Category Archives: virtual heritage

CAA UK 2013: Game Issues for Scholarly Discourse or for Public Understanding

Conference, Digital Humanities, game, PhD, slides, virtual heritage, , , ,

I just gave a paper via Google hangout to CAU UK 2013 (Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology – UK Conference 22nd – 23rd February, 2013) in London.

Fullscreen Powerpoint did not seem to work but PDF did. Hmm.

I see some of the problems in Virtual Heritage//Digital Archaeology as how to

  • involve crowdsourcing
  • simulate ritual
  • design suitable and contextual interaction
  • design and evaluate meaningful learning
  • build templates so communities can develop their own interactive 3D environments
  • provide for archaeological scholars and the general public (separate environments, separate levels of detail, separate narratives?)

I forgot to say:

  • You can download related (free) book chapters in the ETC Press Game Mods book here.
  • Aarhus University has a PhD scholarship on Digital Heritage and Virtual Culture for those interested, very lucrative funding!
  • We hope to have a cultural heritage workshop in June on related issues.
  • End of October, Digital Heritage 2013, a vast collection of heritage conferences, will take place in Marseilles.
  • I have a book project on this and very happy to field suggestions about how game studies and game environments can advance to help virtual heritage and digital archaeology.

UPDATE: The slides and audio commentary are online at http://www.lparchaeology.com/caauk/game-issues-for-scholarly-discourse-or-for-public-understanding/

They are also at http://dougsarchaeology.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/game-issues-for-scholarly-discourse-or-for-public-understanding/

I cannot bring myself to listen to my own voice for any length of time (is that what I sound like, at least I did not try to sing) but a big thank you to the organizers.

PhD in DIGITAL HERITAGE AND VIRTUAL CULTURE (4+4 OR 5+3) Aarhus University

Academic, Announcements, Digital Humanities, PhD, virtual heritage, , , , ,

Link http://talent.au.dk/phd/arts/open-calls/phd-call-116/

The Graduate School of Arts, Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University invites applications for a PhD scholarship in Digital Heritage and Virtual Culture. This scholarship is available as of 1 September 2013 for a period of up to three years (5+3) or up to four years (4+4). Candidates who are awarded the scholarship must commence their PhD programme on 1 September 2013.
Digitized and digital resources with archival institutions such as museums, libraries and research institutions are increasingly being made accessible for research, educational and public use and interaction. Digital resources and data may be both cultural heritage and everyday culture resources, and making such resources accessible and enriching them for innovative research, educational and public use and interaction are central tasks of the digital humanities.
The Danish Digital Humanities Lab (DIGHUMLAB DK), anchored at Aarhus University, is a national consortium engaged in digital humanities projects and in developing digital research infrastructures for the humanities and social sciences. With interdisciplinarity and collaborative research at the core of our vision, DIGHUMLAB can offer the PhD scholar collaborative networks with AU research centres (eg Centre for Advanced Visualization and Interaction, Centre for Participatory IT) and with interdisciplinary research environments including Smart Aarhus and the university’s research programmes in digital design, information science, media studies, archaeology, museology, anthropology and experience economy, as well as with international research networks and projects.
Proposals for PhD projects should focus on research in and development of methods, tools and applications for production, representation and dissemination of digital heritage and virtual culture, and may involve applied research in the development and deployment of GIS-based projects, digital heritage archives, 3D visualizations, interactive digital simulations, design or evaluation of cultural simulations in virtual environments, or game-based learning for digital archaeology and interactive history projects.
There is also a related research application to set up a network of digital heritage research, which Aarhus University is pursuing with other leading European Universities. If that grant is successful, the applicant may work as part of this new international network in digital heritage, or the research could be fractionally combined with the PhD scholarship in Heritage Studies.
Application deadline: 15 March 2013 at 23:59 Reference No: 2013-218/1-116

The Journal of Interactive Humanities (new open access journal)

Digital Humanities, game, Journal, virtual heritage, ,

I have just joined The Journal of Interactive Humanities editorial board, should be interesting! Deadline for first papers is Feb 28.

