Çatalhöyük in Second Life, Fall 2009

Once again Spring has come to Çatalhöyük! We’ve removed all the snow and icicles and the tell is green and grassy. Work has started up again, and we’re lucky enough to have a class dedicated to “Serious Games” working on the site, as well as undergraduate research apprentices through Berkeley’s URAP program.
We have a number [...]

(Re)Building Çatalhöyük: Changing Virtual Reality in Archaeology

I submitted the final version of my Archaeologies journal article today, through their digital editorial manager.  It is a reworked version of a paper I wrote for the World Archaeological Congress last year in Dublin and it will be my first official publication.  Many thanks to Krysta Ryzewski, the editor of the volume, for organizing [...]

Basket Weaving at Çatalhöyük

I uploaded the above test clip for the longer machinima that I posted about a little while ago.  It took an immense amount of work to get this far, and this is only a tiny clip of a somewhat awkward avatar doing a single animation.  I used Jing for the video [...]

More Projects Than Time

One of my least favorite traits is overcommitment–meaning that I always commit to too many conferences/papers/projects and something always falls by the wayside.  My batting average is pretty good, but I still swing at the air a bit more than I’d like.
So, while I have the attention of the Cal community, I’d like to let [...]

Popular Online Visual Aesthetics

Radical remediation, you say?
What’s odd is how ridiculously fun making this image was, and how it felt slightly transgressive.  Would I do the same with a photo of a skeleton?  With an assemblage from a Hansen’s disease settlement? This is actually fairly sedate; I could have added dancing kittens and diamond dollar bill signs.
When you [...]

Fake Dead People

What exactly is the agency of the virtual non-human human? This question hit me when I was in the midst of editing what is shaping up to be my first publication, (Re)Building Çatalhöyük: Changing Virtual Reality in Archaeology, a text refashioned from my more stridently titled paper presented at the World Archaeological Congress, Get Real: [...]

Consider it Burned.

I’m happy to report that the Burning Çatalhöyük was considered a success! We soldiered on despite considerable language and technology barriers, including a point where Karl Harrison was trying to speak about the buildings and was completely frozen.  We had a lot of visitors throughout the day, and about 30 for the main event, with [...]

Red and Hands

I finally made something that just might be Archaeography worthy, so I abused my limited moveabletype knowledge and posted an entry over there about the wall paintings and Second Life.  Let’s hope I didn’t break anything in the process.
I’ve been banging away at the buildings in Second Life–they’ll be ready by Wednesday, but only just!  [...]

Burning Çatalhöyük

Burning Çatalhöyük: A Virtual Public Archaeology Event hosted by UC Berkeley Students and Faculty
2PM-4:30PM Pacific Standard Time (10PM-12:30AM GMT or Universal Time)
December 10, 2008
Location: Okapi Island
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Okapi/128/128/0
(You must have the free Second Life browser)
Join us for Burning Çatalhöyük, a project developed by OKAPI, the Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük, and the UC Berkeley DeCal program. Çatalhöyük on [...]

Verisimilitude

Y’know, as close as we can get sometimes, it’s just not the same as actually being there.