“Digital cultural heritage,” a field with a wide variety of definitions, has benefited greatly from the use of several emerging technologies to increase accessibility to cultures and historical content for a larger audience. As an example, Virtual Reality allows for users to simulate an embodied experience in geographic and temporal locales that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to experience. Similarly, entertainment media such as videogames often take inspiration from aspects of history and cultural heritage to situate their gameplay mechanics in a generally known world. This marriage of sensory and ludic experience with historical or cultural content allows for many opportunities to teach users about various aspects of the human condition. However, there are some aspects of these technological experiences that are not always beneficial to a user’s intellectual understanding of the complexities of the past.

Historical VR experiences generally lean toward “tourist”-type experiences, where users experience a notable location primarily through passive observation, often receiving some form of explanatory content or enrichment through text or audio commentary.These experiences are often closer to academic lectures than they are games and often leave users disinterested or disengaged from the content. On the other end of the spectrum, historical and cultural heritage materials have also been used as mise-en-scene for historically-themed games that seek to entertain users more than educate them. Using these experiences to convey accurate and useful information in cultural heritage education is therefore not always the best idea.

In this session, I would like to invite participants to discuss the benefits and drawbacks to approaching historical and cultural heritage education through the guise of virtual reality and video games, and discuss ways to thoughtfully evaluate how/whether the GLAM sector can learn from and engage with these materials to inform our work. In particular, I would like to discuss methods for adapting strategies used in Virtual Reality experiences and videogames to inform the outcome of ongoing work to digitize cultural heritage materials.

Blender’s versatility as a free, open-source computer graphics program makes it popular with diverse audiences, from professional CG artists to gamers enthusiastic to build their own assets. While these communities have created a wealth of online material for self-teaching, they rarely touch on Blender’s potential for humanities projects, leaving humanists to fill in the gaps as they learn.  I propose a 30-minute session to discuss 

1. How humanists interested in 3-D modelling and virtual reality can read existing blender workflows in relation to their own interests 
2. The unique needs of humanists in using Blender or other VR software outside of conventional settings 
3. How these questions extends to software beyond blender

Emily Allen & Hannah Geerlings
Musicologists/Digital Cultural Heritage Interns

This 50-minute session addresses HP Reveal, a free AR app for mobile devices. We have used this app for a local music venue called the Bradfordville Blues Club and wish to discuss the following:

1. Introduction to Augmented Reality & Sound
   • Overview of how we’ve used augmented reality & future directions for implementing sound components
2. Ideas for Including AR in Learning Environments
   • How to use AR for classrooms, museums, and libraries
3. HP Reveal Workshop: Create Your Own Augmented Reality
   • Download HP Reveal and test it with us!

We are also open to discussing other topics as participants see fit.