Category Archives: Digital Humanities

personal bit of information and apology

Conference, Digital Humanities, , , , ,

I am sorry I have not had much time to update the site lately, I have been very busy with organizing a workshop in Copenhagen
http://dighumlab.dk/news/single-news/artikel/cfp-cultural-heritage-creative-tools-and-archives-workshop/

The programme will appear soon and I am very happy with it, I think it will be a great event.

However June will probably not see much activity on this site as I will be tidying up loose ends here in Denmark before moving to Curtin University in Western Australia in July to start a new role. I am sorry in many ways to be leaving Europe but this is probably the right time to do so and some wonderful opportunities await.

In particular I am looking forward to working with iVEC, supervising PhD students, facilitating a new masters in visualisation for Curtin, and also help them develop new facilities such as this one for research into Cultural Visualisation (amongst other things).

Centernet CFP–NANO: New American Notes Online (Issue 5) Special Theme: Digital Humanities, Public Humanities, Deadline: 1 October 2013

Digital Humanities, Journal,

NANO: New American Notes Online

Call for Papers: Issue 5

Special Theme: Digital Humanities, Public Humanities

Deadline: 1 October 2013

www.nanocrit.com

Scholars, artists, and new media practitioners—including Sharon Daniel, Erik Loyer, Alex Juhasz, Liz Losh, Tara McPherson, Kathleen Woodward, Sarah Elwood, Margaret Rhee, Kim Christen, and Alan Liu—have recently investigated the intersections of digital methods with cultural criticism, demonstrating how investments in technologies and computation are not necessarily antithetical to investments in critical theory and social justice. Building on these investments, this special issue of NANO (http://www.nanocrit.com/) asks how, when, and for whom digital humanities is also public humanities, with particular attention to project-based research. For instance:

● Which digital humanities projects are currently engaging contemporary politics and social exclusion, under what assumptions, and through what mechanisms?

● How are these projects articulating relationships with their publics and community partners, and through what platforms and forms of collaboration?

● How are public humanities projects being preserved, circulated, and exhibited through digital methods? By whom? Using what protocols and technologies?

● Does public humanities have “data”? If so, then how is that data defined or structured? If not, then what are some concerns about data-driven research?

● What might the histories of digital humanities (however defined) learn from social justice activism, participatory research, context provision, and witnessing?

● How are building, making, or coding activities embedded in social justice initiatives?

Across text, image, audio, and video, authors are invited to individually or collaboratively submit notes or brief “reports” detailing projects that work across digital and public humanities, including projects that do not identify with either term.

For the issue, a “report” implies a submission that, at a minimum:

● Focuses on an existing project, which is in development or already live;

● Provides screengrabs, screencasts, or snapshots of that project and (where possible) treats them as evidence for an argument about the project;

● Intersects questions of computation and technology with questions of culture and social justice; and

● Articulates a narrative for the project, including (where applicable) its workflows, motivations, interventions, management, and partners.

Invited by NANO, the editor of this special issue is the Maker Lab in the Humanities at the University of Victoria, including Adèle Barclay, Nina Belojevic, Alex Christie, Jana Millar Usiskin, Stephen Ross, Jentery Sayers, and Katie Tanigawa.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: For this special issue, we are accepting submissions across text, image, video, and audio. All submissions should be submitted to both maker and editor.nanocrit by 11:59pm on 1 October 2013 in your time zone. The body of the email should include your name(s), your affiliation(s), the title of the submission, five keywords describing the submission, and media type(s) and format(s) for the submission. Where possible, the submissions should be attached to the email. Should a submission exceed the email attachment limit, then the body of the email should also include a URL for the submission. The URL should not be discoverable on the web (e.g., it should be behind a passcode-protected wall, in a private cyberlocker, or not visible by search engines). Do not include your name(s) in any file name. Your name(s) should only be included in the body of your email.

If your submission is in text, then it should not exceed 3500 words (DOC(X)s and RTFs are preferred). Up to 15 high-resolution (at least 600 dpi) images are permitted (JPEGs are preferred) per submission. Video submissions should be 3 to 10 minutes in duration (MOVs and MP4s are preferred; minimum resolution: 426 x 400; maximum resolution: 1920 x 1080). Audio essays should also be 3 to 10 minutes in duration (MP3s and WAVs are preferred, encoded at 256 kbit/s or higher). Both audio and video can also be embedded in any text submission (no more than 5 instances of embedded media per submission).

