Archaeology, Architecture, and the Postcolonial Critique

Peer reviewe

Evaluating the effectiveness of ICT applications in cultural heritage spaces: Lessons from three research studies in Italy, Belgium and Greece [in Greek]

No abstract available

Evaluación del 'hellenic cosmos'

No abstract available

Evaluación del 'hellenic cosmos'

No abstract available

VR Applications, New Devices and Museums: Visitors’ Feedback and Learning. A Preliminary Report

Between the 15th of September 2005 and the 15th of November 2005, an exhibit on virtual and Roman archaeology was organized in Rome inside the Trajan's Market Museum. The event, “Building Virtual Rome” (“Immaginare Roma Antica”),was a great opportunity to show, inside an ancient monument, for the first time together, many different projects,applications and installations about VR and Cultural Heritage. The uniqueness of the event was at the same time an occasion to live a new experience, for visitors and for organizers as well, and to face some problematic aspects due, both, mainly by the meeting of high technological projects (some of them still at research level), cultural contents and also archaeological “container”. During the exhibit we tried to observe visitors and make some interviews, with the goal of understanding their expectations at the beginning, their experience during their visit and finally their satisfaction/unsatisfaction, learning, feedback, interaction level during and after the visit. The preliminary results of this analysis are showing that the embodiment and the diverse difficulties to use diverse devices and software depend on many factors and that “communicating” the virtual is not a technological issue, but it is an epistemological question

VMUXE an approach to user experience evaluation for virtual museums

This paper presents a new approach for the evaluation of User Experience (UX) aspects applied to virtual museums (VM) - VMUXE. A wide percentage of projects and applications for VMs are often "born and buried" in digital labs, without having been experimented and monitored with people. These "prototypes" are the result of experts, technicians, curators, combined together to give birth for multidisciplinary and avant-garde outputs. Earlier attempts to evaluate VM installations failed due to the lack of strategy facing the multidimensional complexity in studying and comparing digital applications in different installations using different devices and metaphors offering different UXs. As a conclusion "communicating" culture through the aid of advanced technology was not a technological issue, but an epistemological one. Setting up a good process of evaluation and analysis is therefore important for establishing next generation virtual museums (NGVM) aiming to reach certain goals such as knowledge exchange, cognitive improvement and heritage communication

Improving Accessibility to Intangible Cultural Heritage Preservation using Virtual Reality.

Presentations of virtual Cultural Heritage artifacts are often communicated via the medium of interactive digital storytelling. The synergy of a storied narrative embedded within a 3D virtual reconstruction context have high consumer appeal and edutainment value. We investigate if 360◦ videos presented through virtual reality further contribute to user immersion for the application of preserving Intangible Cultural Heritage. A case study then analyses whether conventional desktop media is significantly different than virtual reality as a medium for immersion in intangible heritage contexts. The case study describes bridge diving at Stari Most, the old bridge in Mostar Bosnia. This application aims to present and preserve the bridge diving tradition at this site. The project describes the site and history along with cultural connections, a series of quiz questions are presented after viewing all of the materials. Successful completion of the quiz allows a user to participate in a virtual bridge dive. The subjective evaluation provided evidence to suggest that our method is successful in preserving intangible heritage and communicating ideas in key areas of concern for this heritage that can be used to develop a preservation framework in the future. It was also possible to conclude that experience within the VR framework did not affect Effort Expectancy for the web application, but the same experience made a significant influence for the Performance Expectancy construct