Month: October 2016

Hey everyone,
Last lesson we looked at the interaction we have with space, through 3d digital imaging, virtual tours and such.

The topic of virtual tours was interesting because it brought up a lot of different opinions. We clicked through the National Museum of Australia’s virtual tour and not everyone liked it because it isn’t the best representaton of reality. I however really enjoyed the idea of virtual tours because, the NMA for example, is now more accessible to people with disabilities.

We also looked at museums and galleries around the world created 3D images and models of objects. I think this is great for SO many reasons. Some people in class said that having a 3D image would make researching a particular object easier than trying to work with a 2D image, whilst others stated that having that documentation is important in case of a disaster that leads to the destruction of an original object. At the AICCM conference in Hobart last year I remember one of the talks being about how museums and galleries have started using 3D replicas of objects for different reasons. One talk was about integrating 3D replicas into tours for visually impaired visitors to allow them to experience the artworks, whilst another talk was about how museums and galleries use 3D replicas for displays, while the original pieces sit safely and comfortable in storage somewhere.

This lesson has given me a really strong urge to just 3D print everything. Maybe from now on I will only gift people in 3D replicas of them.

See you all this week 🙂
Nour

For a long time, the way of museums, galleries, and famous interests displaying their digital content are doesn’t changed, no matter online or on site. As far as I know, in some museums in China, you can rent a tool that allows visitor enter a code near the item, and listen the audio guide content. It’s a good idea, and many museums are doing that, but if we take further, the visitors can rent a VR equipment, their visiting experience will have a big changed! They can watch VR/AR content about the item, or a theme.
However, there’re still some problems for doing this.
It’s still very expensive for some museums to afford VR equipment, not to mention creating the VR content for their items. For content production, I think they can hire university students to help them, or let the contractor do this. For the money doing this, it can be a crowed funding program, donate to this, benefit from this. Or ask their government. Or maybe the ‘United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’ can start a foundation for museum collections and interests digitize, especially for VR content.
To make museum collections become more easy to be watch, why not put them on XBOX, PS4? It can be a game, or just an app, with game handle, people can freely explore the collections, even they don’t have VR equipment.
As a result, anytime, anywhere, people can easily access the collections VR content, or just digitized content. It can be global fund, global share.
BUT, let’s go back to money. This kind of VR/AR are usually free to view, let people to pay them just like pay the ticket to visit the museum or gallery? YES, it’s a good idea, but the content should be extremely good quality, otherwise people won’t pay it.Or, let the commercial ads enter the VR world? Not bad, I believe most people don’t like ads, but if it can make the VR be substantial, why not do that? But I think the ads should be relevant to the content they are viewing, and we already have this kind of technology.

SO this week was extra fun as promised. I think I especially enjoyed looking at the different virtual reality software’s. I have already heard of and experimented with google cardboard as my mum owns one and has used it on her trip to Africa. But I really enjoyed finding out about the cultural institution VR tours through google maps. I am in two minds about it however. I don’t know if it is entirely a good idea. But I do think that it would be a good tool to use in conjunction with other collection materials for cultural institutions. I can see how do a VR tour of a museum with links to the objects and their information could be a useful tool. With a tool like that you could access the museum after  visiting it to go over and remember what it is you explored during that visit. You could also use it to see a place before going to it to see if it worth going to depending on your interests. As was pointed out in class, another use would be for disabled persons who can’t access the museum for whatever reason.

At the same time I do believe there is the down side of not going to the museum at all because there is a virtual reality viewer. You could get away with not going at all and then the museum or galleries attendance rates would go down which is not good for funding and the like.

In the end I think this is a good tool to use in moderation. The National Museum has the virtual reality site through google which works in conjunction with some object links. It shows you enough of the museum to get you curious, but not too much so that there is still something to see when you go in.

That’s my opinion anyway.

Till next time

Goodbye and thanks for all the fish

I really enjoyed the subject matter for this week. I do think that 3D imaging has a lot to offer museums in terms of accessibility as museums only have so much room to actually display things. Making the extended collections available online is much more helpful for those doing research interstate or internationally. It isn’t the same emotionally as seeing the item in person but I believe it offers a lot. It is also a good insurance as if the item happens to be damaged or the whole museum is lost you have a record that has been conserved and can be 3D printed such as the arch of triumph from Palmyra. I think this is important moving forward as humanity has already lost far too much of its past.

