Remixing Çatalhöyük Launches

Remixing Çatalhöyük
http://okapi.berkeley.edu/remixing
The OKAPI team is pleased to announce the launch of Remixing Çatalhöyük, a multimedia exhibition and research archive featuring the investigations and discoveries of the Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük and their colleagues. Located in central Turkey, Çatalhöyük (”cha-tal-hu-yuk”) is the site of a Neolithic farming community that flourished from 9,400 until 7,700 years ago. We invite the public to explore themed collections, create original projects, and contribute their own “remixes” of Çatalhöyük.

Remixing Çatalhöyük was constructed during the Spring 2007 semester by a team of UC Berkeley students, staff, and faculty, working in close collaboration with the Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük (BACH). Remixing Çatalhöyük highlights and supports a multi-vocal approach to history, where the global, online community is invited to participate in the dialogue alongside the physical, local community. The OKAPI and BACH teams hope that this project will inspire other researchers to openly share their research data and engage broad public audiences.

Web Site Design
Remixing Çatalhöyük features a tripartite design, including a research archive, themed collections and an interactive web exhibition.

The Research Archive includes more than 65,000 photos, videos, articles and other multimedia research materials–all freely available under Creative Commons NonCommercial Attribution licensing.

The Remixing team curated and adapted research materials into four Themed Collections designed to engage public in the process of archaeology and support a wide range of “k to grey” teaching and learning scenarios:
• Life Histories of People, Places and Things
• Senses of Place
• Archaeology at Different Scales
• The Public Face of Archaeology
The themed collections feature intro articles, intro videos, K-12 activities, and 200 carefully selected and annotated multimedia resources from the research archive.

The Web Exhibition was designed to spark interest and provide context for numerous research materials. The interactive Site Plan (at right) allows users to zoom in and roll-over excavation site features. The Timeline (at right), Map and People gallery orient visitors and highlight the project’s multi-vocal, multi-scalar approach to archaeology.

K-12 Activity
In this unique activity co-developed by a team of archaeologists, teachers, and curriculum developers, students use archaeological evidence and their own imaginations to reconstruct life in a Neolithic household, more than 9,000 years ago. The activity is designed for middle school students and can easily be adapted for other ages. This activity complies with Section 6.1 of the California History-Social Science Content Standards for sixth grade students, which requires that “Students describe what is known through archaeological studies of the early physical and cultural development of humankind from the Paleolithic era to the agricultural revolution.”

On Remixing
Remixing Çatalhöyük is designed to advance the discovery of new ideas by facilitating the reuse of resources and ideas developed by the Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük. The site features student projects, faculty presentations, multimedia websites, and other “remixes” of Çatalhöyük research data. We hope these examples inspire others to remix and reuse research data from this and other projects.

Archaeoblender
http://www.archaeoblender.com
Visitors are encouraged to download, remix materials, and share their remixes using Archaeoblender. Archaeoblender was developed by the OKAPI team using ccHost, an open-source application developed by the Creative Commons for sharing and remixing multimedia content.

OKAPI Island
Virtual Residents of Second Life –a multi-user online environment—can visit Okapi Island to explore 3D representations of Catalhoyuk as it exists today and as it may have looked in the past. During the Fall 2007 semester, a dozen students, faculty and staff will be completing construction of Okapi Island and preparing for a public program.

Okapi Island, location of Çatalhöyük in Second Life. Come Visit! http://slurl.com/secondlife/Okapi/128/128/0

Okapi Island Project Wiki (Join Us!)
http://okapiisland.pbwiki.com/

Accessibility
We provided a text version of the site to improve accessibility for users with low speed connections, screen readers, iPhones or other special needs.

Multilingual
The entire site (with the exception of the research database) was translated into Turkish by UC Berkeley Anthropology graduate student Burcu Tung and proofed by Stanford Anthropology graduate student Elif Babul. Tesekkür.

Dissemination
To maximize visibility and reuse, we have (or will soon) republished materials from Remixing Catalhoyuk in multiple locations, including Flickr, YouTube, Apple Learning Interchange, Connexions, Internet Archive, Wikiversity, WikiEducator, and CyArk. A future report will document the quantity and nature of traffic we receive from each site.

