2015 leap-presence workshop 18 may 2015, barcelona
TRANSCRIPT
“Being Not-There: Theory Practice and Evaluation”
{LEAP] Workshop on May 18, 2015 "Cultural Presence in Archaeology. Theory, modelling and evaluation"
Professor Erik Champion, Faculty of Humanities, Curtin University, Western Australia
http://www.upf.edu/leap/actualitat/20150504.html
My interest in Virtual Heritage• Background in architecture, (art
history) and philosophy
• PhD with Lonely Planet in virtual environments for travel and tourism
• Taught interaction design and game design at UQ, UNSW, Massey
• Project Manager at DIGHUMLAB (Denmark)
• Professor of Cultural Visualisation, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia
2
Cultural Visualisation?Feature Science Art Culture
Reusable data Yes No Seldom
Standard tools Yes Seldom Thematic & communal
Clear research question Yes Seldom Depends
Null hypothesis Yes No Not often
Extensible Mostly Seldom Important
Falsifiable Yes Seldom Difficult
Stored Surely Unlikely Vital
3
Virtual Heritage is..• “[It is]…the use of computer-based interactive technologies to
record, preserve, or recreate artifacts, sites and actors of historic, artistic, religious, and 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 & Ojika, 2000]
• Beliefs, rituals, other cultural behaviours and activities left out?
• Traces the level of certainty, and authenticity of reproduction and reveals process? I.e. scholastic rigour?
• Sensitive to the needs of audience & shareholder?
4
Definitions NEW MEDIA: the act of reshaping the user experience
through the innovative use of digital media. VIRTUAL HERITAGE: convey the appearance, meaning,
significance and social agency that designed and used cultural artefacts and sites, (through the use of interactive and immersive digital media).
NEW HERITAGE: re-examine the user experience that digital media can provide for the understanding and experiencing of tangible and intangible cultural heritage
Erik Champion, in Y. E. Kalay, T. Kvan, & J. Affleck, New Heritage: new media and cultural heritage. New York: Routledge, 2008.
5
2001-2004 PhD thesis• Place versus Cyberspace: What creates a sensation of place (as a
cultural site) in a virtual environment in contradistinction to a sensation of a virtual environment as a collection of objects and spaces?
• Cultural Presence versus Social Presence and Presence: Which factors help immerse people spatially and thematically into a cultural learning experience?
• Realism versus Interpretation: Does an attempt to perfect fidelity of sources & realism improve or hinder the cultural learning experience?
• Education versus Entertainment: Does an attempt to make the experience engaging improve or hinder the cultural learning experience?
6
4 Issues With Culture• Definition (and relation to
place and inhabitation)?
• How is culture transmitted?
• Transmit local situated cultural knowledge to “others”? (Being not ‘there’)
• VH: how to transmit via digital & augmented media?
9
Culture is a feedback loop• A visitor perceives space as place, and inhabits (modifies
a place), place 'perpetuates culture’, and thus influences the inhabitants in turn.
• We might say that social behaviour is behaviour between two or more people.
• Cultural behaviour is a subset of social behaviour, where behaviour is governed by or understood in terms of a cultural setting.
• As culture almost inevitably involves transactions, there must be objects of shared transactional value.
10
the museums of tomorrowhttps://twitter.com/plevy/status/433058523836985344/
photo/1
Why 3D?• To evoke +communicate historical situations or heritage values find
deeper understandings not simply memorize facts (Bloom, 1956).
• Place is a cultural setting, it gives cultural interaction a time and a location, Crang (1998, p.103), “Spaces become places as they become ‘time-thickened’”
• Places do not just organise space, they orient, identify, and animate the bodies, minds, and feelings of both inhabitants and visitors.
• Cultural presence: a feeling in a virtual environment that people with a different cultural perspective occupy or have occupied that virtual environment as a ‘place’.
12
Transactional Value Requires Social Judgment
http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2013/10/social-media/south-carolina-state-library-launches-social-media-library-and-archive/
13
Why Games? • learn through play OR through design
• culture passed on via games
but please remember to
• be careful about IP and ownership
• consider the lifespan of games and associated platforms
• explore surround screens, involve audience(they are lost easily)!