The Journal of Interactive Humanities is a peer-reviewed, open access journal that provides an important forum for the development of new methods of outreach such as interactive games and media for museums, digitizing archives, cultural heritage preservation, and other endeavors in the humanities. Articles explore the intersection between narrative, interactive media, material culture, education and public outreach within the humanities from a variety of perspectives.

Open Access Policy

JIH will be archived in Rochester Institute of Technology’s institutional repository, the RIT Digital Media Library: http://ritdml.rit.edu. Authors are permitted to archive their individual work(s) in their respective institution’s open access repositories. This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Ch16 “History and Cultural Heritage in Virtual Environments” sent to OUP

Digital Humanities, game, virtual heritage, visualisation, , ,

Oxford Handbook of Virtuality
Chapter 16: History and Cultural Heritage in Virtual Environments

Keywords: History, heritage, games, evaluation methods, cultural heritage, HCI, multi-user interaction, virtual worlds, virtual reality, 3D interfaces.

Abstract

Applying virtual reality and virtual world technology to historical knowledge and to cultural heritage content is generally called virtual heritage, but it has so far eluded clear and useful definitions, and it has been even more difficult to evaluate. This article examines past case studies of virtual heritage; definitions and classifications of virtual environments and virtual worlds; the problem of convincing, educational and appropriate realism; how interaction is best employed; the question of ownership; and issues in evaluation. Given the premise that virtual heritage has as its overall aim to educate and engage the general public (on the culture value of the original site, cultural artifacts, oral traditions, and artworks), the conclusion suggests six objectives to keep in mind when designing virtual worlds for history and heritage.

ALLC small grants award for “Cultural Heritage, Creative Tools and Archives” workshop

Conference, Digital Humanities, virtual heritage, , , , , , ,

Email from today:

Dear Erik,

We are happy to inform you that EADH (formerly ALLC) has decided to grant your proposal for the workshop Cultural Heritage, Creative Tools and Archives.

In a nutshell:

We proposed a 2 day workshop involving speakers from Denmark and Greece and other European countries; participants will be drawn in the first instance from DARIAH, ARIADNE and NeDiMAH, with the addition of leading digital academics from outside these projects. We envisage that the workshop will lead to closer cooperation between members and help attendees develop tools and methods that can be used by the wider community, to address a communication gap in 3Drelated Digital Humanities at a European level. This event will be case-study based, participatory in approach, and workshop-based rather than lecturer-driven. Sessions will be conducted with support from key participants / moderators.

This will be an introductory workshop, suitable for both recently started and experienced digital scholars, and aiming to introduce participants to the main tools, techniques, and resources for digital humanities in the field of digital heritage, tools and archives. Workshop methodology and enabling resources will be standardized so that it can be taught by a number of different scholars, and would last 2 days, with the possibility of a social event the night before (that would be funded by us).

Time of completion: 16-17, 23-24, or 27-28 May 2013.

Venue: Denmark, Copenhagen or Aarhus.

 

23 January 2013 DIGHUMLAB kickoff, Aarhus University Denmark

Academic, Digital Humanities, virtual heritage, , ,

Over on the dighumlab.dk website we have a launch tomorrow, free admission! I have 15 minutes to speak about DIGHUMLAB and tools and sevices to help digital humanists, especially those starting off with traditional historical and heritage/basd backgrounds, phew!

09.45  History and Cultural Heritage
Projektleder Erik Champion, DIGHUMLAB

The talk will provide a short overview of digital humanities research, particularly tools, methods, and data, currently or about to be used in the fields of history and cultural heritage.

I thought I might briefly mention

  1. Issues and debates in the Digital Humanities and where DIGHUMLAB stand.
  2. DIGHUMLAB goal and mission statement.
  3. There are new proposals for centers, even as we speak! For example at Princeton!
  4. Some famous and useful case studies, tools and methods such as Programming for Historians, bamboo DiRT, and some publishing services: commentpress, open edition, and the reputed and proposed humanities counterpart to PLOSone.
  5. European organizations, DARIAH, CLARIN, NeDiMAH, Telearc, etc.. and wider afield, organizations like HASTAC and http://www.arts-humanities.net.
  6. If I have time *I won’t, I might mention the latest book, my next book project entitled Critical Gaming, the Handbook of Virtuality, and some past case studies.

