
maps that demonstrate location, orientation, or the social attitude of non-playing characters in relation to the player
imaginative use of technical constraints that add to the thematic fantasy, goal-direction and challenge necessary for an entertaining game.
SO: How can games and interactive digital media in general help learning about archaeology?
Type of game (paper, Champion, GBL, 2008) Example in available games
Tourist Game: enjoy off site from a safe and
comfortable distance.
The new travel game genre, like
Weekend in Capri
Puzzle Games: find what happened by
examining material remains, changes, epigraphy..
ArcDig; Qin: Tomb of the Magic Kingdom, escape
the Forbidden city by solving puzzles (traps etc.).
Resource Management: understand the
speculative historical processes and formulae,
inhabitants’ relationships to their surrounds..
Civilization, Age of Empires, Tribal Trouble,
Pharaoh, Caesar IV
Historical Battles: Avoid being killed, take over
territory, learn military strategies.
The Total War Series, Battalion IV, Starcraft
Role Playing Games The Elder Scroll series: Oblivion, Skyrim
Control Games: These games aim to control
or overcome inhabitants.
Shadow of the Colossus, Darwin, Black and White
Social Mashup: encounters via semi-controlled
characters.
The Sims, Spore
Games that allow classroom role-playing of
history through in-game camera
capture(machinima).
Halo, Unreal, Sims, The Movies
Types of games that MAY help..
Where the knowledge is learnt
Deduction
Exploration
Augmented -ambient info
Counterfactual inspiration
Instrumental
Performance (role-playing)
Diegetic (narration) inside/outside VE
versus mimesis OR external diegesis
Cultural Significance
Today, electronic games are an important vehicle for learning (Anderson, 2010; Dondlinger, 2007).
At the minimum, a game is an activity that (1) typically has some goal in mind, something that the player works to achieve, (2) has systematic or emergent rules, and (3) is considered a form of play or competition (Oxford, 2010).
Apart from “skill and drill” types of games, many are much more complex, providing an interactive narrative in which the player must test hypotheses, synthesize knowledge, and respond to the unexpected (Dondlinger, 2007).
For historical situations or heritage the player/user/student should develop a deeper understanding rather than simply memorizing facts (Bloom, 1956).
I wish to convey the cultural significance of what is represented and interacted with.
What did X mean in time and space and culture and to whom?
My past projects..
Question: How contextually appropriate interaction
can aid the understanding of cultures distant and
remote to the participant.
Participants: university students, museum curators,
travel writers, 3D visualization experts, language
scholars, travellers and tourists.
Tools: Unreal, Unity, Half-Life 2, NeverWinter Nights,
Oblivion, Quest 3D, Adobe Atmosphere, Flash,
StrataStudio, 3D Studio Max, Maya, Blender.
Learning from disperience
How unreliable digital media can be!
Data collection is usually suspect.
Theoretical notions of cultural learning are not
designed to be easily tested, what is it and how
can it be tested?
Designers do not fully understand their own
assumptions until they play test other designers.
Greatest learning experience has been from
designing these VEs, not from playing them.
Gaps between the humanities and the technology
researchers in VH is still alarming.
Little simulation of rituals
Do video games employ habitual social and personal activities closely related to ritual (Gazzard and Peacock 2011)?
Any repetitious activity is NOT a ritual. Rituals, games, and game play narratives may lead to
unpredictable outcomes yet rituals in the real-world tend to be closed
rules are often indirect and learnt over many years, the ritual is experienced in a transcendental state
outside distractions are minimized and ignored
paradoxically, while the ritual is an important part of social bonding it can also reinforce social distinctions.
In the real world the complicit attention and deference of participants is crucial and immediately sensed.
Can we crowd-source?
To what extent can users enrich their environment by personalizing it and communicating through it (Walters, Hughes and Hughes, 2011)?
To what extent should users be thematically constrained by the environment itself?
How much individual freedom can users have to interact with the environment at the risk of destroying immersion?
IS Digital media a shop façade for the serious and scholarly past-time of reading and writing books (Parry 2005; Gillings, 2002). then how will the changing attention spans and learning
patterns of new generations be best addressed (Mehegan, 2007)?
Dreams
Level design game games
Augmented reality and mobile devices
Physiological interaction
New interaction inspirations World-builder
Learning via craft not just spectacle
Humbleness with distinctions
Treating people as infrastructure *VMUST
Get students to learn about historic events and literature through simple game design
Journey to the West, recreated in NeverWinter Nights, a 12 week project by 3 students in 2006.
