Transfer of learning between screen-based and gallery-based content:an initial study

We ran a participatory design and evaluation of a paper prototype mobile application, called Digital Islam, to engage visitors and provide additional information in the British Museum’s Islamic Gallery. An evolutionary paper prototyping exercise involving 28 visitors aged 18-60 was run for 3 weeks. As visitors interacted with the paper prototype, we manipulated the prototype, observed the visitors as they interacted with it and took notes. We asked thevisitors to “think aloud” while interacting with the prototype. The prototype rapidly evolved as visitor feedback was fed back into the design. Visitors usually do not receive explicit training in the use of museum applications, instead relying on tacit training that may have positive or negative effects depending on what learning is transferred. Our study appeared to show negative transfer between visitors’ interactions with content in the gallery and content in theapplication. Visitors were asked to perform 3 tasks, finding (A) content in the gallery; (B) textual content on screen; and (C) video content on screen. Redesigns of the interface had little impact on users’ performance. The order of tasks and consequent transfer of learning between them seemed to be more important. Visitors found Task B particularly challenging when preceded by Task A. When we introduced Task C between A and B, performance on task B immediately improved: users found the on screen content more easily and faster and nolonger looked fruitlessly for it in the gallery. The study suggests that introducing additional content in mobile applications intended to improve the visitor experience can harm that experience without careful consideration of the tacit training and learning effects when combining content in the gallery and in the application

Excavating the Future

Well-known in science fiction for tomb-raiding and mummy-wrangling, the archaeologist has been a rich source for imagining ‘strange new worlds’ from ‘strange old worlds.’ But more than a well-spring for SF scenarios, the genre’s archaeological imaginary invites us to consider the ideological implications of digging up the past buried in the future. A cultural study of an array of very popular, though often critically-neglected, North American SF film and television texts–running the gamut of telefilms, pseudo-documentaries, teen serial drama and Hollywood blockbusters–Excavating the Future explores the popular archaeological imagination and the political uses to which it is being employed by the U.S. state and its adversaries. By treating SF texts as documents of archaeological experience circulating within and between scientific and popular culture communities and media, Excavating the Future develops critical strategies for analyzing SF film and television’s critical and adaptive responses to post 9/11 geopolitical concerns about the war on terror, homeland security, the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq, and the ongoing fight against ISIS

Realistic visualisation of cultural heritage objects

This research investigation used digital photography in a hemispherical dome, enabling a set of 64 photographic images of an object to be captured in perfect pixel register, with each image illuminated from a different direction. This representation turns out to be much richer than a single 2D image, because it contains information at each point about both the 3D shape of the surface (gradient and local curvature) and the directionality of reflectance (gloss and specularity). Thereby it enables not only interactive visualisation through viewer software, giving the illusion of 3D, but also the reconstruction of an actual 3D surface and highly realistic rendering of a wide range of materials. The following seven outcomes of the research are claimed as novel and therefore as representing contributions to knowledge in the field: A method for determining the geometry of an illumination dome; An adaptive method for finding surface normals by bounded regression; Generating 3D surfaces from photometric stereo; Relationship between surface normals and specular angles; Modelling surface specularity by a modified Lorentzian function; Determining the optimal wavelengths of colour laser scanners; Characterising colour devices by synthetic reflectance spectra

Traveling women professionals: a transnational perspective on mobility and professionalism of four women at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century

Gegenstand dieser Dissertation ist die historische Erforschung der Etablierung von Frauen in traditionell männlich dominierten Wissensdisziplinen im nordamerikanischen Raum anhand der Karrieren von vier Frauen Ende des neunzehnten und Anfang des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Dabei widmet sich diese Arbeit insbesondere der Interdependenz dieser Etablierung im Zusammenhang mit der sozialen und geographischen Mobilität dieser Frauen, die sich u.a. als Archäologinnen und Journalistinnen in multilateralen Grenzüberschreitungen über soziale Rollenbilder hinwegsetzten.The object of this dissertation is the historical investigation of the establishment of women in traditionally male-dominated disciplines in North America on the basis of the careers of four women at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. This work focuses on the interdependence of this establishment in the context of the social and geographical mobility of these women, who, e.g. as archaeologists and journalists, multilaterally transcended their ascribed social roles

THE EVOLUTION OF LANDSCAPE IN VENETIAN PAINTING, 1475-1525

Landscape painting assumed a new prominence in Venetian painting between the late fifteenth to early sixteenth century: this study aims to understand why and how this happened. It begins by redefining the conception of landscape in Renaissance Italy and then examines several ambitious easel paintings produced by major Venetian painters, beginning with Giovanni Bellini’s (c.1431- 36-1516) St. Francis in the Desert (c.1475), that give landscape a far more significant role than previously seen in comparable commissions by their peers, or even in their own work. After an introductory chapter reconsidering all previous hypotheses regarding Venetian painters’ reputations as accomplished landscape painters, it is divided into four chronologically arranged case study chapters. Three of these focus on the artists identified during their own lifetimes as specialists in landscape painting in northern Italy—Tiziano Vecellio (c.1485-90- 1576), Girolamo Savoldo (fl.1506-48), and Dosso Dossi (c.1486-1542). Working from a more historicized definition of landscape, my study shifts focus from questions of landscape’s origins and status to a more nuanced examination of its function in private residences. Bellini’s St. Francis is considered anew in light of humanist-inspired aesthetics as a precursor to Venetian poesie that celebrated an artistically self-conscious approach to image-making. Titian’s youthful Flight into Egypt (c.1507) is analyzed for the first time in regard to its original presentation in the main reception hall of its patron Andrea Loredan’s palace. Savoldo’s Temptation of St. Anthony (c.1520) is reconsidered, on the basis of unpublished technical analysis, as a document of the artist’s presence in Venice and his adaptation of Flemish landscape to suit the tastes of local clients. Finally, a reevaluation of Dosso’s Jupiter Painting Butterflies centering on the landscape and its theoretical implications is proposed. Dosso’s painting of atmospheric phenomena embodies theories published decades later advocating painting’s superiority over sculpture and the painter’s god-like ability to portray all of Nature’s creation. These focused analyses suggest that landscape achieved a new position in Venice from 1475-1525. Ultimately, this dissertation proposes that the goals of virtuoso landscape painting were two-fold: to enhance both the doctrinal message and delight audiences absorbed from a picture

Imaging the Egyptian Obelisk at Kingston Lacy

The obelisk that stands in the grounds of the National Trust property at Kingston Lacy, Dorset, was brought from Egypt in 1821 by William John Bankes. Known as the Philae obelisk, it has hieroglyphic inscriptions on the tapered granite column and Greek on the pedestal. In a multidisciplinary project to mark the success of the Philae comet mission, the inscriptions have been digitised by both reflectance transform imaging and 3D scanning. Novel imaging techniques have been developed to stitch together the separate RTI fields into a composite RTI for each face of the obelisk in registration with the geometric structure represented by the 3D point cloud. This will provide the basis for both paleographic examination of the inscriptions and visualisation of the monument as a whole