All submissions should follow MLA guidelines for format, in-text citations, and works cited. Please email any questions about the submission guidelines to maker and editor.nanocrit.

SCHEDULE: Below is a tentative timeline for this special issue:

April 2013: Call for papers

October 1, 2013: Deadline for submissions to maker and editor.nanocrit

October 2, 2013: Peer review commences

November 1, 2013: Comments by the editors sent to all authors

November 25, 2013: Authors return final, revised submissions to the editors

December 1, 2013: End of peer review process

December 1, 2013: Final versions of selected submissions sent by editors to NANO

December 6, 2013: Publication in NANO

COPYRIGHT AND PERMISSIONS: NANO expects that all submissions contain original work, not extracts or abridgements. Authors may use their NANO material in other publications provided that NANO is acknowledged as the original publisher. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for reproducing copyright text, art, video, or other media. As an academic, peer-reviewed journal, whose mission is education, Fair Use rules of copyright apply to NANO. Please send any questions related to copyright and permissions to editor.nanocrit.

QUESTIONS: Please do not hesitate to contact the Maker Lab in the Humanities (special issue editor) at maker with any questions or concerns about this special issue.

We are looking forward to receiving your contributions to this issue of NANO.

The Maker Lab in the Humanities at the University of Victoria

maker

Special Issue Editors: Adèle Barclay, Nina Belojevic, Alex Christie, Jana Millar Usiskin, Stephen Ross, Jentery Sayers, and Katie Tanigawa

www.nanocrit.com

CVRB conference submission extended.

Conference, Digital Humanities

http://www.jvrb.org/cvrb

CVRB 2013 – 1st International Conference on Virtual Reality and Broadcasting

Celebrating the 10 year anniversary, JVRB is organizing an international conference on VR and Broadcasting that is held in conjuction with Marie Curie Researcher’s night.

we would like to inform you that we have extended the deadline for full articles to April 30th, 2013, the same as for short papers. Additionally, we are planning a second extension of the deadline for both article types to May 31st, 2013.

Conference calls for April 2013 onwards

Conference, Digital Humanities, ,
START*DUE*CONFERENCETHEMELOCATION
22-09-1303-04-13Theory and Practice of Digital LibrariesTheory and practice of digital libraries 2013Valletta Malta
11-09-1322-04-13vs-games 2013Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious ApplicationsBournemouth UK
25-09-1330-04-13EAEA2013Envisaging ArchitectureMilan Italy
16-09-1330-04-13Culture and ComputingFourth conference (Culture and Computing 2013)Kyoto Japan
31-10-1330-04-13games and literary theoryDigital Games and Literary Theory Conference SeriesValletta Malta
25-09-1330-04-13CVRBJournal of Virtual Reality and BroadcastingDusseldorf Germany
19-09-1307-05-13transcending bordersJapanese Association for Digital HumanitiesKyoto Japan
09-12-1324-05-13icmi2013Multimodal Interaction, ICMISydney Australia
28-10-1309-06-13Digital Heritage 2013Digital HeritageMarseilles France
06-10-1314-06-13its2013ACM Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2013 ConferenceSt Andrews Scotland
22-09-13SSHhorizons for social science and humanitiesVilnius Lithuania

Job offer: project manager PERICLES at CeRch

Digital Humanities, job, , ,

The Centre for e-Research (CeRch) located in the Department of Digital Humanities (DDH) at King´s College is looking for a project manager on a new EU FP7 Digital Preservation project PERICLES that will run until the end of January 2017. Closing date for applications is 16 April 2013.
For further information please visit this page: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/pertra/vacancy/external/pers_detail.php?jobindex=12991

CFP: Cultural Heritage, Creative Tools and Archives Workshop

Academic, Announcements, Conference, Digital Humanities, game, virtual heritage, , , , , , ,

DIGHUMLAB DK and the DIGITAL CURATION UNIT Athens are pleased to invite you to submit to a 2 day workshop on CULTURAL HERITAGE, CREATIVE TOOLS AND ARCHIVES.