On Building Themed Collections
The design of our themed collections was greatly influenced by the process, products and findings of the Calisphere Themed Collections project as documented in “Handful of Things” article by Mankita et al in May 2006 issue of D-Lib Magazine.

Tips, Tools, and Templates
We paid special attention to documenting our process so that others could reuse our tools and techniques. This information is available in the Tips, Tools, and Templates section of the site.

Credits
Project Sponsors:
Paul Grey, Principal Investigator, Scholar’s Box; Professor of Engineering, UC Berkeley
David Greenbaum, Project Director, Scholar’s Box; Director of Data Services, UC BerkeleyRuth Tringham, Principal Investigator, Berkeley Archaeologists at Catalhoyuk
Michael Ashley, Manager, New Programs, Office of the CIO, UC Berkeley

“Remixing” Team:
Noah Wittman, Project Director, Remixing Çatalhöyük
Ruth Tringham, Content Direction, Pilot Instructor; Professor of Anthropology, UC Berkeley; Principal Investigator, Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük (BACH) Project
Burcu Tung, Content Developer and Turkish Translations, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Elizabeth Ha, Media Manager, Video Production
Adrian Van Allen, Web & Interaction Designer
Ruth Tepper Brown, EditorOna Johnson, Curriculum Developer
Denise Phelps, Digital Media Specialist
Michael Ashley, Information Architect
Marc Moglen, Second Life Audio Producer
Daniel Wei, Second Life Scripting and Modeling
Elif Babul, Turkish Proofing
Joseph Coburn, Interactive Designer, Demonstration Tool
Rockman et al, Evaluators

Special thanks to the Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük and colleagues for sharing their content and expertise.

This project was made possible with funding from the US Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE Grant #P116B040739). Additional support was provided by the Gilbert Fund, UC Berkeley’s Office of the CIO, Open Knowledge and the Public Interest, Multimedia Authoring Center for Teaching Anthropology, and the Archaeological Research Facility.

Brown Bag Presentation: Building Digital Collections for Campus Scholarship and K-12 Education

TITLE: Building Digital Collections for Campus Scholarship and K-12 Education
SPEAKER: Noah Wittman
DATE: 12 pm Wednesday, July 18
LOCATION: Room 101A, 2195 Hearst St.

KEYWORDS: Digitization, Digital Asset Management, Licensing, Metadata, Creative Commons, OAI-PMH, Dublin Core, Second Life, Remixing, Çatalhöyük, Curiosity Box, OKAPI, Themed Collections, Exhibitions, Extensis Portfolio, ccHost, Scholar’s Box, FIPSE, Calisphere, Anthropology, Translation/Localization, K-12, Web 2.0, Open Source

DESCRIPTION: Noah Wittman will share progress on the US Department of Education Scholar’s Box project, describing diverse technologies, practices, and models for building digital collections. In particular, Noah will discuss recent efforts to (1) pilot digital asset management tools and services for the UC Berkeley Anthropology Department and (2) develop teaching collections and an online exhibition featuring archaeological research materials—more than 75,000 photos, videos, and articles–describing Çatalhöyük, a Neolithic settlement located in modern-day Turkey.

Learn more about the Scholar’s Box project:
http://okapi.wordpress.com/projects/fipse-the-scholars-box/

Presentation_Slides(PDF) 2MB

Presentation Slides (PDF) 20 MB  (Better Quality Images)

Interns Begin to Upload Content

Last week in the CyArk Visualization Internship, the interns learned how to upload content to the CyArk web portal. The Interns will be using the suite of CyArk Site Manager tools to upload, annotate and disseminate content from their field projects earlier in the semester. The students will work alone and in groups to create and upload content for the sites of Cheney House and Fort Scott. To check on their progress go to:

http://cyark.berkeley.edu/

Constructing Knowledge & Virtual Places

Following are updates from two UC Berkeley undergraduate research apprentices who are recreating an archaeological excavation site in Second Life as part of the Remixing Catalhoyuk project. Curious? Come visit Okapi Island in Second Life.

Daniel Wei describes below how he used a 2d contour map to create a 3d model of the excavation site, which will take up the entire surface of OKAPI island.

Video of Okapi Island in 3d.

