This Anthro Life has teamed up with Savage Minds to bring you a special 5-part podcast and blog crossover series. While thinking together as two anthropological productions that exist for multiple kinds of audiences and publics, we became inspired to have a series of conversations about why anthropology matters today. For this series we’re sitting down with some of the folks behind Savage Minds, SAPIENS, the American Anthropological Association and the Society for American Archaeology to bring you conversations on anthropological thinking and its relevance through an innovative blend of audio and text. That means each week for the month of June we’ll bring you two dialogues – one podcast and one blog post – with innovative anthropological thinkers and doers.

You can check out the the second episode of the collaboration titled: Anthropology has Always been Out There, here.

In the second conversation of the TAL + SM crossover series, Ryan and Adam were joined by AAA Executive Director Ed Liebow and Program Manager for Educational Outreach Leslie Walker. They explored the work of the AAA, the changing natures of work and research today, and critically assessed anthropology in terms of scope and impact.

Be sure to check out the first episode of the TAL + SM collaboration: Writing “in my Culture.”

The American Anthropological Association

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an association for professional anthropologists that has been active since 1902. Today, the AAA is the largest anthropology organization in the world, encompasses more than 10,000 members, publishes 23 journals, hosts an annual meeting, and advances broad public education initiatives, some of which have notably focused on race and migration. Recently the AAA began an aggregate podcast network, of which This Anthro Life is a founding collaborator.

Ed Liebow was named Executive Director for the American Anthropological Association in 2013 after a long career with the Battelle Memorial Institute, the world’s largest not-for-profit research and development organization. Ed first joined Battelle in 1986, the year he received his PhD in cultural anthropology from Arizona State University. He has conducted research and public policy analysis on a variety of energy, public health, and social policy issues concerning disadvantaged communities. While at Battelle, he rose from the rank of research scientist to project leader to director of research operations in the Seattle office. He maintains a position as affiliate associate professor of anthropology and interdisciplinary studies at the University of Washington. He has been a visiting professor of Applied Anthropology and Comparative Economics at Università Carlo Cattaneo Castellanza, VA, Italy, a Senior Fellow of the Fulbright Commission, and have served on the faculty of the CDC-sponsored Summer Evaluation Institute. He has also served on the executive boards of the AAA, the Society for Applied Anthropology, the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference, and the Jack Straw Media Arts Foundation.

Leslie Walker is responsible for managing AAA’s Public Education Initiative (PEI) that includes projects and programming for two important topics, race and migration. Leslie is a cultural anthropologist who previously worked for the National Park Service and taught at Prince George’s Community College. He has conducted research on cultural heritage and environmental justice of Afro-diasporic and Native American communities in the DC Metropolitan area, South Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Anglophone Caribbean. In addition to his work at the AAA, Leslie is an adjunct lecturer at Coppin State University teaching courses on cultural resource management and urban ethnography. Leslie holds degrees in anthropology from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and the University of South Florida. He also holds a specialization certificate in project management from the University of California Irvine, School of Continuing Education

Anthropology has Always been Out There

When asked where public engagement fits in with anthropology as a discipline, Ed pointed out that it is important not to view public and anthropology in binary opposition. The AAA’s tagline, “Advancing knowledge, solving human problems”, highlights the vision that anthropology serves to both mint new and refine existing knowledge while also translating knowledge to actionable insight. Recently AAA members were polled to ascertain whether they felt that their research was directly relevant to public issues. An overwhelming number of those polled said yes. Yet, a key takeaway is that while many anthropologists consider their work to be directly related to public issues, extra work is required to make important findings of research translatable to different audiences. In this regard,  Leslie sees anthropology as a discipline focused on identifying and analyzing patterns in human interaction and organization, past and present. Anthropological insights can be used to increase awareness to those within the discipline, the larger scholarly community, and the public. Anthropological methods and theories are used to highlight how some communities are implicated in social discrimination and injustice. However, he contends, there is a privilege in studying anthropology because students are often first introduced to the discipline at college or university.

How to Impact Public Conversation

The AAA recognizes the profound impact that anthropological research offers in naming problems and issues within society. This recognition of anthropology’s impact on public conversation prompted both members and staff of the AAA to begin developing the Public Education Initiative (PEI) in 2002.

The PEI highlights anthropology’s distinctive and encompassing perspective on human variation, human migration, and displacement, as viewed through the lenses of science, history and lived experience. The PEI has been shaping public conversations with hundreds of thousands of museum-goers and visitors to AAA websites. Leslie ensures that PEI offers guides for classroom teachers, community groups, and curriculum materials on race and migration that they can use to complement their lesson plans and workshop guides.

In 2007, the Association presented its first education project Understanding Race: Are We so Different? The project has had enormous success and since then the AAA has launched another project: World on the Move 100 Years of Migration. Additionally Leslie helps coordinate the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, which celebrates living cultural heritage. When reflecting on how these projects draw on and change  how we see anthropology, Leslie said “Anthropology has always addressed contemporary issues within society; but making it noticeable that when there’s issues of race or migration, showing that here are these things that have been constructed through culture and here are the offenses and the abuses of it, but here are the ways that we can undo it, and here we are as anthropologists: solving these issues, or addressing them, or raising recommendations. Highlighting that this is what we do as anthropologists”.

Tracking the Trends in Anthropology

Leslie’s discussion of public education propelled us on a quite productive tangent as we began to reflect on anthropology as practiced outside its traditional educational domain. This raised a host of questions about the where, how, to and by whom anthropology is often practiced, and how the PEI may point to other trends that anthropology faces today. Ed identified three main trends he sees in the discipline:

1. Changing Workforce. One of the major changes of 21st century labor is the rise of the project-based, or “gig” economy. Unlike traditional academic professor-university-student relationships, project-based work is more often characterized by a client-patron relationships with different metrics of accountability and funding. The continuing rise of the gig economy provides a diminished latitude for pure intellectual research because it tends to be based on concrete outcomes for clients. Further, much research, design, and impact-based work are undertaken in multidisciplinary teams, both limiting insider anthropological theorizing and providing an important outlet for anthropological thinking, critique, and ethnographic insight.