Game Mods: Design, Theory and Criticism (ETC Press)!

design, Digital Humanities, game, virtual heritage, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Erik Champion (Ed). (2012). Game Mods: Design, Theory and Criticism

Are games worthy of academic attention? Can they be used effectively in the classroom, in the research laboratory, as an innovative design tool, as a persuasive political weapon? Game Mods: Design, Theory and Criticism aims to answer these and more questions. It features chapters by authors chosen from around the world, representing fields as diverse as architecture, ethnography, puppetry, cultural studies, music education, interaction design and industrial design. How can we design, play with and reflect on the contribution of game mods, related tools and techniques, to both game studies and to society as a whole?
Contributors include: Erik Champion, Peter Christiansen, Kevin R. Conway, Eric Fassbender, Jun Hu, Alex Juarez, Friedrich Kirschner, Marija Nakevska, Natalie Underberg.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License

Purchase from Lulu.com, or Download for free

For more information, and to purchase or to read the chapters, visit

http://www.etc.cmu.edu/etcpress/content/game-mods

The ETC Press is an academic and open-source publishing imprint that distributes its work in print, electronic and digital form. Inviting readers to contribute to and create versions of each publication, ETC Press fosters a community of collaborative authorship and dialogue across media. ETC Press represents an experiment and an evolution in publishing, bridging virtual and physical media to redefine the future of publication.

Visit   http://www.etc.cmu.edu/etcpress/

Can the past and history be shared? Abstract accepted for Digital Past conference

Conference, design, Digital Humanities, game, virtual heritage,

Paper and workshop proposal accepted for Digital Past conference 2013 @ Monmouth Wales, 20-21 February 2013. URL:http://www.digitalpast2013.blogspot.co.uk/

Paper: Can the past and history be shared?

There is an interesting divide between historians and the public that must be debated, how to best use virtual heritage, and digital media in general, to learn and share historical knowledge and interpretation. Heritage and history do not have to be a series of slides; space-time-intention can now be depicted and reconfigured. Teaching history through digitally simulated ‘learning by doing’ is an incredibly understudied research area and is of vital importance to a richer understanding of heritage as lived.

However, the actual spatial implications of siting learning tasks in a virtual environment are still largely un-researched. Evaluation of virtual environments has been relatively context-free, designed for user freedom and forward looking creativity. It is still much more difficult to create a virtual place that brings the past alive without destroying it.

There has been an explosion in virtual heritage conferences this century. In the last year alone, there have been calls for digital cultural heritage or virtual heritage by Graphite, VSMM, New Heritage Forum, VRST, VAST, DIME, Archäologie & Computer, and DACH, just to name a few. An outside observer may believe that such academic interest, coupled with recent advances in virtual reality (VR), specifically in virtual environment technology and evaluation, would prepare one for designing a successful virtual heritage environment. Game designers may also be led to believe that games using historical characters, events or settings, may be readily adaptable to virtual heritage. This paper will advance key contextual issues that question both assumptions.

Beacham, R., Denard, H., & Niccolucci, F. (2006). London charter for the computer-based visualization of cultural heritage. Retrieved from http://www.londoncharter.org/introduction.html
Fredrik, D. (2012). Rhetoric, Embodiment, Play: Game Design as Critical Practice in the Art History of Pompeii. Meaningful Play 2012 conference paper.
Retrieved from http://meaningfulplay.msu.edu/proceedings2012/mp2012_submission_178.pdf

Submission 2: Workshop Suggestion: Prototyping and Visualizing Virtual Places
This workshop will primarily be a primer for using 3D visualisation, modelling, video editing and game technologies as quick prototyping and scenario design tools. If attendees request it, time may also be spent on attendee issues, solutions, previous experience, and case studies in utilizing these or similar tools. As well as an overview of these tools and an explanation of their comparable features , there will also be a brief presentation of the presenter’s work in using these tools for designing for cultural and historical interaction.

