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11th
International Conference on Information Visualisation - IV07
Keynotes
Lectures: |
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Professor Robert Spence, FREng, 2. Visualising Australian Indigenous Knowledge
Practices Using The Game Engine Dr Theodor G Wyeld, The University of |
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Professor Robert Spence, FREng,
Abstract
For the discipline of Information Visualization
to contribute significantly to our wellbeing, a shift of focus away from
technology is required. The required
shift is towards people, whether user, inventor or tool designer. In the course of some views that may upset
traditional thinking, Bob will suggest a variety of ways to enhance the success
with which new ideas in information visualization can be brought to fruition.
Biography of speaker:
Professor Robert
Spence: From the unlikely schoolboy
hobby of telephone exchange design Bob Spence became a designer of electronic
circuits. Then, in 1968, he realised the enormous potential that interactive
graphics held for engineering design, a realisation that led via research and
development to the first (1985) commercially available interactive-graphic
circuit design facility. His work in
Human-computer Interaction also led naturally into information visualization,
and along the way Bob was the co-inventor of the first Focus+Context
technique (the Bifocal Display) and the Attribute and Influence Explorers. An influence upon his work in information
visualization came from his parallel research into engineering design for mass
production, leading to visualization tools such as the Prosection
Matrix and the Influence Explorer. Bob
is currently Emeritus Professor of Information Engineering at Imperial College
London and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He presents courses on Information
Visualization around the world: “have course, will travel”.
Visualising Australian
Indigenous Knowledge Practices Using The Game Engine
Theodor G Wyeld, Media program,
The
{theodor.wyeld@adelaide.edu.au}
Traditional perceptions about how
to represent cultural knowledge differ from region to region. Many different
cultural conventions exist. This talk discusses Australian Aboriginal knowledge
visualisation practices.
A brief survey of contemporary
versions of traditional indigenous tangible knowledge representational forms suggests
there has been a subtle shift from three-dimensional, tactile, haptic, representations – carving, impressions in sand,
elaborate weavings, assemblages, castings, masks – to two-dimensional or
flattened, printed, photographed, dyed-on-cloth versions more easily sold to
collectors, tourists, museums, researchers and so on. This reflects the West’s
inherent reliance on two-dimensional recording media – TV, print, film and so
on. Whether, in this shift, they have lost their original, ceremonial, spiritual,
ritualistic, transitory, ethereal meanings remains problematic.
Typically, analyses
of these traditional knowledge representations is based on identifying
the semantic information available. Semantic analysis has to do with the
translatable relations between the perceptual signs that a particular culture
may give symbolic value. However, the translatability of these forms is also a
function of the aesthetic education of the perceiver. And, despite the many
hermeneutical approaches to the study of ritualistic knowledge representational
forms available to us, there remains much which simply can not be translated.
Hence, the contribution the traditional custodians of these forms make to the
translatability of their aesthetic artefacts is their ability to articulate and
transfer their own cultural practices to others. It is only when the
conventions used to express these knowledge systems are untranslatable that we
find the need to learn their cultural specificities. As with all conventions,
once achieved, such “confections make reading and seeing and thinking
identical” (Tufte, 2002).
In this sense, we have much to
learn. The iconographic communications of world Indigenous peoples predate the
Western realist imagery that emerged from the European Renaissance, by
millennia. Yet, it continues to talk across the aeons uninterrupted. Its
messages, once decoded, are clear, concise, and complex. In our hastening march
towards greater understanding of our own, technologically-mediated, cultural
practices we invent new ways to visualise their complexities. It is debatable,
however, how successful many of these schemas will continue to be.
Perhaps the encodings of
indigenous iconography – at the same time mapping space, knowledge and emotions
– will provide a new medium for exploration. This is not an easy path to
follow, however. There are many sensitivities to be
observed. And there will be some codes that can never be revealed as they are
too sacred to those who hold the key to their understanding. Despite this, much
can be gained from stepping outside the prevailing paradigm, suspending one’s
beliefs and learning anew what has been know and transferred across the
generations as a human condition – to use of visual, haptic
and other tools to exchange knowledge.
For the Australian Aboriginal, the
embedding of their cultural knowledge, which the increased accessible the 3D
game engine this has provided a platform for its sharing. As such, this talk
addresses the communicating of Australian Indigenous knowledge practices using
a 3D game engine. It provides an overview background of Australian Aboriginal
cultural heritage and how it has been traditionally articulated; the embedding
of storytelling as a knowledge exchange medium in ‘country’ (sacred and
spiritual lands) re-presented in a game engine; and, notions of the efficacies
of this method as a knowledge visualisation schema that has application in
other fields. It will also address some of the more inaccessible questions
raised as key challenges for information visualisation in general.
Biography of speaker:
Theodor G Wyeld, Digital Media
Production, Media Program, School of Humanities, Faculty of Humanities &
Social Sciences, Theodor Wyeld is a lecturer in Media
at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. He has degrees in Architecture
and Planning. With several years practicing and teaching in these fields and
ICT, his current focus is in the field of digital media. In
particular, perspectival representational media and
its role in Information Visualisation. He is
also actively investigating alternative visualisation
paradigms, such as Indigenous non-Western visualisation
schemas, to uncover how they could inform new ways of visualising
information and knowledge.
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