Tag: new media

Fake Dead People

joey-ramone-doc-martens

What exactly is the agency of the virtual non-human human? This question hit me when I was in the midst of editing what is shaping up to be my first publication, (Re)Building Çatalhöyük: Changing Virtual Reality in Archaeology, a text refashioned from my more stridently titled paper presented at the World Archaeological Congress, Get Real: A Manifesto for Virtual Reality in Archaeology.  In this paper I establish Second Life as a pretty good venue for changing the way we reconstruct archaeological sites and examine the use of avatars and non-player characters (NPCs) in these reconstructions. My good friend (and professional copy editor!) Lei-Leen had done me the favor of proofing it and she highlighted my use of “person” while I was discussing these NPCs.  Certainly these people-created constructs were not people themselves.

In the paper I argue against the creation and use of NPCs in virtual archaeological reconstructions:

NPCs are “non-player characters,” entities generally created as a kind of set dressing, present to answer scripted questions about the reconstruction, or to provide ambiance. This tends to bring out the worst in reconstructive impulses; in one example, Julius Caesar reclines on his couch, reciting information about his villa to the user. A recent simulation of an African American site in Oakland, California contained prominent members of the community who stood by the side of the road to robotically impart their knowledge when approached by the user’s avatar. Turning people of the past into mere mouthpieces for their architecture diminishes the rich potential of reconstructions to impart information about complex lifeways. Using programmable objects such as the previously mentioned mano and metate allows avatars to act as their own guides to the past, populating the re-created ancient landscape with avatars of people interested in the past, interacting with artifacts and taking on roles suggested by these artifacts. This is simple for archaeologists who are accustomed to telling stories through objects and adds another level of interactivity to the virtual reconstruction.

I still believe this to be true, that fundamentally we are better off wearing Caesar’s crown for ourselves rather than asking a poor simulacrum about the weather in the Republic.  Thinking of Caesar as a non-player character in history is a stretch by any means.  But game developers (and digital archaeologists) will probably not stop populating virtual worlds with fake people.  These NPCs are nonhuman manifestations of a network of agents (polygons, “modern” humans, fiber-optics, and the dead person herself) and the relationships between these agents and as a result should be studied as such.  But does this understanding of an NPC as a network make it ethical to take such liberties with the visages of the dead? What does it mean when Joey Ramone comes back from the dead to sell Doc Martins?

Of course, I could just be reading too much Latour.  Let’s ask Eliza.

* Hello
> How are you today.. What would you like to discuss?
* Latour
> Tell me more…
* Have I been reading too much Latour?
> Can you elaborate on that?
* He’s a modern social theorist.
> What does that suggest to you?
* That I should be reading him for my dissertation.
> Say, do you have any psychological problems?
* Possibly.
> Tell me more…

Telerobotics and Archaeology

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While doing some reading for my dissertation, I came across a reference in The Robot and the Garden to the Mercury Project, an art installation based out of USC in 1994-95.  The Mercury Project was co-directed by Ken Goldberg and Michael Mascha, the former now being at UC Berkeley, and with whom I took a class two years ago as part of my designated emphasis in New Media.

Mercury Project combined robotics and archaeology in an interactive art installation. To our knowledge, the Mercury Project was the first system that allowed WWW users to remotely view and alter the real world via tele-robotics. Users excavated artifacts buried in a sand-filled terrarium in our laboratory in Los Angeles. All buried artifacts were derived from an unnamed 19th Century text which provided a meta-commentary on science and the Internet. Users were challenged to collectively identify this text by describing their findings and hypotheses in an ongoing Operator’s Log.

Telerobotics is controlling robots at a distance, like the Mars rovers or those remote hunting websites that were in the news a few years ago.  As a side note, the main website for remote hunting no longer exists and the Texas legislature passed a ban on such activities in 2005. Lo, marginalia.