2. Changing Nature of Research. More anthropologists are moving away from projects designed to, as Ed says, “scratch their own intellectual itch”, but tailor their initiatives to client based interests. For example, this can be seen in the length of some ethnographic research projects. Whereas graduate students are required to conduct long-term fieldwork, generally for a year or more, client-based observational research could range anywhere from one day to a few months. While long-term ethnographic research is an incredibly formative personal and scholarly undertaking, many anthropologists increasingly characterize it as more of a ‘rite of passage’ than the essential point in which one becomes an anthropologist. These concerns raise the question, what forms of fieldwork are valued as anthropological and by whom? It is worth addressing that fieldwork for anthropologists has largely been valued for its duration rather than frequency. Does conducting a year of fieldwork once (American graduate model) rather than an ongoing series of shorter term observational research stints for a few days, weeks or months (practitioner model) make one more of an anthropologist? On par with the changing nature of the workforce, the nature of research itself is changing to be more impact, assessment, or measures-based. Critically, Ed points out that rather than think of client-based research as diluted anthropology, or ethnographically thin, we need to understand that different career paths have different reward structures.

3. Community Collaboration and Communities of Practice. The model of a ‘lone anthropologist’ is showing signs of aging; not to mention anthropologists have never worked alone. For the last few decades, communities have continued to take more active roles with anthropologists, contributing to shared and collaborative work. Indeed, more and more communities insist on actively participating in research and ensuring accountability for anthropological research. As a new hybrid field, for example, Design Anthropology is premised explicitly on research conducted by multidisciplinary teams and the collaborative formation of issues to be solved. Likewise, many archaeologists working in the Americas collaborate with local indigenous communities who have vested interests in heritage and could be directly impacted by the investigative findings – further pushing research away from simply scratching an intellectual itch or the myth that anthropologists somehow work alone.

The Story Digs Deeper…

These trends are particularly important to think through because, as Leslie pointed out above, anthropology occupies a somewhat privileged niche as most become aware of the discipline for the first time in a university setting, if they encounter it at all.

Ryan helped counter this idea by thinking about the idea of audience: “anthropology’s audience is really everybody. It is our objective to bring our narratives and those of the people we work with together, and to showcase why such dialogue is so important. Anyone can do anthropology and diverse voices add needed value to the conversation”.

Taking into account audience and privilege, Leslie and Ed leave us with two crucial and actionable points: Leslie states anthropologists need to be “reaching outside of the discipline, in sort of the public space, but also out of the molds of who an anthropologist is and what they look like. We need to encourage queer anthropologists, anthropologists of color, indigenous anthropologists, and anthropologists with different abilities.” Second, Ed illustrated that the near-sightedness on the part of mainstream anthropology today is that it doesn’t listen to other channels – where anthropology has always also been and continues to make substantial impacts. Anthropologists working in the grant writing world, National Forest Service and governmental sector, and in cultural resource management all have huge impact and are part of the anthropological conversation. Their voices have value, and like so many others, are needed in the conversation.

Check out episode two of the TAL + SM Crossover here. Stay tuned for next week’s episode where we sit down with SAPIENS and dive into the world of popular science writing and bringing the conversation to ever wider circles. See you next week, same TAL time, same TAL channel.

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about the relationship between form, aesthetics, and belonging. In my own archaeological practice (Rizvi 2015), I have enmeshed the notion of resonance with new materialism, empathy as linked to aesthetics, and belonging. As I have argued, resonance emerges as an intangible affect that the material thing has beyond its formal boundaries within larger planes of perception creating dynamic relationships among humans/nonhumans and illustrating cultural decisions of material as vibrant matter (c.f. Bennett 2010). In so far as the material has vibrancy and frequency, it has then the capacity to evoke an emotional and affective response to a similarity of material, style and/or form. Such response can be coded as a sensory aesthetic empathy that links to constituting subjective belonging. This argument had been posited with the ancient world in mind, but I have recently been applying archaeological theory to the contemporary, particularly within art and design.

As my anthropological concerns have found themselves situated within the United Arab Emirates (UAE), I have found myself working through contemporary things and assemblages in order to understand the past within this political geography. More often than not, working through such questions falls within the ways we understand critical heritage discourse – an intersection of perceived distance or lack there of, between the time of now and that of the past. As such, and not surprisingly, I have found contemporary art and design in the UAE deeply engaged with and within the constructions/discourses of heritage. Right now, my social media feed is full of reporting on Dubai Design Week. As a part of the thematic, there is a strong focus on using local materials that have local resonance, local meaning, local heritage, and local technique. Even the design of the space is being lauded as keeping a local environmental sensibility in mind. There is a sense that what we are experiencing is some negotiation and an authorizing of what constitutes Emirati vernacular design as Rahel Aima might argue (see her piece in Frame – summer issue), or as Laura Egerton reports in Vision, Dubai Design Week becomes a space within which forgotten crafts have the potential to change the future. It is easy to see the relationship  between contemporary design, uses of heritage to be future-oriented (and arguably, on fleek in that hipster way), and the ways in which a local aesthetic has been co-opted for contemporary design so it can speak to a local market and sensibility. The form taken by the local aesthetic significantly lends itself to an empathetic sense of belonging, which is integral to these conversations. Interestingly, however, the contest of heritage in the contemporary is less about what is authorized, but rather, what form can account for commitments of time, place, and access to these conversations.