The proposed workshop will run for 90 minutes. The purpose will be to overview 3D modelling, rendering and animation packages for creating digital places and visualisations of past cultures . The convener will bring the required applications, and make available applications either from a website or via a USB stick.

Tools Previewed
Google Sketchup
Google Sketch up is both a free and commercial 3D application which offers simple modeling and rendering features, a huge warehouse of free 2D and 3D assets, and can export to Blender, Unity,

Unreal UDK (via kmz4 format) and Google Earth.
Blender 3D runs on MAC PC and Linux, Blender is totally free, and the new version 2.5 and its derivatives offers a much improved interface. The bulk of the workshop will concentrate on Blender, as not only is it an impressive modeling and rendering package, but it also offers interesting compositing and video editing features. Blender also has a simple game engine and has possibilities for exporting to Apple iOS.
UNITY has free and trial versions, runs on MAC, PC, Android and iOS, and game consoles. It can import many formats, and is easy to learn, or to add assets to. Scripting can be by JavaScript, Python or C# but there are standard assets and add-ons that can create 3D objects and environments very quickly. It can also create webplugins that run inside browsers or even inside MOODLE.

The best game and virtual environment journals?

Academic, game, Journal, virtual heritage, ,

How do you measure the reach, quality and effectiveness of journals in the areas of game studies and virtual environments? Many of them do not clearly feature impact factors, but by using commercial software one may be able to get a better idea of how well they help the h-index of submitted papers. I won’t get into the debate here on open access journals but as some of the below journals are open access, and some are extremely expensive, this should also be a consideration, especially if one is writing also for a non-academic audience (such as game designers).

I have been reading a few articles on how book chapters do not get cited (Anderson, 2012; Bishop, 2012) and whether academics should write book reviews (Toor, 2012). In Virtual Heritage research many conferences are not fully published and indexed, while the book chapters are seldom cited.  There are some good articles out there on how to get published (Armstrong, undated), but why bother if one is not cited? Lack of citations probably also means that one is not read by a serious professional audience.

And I note in (my) area, some of the more famous journals appear to be

NB related VR/VE/ graphics journals impact factors here.

*I am on the editorial boards of the above journals.

UPDATE: you can compare the above journals at SCIMAGOJR website.

Descriptive Theory Does Not Build Place

Digital Humanities, virtual heritage, , ,

This is from the Hong Kong New Heritage Place Panel in 2006. Seems such a long time ago! One day I should revisit all these grand claims that arose from a younger me, and aim for more substantiation and logical structure.

Descriptive Theory Does Not Build Place

New media, virtual heritage, cultural heritage, and place are all hotly contested concepts, of interest to many different fields. They have in common a slippery definitional outline, and they all feature in fiery interdisciplinary debates. They also pose many difficulties for those of us attempting to create a lucid prescriptive and descriptive theory that explains and employs them effectively.

For real world cultural heritage projects one must consider actual problems of preserving the present, while allowing people to in some way understand the past. According to constructivist and constructionist theories, the best way of creating understanding for people of different learning abilities and interests is to allow them to interact with the object in question. Virtual heritage, for all its difficulties, can augment and afford experiential understanding via interaction in a way not always directly accessible through present day cultural sites. It may sound flippant, but place can actually get in the way of cultural understanding for both the public and for archaeologists. For what survives may not always be accurate, authentic, or revealing.

On the other hand, many critics have argued that virtual environments lack a sense of place. In trying to answer these critics, the danger lurks that in attempting to create a sense of place, we convince the public of a hypothetically constructed past. With technology currently used by many VR centres, such issues might appear to be easily resolvable. I reluctantly disagree.

Virtual heritage environments typically encounter issues of meaningful interaction, authenticity, accessibility, maintenance, non-intrusive evaluation of cultural understanding of inhabitant values and beliefs, and of course the ethical issues of site ownership, management and identity. It is also possible that many in the virtual heritage community may benefit from revisiting heritage studies to see how real world places have attempted to answer similar issues.

