Dan "O'Hara argues that, strictly speaking, the term skeuomorphism refers only to those vestigial elements in nature or artefact that survive from an original form, even though they are no longer required. At its broadest, this definition extends to the levers and dials in a modern aircraft cockpit, for example, which no longer connect to systems directly, but instead are merely inputs and outputs of a computer that actually controls things. Such controls are skeumorphs because they are holdovers from the days before computerised aircraft, and have been left in their original form for the benefit of pilots, who are used to them working in a particular way.
So can a digital depiction of something properly be called a skeuomorph? It is more accurate to refer to it as a visual metaphor that calls to mind a physical skeuomorph without really being one. The iPhone's notification panel, with its imitation linen effect, was not descended from an object that was once made of linen. The switch that, say, allows you to switch an iPhone into Airplane Mode is not an on–screen replacement for what used to be a physical switch. In the early days of graphical user interfaces, designers employed familiar devices, such as folders, trash cans and other objects commonplace in the office. The result was that operating systems ended up being littered with depictions of things that had never existed inside a digital device; the on–screen 'trash' icon is not the vestigial remnant of an actual trash can that was once part of the computer, which is why it is really a metaphor, not a skeumorph. (That said, as computer graphics became more detailed, the original blocky icons gave way to more detailed depictions of trash cans, folders and so forth, which are arguably skeuomorphs of visual metaphors.)"
(Glenn Fleishman, 25 June 2013, The Economist)
"Metamedia ia a studio and lab that pursues research and pedagogy in design history and media materialities.
It is located online, in Stanford Archaeology Center, and has worldwide affiliates.
Metamedia combines archaeology and media, with an archaeological and long–term focus on how people get on with things, with media(works) treated as modes of engagement between people and things. Media as artifacts and prostheses as well as systems to convey meaning: we emphasize the materialities of mediation at the heart of design – the way the steel was burnished, the clay was turned, how the vessel connects makers and materials, users and contents in genealogies of containment, portage, representation ... whatever work gets done."
"Archaeology is what archaeologists do. This answer is not a tautology. It refers us to the practices of archaeology. And to the conditions under which archaeologists work – the institutions and infrastructures, the politics and pragmatics of getting archaeological work done.
Archaeologists work on what is left of the past. Archaeology is about relationships – between past and present, between archaeologist and traces and remains. Archaeology is a set of mediating practices – working on remains to translate, to turn them into something sensible – inventory, account, narrative, explanation, whatever.
Archaeology is a way of acting and thinking – about what is left of the past, about the temporality of remainder, about material and temporal processes to which people and their goods are subject, about the processes of order and entropy, of making, consuming and discarding at the heart of human experience.
'Archaeological Sensibility' and 'Archaeological Imagination' are terms to summarize components of these mediating and transformative practices. Sensibility refers us to the perceptual components of how we engage with the remains of the past. Imagination refers us to the creative component – to the transforming work that is done on what is left over."
(Michael Shanks)
"Historical expert Jo Teeuwisse, from Amsterdam, began the project after finding 300 old negatives at a flea market in her home city depicting familiar places in a very different context. She researched the background to each of the most interesting finds and created a beautiful series of pictures by super–imposing the old pictures on top of new ones.
Now she has rediscovered photographs of soldiers at war in France and across Europe and put together further sets of evocative and emotional designs."
(Emma Reynolds, 18 October 2012, DailyMail)
"Internet Archaeology seeks to explore, recover, archive and showcase the graphic artifacts found within earlier Internet Culture. Established in 2009, the chief purpose of Internet Archaeology is to preserve these artifacts and acknowledge their importance in understanding the beginnings and birth of an Internet Culture. We focus on graphic artifacts only, with the belief that images are most culturally revealing and immediate. Most of the files in our archive are in either JPG or GIF format and are categorized by either still or moving image, they are then arranged in various thematic subcategories. Currently, a major focus of Internet Archaeology is on the archiving and indexing of images found on Geocities websites, as their existence has been terminated by parent company Yahoo; who discontinued GeoCities operation on October 26, 2009. Internet Archaeology is an ongoing effort which puts preservation paramount. Unlike traditional archaeology, where physical artifacts are unearthed; Internet Archaeology's artifacts are digital, thus more temporal and transient. Yet we believe that these artifacts are no less important than say the cave paintings of Lascaux. They reveal the origins of a now ubiquitous Internet Culture; showing where we have been and how far we have come."