In order to complicate and think through this theory of resonance within the contemporary commitments I mentioned above, I decided to look to sound artists who utilize resonant materials to create sounds that are not necessarily locally acoustically resonant. The sound becomes the by-product and not the defining feature of the piece. It is the material artifact that holds the key to understanding the possibility of belonging. It is an assemblage then that belongs to a material history of the region and is the conduit of aesthetic empathetic responses. In order to test some of these ideas, I looked to the work of Fari Bradley and Chris Weaver, a British sound art duo, who are not part of critical heritage discourse in the region, and yet, while in residence in Dubai a couple years ago, utilized some of the tropes developed through local discourse. I have been following Bradley and Weaver since their New Media Residency (2014-15) at Tashkeel (Dubai), which culminated in an exhibition, Systems for a Score (Jan-Feb 2015). I reached out to them earlier this year (Spring 2016) in an effort to think through their practice vis-a-vie my own.

Linking form, sound, and politics to aesthetics, is particularly tricky in some parts of the world, and Dubai is no exception to that rule. Bradley and Weaver’s work delicately treads those lines and focuses on the politics of sound, amplification and material. As Bradley recently commented, “For us, the material properties of an object provide a way for a sound work (employing the material qualities of that object) to interact with the physical environment (indeed this method is an excellent way for an environment to “push” back against a work, through physical forces: e.g. heat, wind, moisture, dust, movement, reflecting sound etc)…To try to simply have sound existing in some immaterial vacuum, has resonances with a certain type of political view point.” (March 3, 2016, email interview) This shifts our attention from resonance being singularly constitutive of belonging, to it being linked to forms existing in spaces where existence would/could be possibly impossible.

Models for a Score (2014). Photograph by Jerry Baloch.
Image courtesy of artists.

In a curiously shifting installation, Bradley and Weaver’s Models for a Score (2014), integrates sound art inspired by al-sadou (Bedouin weaving and significant for my interests, on the UNESCO 2011 List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding) with an adapted Atari game console (circuit bent by Weaver to make it touch sensitive). Utilizing two key material forms, technologies, and ways of situating oneself in time, the duo rigged the console to utilize visual information from the weaves, read as an abstracted form of music. Although the video had no sound, the long hand printed scores on black cloth indexed a form of music that would be urban industrial. The sound suggested was at once resonant of an urgent intangible cultural form. Models for a Score (2014) can be displayed in different ways given that it is considered both a space of perception as well as one of production. Significant to it’s display however, are the vertical lines that are digitally reproduced in dual color forms, mimicking the Bedouin weave. These articulations are not only arbitrarily produced, but in creating these spaces of production, the artists aimed to open spaces for collaborative sound making or what one might consider to be articulations of an urban public space within the white cube.

Red Tide (2014). Photograph by Jerry Baloch.
Image courtesy of artists.

What is most interesting (and politically astute) is that not much of their early work, particularly that which was in the Tashkeel show, actually produces sound that is easily perceivable. However, the interaction with volume shifts with Red Tide (2014-15). This piece is linked to Bradley’s own personal history and desires, “Red Tide, 2015 is really an extension of our practice pushed to its most sculptural level. On arriving in UAE I had pored over different kinds of maps (historical, geopolitical, topographical etc) to understand the Gulf at every side and our physical proximity to Iran where I was born and hoped to visit for the first time since leaving as a small child.” (February 26, 2016, email interview) In creating this piece, there is a subtext of understanding oneself and a desire to see a place where one comes from, importantly including fantasy, “In England we have a long tradition of people swimming the English channel to France, and (we) fantasised and we talked about what it would take to swim, or sail in a Dhow from Dubai or Ras al Khaimah whose northernmost part is so close to Iran.”(ibid) Personal stories tend to resonate a bit louder than others (one must still lean into the piece to hear it), and yet the duo are cognizant of the piece not coming off as didactic, but rather they would prefer the focus be the materials themselves that in producing sound are also entrenched in the politics of amplification.

The piece itself reflected the fantasy, utilizing a map, some electronics, copper wires, and a light box: “we decided to chart a straight line in the sea from where (we) were living in Dubai to Iran. Each of the three red copper wires was pulled taut in order to carry three unique sounds: the sounds of space matter in orbit, the sound of tectonic plates in motion and extracts from the first ever insurance document known to man, written in the Gulf by Hammurabi.  By feeding the sounds into the strings we allowed them to become distorted and diminished in volume by the wires. We designed the piece to fit in a corner, the wires casting a shadow from the map to the control box, which held three musical tuning pegs for strings. The print of the map we placed on a light box to highlight the map, and allow for low lighting to cast a shadow of the strings on the corner. We had to plan in very fine detail the angle of the box, strings and maps. This way onlookers would have to lean in; to read the map, to decipher the sounds.” (ibid).

The need to listen closely to understand where one might come from, and all the attendant sounds that reflect other forms of mobility, whether in space, geologic, and/or historic, uniquely capture an emotional aesthetic of belonging elsewhere, but speaking from here. The choice to require a close listen was explained to me with regards to a politics of amplification; as Bradley said, “from our perspective, after years of working with sound in different settings, speakers offer a false sense of trust to those viewing them [the speaker] while listening. The sound and it’s source appears removed from the speaker which is the end result (acousmatic)…That speakers convey sound un-colored is a myth; even while listening our ears, the receivers are colouring the sound, so to constantly strive for a kind of uncoloured, ‘pure’ playback, if followed through to its logical conclusion, can only end in removing the listener because your perceptual processes colour sound.” (ibid) Following her note, Weaver continued more explicitly, “Loudspeakers have traditionally had a role in authoritarian societies. PA systems and the artificial amplification of the voice are used to transmit the “correct” ideas, the “truth”, states version of history.”(February 26, 2016, email interview) And so within the politics of amplification, the idea that there is a purity to any sound form could be considered as a false consciousness of sorts. Each sound has a color, a timbre, and forms of complex information that contextualize it, if you know what you are listening for, and know how to hear it. If you really want to know what’s what, you have to strive to listen because often, only authorized heritage is amplified. It contests the position of a priori knowledge: if you don’t know what you are listening for, how might you know what to listen for?