My suggestion is that new media (i.e. small n and m) technology offers more accessible, user friendly, and innovative ways of capturing and expressing place qualia to current generations. New media has challenged Presence research to study not just response to virtual environments, but also virtual environments with suitable content. The artistic expansion of new media in terms of enhanced sensory input and output may help virtual reality break free of the mouse and the screen as creative constraints to digital expression.

New media has started to separate data from platform, which may eventually also help port VR to the wider public. New media has addressed consumer demand for personalisation, social sharing, and social identity, in entertainment media. Virtual heritage, by contrast, has been slow to address audience and user issues. New media, through its holes, hacks, and add ons, has also helped foster a community-based network of developers who are working together to create open source projects. Virtual heritage needs to utilise such technology so that the training of designers and owner-operators can help distribute and manage the content.

New media has started to separate data from platform, which may eventually also help port VR to the wider public. New media has addressed consumer demand for personalization, social sharing, and identity, in entertainment media. Virtual heritage, by contrast, has been slow to address audience and user issues. New media, through its holes, hacks, and add-ons, has also helped foster a community-based network of developers who are helping create open source projects. Virtual heritage needs to utilize such technology so that the training of designers and owner-operators can help distribute and manage the content.

Update: the original panel abstracts are here:
http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~giaccard/research/pdf/GiaccardiKalay_NH06.pdf

Prototyping for Ownership Workshop at Media Architecture Biennale

Architecture, Conference, design, game, virtual heritage

On 15 November i.e. yesterday, I attended the “Prototyping for Ownership” workshop, run by

Klaus Birk (Media Design, DHBW & Information Environments, UAL London)
Roman Grasy (Intuity Media Lab). >Their company is based in Germany.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The workshop had 2 groups. Our group of between 5-9 people (it varied!) spent the day choosing little pictures, noting down ideas to them, on creating media architecture on problems close to us. There was a Kinect and VVV (runs nicely with Kinect), augmented reality trackers, a 360 degree mouse, and a macbook pro with after affects (you can guess what I ended up doing).

Some of my ideas are in the slide show above.

My group chose my idea of a giant phonogram set into a square, people would run around tracks or grooves of the phonogram, which would start tracks of music, their speed and rhythm would be tracked, affecting the music, and gestures could affect the timbre. Small orchestral pits in the corners of the square would allow sound editing via mechanical or visual (projected) buttons. Also there would be exercise levers that would control the music just like dials on a sound editing desk (may attach sketch later). Shells or pipes in the side streets would faintly play current or past performances, to draw people to the square. We also thought of a catch the light or animated sprites game, that would be derived from the spinning carousal-musical tracks, on the surrounding urban facades, and there could be small lasers inside the tracks, broken by the shadows of the dancers.

There is also a video of us dancing to the start stop Fat Boy Slim track while being rotated. Too embarrassing to add here, to be honest. So I hope they don’t choose this video part of the prototype to show at the Biennale! (Edit: Klaus has, oh well, I am stuck in the office so if it is shown today I won’t know about it).

Part of our kinect interface for the “anti travelator” or “magic urban roundabout” prototype is below, it worked, you step into the light (the magic circle) and the music turns on, you step out, it stops. Ideally it would record your height and changing y position to change tracks in the music and pitch. Truly a magic circle!

NB the twitter handle for the conference is @MABiennale website address is http://mab12.mediaarchitecture.org/

It also runs on Saturday at Godsbanen, Aarhus (great venue for this sort of thing).

Oxford Handbook of Virtuality: History and heritage in virtual worlds abstract

Academic, Digital Humanities, game, virtual heritage, , ,

Here is the latest abstract for my chapter for the Oxford Handbook of Virtuality, edited by Mark Grimshaw. The chapter was written and sent to OUP some time ago, no doubt there will be changes, but I am happy to take comments or suggestions etc.

History and Heritage in Virtual Worlds

Keywords: History, heritage, games, evaluation methods, cultural heritage, HCI, multi-user interaction, virtual worlds, virtual reality, 3D interfaces.