To generate a 3D terrain file for Second Life from a 2D contour map, I used a open source program called Backhoe. Backhoe is a small, easy-to-use program specifically used to edit Second Life terrain files, but it only works on Mac OS. For a windows program, I would suggest using Bailiwick which is also open source. On a side note, one can also use the built-in SL terrain editing tools, but using third party programs is easier. If one only wants to read these .raw files without installing extra programs, one can use Photoshop. First of all, I found a 2D contour map of the Eastern mound of the Catalhoyuk site. The one I used does not have all the measurements, so rough estimates were used to generate the 3D image. This is a reasonable estimate since the land is interpolated anyway once imported into Second Life. Backhoe includes a sample .raw file, which includes all 13 channels needed to define a Second Life terrain file. I first flattened the land to create a new slate to draw the mound. I then used the different tools: raising, lowering, smoothing, roughen, etc. to approximate the heights of the mound. It was also beneficial to make the contour map the same size as the editing window to get precise dimensions. It is easiest to start at the highest point of the image and work ones way down the terrain by raising the land in contours around the highest point. Once this is done, I use the smoothing tool to get a smooth surface, critical to get a good rendering of the terrain in Second Life. At the end, I raised the water level so that the island will have water on all sides. This file can then be exported as a .raw file ready for import into Second Life.

Audio producer Marc E. Moglen describes below how he created his piece entitled Çatalhöyük Invocation. Listen.

Upon entering the Second Life Okapi Island one hears (or may hear) a music piece entitled Çatalhöyük Invocation. The piece combines elements of the old and new, remixed into a cohesive sound experience.

Drums and other simple percussive instruments throughout reflect some possible instrumental sounds of the ancient civilization, and with added digital delay (echo) and reverberence resemble the sounds of working with tools and hands. Actual audio from scholars conversing at the dig site is chopped up, and with delay added becomes just the musicality of vocal inflection, as the phrases are incomprehensible.

A modern Turkish instrument, the saz, is introduced late in the piece along with changing percussive elements.

The sounds of birds (a midi file triggered by a midi keyboard, with added amplitude envelopes and reverberence) give a sense of some of the fauna on at the site. The piece ends with just the birds, as a transitional ending to the piece.

Okapi team members to lead HDD workshop at US ICOMOS meetings

US ICOMOS Mobile Workshop: High Definition Documentation for Heritage Management and Tourism - Fort Scott, Presidio April 20th 2007

Instructors:
Michael Ashley, PhD, Archaeology, Manager of New Program Development for the Office of the CIO, UC Berkeley
Elizabeth Lee, Program Manager for the Center of Digital Scholarship at UC Berkeley
Marlin Lum, Imaging Director, Cultural Heritage Imaging
Oliver Monson, Field Operations Manager, CyArk High Definition Heritage Network
Mark Mudge, President, Cultural Heritage Imaging
Carla Schroer, Executive Director, Cultural Heritage Imaging
Sponsored by the Presidio Trust, the University of California at Berkeley, CyArk High Definition Heritage Network, and Cultural Heritage Imaging.

This one-day workshop will provide participants with hands-on training in high-definition documentation (HDD) for cultural heritage, with the intention of producing digital content that is also useful for public interpretation and tourism. Multiple technologies and methods will be shown and discussed, demonstrated and instructed, including panoramic photography, high-dynamic range photography (HDR), 3D laser scanning (HDS), and video and website management.

Who should attend and why

Participants interested in heritage management, documentation, cultural tourism, architecture and training will all benefit from this workshop. Participants will learn real-world techniques for creating rich media content that will appeal to the public and generate interest for their heritage sites. Many of the methods and principles introduced in this workshop are replicable with low-technological solutions and for a variety of budgets. No previous experience is necessary.

Workshop Plan

This workshop will take a holistic approach to comprehensive workflows that integrate best practices of standards in digital preservation with the diverse standards of practice for documenting cultural heritage sites. The aims of the workshop are to demystify some of the methods used in HDD and help the participants of the workshop identify useful techniques for heritage documentation. The participants will receive training in the use of these technologies as well as a better understanding about the kinds of final products these techniques can produce.

Perhaps most importantly, the workshop products will be used in a new UC Berkeley/Presidio course to be taught in Summer Session 2007 on site stewardship and management, as well as in the ongoing CyArk internship program. The intention is to help create content, recommendations and documentation that will benefit the Presidio Trust with their mission to protect and develop this important heritage site.