Earlier this week, my Emirati Arabic teacher told us that in contrast to MSA (Modern Standard Arabic), the ways in which we pronounce words in Emirati are less pronounced – the fluctuations in sound and tone are more subtle, and are seemingly flat, even though they are not. It is in knowing those very precise and yet historically variable fluctuations in sound that separate one as non-native speaker. In contrast, in art and design, the historic nature of representations have varied depths and histories in a new federation (UAE was formed in 1971): an aesthetic language only now being encoded into an authorized heritage.

And so, this is precisely where the durational commitments of time, place and access to these conversations are placed: at the intersection of now and then. By examining work like that produced by Bradley and Weaver, that is made utilizing the resonant forms of here, but is of and from elsewhere, we are able to locate the potential of contemporary art to be critical heritage discourse. For artists who are not of here, but were here while longing for a visit elsewhere, there is something remarkable in Fari Bradley and Chris Weaver’s ability to find that articulation through an acoustic material vocabulary in the UAE. I would argue that these works could not have been made any where else but here. There is something about their borrowing of resonant forms that provide a vocabulary and soft articulation of longing, that is unique to the empathetic aesthetic forms of resonance of the UAE.

References:
Bennett J (2010) Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham and London : Duke University Press.

Rizvi, U.Z. (2015) Crafting Resonance: Empathy and belonging in Ancient Rajasthan. Journal of Social Archaeology. Vol. 15 (2): 254-273.

Acknowledgements: Much of my thinking about UAE contemporary art and design has been influenced and challenged by the participants of Campus Art Dubai (CAD), where I have been one of the lead tutors since 2014, and most significantly, my co-lead tutors and collaborators in CAD, Murtaza Vali and Lee Xie.

Media forms are constantly calling into question each other’s ability to represent the authentic, and these remediations raise the possibility of the decay of aura, the loss of authenticity of experience. (Bolter et al. 2006: 34)

Over the last decade, we’ve both been thinking about the fundamental problem of how the authenticity of historic objects and monuments is produced, experienced and negotiated. In particular, this has coalesced in our recent work on digital 3D models, where we have engaged directly with the questions raised by Bolter and his colleagues. To what extent does the use of new 3D digital media in the heritage sector result in the loss of authenticity? What do digital 3D models of historic objects do to their physical counterparts and visa versa? How do their biographies intersect? How does participation in their production inform the experience and negotiation of their authenticity?

Authenticity has traditionally been seen as an intrinsic and immutable dimension of tangible historic objects, monuments and landscapes; qualities that define their significance and their truthfulness. In contrast, the authenticity and value of physical replicas and reconstructions has a much more difficult history. Whilst changing according to their modes of production, accuracy, institutional associations and subsequent uses, their authenticity is almost always seen as secondary, and indeed a potential threat, to the original objects they represent. In Theorizing Digital Heritage, Fiona Cameron explores how digital visualizations of historic objects and monuments (including digital representations and physical reconstructions), often acquire a similarly complex and ambivalent status. This is accentuated by the ‘weirdness’ of digital objects. As one of us (Jeffrey) argues in Challenging Heritage Visualization, such objects are inarguably different from the ‘real’; lacking in substance and physical locale, they apparently defy the laws of nature with their infinite reproducibility and inability to degrade.

But we suggest that these seemingly clear cut distinctions between originals and replicas, both physical and digital, are in fact far more complex than they might first appear. The authenticity of originals is culturally mediated and, as one of us explored through ethnographic research, it involves complex networks of relationships between people, places and things (see Jones; also Macdonald). Just as the intrinsic authenticity and value of originals is widely challenged, so the inauthenticity of physical replicas and reconstructions can be questioned. Physical replicas and reconstructions can acquire authenticity depending on their modes of production and consumption, and the networks of institutional and individual relations from which they arise (e.g. Foster and Curtis). Likewise in considering digital media the notion that virtual replicas and representations signal the end of authenticity has been questioned (e.g. Cameron; Jeffrey). Using Latour and Lowe’s appealing metaphor from the title of their article in Switching Codes, we see a ‘migration of aura’, but how does this work and under what conditions?

Recently our separate research on these issues came together in the ACCORD project, which involved a collaboration between Glasgow School of Art, the University of Manchester, Archaeology Scotland, and the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland (now part of Historic Environment Scotland). Through the project we explored how community co-production of 3D digital heritage visualizations impacts on the authenticity associated with them (and in turn the tangible heritage they represent). Working with 10 community heritage groups across Scotland, we co-created 3D visualizations of heritage places, which importantly were identified as places of significance by members of the groups. The ACCORD team used a form of short-term ethnography (Pink and Morgan 2013), using mixed methods, including focused group interviews and participant observation. In turn, the production of the 3D visualizations acted as the kind of intervention in people’s lives recommended by Pink and Morgan; in effect creating an ‘intense route to knowing’.

The research reveals that 3D heritage visualizations can acquire meaningful levels of authenticity and value, at least from the point of view of those involved in their production. At the same time strong distinctions between originals and 3D models are upheld, and certain characteristics undermine the migration of aura from analogue to digital forms. These include the absence of touch (with our non-haptic models), the loss of wider context or setting, the absence of experiential dimensions such as the weather, sound, changing daily and seasonal qualities. Nevertheless, complex and dynamic relationships are set up between heritage objects and their digital replicas. These involve subtle forms of partial migration and borrowing, alongside the generation of new forms of value and authenticity. 3D printing creates a further element of complexity as the digital object ‘migrates’ back into the material world. In this case, we can see an analogue-digital-analogue cycle at work, in which some original forms of authenticity are lost, but new ones are created through the production process.