(Internet Archaeology)
Via Chelsea Nichols [http://ridiculouslyinteresting.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/internet–archaeology–the–best–of–90s–internet–graphics/]
"Terms like 'Internet café' or 'cybercafé' bring us right back to the 90s along with phrases like 'web page' or 'digital divide', which were invented to describe new hybrids involving analog and digital, virtual and real as well as the present and near future.
It's not that these terms have grown obsolete. It's rather that these 20th–century phenomena they once described have outgrown their terminology. They were born as metaphors, but over time turned into idioms, and their analog parts were the first [to] lose their original meanings. People who did not witness the emergence of the web do not fully understand why browser content is still called a 'page'. It's has also become unclear what public internet access facilities have in common with cafés, yet we continue calling them 'internet cafés' or 'cybercafés'."
(Olia Lialina, 2012–01–10)
"1970s Vintage desktop and pocket calculators listed by company (131 identified brands, 613 calculators). ..., it is crazy to think that in many of these calculators you have a chip that is bigger in size than one of the Intel Core Family processors."
(Vintage Technology)
"Lisa Fischer is Director of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's Digital History Center (DHC). Located in the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library, the DHC was created to harness new technologies to help in engaging the public in the continuing conversation about the American Revolution, citizenship, and democracy. The DHC is currently working on a several complementary projects ranging from the creation of a new comprehensive website on the on the American Revolution to 'Virtual Williamsburg,' an initiative to create an interactive 3D model of the town as it looked in 1776 in collaboration with the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH)."
(16 February 2010)
Fig.1 Tom Ellis (2010 ). presentation by Lisa Fischer, Director of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's Digital History Center.
"Collections Online is part of Heritage Services' ongoing commitment to improving access to the collections, and will continue to develop. It currently presents highlights from the following collections: Auster Aircraft, Coal Mining, Designer Fashion, Fox Hunting, Images of Harborough, NEXT, Toys and Games and the Symington Collection of Corsetry, Foundationwear and Swimwear."
(Leicestershire County Council)
"The aim of Culture.Info is to be the first port–of–call for users seeking cultural information on a particular topic. Each Culture.Info sub–portal will provide a carefully researched set of listings of links to information that is more focused and useful than can usually be obtained from the vast majority of existing listings or search engines.
Cultural areas will be added in due course in the following key areas:
* Heritage–including archaeology, archives, conservation, history, heritage, museums
* Media–including advertising, broadcasting, digital & new media, film, games, publishing, radio, television
* Performing–including circus, comedy, dance, festivals, music, opera, puppetry, theatre
* Pursuits–including antiques & collecting, hobbies & pastimes, outdoor activities
* Sport–individual and team, and also sports involving animals
* Visual–including architecture, crafts, design, exhibitions, galleries, painting, photography, sculpture
* Words–including books & literature, languages, libraries, reading, writing
* A place could be a country, a region or even a city."
(Culture.info)
"The largest virtual heritage project completed in NZ is the 20 minute 3D film 'The Guns of Motutapu'. It is a story about Motutapu Island and NZ's most important WWII gun battery at the time of an anticipated Japanese attack. As one of the largest 3D heritage projects of its type in the world, it features an intensely detailed simulation of a 6' MK21 counter bombardment battery firing into the Hauraki Gulf. One lucky aspect of the project is that Major Derek Thorburn, who came to Motutapu in 1942 and rose to become commander of the guns, acted as a technical advisor to the project. As an actual eye witness to the history, he worked with the 3D artists to achieve a level of visual accuracy that was in danger of being lost forever. The film has proven hugely effective as a fund raising tool for the Motutapu Restoration Trust and its efforts to restore the island. As a result of this success the trust again contracted with 4D Canvas and a second Motutapu film has just been released."