The workshop will begin in the Presidio Officer’s Club with a presentation about the history of HDD and its relevance to heritage management, HABS standards and cultural tourism. After this introduction to HDD, the workshop will travel through the Presidio to Fort Scott and engage in hands-on documentation of the historic fort. Participants will learn how to record, process and manage HDD data to produce useful tools for both site management and heritage tourism.

Workshop Schedule:

9:00 Welcome and Introduction to Fort Scott
9:30 HDD Overview
10:00 HDD for Conservation
10:15 Workshop Goals, Objectives and Deliverables
10:30 Bus departs for Fort Scott
11:00 Tour of Fort Scott
12:30 Lunch
1:00 Break out sessions
1:50 Bus departs for Officer’s Club
2:00 Discussion on HDD data management and opportunities
2:45 Workshop wrap-up

To see photos of workshop preparations please go to:

http://mactia.berkeley.edu:16080/okapi/fortscott_hdd/content/index.html

To look at HDD content being produced for the workshop go to:

http://cyark.berkeley.edu/map/fort_scott

Fort Scott Field Collection 3-16-07

This week the CyArk Visualization Interns will travel to San Francisco’s Presidio to document Fort Winfield Scott. The fort was originally constructed between 1910 and 1915 and served as headquarters for all seacoast defenses at the Presidio. The fort is significant because of it serves as an example of the military’s involvement in seacoast defense and the structures represent one of the finest examples of the Mission Revival Style. The horseshoe building arrangement and use of the natural topography also evidence change in 20th century planning concepts by the integration of setting, architecture and landscape.

The internship students, along with professionals from the Presidio Trust, CyArk, CHI and SVLS will preform a High Definition Documentation of one of the barracks of the fort. The majority of the work will take place between 10:00 am and 3:00 pm on Friday March 16th.

Interns take on Cheney House

In their first HDD field experience, the CyArk Visualization interns started work on documenting Berkeley’s historic Cheney House last week. In partnership with Berkeley’s Archaeological Research Facility, the interns used the Cyrax 2500 to begin laser scanning the building scheduled for removal during the upcoming campus expansion. The interns learned the basic set-up and operation of the scanner and how to use different types of control during the scanning process. Students also had the opportunity to learn panoramic and HDR photo techniques using CyArk’s Nikon D80 and panoramic rig. The students will complete collection this week. The documentation of the Cheney House is only a small part of a larger archaeological project taking place around the historic house. For more information on the project please see their project blog and their photo pool.

Creating Content From 3D Data

Last week in the CyArk Visualization Internship, students learned how to create web-ready content from the 3D point cloud data. Using tools within Cyclone, students cut sections from the point cloud and created animated fly-throughs of the data. The sections were then exported into AutoCAD where they could be saved into dwf files to be viewed in a free viewer. Although created in Cyclone, the animations actually export as a video file and can be viewed on any computer.
The students were able to produce good results, especially considering this was only their third week using the High Definition Data. This third week of instruction marks the end of the data processing focus in the class, while this week will be the beginning of the data acquisition focus. Students will learn about field collection techniques and then apply their newfound processing skills to the real data they help collect.

CyArk Makes Cover of Geoworld

CyArk makes headlines as one of the cover stories to this month’s issue of Geoworld. The article discusses CyArk’s basic methodology for using High Definition Documentation (HDD) for historic preservation. The article outlines many of the key principles behind CyArk’s method and also gives insight into CyArk’s mission to document and preserve cultural heritage.

To read the full article please visit Geoworld’s website.

Interns learn photo-processing skills

This past Friday the CyArk Visualization Interns learned the basics behind the photography side of CyArk’s HDD processing methodology. Working with a set of practice images taken from the El Presidio Documentation Project, the interns learned how to create panoramic images, process High Dynamic Range photos, create spherical QTVR’s and colorize the point cloud using photo-texturing techniques. During the 3-hour training session instructors Oliver Monson and Elizabeth Lee guided the interns through programs such as PTGui, RealViz Sticher, Adobe Photoshop and Cylcone to process single images into spherical images and then into cubical images to be mapped onto the point cloud.

The new interns will work this week to process photos of the Presidio in their homework data set. Second semester interns will be holding office hours to assist the new interns as they practice with these new programs.

Coming up this Friday, Interns will learn how to create web-ready content and how to use the CyArk Database Annotation Tool to manage their data.