The community co-design and co-production employed in the ACCORD project is a key part of this process, producing relationships between people, places and objects that informs the experience of authenticity. So, whilst most research on the authenticity and value of digital media focuses on issues such as metric accuracy, design aesthetics and consumption, we suggest that modes of production and participatory practice are equally, if not more, important. The results have important implications for heritage practice, as well as for the application of digital 3D visualization more broadly. They suggest that forms of community participatory practice could be used to explore the authenticity and significance of original historic objects and monuments. At the same time, such methods could be used to create rewarding and significant relationships with digital objects, for those involved in their production and beyond. For instance, they might impact on wider audiences, if the biographies of digital 3D models, and their relationships to people are places, are made explicit. At present we are developing a follow-on project to explore the impact of these proposals, through community co-curation of exhibitions of centred on the ACCORD digital models.

Siân Jones is Professor of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Manchester. She is interested in the production and consumption of cultural heritage and has written on authenticity, social significance, conservation practice, and community archaeology/heritage. You can find her on social media @blinkymanx and https://manchester.academia.edu/SianJones

Stuart Jeffrey is Research Fellow in Heritage Visualisation at the Digital Design Studio of the Glasgow School of Art. His research encompasses multiple aspects of technical recording, reconstruction and visualisation in the heritage context, particularly how outputs from these processes are received by their intended audiences. @stuartjeffrey and http://www.gsa.ac.uk/research/dds-profiles/j/jeffrey-dr-stuart/

Funded by the AHRC, ACCORD is a 12 month project. Others involved in the project include Mhairi Maxwell (Glasgow School of Art), Cara Jones (Archaeology Scotland), and Alex Hale (HES). You can find us on social media @ACCORD_project and http://accordproject.wordpress.com/

Post by Laia Pujol-Tost.

Archaeology has a long tradition of using visual representations to depict the past. For most of its history, images were done by hand and based on artistic skills and conventions. But the last fifteen years, we have witnessed 3D models take over archaeological visualization. It is interesting to note that while hand-drawn depictions tend to show human figures and seem to be associated with scenes of “daily life”, virtual reconstructions mostly show architectural remains and public spaces, usually devoid of people and objects. Yet, authors state that their intention is to represent the past.

My field of research is what we now call Virtual Archaeology, but I started investigating when we still talked about “VR applications in Archaeology”. I have seen it become mainstream and evolve; and I wonder why after almost twenty years of technological improvements and theoretical debate, virtual reconstructions are still empty. Especially in comparison with drawings. Do the virtual and the physical have implicitly different goals? Are they subject to different perceptions or expectations by researchers and/or audiences? Have they received different historical influences? Maybe technological capacities still play a role?

Let’s put some evidence on the table. I have reviewed a lot of bibliography, and in my early career I conducted a series of studies that took me to Rome, Ename (Belgium) and Athens. The conclusion in relation to the matter at hand was the following: both audiences and experts associated VR with the objective reproduction of reality, while the introduction of human characters (and objects) seemed more speculative. As a result, they considered illustrations were better for wide audiences, especially for children, and associated their production with non-academic professionals (illustrators and educators).

This situation arises from a confluence of causes related to VR and to Archaeology. In the first case, VR allows the representation of and navigation within 3D geometrical spaces. The Cartesian concept of the world is deeply rooted in the Western mind, and is best represented by computers. But VR also comes from the pictorial perspectivist tradition, which is arguably considered the closest to human perception. In addition, we now have the possibility to acquire the model directly from reality, by means of photogrammetry or 3D scanning. Hence the belief that VR represents the world objectively. On the other hand, modelled humans are problematic because they require a lot of computing resources but still seem “fake”. The “uncanny valley” effect contributes to the belief that humans hinder realism.

Technological capacity has been one of the historical justifications for not populating archaeological virtual environments. However, even now that I am building my own VR-mediated experience, I am not persuaded. Video-games display very realistic worlds with human characters and maximum interaction. Certainly, the entertainment industry mobilizes a lot of money and people. But we do have examples of archaeological projects supported by big investments in terms of time and/or human efforts. On the other hand, realism is not limited to visual effects, but is achieved thanks to the interplay of different elements (an overload of visual details, affordances for interaction, sounds, etc.), which generate a general impression of verisimilitude. Besides, there are other solutions, none of them new, such as procedural generation (of textures, buildings, etc.), Non-Photorealistic Rendering, and more recently, the combination of digital and video-recorded content. Yet, I have come to understand that people involved in virtual archaeological reconstructions mostly think in terms of visual accuracy.

To discuss the other set of causes, related to archaeology, let me tell you about {LEAP]. This project aims at building a theoretical and methodological framework for VR mediated experiences, based on the concept of (Cultural) Presence. In order to refine the concept and its translation into user requirements, last August I conducted fieldwork at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük (Turkey). VR applications share features with the original site (raw data); an experimental house built close to the site (immersivity); and illustrations of the settlement (presence or absence of humans). But VR applications also have specific capacities (dynamism and simulation) due to their virtual computational component. I wanted to see which ones were spontaneously used or considered important by experts when describing verbally and/or visually a past culture. What did I learn about illustrations and virtual reconstructions? According to the results, virtual reconstructions should: 1) show life and objects (like the illustrations but in a dynamic way); 2) distinguish between evidence and reconstruction (like the site); 3) be immersive and multisensory (like the reconstructed house); 4) allow natural navigation (at eye’s, not bird’s view); and 5) show temporal evolution and unusual perspectives (making the most of virtuality).

