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 in Google Earth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqMXIR wQniA Image: http://www.virtualtripping.com/google- earths-rome-reborn/ 2008 London Charter remedies this? 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 Ethnographic Collection Science Bergamo by user, bergamo Relates to future funding… CARARE Final Conference 7-9.11.12

Europeana,.. Frees 20 m objects, 22 3D http://www.sparpointgroup.com/Blogs/Co ntinental-View/Interview--Dr-Anestis- http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datab Koutsoudis---At-the-cutting-edge-of- log/2012/sep/12/europeana-cultural- Greek-3D/ or http://www.67100.gr/ heritage-library-europe 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? Types of games that MAY help..

Type of game (paper, Champion, GBL, 2008) Example in available games Tourist Game: enjoy off site from a safe and The new travel game genre, like comfortable distance. Weekend in Capri Puzzle Games: find what happened by ArcDig; Qin: Tomb of the Magic Kingdom, escape examining material remains, changes, epigraphy.. the Forbidden city by solving puzzles (traps etc.). Resource Management: understand the Civilization, Age of Empires, Tribal Trouble, speculative historical processes and formulae, Pharaoh, Caesar IV inhabitants’ relationships to their surrounds.. Historical Battles: Avoid being killed, take over The Total War Series, Battalion IV, Starcraft territory, learn military strategies.

Role Playing Games The Elder Scroll series: Oblivion, Skyrim Control Games: These games aim to control Shadow of the Colossus, Darwin, Black and White or overcome inhabitants. Social Mashup: encounters via semi-controlled The Sims, Spore characters. Games that allow classroom role-playing of Halo, Unreal, Sims, The Movies history through in-game camera capture(machinima).

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

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. ..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. Center for Digital Ethnography, Florida Natalie Underberg 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 publicVR.org

http://publicvr.org/ http://vimeo.com/25901467

Interactive narrative

 http://www.interactivestory.net/ 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 http://ael.gatech.edu/lab/research/arsecon /projects/mrconference.html 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