• develop possibility space: if it is too ‘gamic’ people might destroy rather than explore!
Secrets of the Lost Cavern
Games aren’t Challenging?• A rule-based formal system with a variable and quantifiable
outcome, where different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable. (Juul 2003, para 15).
• A system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome. (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004).
• A challenge that offers up the possibility of temporary or permanent tactical resolution without harmful outcomes to the real world situation of the participant (Champion, 2006).
15
Prescriptive or Procedural learning?Gamer: Reach objectives as quickly and vividly as
possible. Activity
Tourist: Enjoy highlights safely and conveniently. Viz: Weekend in Capri
Traveller: complete tasks via local affordances. Activity: Myst
Archaeologist: Discover past via examining material remains, geographical changes, epigraphy etc.
Viz of process: ArcDig, detective series?
Anthropologist: Understand the beliefs roles and relationships of inhabitants in context. geographical changes, epigraphy etc.
Hermeneutic: Myst, Sims? Oblivion?
16
Games For History1. Play and and answer questions
2. Play and classroom discuss and debate authenticity
3. Role-play with games, puppets, or narrators
4. Mod cities, empires events based on theories
5. Film events etc. using Machinima tools
6. Combine images or panoramas with other media
7. Design past artefacts, events, rituals or customs
8. Create VEs using games and game mods or using VR
17
Problem: Evaluation• The Siren call of technological determinism and fancy pictures.
• Digital media as purely a shop façade for the serious and scholarly past time of reading and writing books (Parry 2005; Gillings, 2002).
• If we avoid teaching with digital media, how will the changing attention spans and learning patterns of new generations be best addressed (Mehegan, 2007)?
• Even if we decide on what we are evaluating, how to evaluate?
• The ethnographic techniques used by researchers may be effective in recording activity, but they do not directly indicate the potential mental transformations of perspective that result from being subjectively immersed in a different type of cultural presence (Benford et al, 2002).
18
Evaluating VES - People• Task performance (quantitative or
qualitative)
• Likert or statistical evaluation
• Extrapolated understanding
• Personal ‘sense’ of cultural presence
• What do they choose next (exit strategies)
• ‘Teach the teacher’ et al methods
• Excitement recorded from biofeedback
19
PROPRIETARY: Renaissance (Blaxxun)You own it and It does what you want
BUT what about cost and labor, and who maintains and distributes it?
Virtual Worlds aren't always cultural
2005Unreal-music_Xavier Quijas Yxayotl-www.yxayotl.com.mp4
Journey to the Westneverwinter nights
Biofeedback middleware
Biofeedback could affect..• Triggered or default
behaviours of the avatar.
• Control camera views (based on heartbeat).
• Change trust (galvanic skin response-sweat).
• The field of view (music or character anger).
• Control other NPCs (calmness).
CH game modsTurkey Maiden Educational Computer Game
http://www.thenightjourney.com/statement.htmhttp://digitalethnography.dm.ucf.edu/
• Modding, continuity, (scripted) social behaviour
More game mods..
Oblivion: Nefertari
3 types of presence• Social: Medals are artefacts that
represent the recognition of others
• Cultural: Frameworks, goals, treasures, portals, identification, social structuration. Agnew (1999, 93): “ … all people live in cultural worlds that are made and re-made through their everyday activities.”
• Hermeneutic (richness): Archaeology can be viewed as a “kind of spatial text that varies from reader to reader” (Tringham 1994, 172).
Example: Turing TestTry to disguise yourself as an NPC or take over their role in
society and see how long you last before being discovered.
publicVR.org
http://publicvr.org/
http://vimeo.com/25901467
Jeffrey Jacobsontalking at Curtin
Jeffrey JacobsonCurved Screen, HIVE, Curtin
Touchscreen Taoism
Chinese Taoism Touch Screen by Neil Wang and Erik Champion (VSMM2012 conference)
Opening: 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
Critical Gaming:Biofeedback, Rituals Worlds and Roleplaying, Violence, Interactive Narrative/Drama, Virtual Heritage, Heuristics
Camera tracking:mirror+puppet+replace avatar