There is an obvious conflict between these expectations and virtual reconstructions. Moreover, Virtual Archaeology is now a mature area of research, for which an internationally acknowledged set of guidelines, the Seville Principles, has been established. Yet, several points (related to coherence between aims and methods, transparency, and effectiveness) are still not implemented in many VR projects. In my opinion the causes are to be found in archaeological practice. As debated in a couple of recent seminars, the dominant epistemological paradigms aim for the truth, understood either as explanation or description of the archaeological record. Objectivity and visual realism are one and the same. Nevertheless, there are other, very important paradigms that acknowledge the interpretive nature of Archaeology, and attempt to express it visually. Unfortunately, they are both confronted to the pressure of funding bodies, stakeholders and audiences, who demand the illusion of a (scientifically accurate) trip to the past. The consequence are hyperrealistic environments, where buildings are fully reconstructed (in spite of the availability of data), but human characters and material culture are (sometimes) introduced as a necessary embellishment.

So in the end my question should not be why are virtual reconstructions empty, but if we want to change this and how. How do we do our job, how do we contribute to science and society, against hype, inertia, and economic interests?

This is the first in a series of posts, coordinated with Colleen Morgan, on the relations between analog and digital cultures. Over the next month, through the contributions of a variety of archaeologists, we will explore the concept of materiality in an age where the nature of ‘the material’ is rapidly shifting. How do physical materials and digital materials shape one another? How does experimentation with the digital rethink the dimensions of the analog, and vice versa? How, if at all, do we distinguish between one and the other – and is this even necessary (or possible) today? How have our understandings of ‘the real’ – of ‘things’ and ‘facts’ – of presence and the body – of aura and authenticity – been shifted by interactions between physical and digital materials?

As the premiere scholars of materiality, archaeologists are well-versed in the continuities between, and changes to, artifacts. Here, we probe their boundaries through discussion of our engagements at the intersections of the analog and the digital. I begin with some critical comments on mobile apps: oft enrolled in visitor experiences at archaeology and heritage sites, are these digital tools actually valuable?

I’ve been working at the convergence point of analog and digital technologies for many years now. This entails studying how archaeologists deploy them in their professional practices, training others (and myself) in the use of digital tools to facilitate better understanding of the archaeological (physical) world, and creating opportunities to expose crossovers between analog and digital environments (for example, developing virtual exhibitions displayed in physical spaces).

Most recently, I’ve become concerned with mobile apps. In archaeology – and in the museums world – these kinds of hand-held technologies have a long history of use, particularly for delivering interpretation of artefacts, exhibits, and full sites to visitors (e.g., see Jeater’s review). A project or an institution may develop an app that you download on-location or beforehand, which then typically acts as a form of guide around the place and its collections.

My interest is in the link between these mobile technologies and the material world. In the best case (e.g., see the work of Eve, Hoffman, Morgan, Pantos and Kinchin-Smith, produced as part of the Heritage Jam), they are means to full multi-sensory experiences of ancient landscapes.

But in the worst case, they have little or no physical relevance, in the sense that they could just as easily (or more easily) be used in the home, while still in bed, rather than out in a mobile landscape.

If you’ve tested out a few apps for heritage sites, you’ll likely identify with this predicament. Their real possibilities are often not being exploited (e.g., the opportunity to physically move around different locations), and when they are (e.g., in the case of augmented reality apps), it’s unclear who’s using them, how meaningful they really are for visitors’ appreciation of the archaeological record, and what bigger impact they are having on relevant fields of practice (e.g., how they are really altering heritage interpretation? Is it worth it?). If sound is deployed on the app, it regularly works as little more than a surrogate tour guide.

When using heritage apps, you often spend much your time staring at the screen of your mobile device, reading text or viewing visual materials on the device itself to the detriment of the site you’ve come to see. Some recent testing we’ve done in York has even suggested that apps falsely lead users to feel that they’ve visited ‘everything’, when in fact they’ve visited only a fraction of what non-users experienced.

Many people also seem inclined to develop apps that reinforce these problems: they are standard, unexperimental, grounded in the typical hand-held audio guides that were the ‘mobile apps’ of 50+ years ago (e.g., in museums).

Developers often talk about the positive aspects of mobile apps, especially their potential to attract new and younger audiences, their promise of immersion or embodied experience, their entertainment value and heightened relevance in the modern world. Others have highlighted their negatives, which as I’ve noted above, can seemingly be infinite, e.g.:

• distracting visitors from the actual site itself
• isolating visitors from their companions
• isolating artifacts from one another
• can be expensive to develop
• memory limits on mobile device may make downloading or use of the app impossible
• app may have an additional costs for users including expense for connecting to mobile signals
• persistent digital divides might make apps inaccessible to significant demographics, and reinforce structural inequalities

Despite all the negatives (and I can go on, as not only do I teach mobile app development, but a number of my students are studying the efficacy of existing heritage apps), I still find them compelling. I’m drawn to them because I believe they have so many under-exploited possibilities that might have transformative effects on how we interpret the archaeological record and on how we interact with other interested people.

If done well, I believe such technologies can perform a critical role in enabling their users (and makers) to think through the complex relations between space, place, humans & media. Mobile devices are ubiquitous in many parts of the world, and in some of the developing contexts that I’ve been working recently (e.g., Egypt), they are an essential part of all aspects of everyday life, yet are rarely used in the context of heritage. They allow integration of multiple types of rich media (still & moving imagery, sound, etc.). And, as I see it, they are still in their experimental phases, so there is much room for innovation, and – as they have not yet been fully institutionalised – there is still real flexibility to push on their boundaries.

For such reasons, and in collaboration with multiple teams, I’ve been experimenting with mobile app development in various environments. This includes the making of low-tech, open access/open source apps crafted and conceived by students (thanks to Tom Smith for all his support!). It also includes larger scale initiatives, for instance at the world-renowned Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey.