Anyway, the installation involved a robotic arm and a pneumatic puffer that WWW users could use to remotely excavate objects in a sand-filled terrarium.  The buried artifacts included a watch, a pipe, a lock, and other objects inspired by Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth.  As they state on their webpage, “we viewed the process of discovering artifacts as a metaphor for the Internet itself.  Choosing artifacts with some ‘underlying logic’ presented a challenge for collective interaction which motivated users to return to the site.”  While this all emphasizes archaeology as a rather Victorian, fantastic enterprise, I’m still pretty chuffed that the first example of telerobotics on the web was an archaeologist.

For those with academic access, here’s a link to the article in Computer Networks and ISDN Systems.

ViA – 2008

The Visualisation in Archaeology workshop was easily one of the best and most productive conferences I’ve ever attended.  Most of the attendees were presenting as well, and there was only a single session at any one time.  Megan Price’s paper on the Victorian lantern slides produced by H.M.J. Underhill was particularly fascinating, and I approached her to ask if she’d considered making a small documentary film on the subject.

Aaron Watson’s reconstructions and reimaginings of archaeological sites was also really fascinating–it’s unfortunate that he doesn’t have any of his moving images/videowork online as far as I can tell, because it was my favorite.  He juxtaposed pieces of his final report with more sensorial experiences of the landscape during his ViA presentation.

My paper was well received, despite some online shenanigans attempting to sabotage (!) my career.  I wish I had spent more time working on the slide show, but for some reason this paper took way longer to complete than usual.

I got straight off the plane and went to class, which was a little brutal, but we were having a feedback session on papers, and it was nice to come back to some really insightful and complimentary remarks from people whom I’m convinced are about 20x smarter than I am.

So, now, with a rough draft of a publication due on Nov. 1st, the Asian Art Museum video, and burning down Çatalhöyük…I don’t even have much time to breathe!

…and I’m an Archaeologist.

A short clip from a longer video that we’re making for the San Francisco Asian Art museum. It’s the first time I’ve shot in HD, and it’s producing some problems between Final Cut Pro versions, but I’m struggling along.

Çatalhöyük in Second Life – Update

As previously mentioned, while I’m not writing, I’ve been working on OKAPI island in Second Life.  I wanted an area where we could package and give away textures from our upcoming events so that people could recreate any part of Çatalhöyük in their own Second Life reconstructions.  Naturally, I chose to recreate Sadrettin’s on-site cafe, where excavators (and brave lab people!) go for an ice cream during the break between excavation and paperwork.  Unfortunately I still haven’t been able to create an adequate ice cream freezer, and the plants are off, but…well, it’s Second Life.

If only the ocean were really that close to the site!  Here’s a shot of the cafe taken by Mia Ridge (of Open Objects fame) for comparison:

Come and check it out, if you’re so inclined:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Okapi/128/128/0

Embedded Interpretation

So, once upon a time, a naive undergraduate from the University of Texas applied for graduate school in archaeology.  She sent out a statement of purpose that boiled down to: “I want to be able to embed archaeological information in the landscape, and I want other people to be able to add to that information…on my cellphone.”

Three years later, that’s what I did.  There’s several ways to do this, and this is obviously a kludge, but it’s a start.  I’ll probably load the full documentation up to the Presidio field blog later tonight.

Presidio Memory Maps

For the next three weeks I’m helping to teach a class at the Presidio of San Francisco on digital documentation, cultural heritage, and interpretive trails.  It’s an intensive course, 8+ hour days for the undergraduates and more like 12-13 hour days for me.  For the first day, I had the students create memory maps using flickr and google maps to teach them how to use the tools, but also to teach them about free-associative narratives as a part of placemaking.  It worked well as an exercise, and it was interesting to see the different scales that the students used for their own maps.  I made one a couple of years ago ago about living in New Orleans, but I felt like I wanted to update it, so I made another one from Austin, linked above.

I’m also updating the official project blog, Remixing El Presidio, here:

http://remixpresidio.wordpress.com

Good fun, but I’m ready to have my hands in the dirt again!

