elanya

It turns out today was a pretty good day! I did a bunch of cool things at work. The skype tour actually went quite well, I think - certainly better than R expected it to. I think she was encouraged by the possibility, but at the same time, it is giving away staff time and programming for free to people who will never actually come and visit here, so I can understand her concerns. The museum is poor - we need income to survive.

We also had a meeting with a group (originating in the UK but now with people in Canada as well) who develop digital/virtual technologies for museums. It was interesting and encouraging and we can probably work with them - they will help find and apply for grants and stuff to, so it isn't just a matter of us finding money and paying them to make something. They emphasized something I think R sometimes needs o be reminded of - you need to have a narrative, not just cool tech. You need a purpose of the cool tech, it is not an end in itself. We're lacking in narratives.

I had some cool ideas for ways to use AR stuff in the museum, though, form that museum. Let me grab them from the email I sent her... I have to say I feel like one of the advantages of their model of operations is that they get to hear a lot of ideas - they may not work for a particular client, but maybe a different client could use them, right? I hope they aren't just idea mining, but they do seem to be relatively successful. And they are museums professionals, with PhDs in museology from Leicester, and such. They were really cool. TBH I'd like to quit and go work for them :V

Ah ha ha I managed to send it from the wrong account great @_@ I guess that explains why she didn't answer :p

short form ideas:
-use AR(?) to project site map images onto their corresponding locations on the village, either as an AR image or as a googlemap overlay for people to look at while wandering the site

-create a couple of scavenger hunts where you collect pieces that all come together into some kind of story/image/animation - basically you get stuff along the way and a bonus for completion

-combine AR scavenger hunting for both real and virtual objects in the museum/village with a choose your own adventure game. Seriously how cool would *that* be?

VR excavation! I mean this is the next level of the sandbox full of artifacts that most museums have. You can have different difficulties, form your basic 'dig and find a thing' to offering different kinds of tools to find different things (objects and features!) and interact with them. You could totally have a shovel, a trowel, a screen, a measuring tape....

What I am also curious about doing, while I am funding and finding time for all these cool imaginary projects, is to rebuild an excavation from the notes taken during excavation. It would be.... a lot of work. You could generalize stuff a lot (randomizing objects retrieved from a particular layer or unit), but still... I mean, you couldn't necessarily 'replace' every unique single artifact, unless it was a tiny site and you could scan the entire collection some how. But I'm not sure that would be the point. hmmhmmmhmmm

Anyway you heard it here first :p

Oh, also, on my way home from work, I bought a frickin' cake. It was a cannoli cake, and it was pretty good :D