At Çatalhöyük, over the past 7 years and in partnership with students and colleagues from the universities of Ege, York and Southampton), I have led many of the site’s heritage interpretation ventures (e.g., curation of its Visitor Centre, development of on-site signage, production of the site’s guidebook, maps and brochures, etc.), including evaluation of visitor experience. (For more info on our activities, see the “Visualisation Team” section of Çatalhöyük’s Archive Reports).

Here, we have developed a very thorough understanding of tourist expectations (as a relatively remote site, it still sees upwards of 20,000 visitors per year). And we have the opportunity, through the support of the Project Director Prof Ian Hodder, to experiment on a large scale with digital/analog interventions, with great potential to impact not just visitor experience, but also professional practice (given Çatalhöyük’s visibility in academic archaeology).

Çatalhöyük is an important case study for many reasons:

• The nature of its mud-brick architecture combined with the dusty environment make it difficult for non-specialists to perceive the archaeological record.
• Despite our efforts, there are still relatively few interpretative materials on site, and those that do exist are often not maintained.
• Difficult weather (hot in summers, cold in winters) and technological conditions make visiting and presenting the site challenging; and Çatalhöyük is in a remote location with problematic public transport options.
• Only a small number of knowledgeable people are available on site to communicate additional information to visitors on a year-round basis; virtually no archaeologists are present outside of summer months.
• Inflexible touring schedule/approach, often with poor instructions and rigid route, handcuff the visitor experience; indeed, visitors have been observed to actually jump illicitly into excavation units in order to get closer to the archaeology, yet even then they still might leave with limited appreciation of the site.
• Because many visitors do a lot of research about the site before coming to see it, when they arrive they tend to understand more about it. Visitors often also seek out supplementary informational resources, plus they regularly come to site with mobile devices & are willing to use those devices on site. This presents a tremendous opportunity for us, because given that visitors are doing such pre-visit research and are prepared to use their mobiles, it means we can potentially cater to them with technological options delivered in advance of their visit.

Funded through the the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA), and in partnership with the CHESS team, in 2014 we began to experiment with this opportunity. In the first instance, we constructed a mobile device-based narrative about a particular building at Çatalhöyük (Building 52), written by the site’s own experts, populated with existing visuals and audio recorded by the authors of the story. Our evaluations of the app suggested that its real impact was actually on the archaeologists themselves who crafted the narrative. In other words, their involvement in writing the content of the app affected how they thought about the site and their research at the site (Roussou et al. 2015). Experience of use of the app itself for understanding the archaeological record, however, was mixed.

In Summer 2015, with further funding from the BIAA, and again in partnership with CHESS, we returned to site to elaborate the app. This time, however, we wanted to push back against some of the problematic trends that we’ve observed with these tools, and maximise the capacities of the mobile device – its social functions, its multi-media possibilities, its portability – to create connectivity. Our aim was to use the app not simply to communicate a story about Çatalhöyük, but to:

(1) facilitate engagement between visitors on site (both people in the same tour group and other unknown people touring the site), and

(2) engage users’ bodies and prompt interactivity with the physical world around them at the site

To do this, we split the existing script for the app (created in 2014) into multiple parts so that two members of a visiting group had to work together to understand the storyline. In other words, each person would only hear/see a fragment of the story, and it would only be via (prompted) conversation between the two of them that the full narrative would become evident. We added even more prompts to various parts of the story in an effort to compel discussion, reflection and collaborative decision-making about past inhabitants and activities in Building 52. We worked to augment the haptic nature of the experience of holding/looking at the mobile device by asking users to touch and align their devices. This created a kind of ‘shared screen’ for visitors, pulling the content on their individual devices into a larger whole – something which they could subsequently explore together. We also attempted to add playfulness to the experience, for instance, prompting users to choose particular items excavated from the house to virtually ‘give’ to their partners.

Our efforts were rolled out through a multi-stranded approach.

Firstly, we conducted a ‘body storming’ session at Çatalhöyük with researchers at the site, specifically aimed at thinking through how we might better engage the body in the interpretative experience at Çatalhöyük. Participants in the session were asked to articulate, then act out (without words), concepts associated with being a ‘Çatalhöyükian’ – and what ‘Çatalhöyükness’ meant to them. The idea was to be able to use the embodied results of this session to inform new content and experiences for the app. However, while full analysis of the session is forthcoming, initial interview results provided mixed feedback on its utility.

Secondly, we tested a prototype of the app on site in July with an audience of researchers and students. Evaluated through interview and video capture (see Katifori et al. 2016), the results again were mixed, but with more sense of promise: some users liked the interactivity we’d added, some did not; some felt they were being ‘cheated’ by having to ask their visiting companion for information (rather than learning direct from their own device), others felt clearly more engaged with the site. Everyone, however, appeared to enjoy the playful elements added to the app. A full description of our work will be presented at the next Museums and the Web conference in Los Angeles this April.

Thirdly, with my team of students from Ege University and the University of York, we installed on site a separate, physical display – meant as a point of comparison to the digital display of the app. In this case, we used Çatalhöyük’s replica house as a hiding place for a number of printed plexi signs. Each sign provided a clue to locating the next sign, with the aim of encouraging visitors to actually engage with the physical parts of the house – its oven, baskets, storage rooms, etc. Initial assessment suggests that these signs have been successful in encouraging touch, movement, material and bodily interactivity – more than I’ve typically seen with mobile apps.

Possibly the most interesting component of all of this work for me has been its evaluation, and the passionate reactions expressed by many – particularly to the mobile app. We’ve only just begun to review the interview data collected from users of the app, but my impression is that it’s generated a polarised set of replies. These range from true advocates who felt genuinely influenced by the experience, to those who perceived it as a waste of time, or as something too radical, or gimmicky, or distracting from the experience of ‘being there’.