I love the idea of creating 3D worlds such as the recreation of life in Angkor I think that while it definitely has limits as to what is known and portrayed it is another way of making the past come to life. With time and increased immersion from VR perhaps they will allow people to connect with the past in ways which we are not yet capable of doing. Being able to walk around a WW1 trench and see what it was like or see how conditions on an old first fleet ship were are a couple of experiences I think would be quite powerful.

I recall footage of the game Rome Total War II being used in a documentary. I have seen it in multiple documentaries including one on Carthage being destroyed by Rome. It shows that there is a desire for these representations for use by historians. Since games generate revenue they tend to be able to have a high quality however this does bring up issues around profits and museums.

 

 

This week we looked partly at virtual reality during class and looked at a number of different ways which we can create a virtual reality. One of the things we looked at was 3d scanning which didn’t really work successfully because the back of the Tardis didn’t appear only the front, sides and top. Another piece of technology that we looked at, however, was google cardboard. Which is sort of similar to the oculus rift which I’ve seen around before but it is a far simpler and cheaper version. I can see how this form of virtual reality simulator could be really useful when working in museums especially from a curatorial point of view. This is a really efficient way that you could experience an exhibit without actually attending it. Meaning that if you were in another country and there was an exhibit else where you wanted to attend you could perhaps do so through this technology.

 

 

This week we took a look at creating 3d images out of pictures, discussing and debating about the purpose and use of 3d digitalization.

In my opinion is a handful technique, its use extends from recreating thing that do not longer exists like architectural structures that no longer exist out of plans or other documentation, to recreate objects that are in good conditions inside a collection.

The interaction with space was an essential part of the conversation topic this week.

In believe, the 3d digitalization of museums or objects within them give people the opportunity to interact with things they do not normally have access to.

Despite its advantages, this way of displaying an object can sometimes disconnect you from the object itself.

I really liked how everyone had their own views about the use of lack of it within collections.

Below an example of 3D site model reconstruction, comparing it with the site images from today.

Recognition of faces, what a great application! I found it quite interesting and amazing. it’s true we turn to see faces or we look for them constantly in our surroundings. the different applications have different purposes and ways to recognize faces.

Before this class, i did not imagine this type of application could be helpful in heritage discoveries like the Anne Boleyn’s case where a research team had use facial recognition to identify her portrait, although hesitation can take over and the fact that is not entirely trusty is a great thing to consider the different ways technology can be use to innovate and help us get more and more of our cultural history every day.

 

 

Hi everyone,

My week 9 reflection is a bit late due to not having internet in my new house 🙁

Last weeks lesson was really interesting, enjoyable, and so very creepy.

I enjoyed the new discovery of redaction art, and submitting some photos to the Vintage Art Depot on Twitter. I submitted a bunch of real photos, but also a cartoon image of myself to see whether it would detect the face, and it worked! The topic of facial recognition reminded me of this post which I find so funny. Also, since becoming aware that humans are REALLY good at detecting faces in things, I actually cant stop detecting faces in things. More so than before.

Actually being able to sit through a lesson made such a difference than trying to do it all online, so I’m very happy that I don’t have any more forensics tutorials clashing with this unit.

Looking forward to this weeks class,

Nour.

Finding out this week about just how far face detection has come and how much companies and governments are investing in the technology was a little creepy. The bad dystopian sci-fi names ( such as ‘the capacity’) for them aside it was really cool how some designers had come up with styles that allowed you to avoid facial recognition software. They looked equally as sci-fi as the technology sounds, it will be interesting to see if eventually the technology develops to see through these disguises. Although as humans see face in things that machines can’t see I guess it would be a very long process to get that far.

I found the idea of redaction art very interesting as it is something that has gone undiscovered only to be brought to light through detection software and the human eye.

I liked the idea of image classification and were it a completely free service would be interested in playing around with it. One idea I had was for its use with historical artworks such as representations by ancient cultures of the sun, I am not sure why but it seems like it would have the potential to find some interesting things.

I also laughed at the prospect that the positive and negative folders made me realise that everything in the world can be sorted into two categories, goldfish and not goldfish.

We began this week by looking at a particularly interesting case of the ASIO File redaction’s. The tools used in this case are really interesting it shows how technology and the digital aspect of our world can be used to retrieve information that we couldn’t previously see. However, sometimes it can pull up things that we perhaps don’t need to see or necessarily want in our records and files. In this case it was that the person creating the redaction’s in the ASIO files seems to have also just drawn random little drawings throughout the files of things like shoes and boats. This means that as well as getting the actual redaction’s you are getting a lot of false redaction’s which means you have to look further through the files to find those legitimate redaction’s. This is really similar to those problem we found with search engines pulling up irrelevant things.