(Chris Keenan , 12.5.2006)
"Lake Mungo 3 is the oldest (Pleistocene) 'anatomically modern' human from whom DNA has been recovered. His mtDNA belonged to a lineage that only survives as a segment inserted into chromosome 11 of the nuclear genome, which is now widespread among human populations. This lineage probably diverged before the most recent common ancestor of contemporary human mitochondrial genomes. This timing of divergence implies that the deepest known mtDNA lineage from an anatomically modern human occurred in Australia; analysis restricted to living humans places the deepest branches in East Africa. The other ancient Australian individuals we examined have mtDNA sequences descended from the most recent common ancestor of living humans. Our results indicate that anatomically modern humans were present in Australia before the complete fixation of the mtDNA lineage now found in all living people. Sequences from additional ancient humans may further challenge current concepts of modern human origins."
(Gregory Adcock, Elizabeth Dennis, Simon Easteal, Gavin Huttley, Lars Jermiin, William Peacock and Alan Thorne)
Adcock, G. J., E. S. Dennis, et al. (2001). "Mitochondrial DNA sequences in ancient Australians: Implications for modern human origins." Archaeology in Oceania 36(3): 163-163.
"Welcome to the new Acropolis Museum. 188 years since the declaration of the Greek Independence, 33 years since Constantinos Karamanlis took the far–sighted decision to built it in this particular site, and 27 years since the campaign of Melina Merkouri, a duty is fulfilled and a dream is realized:
A whole nation's duty to its own cultural heritage; the new Acropolis Museum. The paramount monument of Ancient Classical Times now has its own Museum – at last. In difficult times people need symbols to hold tight and stand straight. The Grand Opening of the new Acropolis Museum may be such a symbolic event. Where the Aesthetics of Logic, the Ethics of Freedom and the Rationality of Beauty, are all fused together and carved in stone for eternity. Acropolis hasn't stayed intact over the centuries. Yet it is still radiating its Beauty and its Truth.
This unique embodiment of ideas, ideals, moral standards and aesthetic values is needed now, more than ever. And we enjoy these, for the first time in a Modern Museum deserving to the historical Monument. Take a tour in it. Appreciate its atmosphere and its exhibits. Be inspired by its transcending message. It is Greek because it is Ecumenical. It is ours only to share it with the rest of the World. And please, remember: What you will discover is not just a part of our History. It is also a part of our soul, of who we are...
There are strong, sacred bonds, connecting us with every single item, from the humblest archaeological fragment to the most ornate figure. All of the artifacts are parts of our soul... Mostly the ones missing! With the anticipation that eventually – better sooner than later – they will be re–united in their birth place and in the integral form they were meant to be."
(Antonis C. Samaras, Greek Minister of Culture)
"Rome Reborn is an international initiative whose goal is the creation of 3D digital models illustrating the urban development of ancient Rome from the first settlement in the late Bronze Age (ca. 1000 B.C.) to the depopulation of the city in the early Middle Ages (ca. A.D. 550). With the advice of an international Scientific Advisory Committee, the leaders of the project decided that A.D. 320 was the best moment in time to begin the work of modelling.
...
The primary purpose of this phase of the project was to spatialize and present information and theories about how the city looked at this moment in time, which was more or less the height of its development as the capital of the Roman Empire. A secondary, but important, goal was to create the cyberinfrastructure whereby the model could be updated, corrected, and augmented. Spatialization and presentation involve two related forms of communication: (1) the knowledge we have about the city has been used to reconstruct digitally how its topography, urban infrastructure (streets, bridges, aqueducts, walls, etc.), and individual buildings and monuments might have looked; and (2) whenever possible, the sources of archaeological information or speculative reasoning behind the digital reconstructions, as well as valuable online resources for understanding the sites of ancient Rome, have been made available to users. The model is thus a representation of the state of our knowledge (and, implicitly, of our ignorance) about the urban topography of ancient Rome at various periods of time. Beyond this primary use, the model can function in other ways. It can be used to teach students or the general public about how the city looked; it can be used to gather data not otherwise available, such as the alignment of built features in the city with respect to each other or to natural features and phenomena; and, it can be used to run urban or architectural experiments not otherwise possible, such as how well the city or the buildings within it functioned in terms of heating and ventilation, illumination, circulation of people, etc. Finally, a digital model can be easily updated to reflect corrections to the model or new archaeological discoveries."
(Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities)
"The Virtual Museum of Archaeology (or MAV), which opened this summer [Northern Hemisphere], is based on the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum and is sited 100 metres from the ruins of the former settlement.
The creators of MAV aim to digitally reconstruct the destroyed town and recreate what life there was like.
The town was destroyed in 79 AD when the eruption of Mount Vesuvius encased it in scalding ash, killing those trying to flee, and preserving under 25m of debris some of the finest examples of private Roman villas.
'It is incredible coming to Herculaneum in the dark because your imagination fills in the gaps. Now a local museum is using digital technology to do just that,' said Walter Ferrara, the MAV's head curator.
Although MAV is near the actual site of Herculaneum it attempts to show it how it was not how it is now. "
(David Reid, BBC News, 12 September 2008)
"During the excavation works in 2001 for a hotel in the centre of Iceland's capital, the oldest proof of settlement in Reykjavik was found. The ruins of a longhouse and of a turf wall can now be visited "on site": The museum is situated in the basement of the new hotel; the longhouse's former main room is part of today's exhibition hall.
An interactive media installation presents the ruin, dated around 930 AD, the way it probably looked when occupied. The Multi–User installation resurrects the inhabitants as ghosts and shows them in their daily activities. The pater familias is welcoming a guest, servants take care of the livestock and the kitchen, the housewife is dyeing cloth, a child is playing. Museum visitors gain information by activating texts and images telling more on life in Iceland's Middle Ages. A spot light is also directed onto the relics found in the ruin. Touched by the visitor, they will show where they were located in the longhouse and explain their function. Additionally, the purpose of the building's different rooms is described."
(ART+COM)
"Most of the knowledge that we have of pre–literate societies comes from the interpretation of archaeological 'works' that have survived. However, key aspects of the argument are speculative. Let me take as an example the cave paintings at Lascaux. Opinion is divided about whether the paintings show a hunting expedition or represent a ritual activity in which image–animals are slaughtered symbolically as an auspicious prelude to the actual hunt. The reason that this important distinction cannot be reliably made is because the images do not embody information about their use, i.e. whether it is depictive or symbolic. This is not a problem confined to objects of great antiquity. For example, there is little material difference between a pair of chop–sticks and a pair of knitting–needles except the cultures in which they are found and the way in which they are used. This is even more apparent if one considers that there is nothing about their physical form that prevents them being exchanged and the one used for the purpose of the other."
(Michael A. R. Biggs, 2003, Practice as Research in Performance)
"Victorian tea trader Frederick John Horniman began collecting specimens and artefacts from around the World in the 1860's. Horniman's key mission was to bring the world to Forest Hill and he opened part of his family house to the public so they could view the riches he had collected. As the collections increased they outgrew the family home and in 1898 Horniman commissioned Charles Harrison Townsend to design a new Museum."
(Horniman Museum, UK)
Fig.1 Simon and Ashley, 'Interior of the main gallery in the Horniman Museum taken in 2006', http://www.flickr.com/people/10802072@N04.
"The Hugh Lane Gallery removed the contents of Francis Bacon's studio at 7 Reece Mews in August 1998. This operation was conducted with the assistance of a team of archaeologists who mapped the space, and tagged and noted the positions of the objects. The reconstructed studio features the original door, walls, floors, ceiling and shelves. Over 7,000 items were found in the studio and these were catalogued on a specially designed database before their replacement in the studio. The Francis Bacon Studio Database is the first computerised archive of the entire contents of a world ranking artist's studio. Every item in the studio has a database entry. Each entry consists of an image and a factual account of an object. The database has entries on approximately 570 books and catalogues, 1,500 photographs, 100 slashed canvases, 1,300 leaves torn from books, 2,000 artist's materials and 70 drawings. Other categories include the artist's correspondence, magazines, newspapers and vinyl records."
(Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, 14 December 2004)
the formation of the archaeology–poem, made up of multiple registers, but equally of the particular inscription of an articulation linked in turn to events, institutions and all sorts of other practices.
(Gilles Deleuze)