Personally, I continue to feel conflicted about mobile technologies for heritage interpretation. I’m not convinced that we’ve yet untangled the means to blend the physical and the (handheld) digital into a complementary visitor experience. But ‘being there’ at a place like Çatalhöyük is very complicated (for reasons that include everything from transport and infrastructure to the fragmentary nature of the archaeological record), and these technologies do have affordances that could ease – perhaps even eliminate – such complications. I’d like to think that one day this will be possible.

So I’ll sign off now with a series of questions that I continue to grapple with, and that will present themselves in different forms in some of our other posts over the course of this month:

What are digital technologies actually enabling, if anything? Does the traditional analog equivalent (in my case, a printed sign) still offer more to users?

How can we deploy digital technologies (for example, mobile apps for cultural sites) in more productive, bodily- and thought-provoking fashion?

And from the archaeological perspective,

How can we improve people’s experience and understanding of the archaeological record? For instance, if developing a mobile app, how can that app create a more impactful tour of a site for visitors, more human-to-human interaction on the tour, and a richer sense of one’s own presence there at the site – in the moment – and in the past (as a Çatalhöyükian)?

In April 2011, Abu Dhabi hosted the 17th GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) stamp exhibition, a well attended and received event. The newspapers covering the exhibition remarked on how significant stamps were to heritage. On display were stamps from the national archive, demonstrating ‘national consciousness’ prior to becoming a nation (i.e. pre-1971), as well as representing a more global and cosmopolitan outlook. Postal services in what is now the UAE began in Dubai in 1909 by Great Britain but administered by the Government of India. Neil Donaldson, in The Postal Agencies in Eastern Arabia and the Gulf (1975), discusses how throughout the 19th century (until 1946), Political Residents and Political Agents living in the Gulf states were all appointed from the Indian Political Service. As postal services became necessary, it was the Indian Postal Department that opened up offices in Muscat (1864), Bahrain (1884), Dubai (1909) and in Kuwait (1915).

Civil mail from Sharjah went through Dubai until 1963.

July 10th, 1963 Sharjah opened its own postal office, issuing its own stamps and postal stationary under the name of Sharjah and Dependencies (which included Kalba, Khor Fakkan, and Dibbah). During this time, there were also some unauthorized overprints that were in circulation. Although Sharjah and her Dependencies joined the UAE in December of 1971, it was not until July 31st, 1972 that the UAE assumed full postal responsibilities. Since most of Sharjah’s visual stamp culture was not really UAE specific, many UAE stamp catalogs do not list them.

These (below) are some of the first stamps issued by Sharjah in 1963, all of which I have “collected” images of from Ebay:

From left to right, the first has a portrait of Sheikh Saqr (III) in the top right corner, with the flag of Sharjah fluttering over a map of the Trucial States, and is a 1 n.p. (naya paisa or new money/currency). It seems to be a reasonable and well placed first issue: it establishes the figure of authority, the symbol of authority and the location of that authority. The next three stamps, the World Health Organization (WHO) and fight against malaria campaign (illustrated by the mosquito and the WHO emblem), the Freedom from Hunger campaign, and the International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent Centenary stamps immediately propel Sharjah into international concerns and through the issuing of such stamps, places Sheikh Saqr as one who commands authority in issues related to international well-being. The visual representations on stamps can be coded as, what Michael Billig calls, banal nationalism (1995), that is, the everydayness of nationalism and national rhetoric. Pauliina Raento and Stanley Brunn also used this framework to look at the visual culture of stamps in Finland (2005). However, in the case of Sharjah and her Dependencies, 1963 continues to be pre-federation (and thus pre-nation). Through the issuing of these stamps, Sharjah establishes distinct visual registers for domestic and international codes. Codes that are indicative of an autonomous region, not one subservient to British (or regional) interests.

In line with this observation, 1963 marked another very significant moment in my Ebay stamp image collecting. I found this stamp image (shown below) in memoria of the assassination of (US) President John F. Kennedy. This stamp is considered a overprint. The overprint says, In Memoriam John F. Kennedy 1917-1963. Overprinting is technically something that makes a stamp inauthentic and not collectable. And yet, this stamp is used and it circulates at the time (as per the cancel marks on these stamps – also seen on Ebay). It is at this juncture that Ebay begins to provide me with a new visual public history, one that is simultaneously geo-politically informative and intimate.

JFK’s death left a very deep impression on Sheikh Saqr. Not only were stamps issued in memoria, but on the first year anniversary, a coin was also minted with JFK’s portrait on one side, and on the other, the flags of Sharjah. This first year memorial coin is written about quite a bit by coin collectors on various sites because it garners much interest for its subject matter and unexpected minting location. However, it is considered inauthentic by some because it was not authorized by the British. Its minting was authorized by Sheikh Saqr.

This linked Sharjah’s interests with the US and directly against Britian but in a manner that Britain could not politically protest. I could just leave this suggesting a political move, but after reading a bit on Sheikh Saqr, I actually do think he was deeply moved by JFK’s assassination. Although after the fourth year of commemerating JFK’s death anniversary (see below), there are not many more stamps for JFK circulating on Ebay.

I am particularly fond of the overprinting and the unofficial (and thus unauthorized and inauthentic) stamps and coins. In this counter heritage Ebay narrative, Sheikh Saqr emerges as a worldly, scientific and thoughtful man — at least in terms of making decisions about what gets issued on a stamp, and the sorts of global ‘stamp’ discourses Sharjah (and her dependencies) may engage in during that time.

Counter heritage is necessarily fleeting and so I do not despair when I find stamps and they are only available for 22 hours. I know they will resurface and will circulate. And I will continue to be on the look out for them as they belong to a decade (1963-1972) that provides a glimpse into an unacknowledged aspirational postcolonial state.

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