Applying virtual reality and virtual world technology to historical knowledge and to cultural heritage content is generally called virtual heritage, but it has so far eluded clear and useful definitions, and it has been even more difficult to evaluate. This article examines past case studies of virtual heritage; definitions and classifications of virtual environments and virtual worlds; the problem of convincing, educational and appropriate realism; how interaction is best employed; issues in evaluation; and the question of ownership. Given the premise that virtual heritage has as its overall aim to educate and engage the general public (on the culture value of the original site, cultural artifacts, oral traditions, and artworks), the conclusion suggests six objectives to keep in mind when designing virtual worlds for history and heritage.

PhD scholarships at Aarhus University Denmark

Academic, Architecture, Conference, design, Digital Humanities, game, job, virtual heritage, , , ,

Aarhus University has some fascinating PhD scholarships available, please feel free to circulate!

http://talent.au.dk/phd/arts/open-calls/

Virtual Culture (4+4 or 5+3)

Design materials for interaction design (5+3)

Participatory IT (5+3)

Heritage Studies (4+4 or 5+3)

Centre for Cultural Epidemics, Anthropology (4+4 or 5+3)

Interacting Minds Centre (5+3)

Theory and practice of IT-project management (5+3)

The art museum of the 21st century (5+3)

industrial PhDs

http://talent.au.dk/phd/arts/application/industrial-phd-programme/

cfp: VAST2012: The 13th International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Brighton, UK, 19-21 November 2012

Academic, Conference, game, virtual heritage, , , , ,

VAST2012: The 13th International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Brighton, UK, 19-21 November 2012
Use inspired technological advances in heritage
www.vast2012.org
DEADLINE: 23 SEPTEMBER, 2012

Digital technology has the potential to influence every aspect of the cultural heritage environment. Archaeologists and cultural heritage scientists as well as Information and Communication Technology (ICT) experts have in the past collaborated to find solutions to optimise all aspects of capturing, managing, analysing and delivering cultural information, but many unsolved problems remain. The goal of VAST 2012 will be to build on the open dialogue between these different areas of expertise, and in particular allow ICT experts to have a better understanding of the critical requirements that cultural heritage professionals have for managing and delivering cultural information and for the ICT systems that support these activities.

To achieve this VAST 2012 will explore the entire pipeline of ICT in cultural heritage from background research to exploitation. The conference not only focuses on the development of innovative solutions, but it will investigate the issues of the exploitation of computer science research by the cultural heritage community. The transition from research to practical reality can be fraught with difficulty. The digital environment provides new opportunities and new business processes for sustainability, but with these opportunities there are also challenges. VAST 2012 will provide an opportunity for the heritage and ICT communities to understand these challenges and shape the future of ICT and heritage research. We are seeking contributions that advance the state of the art in the information technologies available to support cultural heritage. In particular:

Data Acquisition and Processing:
2/3/4D data capture
Geometry processing and representations
On-site and remotely sensed data collection
Digital capture of intangible heritage (performance, audio, dance, oral)
Geographical information systems

Metadata Handling:
Classification schemas, ontologies and semantic processing
Long-term preservation of digital artefacts
Annotations
Digital libraries, data management and collection management
Multilingual applications, tools and systems

Presentation:
Mobile technologies
Virtual museums
Augmentation of physical collections with digital presentations
Interactive environments and applications
Multi-modal interfaces and rendering
Storytelling and design of heritage communications
Usability, effectiveness and interface design
Intelligent and knowledge-based tools for digital reconstruction
Authoring tools for creating new cultural experiences

Practitioners’ Experience:
Professional and ethical guidelines
Standards and documentation
Requirements and policies
Methodological issues and research paradigms
Tools for education and training
Serious games in cultural heritage
Assistance in monitoring and restoration

Economics and Business:
Economics of cultural informatics
Watermarking, provenance, copyright and IPR
Business models and sustainability for ICT in cultural heritage
Impact of ICT applications in cultural heritage

Other relevant works concerning the application of information technologies to Cultural Heritage, not explicitly included in the above categories, are also welcome for submission. Accepted papers will be presented in the form of:

· Full research papers presenting new innovative results: these papers will be published by Eurographics in the EG Symposium Series (ISSN 1881-864X). The contributions should not exceed 8 pages, including bibliography and illustrations.
· Short papers presenting preliminary results and works-in-progress or focusing on on-going projects, the description of project organization, use of technology, and lesson learned. These papers will have an oral and poster presentation and will be published in the “Projects & Short Papers” proceedings volume. The contributions should not exceed 4 pages, including bibliography and illustrations.