The workshop is open to all but we in particular welcome participants drawn in the first instance from the DARIAH, ARIADNE, CENDARI, NeDiMAH and other EU cultural heritage networks. We envisage it will foster the growth of a community of practice in the field of digital heritage and digital humanities, leading to closer cooperation between participants and helping attendees develop tools and methods that can be used by the wider community.

Workshop themes

Cultural heritage, for the purposes of this workshop, is taken to consist of a broad spectrum of fields of scholarly research and professional practice relating to the study, management and use of the past, including but not limited to: archaeology, material culture studies, public history, intangible heritage, the visual and performing arts, visual culture, museums, and historical archives. We invite presentations of digital heritage tools and infrastructures, established projects and case-studies, state-of the art surveys, and original research contributions on the following themes:

· Cultural heritage information systems, ontologies and knowledge representation for material and visual culture.

· Data analysis, modeling, simulation, and visualization.

· Metadata, interoperability and integration of research data and scholarly resources.

· GIS, 3D graphic reconstruction and high end imaging.

· Digital preservation and curation of cultural heritage data, archives and documentation resources.

· Digital technology in fieldwork (e.g., archaeological data collecting and representation, excavation and survey data management, recording information “at the trowel’s edge”, processing survey and long series datasets, etc.).

· Digital scholarly publishing and public communication of cultural heritage.

· Sharing data and tools across European countries and partners.

· EU policy in digital heritage infrastructures, research, and cultural resource management.

· Any other topic relevant to the innovative application of digital technology to cultural heritage research, management and communication.

Presentation formats

· Project presentation: 20 minutes.

· Demonstration (of a tool, method, or project): 20 minutes.

· Paper presentation: 20 minutes plus 10 minutes of discussion time. Final papers accepted may be published in a journal (to be advised).

· Panel: 40-60 minutes involving 3-5 speakers.

Submission Information

· Format: At the top of the page include your name, your country, your institutional affiliation, your EU infrastructure/project affiliation (if applicable), the title of your paper, and the suggested format of your paper (project presentation, paper presentation, demonstration, or panel presentation). An AV projector will be provided but please indicate any other requirements.

· Submit: Emailyour proposal in RTF format to dighumlab@gmail.com with the title “Cultural Heritage Workshop”. If you wish to present a formal paper, you should submit an abstract of 500-1500 words, including references. For a project presentation, demonstration or panel you should submit a proposal of 300-500 words. If you wish to present on a panel, please indicate the names and affiliations of other participants (if known) on the submission document.

· Submission date: NEW EXTENDED DATE 1 May 2013, 17:00 Central European Time

Other information:

· Notification date: Wednesday, 24 April 2013 (may change).

· Date of Workshop: Wednesday, 26 and Thursday 27 June 2013.

· Cost of Workshop: free tea and coffee will be provided; we will try to find sponsorship for lunch for both days.

· Venue: National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark.

· For more information please contact: Dr Erik Champion, DIGHUMLAB Denmark, echa@adm.au.dk
Co-organisers: Associate Professor Costis Dallas, University of Toronto & Digital Curation Unit, Athens; Dr Agiatis Benardou, Digital Curation Unit, Athens; and Professor Panos Constantopoulos, Athens University of Economics and Business.

We would like to thank the ALLC: The European Association for Digital Humanities for co-funding and the National Museum of Denmark for hosting the workshop. This is a DARIAH associated event. Other associations with organizations are still to be confirmed.

CFP: Inaugural Games and Literary Theory Conference Valletta, Malta

Conference, Digital Humanities, game

University of Malta – Institute of Digital Games and the Department of English – International Conference Series in Games and Literary Theory

http://gamesandliterarytheory.wordpress.com/ 

University of Malta, 31st October-1st November 2013

This inaugural event in the Digital Games and Literary Theory Conference Series follows on from a successful International Workshop held at the University of Malta last year. That event established the scope, appeal and timeliness of interdisciplinary research involving Game Studies and Literary Theory. While there are ample conference opportunities for discussion of the impact of Game Studies on other fields in the Humanities and on the amenability, in turn, of Game Studies to critique by those fields, events where the affinities with Literary Theory take centre stage are, by comparison, quite rare. This is surprising.

