Hey all,

You may recall we were talking about authenticity, accuracy and immersiveness when it came to computer games like the Assassin's Creed series of games, and I provided you earlier with a link to a video of one of the historical tours of the Origins game in the series, set during the Peloponesian Wars in Athens, plus or minus 2400 years ago. Well check out this video of two Classical Scholars touring the game, including Kathleen Lynch from the University of Cincinnati, an archaeologist who's worked for 25 years on the archaeology of Athens. It is an insightful, and impressed, reaction to the effort at accuracy offered up by Ubisoft, the game designers. But was this level of detail necessary, do you think? What does this level of archaeology "Easter egg" accuracy in the game impart, beyond one part impressing an expert, and one part inviting quibbles over details? Is this something archaeology should be trying to do more broadly to immersive people in the pasts we explore?

VR Technique for Preserving and Presenting Historical Paintings

    When I was searching the video display of Assassin's Creed on Youtube, I encountered an animated Chinese painting named Qing Ming Shang He Tu (清明上河图 1085-1145) . It is a painting showcasing the prosperity of the daily life of Bianjing, the capital of Northern Song China (960-1127), during the Qingming Festival (a traditional Chinese festival for reverence of ancestors). I have known this painting since I took history courses in my middle school. And I was very surprised to learn the antique painting is digitalized and animated now. The painting is famous for depicting the street scenario and natural landscape along the river in a very specific and delicate way: over 800 people along with a number of livestock, ships, buildings, vehicles, trees, etc. are included in the painting. When I looked at the animated painting, and followed the movement of the scope that zooms in and out the living details, not only I obtained a deep aesthetic experience (the video is also accompanied with music), but I was also amazed by the way digitalization, especially the Virtual Reality (VR) technique, could play a role in learning the history and its products.

Qing Ming Shang He Tu

Animated Version

    Similar to Assassin's Creed, the Chinese painting takes advantage of VR to mimic a historical space where it can immerse audience experience in an established setting. The audiences are expected to gain more interactive experience while they are placed in the space: they could orient towards where they want to see, stop at any point they want to scrutinize, or choose their own route to explore the scene. Different from Assassin's Creed, the VR setting of the painting is based on an existing material, which supplies enough details and contextual information to the animated version, while the setting of Assassin's Creed is completed with incomplete historical data and imagination of the technicians (I had a bit more elaboration about this in my comments to on February 2, 2021). Moreover, the aims of the game and of the Chinese painting are different: the former is more entertainment-oriented, while the latter is more conservation- and education-oriented. (feel free to disagree with me)

Qing Ming Shang He Tu

VR Version

    The worsening environmental condition caused by climate change, economic development projects, and other man-made damages have been posing threat to the preservation of historical sites and objects. How to effectively protect cultural heritage has become an urgent problem. And the solution to this does not merely rest on national departments, scholars and organizations. The public should also be involved in this process of retaining the material completeness of the common history. And to achieve this, the public needs to be educated and motivated. In this case, can VR be a promising tool in this regard? My understanding is that, through VR technology, people can either enter the space of the historical site by wearing VR glasses, and they can freely rotate their bodies to see the details in different directions; or they can exercise close observation of the historical collection by simply clicking the mouse or tapping the screen. The process could be made fun and exciting as much as possible with this more interactive technology. Distance between humans and objects is thus dissolved. However, whether and how this could be a start point to build deeper connections, and raise public awareness of historic preservation, is still unclear. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment box.

Disciplinary Concerns with DNA Storage

 
    I previously introduced the idea of storing archaeological data with DNA encoding. Unfortunately, there are some concerns if this technology is further explored in archaeology. In theory, this technology should help remove some bias from future historical narratives and data sets, ensuring we don’t have to personally decide what digital data we have room to store or whether it’s worth transferring old data to new storage technology to avoid it being lost or forgotten. Without needing to prioritize information, everything could be encoded for the future. However, is this okay? Or could this lead us blindly into ‘preservation by record’? 

    Although we have the potential to preserve “everything,” the number of decisions leading to the data encoding cannot be forgotten. Future researchers must not assume the record is “everything.” Our interpretation of archaeological and heritage material needed to transform the material into a binary code itself is a potentially problematic procedure. Different forms of digital archaeology already risk the loss of cognitive and experiential aspects of heritage. After this heavy alteration from being transformed into binary computer code, transformed into a strain of DNA, and then reversed in processual to the original digital data set, distance from these aspects is, even more, a risk. This could cause a potentially damaging distance between the material and its cultural context, an issue that has already been discussed in lecture. 

    Also, is it our right to preserve archaeological and heritage material “forever”? Some communities require images of deceased individuals to be destroyed to let the individual pass to their next life. Some material culture also requires burying or destroying when no longer in use. Would storage in organic, living material affect these issues? 

    The proper care, handling, and long-term storage of material in archaeology is an ethical disciplinary problem that must be considered. Is the potential for LONG term digital storage a proper solution to this? Would this method be any better than storing material in locked boxes, warehouses, off-site facilities, out of sight and out of mind? Could the potential distance created between material and context exacerbate this issue? Or do you believe this technological advancement could drive critical discussions on ethics and improve our practice? 

    One thing is for sure, this technology would require interdisciplinary teams and descendant communities must work together to ensure proper care of archaeological and heritage material. The blessing of our discipline is the constant ethical concerns to consider. I'd love to hear your thoughts!