Involved their translation from the origin al Chinese text. They included the text in the games, created game mechanics and
levels from the text, and tested Chinese and Australian students.
cultural games can be playfully instructive
Shown at Vsmm2012 conference Chinese Taoism Touch Screen by Neil Wang and Erik Champion
Opening - http://youtu.be/gFYG4zTn4Js
Game Hua - http://youtu.be/DiGDezTM8hY
Game Qi1 - http://youtu.be/jP9nfdUFDTU
Game Qi2 - http://youtu.be/orCga2CQBjs
Game Qin - http://youtu.be/iC2BGT5IbDE
Game Shu - http://youtu.be/dv_TOnl_sbc
BIOFEEDBACK CINEMATICS AND XRAY VISION
ETC PRESS
http://www.etc.cmu.edu/etcpress/ Tue, 05/20/2008 - 16:21
We publish books, but we’re also interested in the participatory future of content creation across multiple media. We are an academic, open source, multimedia, publishing imprint affiliated with the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and in partnership with Lulu.com. ETC Press has an affiliation with the Institute for the Future of the Book and MediaCommons, sharing in the exploration of the evolution of discourse. ETC Press also has an agreement with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to place ETC Press publications in the ACM Digital Library, and another with Feedbooks to place ETC Press texts in their e-reading platform. Also, ETC Press publications will be in Booktrope and in the ThoughtMesh.
ETC Press publications will focus on issues revolving around entertainment technologies as they are applied across a variety of fields. We will accept submissions and publish work in a variety of media (textual, electronic, digital, etc.). We are interested in creating projects with Sophie and with In Media Res, and we work with The Game Crafter to produce tabletop games. All ETC Press publications will be released under one of two Creative Commons license.
Center for Digital Ethnography, Florida Natalie Underberg
..computer game mod designed to teach about Depression-era Ybor City, Florida history and culture titled the
Turkey Maiden Educational Computer Game (Underberg, 2008). The area is known for its historic cigar industry
and Latin immigrant population. The game itself is based on a Spanish folktale collected from Ybor City, Florida
and was adapted into a video game mod using the popular Role Playing Game (RPG) Neverwinter Nights.
Game design forces students to read material and choose the importance of events and characters
This recreation was based on the Popol Vuh, if players navigated the archaeological recreation correctly, they could be teleported to Xibalba, the mythic Mayan underworld.
In 2006 two students recreated this in 6 weeks, featuring 3D joystick, surround projection, and a dancemat that the player walked on in order to move about the virtual environment.
MirrorBox Projection
New heritage
New Media
comprises the act of
reshaping the user
experience of
exploring realms or
worlds through the
innovative use of
digital media.
Home » Studio in Multimedia Authoring in Archaeology: Investigating the past through New Media technologies:
http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/content/studio-multimedia-authoring-archaeology-investigating-past-through-
new-media-technologies
Sagas in voice & camera tracked games
Skyrimgame can host virtual
recreations (of Nordic stories
or any other), the player can
control the avatar, and issue
voice commands recognised
by the game). Inhabitants can
be easily reprogrammed to
share stories. Trading, praying,
conversing healing etc are
possible, not just violence.
(Bottom picture c/o Eric
Fassbender)n
Mixed Reality
http://virtual.vtt.fi/virtual/proj2/multimedia
/projects/mrconference.html
http://ael.gatech.edu/lab/research/arsecon
dlife/using-the-ar-second-life-client/
Virtual Heritage: suggestions
1. Meticulously and comprehensively capture objects and processes of scientific, social or spiritual value.
2. Present this information as accurately, authentically, and engagingly as possible.
3. Distribute the project in a sensitive, safe and durable manner to as wide and long-term an audience as possible.
4. Provide an effective and inspirational learning environment appropriate to the content and to the audience.
5. Possibility to participate in its construction.
Carefully evaluate effectiveness against the above five aims in order to improve both the project and VH!
The VE could be different VEs for different audiences!
Conclusion
We lack DH projects electric in content and impact (engagement).
The conventions on how to play games are known to a wider number of
people than frequent computer gamers
Games provide engaging and challenging goals, strategies, and performance
feedback which taken together help people to find some form of internal
meaning and purpose in interacting with a virtual environment.
Game-style interaction conventions are typically destructive, instinctive
rather than reflective, and not amenable to history-based learning.
Certain types of virtual environments used in many games are engaging, but
they are not meaningful cultural experiences.
Culture implies materially embodied beliefs that could identity yet outlive a
maker. Play, on the other hand, suggests an eternal changing of form
without thought as to the consequences.
contact
ERIK CHAMPION
http://DIGHUMLAB.DK
http://erikchampion.wordpress.com
Email [email protected]
Twitter #nzerik