We invite scholars with an interest in the conjunction of games and literary theory to submit abstracts between 1000 and 1500 words including bibliography. The deadline for submissions is April 30th 2013. Please submit your abstract in PDF format to gamelit2013@um.edu.mt.

All submitted abstracts are subject to a double blind peer review, which will be the basis for the programme committee’s selection of papers for the conference. A full paper draft must then be submitted by September 30th.

Papers will be made available to participants on the conference website. A selection of top papers from the conference will form a Special Issue of Game Studies focused on Literary Theory and Games. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by June 15th , 2013.

upcoming book “Critical Gaming and Digital Humanities”..what have I missed?

Academic, Digital Humanities, game, virtual heritage, ,

I have been sent a book contract for the above, to be published in the Ashgate Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities series in 2014. I would like to thank the editor Dymphna Evans, and the anonymous reviewers, for some excellent suggestions.

Chapters that we agreed I would write on are as follows. Feel free to add comments on any major chapters or issues that I should focus on, have missed etc.

1.     The Limits of Text in Teaching the Humanities
2.     Game-based Learning and the Digital Humanities
3.     Simulating Culture and Ritual
4.     Fiction Eats Fact: Dilemmas in Virtual Heritage and Digital Archaeology
5.     The Joysticks of Death and Destruction: Violence Morality
6.     Virtual Reality, Visualization, and the Video Game
7.     The Body and the Brain as Game Controller
8.     Interactive Drama and Storytelling
9.     Gaming in the Classroom
10.  Conclusion: Reflective Game Design

Centernet Professor in Digital Humanities, UWS (Australia) vacancy

Digital Humanities, job, , , , ,

The School of Humanities and Communication Arts brings together scholars with interdisciplinary research interests in the following fields:
advertising, anthropology, Asian studies, cultural studies, graphic design, history, international relations, journalism, linguistics and modern languages, literature and literary studies, media and visual studies, media production, music recording and performance, music therapy, philosophy, photography, political and social theory, religious studies, and web design.

Their research intersects with the focal areas of a range of University Research Institutes and Centres: The Institute for Culture and Society, The MARCS Institute, The Religion and Society Research Centre, and the Writing and Society Research Centre. In the area of Digital Humanities, the School will be working in very close collaboration with the School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics and with the eResearch team. In addition to researchers from the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, the Digital Humanities Research Group is expected to incorporate researchers from the technology disciplines, primarily, from the School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics and to develop close links with the UWS eResearch Team.

Applications are invited for the continuing position of Professor (Academic Level E) from scholars with outstanding teaching and research strengths in Digital Humanities. The position will be responsible for providing academic leadership and for developing research and teaching programs in the Digital Humanities. As the Professor in Digital Humanities, you will be responsible for leading and developing the new Digital Humanities Research Group (DHRG). You will have a PhD and a demonstrable record of excellent teaching and high quality international publications in the area of Digital Humanities, and success in obtaining competitive research funding and delivery on the projects. You will bring with you management and leadership skills, and experience in generating and managing large collaborative and interdisciplinary projects. You will be responsible for the DHRG’s intra- and inter-institutional relations, and for the development of both a strategic and 3-year operational plan for the Research Group

The School operates in a multi-campus environment and the successful applicant is expected to teach on all campuses on which the School operates in face-to-face teaching delivery and/or through blended learning technologies. This position will be located at the Parramatta campus.

Remuneration Package:Academic Level E AUD$189,215 p.a (comprising salary AUD$160,629, 17% Superannuation and Leave Loading)
Position Enquiries: Professor Peter Hutchings, (61 2) 9772 6167; p.hutchings@uws.edu.au Closing Date: 13 March 2013
How to apply: Please visit the UWS website http://careers.uws.edu.au/Current-Vacancies for full details on this position and how to apply.

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

Open Library of Humanities, Publishing, Future Technologies

design, Digital Humanities, , , , , , ,

I have just joined the Open Library of Humanities, (editorial committee), you can read more about it here in this Times article entitled Fools’ gold? This project was inspired by PLOSone.