Prescot Street

L-P Archaeology has started a lovely multimedia blog covering their work on Prescot Street.

http://www.lparchaeology.com/prescot/

They have a nice overview of the site, videos, and blogs from the excavators.  My friend Anies is doing a great job with the filming there, and he mentions how difficult it is to record while you have several other duties as an excavator–something I will have to face over the summer.  Fully integrating video recording into the excavation process might be a pipe dream, but it’s wonderful to see it popping up in the “real world” at a contract excavation.  The only thing I might add is a creative commons license on their flickr stream.   Overall, a great example of how to set up a dig blog for outreach.

In other news, I’ve managed to get sick for the fourth time this semester, one week away from taking my oral examinations.  I’m usually completely healthy–it might be that I’ve been under a bit of pressure, perhaps?

Pervasive Play at the San Francisco Presidio

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As I mentioned in my SAA paper back in 2007, ubiquitous computing has great potential for interpretation and outreach in archaeology.  I’m very inspired by Jane McGonigal’s PhD on ubiquitous computing and pervasive play and have decided to test the viability of the format for education.  It’s always hard to make educational games fun, but when they work, it’s incredible!  Does anyone else fondly remember Oregon Trail?

So, I’ve attached my brief web description for the project.  I’d love to get feedback, if you have any to offer!

Pervasive Gaming, Education, and Cultural Heritage: Emplaced Interpretive Games at the Presidio of San Francisco

In a large, urban, technologically advanced metropolis like the Bay Area, how do people recognize and understand the cultural heritage they encounter in their everyday lives? This working group explores the connections between tourism, education, archaeology and technology in the interpretation of place.  With the ultimate goal of developing a pervasive game—a location-aware, augmented-reality public experience—set in the Presidio of San Francisco with its over 300 years of history, archaeologists, new media specialists, and other academics and heritage professionals will come together to bridge the present to the past.  Using social media platforms and ubiquitous computing, we will work to bring history away from the desktop, out of books, and into the world, adding layers of meaning to the landscape. This project encourages an active engagement in the curation and the creation of local history, and a case study for embedded interpretation of place. Working toward giving the Bay Area community a glimpse into the region’s history, this group will foster a local presence for academic and public cooperation, but will also provide access to the project through Flickr, Facebook, and a number of other social networking technologies to serve as a model for experimentation and implementation at other cultural heritage sites.  With the successful implementation of an educational game at the Presidio, we move toward being able to embed archaeological and historical interpretation in the landscape, enhancing the modern day experience of place.

Furnishing the Neolithic

-or-

The Porno Baskets of Çatalhöyük

For Cal Day I’m furnishing the inside of one of the reconstructed Neolithic houses so we can change up our tour a little bit from our open house.  In a lot of ways it has been a great mental exercise–having to figure out if I thought the ceiling was plastered, move the ladder to the correct angle coming out the top, decide if I wanted to put a goat/sheep or three on top of the house, things like that.  I’m still not very good at the build tools in Second Life yet and we’re running out of time, so I’ve been getting things as close as possible on my own and then faking the rest with different purchases.  Of course, these purchases are a little…off from what we know about the artifacts, but I’m doing my best.

I went hunting for baskets the other day, with the lovely preserved basket impressions that we get in the middens in mind, and found a few serviceable examples.  The island where I got them was medieval themed and I thought nothing much of it until I found that most of the materials had some kind of action programmed into them.  The plates turned you into a serving wench, the bucket made you scrub the floor, things like that.  An interesting take on Latour, if I do say so myself.

Except…when I saw some of the other items.  And I’m not just talking about the bed!  I figured out that the whole island was themed after a series of science fiction books set in a world called “Gor” where the women are enslaved to the men as part of a “naturalized” social order.  Well then!

So, these baskets.  While they don’t have anything preprogrammed into them–at least I’m somewhat certain of that–they are basically BDSM set dressing.

I’m reclaiming them for the Neolithic.

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