BEST PAPERS AWARD The best papers selected at VAST 2012 will have the opportunity to be submitted to the ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH). JOCCH is published online during the year and then a hardcopy volume is produced at the end of the year.
All submissions will be reviewed and feedback given to the authors. See detailed information on submissions (http://www.vast2012.org/submissions). To have the paper published in the proceedings, at least one of the authors must register to the Conference after being notified of acceptance but before submitting camera-ready copies.

DEADLINE: 23 SEPTEMBER, 2012

cfp: Digital data – lost, found, and made at Copenhagen University 16 October 2012

Conference, Digital Humanities, virtual heritage, ,

http://ccc.ku.dk/calendar/2012/found_and_made/

Communication on the internet and in other digital media is continuously recording itself – these data are there to be found. They include meta-data – data about data – that carry much information beyond the actual messages that are ‘sent’ and ‘received.’ Meta-data situate these messages in relation to their contexts – the source of information, its connections with other items of information, their trajectories across sites and servers, and the local users of the information, who, perhaps, add their own meta-data. At the same time, various other kinds of data must be made in order to account for the place of digital media in social interaction on a global scale. The resulting challenges to research are as massive as the amounts of data involved – what is referred to in both academia and industry as big data.

This seminar brings key contributors to the first decade of internet research to the Copenhagen Centre for Communication and Computing in order to address these challenges in an interdisciplinary dialogue. Each presentation is followed by Q&A, and the seminar concludes with a panel debate and plenary discussion.

The seminar is open and free – no registration is required. For further information, please contact Kasper Rasmussen <kasper.r>

Time: 2012-10-16 9:45 to 16:30
Place: University of Copenhagen, Southern Campus, Room 24.4.01
Organizer: Centre for Communication and Computing

“Visualizing the Digital Humanities” at DeIC conference, 12-13 November 2012

Conference, Digital Humanities, virtual heritage

My talk:  Visualizing the Digital Humanities (http://www.deic.dk/drupal/program_mandag?q=node/156)

Titel: Visualizing the Digital Humanities
Taler: Project Manager Erik Champion, Digital Humanities Lab
Om præsentation: What is or are the Digital Humanities, especially in relation to Denmark and the Nordic World?
Do we mean the digitalization of text, or does it encompass other forms of data and research?
How is visualization involved, and what sort of data and computing resources are required?
In this talk we aim to answer the three questions from the point of view of the new DIGHUMLAB.dk consortium, comparing and contrasting with other similar centers and institutes.

Note to self, just two months to prepare!

*DeIC is the merger of Forskningsnettet (Danish Research Network) and Danish Center for Scientific Computing (DCSC)

Thanks to all those who attended the DIGHUMLAB launch

Conference, design, Digital Humanities, game, virtual heritage,

On Monday 10 September 2012 we had our official launch and I would like to thank all who attended and the invited speakers and it appeared yesterday and today on the Aarhus University website.

Would like to have more time for questions and answers session, but the delay was probably caused by the audience networking over good coffee, which is just further proof of the need for a more collaborative and communal organization to help promote and disseminare digital humanities!

There will be two new PhD positions advertised soon, and Aalborg may also be introducing new possibilities so keep eyes tuned to the dighumlab.dk website.

PHOTO: Professor Patrik Svensson Director of HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden, discussing interactive media and virtual worlds.
UPDATE: The University article and photo is here: http://www.au.dk/om/nyheder/nyhed/artikel/millionsatsning-paa-nyt-digitalt-laboratorium/ (DANISH) ORhttp://dighumlab.dk/index.php?id=2155&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=120&cHash=64e8312ce6f3871a51329b63375352aa