With a subgroup from NeDiAMH and DARIAH I also started looking at and extending Unsworth’s concept of Scholarly Primitives, and whether, if you had a directory of online tools contents and methods, you could create a simple but scalable classification system (more an ontology than a taxonomy) which could be dynamically linked by journal articles, blog posts and working papers?

This is where Open Library of Humanities and DHCommons and hopefully DARIAH’s French partner OpenEdition, may be able to share their ideas and create a true community publication framework for Digital Humanities scholars. Or should I say, rather, scholars particularly interested in Digital Humanities-related topics.

And of course there are many alternatives

Scalar looks fascinating, and Liquidbooks offers an interesting collaborative wiki model for publishing http://liquidbooks.pbworks.com/w/page/11135951/FrontPage

 

Digital Humanities Tools and other resources

Digital Humanities, , ,

Sorry, should also add this syllabus

Announcements, Digital Humanities, Journal

I believe this call is still open! But I am not sure.

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities

Following last week’s call for archives to participate in Anvil Academic‘s Built Upon initiative, I’m now pleased to announce that we’ve released our call for authors to contribute to the series. If you are interested in producing a work of digital scholarship that makes creative, effective use of digital collections, please consider submitting a proposal.

Current archives partners include:

We hope to announce additional partners soon. You’re welcome to work with digital collections other than the ones listed here.  Initial “Built Upon” works…

View original post 10 more words

Digital Humanities

Thank you for mentioning SMK in Denmark! The State Library and Royal Library are also doing exceptional work.

Available Online

Luke McKernan, Curator for Moving Images at the British Library posted this amusing tweet at a conference last year.

Aided by the pithiness of Twitter, Luke likened the doomed attempt of the Danish king Canute to hold back the sea to Europeana’s attempts to provide a European, culturally aware alternative to a Google.

In one sense, Luke’s comment hits the mark. Given Google’s accumulation of expertise, massive stores of data and sheer financial muscle, it will always be difficult for Europeana to match Google’s core strength – that of providing a search engine that points users to the stuff they want to find.

And while Europeana can point to a ‘long tail’ of aggregated content, some of Google’s spin off projects (such as Google Art Project or the Google Cultural Institute) achieve an instant user traction that Europeana will find difficult to match.

But focussing just on the portal…

View original post 248 more words

Research is not infrastructure

Academic, Digital Humanities, ,

..sometimes.

Research infrastructure is not research just as roads are not economic activity. We tend to forget when confronted by large infrastructure projects that they are not an end in themselves. There is an opportunity cost to investing precious research funds into infrastructure. Every $100,000 lab that lasts four years before needing renewal is the equivalent to $25,000 a year for a Ph.D. student to do research for four years.

A is not B, just as C is not D. OK. But C can be A.

Road Infrastructure  The backbone of transport system

In order to develop innovative and cost-effective alternative transport concepts and to assess their potential impact, research is required on two areas. First, the needs and opportunities for new transport means and systems over the next 10 to 30 years, such as the innovative use of pipelines, floating tunnels, automated underground distribution systems, large capacity transport means, including investigations as to how current means could fulfil future requirements and how innovative technologies can be integrated. Second, the safe, efficient and environmentally-friendly integration of new means of transport, e.g. high-speed vessels, into existing transport operations.

I enjoy Professor Rockwell’s papers, but I disagree that infrastructure is not research, and by that I mean research infrastructure has to be research-based, otherwise it is not providing for genuine research. This is a complex argument (I hope that does not mean long-winded) so I won’t go into it too much tonight.

Key issues though are

  • what is are humanities?
  • what is infrastructure?
  • can infrastructure be emergent research?

From my knowledge of gothic cathedrals and computer games I say “yes it can” to the last question.

I still like his conclusion though even if I argue with his definition of (research) infrastructure.

NB is housing intangible? I think not.

“research infrastructure” means equipment, specimens, scientific collections, computer software, information databases, communications linkages and other intangible property used or to be used primarily for carrying on research, including housing and installations essential for the use and servicing of those things.” (From the Budget Implementation Act, 1997, c. 26)

Reference

Rockwell, G. (2010, May 14). As Transparent as Infrastructure: On the research of cyberinfrastructure in the humanities. Retrieved from the Connexions Web site: http://cnx.org/content/m34315/1.2/

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.