Accessing 3D Data

The issue of access and discoverability is not simply a matter of permissions and availability. To identify, locate, retrieve, and reuse 3D materials requires consideration of a multiplicity of content types, as well as community and financial investment to resolve challenges related to usability, interoperability, sustainability, and equity. This chapter will cover modes, audiences, assets and decision points, technology requirements, and limitations impacting access, as well as providing recommendations for next steps

Visiting Digital Tombstones: Unearthing Questions of Digital Personhood, Commemoration, and Remembrance Processes

In this paper, I investigate digital device users and their relationships with devices in order to tease out the ways human and computer interactions are shaping concepts of personhood by utilizing Alfred Gell’s concepts of the art nexus and the distributed person as frameworks for examining digital applications that are being incorporated by some users in processes of remembrance and mourning. First, I consider the metaphorical vocabulary and terminology applied to technical tools and their use, which ascribe a level of agency to the technological objects or systems. Secondly, I dissect two applications that were developed to run in tandem with the social networking platforms Twitter and Facebook, and designed to directly address processes of death, loss, and remembrance through the digital social network. I evaluate the two digital applications, called ifidie.net and LIVESON, to consider the ways in which people are incorporating digital devices and digital media into critical cultural practices, particularly those related to death and remembrance

Virtual Actualities: Technology, Museums, and Immersion

In this dissertation, I build discussions around the use of digital technologies in association with art and art historical contexts to ask greater cultural heritage questions regarding humanity’s relationship with digital technology. My work reflects on the emergence of digital humanities as a field in response to the experimentation and incorporation of digital methods, with an emphasis on extended reality (XR) technologies, for conducting humanities research in relation to arts and culture-based organizations. I investigate the advantages and disadvantages digital tools bring to the field of Art History today. In particular, the project focuses on modes of publishing, display, and information-capture in museums and archives that illustrate a break from “traditional” models. In doing so, I argue that digital modalities provide a distinctly different paradigm for epistemologies of art and culture. Extending previous research in museum studies and media studies, I address a selection of the latest technological interventions within museum and cultural heritage contexts that operate within a spectrum of immersive modalities and use extended reality technologies. The dissertation brings together many humanities disciplines to investigate how sharing XR within a museum both disrupts and complements the time-tested benefits of object-centered methods of display, representation, and education.The phase “virtual actualities” within the title of the dissertation signals changes in practice that are being brought about as digital technologies, and particularly XR, become incorporated into fields of arts and culture. “Actualities” connote the practical matters associated with producing, presenting, and preserving digitally immersive materials in the contexts of gallery, library, archive, and museum (GLAM) organizations. “Reality” in turn is reserved for the qualities perceived when discussing the characteristics that define 3D and XR production. At the fore in addressing new topics in museum practices and by conducting new experimentation through the application of immersive technologies, this dissertation can offer new information for digital art history, cultural heritage, and museum studies. The aggregation of examples throughout the dissertation aims to provide a survey of the field of XR in its current state within GLAM settings in order to offer insight and guidance for future development and implementation

Working Group Reports on Access and Discoverability

The issue of access and discoverability is not simply a matter of permissions and availability. To identify, locate, retrieve, and reuse 3D materials requires consideration of a multiplicity of content types, and a community and financial investment to resolve challenges related to usability, interoperability, sustainability, and equity. With this in mind, our working group set out to identify the current forms of 3D production, and consider their requirements for long-term access. In doing so, we have identified four primary categories of 3D materials. The first is reality-based forms of 3D production that are generated from physical data that has been measured by technical instruments. This category includes photogrammetric models, scanned volumetric models, scanned surface models, and digital terrain models. The next category is procedural/algorithmic models that are created computationally based on rules or shape grammars. Our third category of 3D forms contains born-digital, sources-based model types, which encompass manual models (i.e., built with 3D modeling software), virtual worlds, and immersive virtual environments. Our fourth and final category of 3D materials are games, which can take the form of many of the previous model types, but also require very specific interactions related to game-play (e.g. goal objectives, activities, stages). Cross-cutting these four categories is the distinction between 3D objects and 3D scenes, each with their own unique access and long-term preservation requirements and challenges

Part I—Dedication to Professor Allen F. Roberts

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