Thinking beyond the Tool…in press!

Thinking beyond the Tool: Archaeological Computing & the Interpretive Process...IN PRESS (Cover by Javier Pereda)

“Thinking beyond the Tool: Archaeological Computing & the Interpretive Process” has gone to press! This wondrous tome contains my very first ever officially published paper from TAG 2010 and is possibly the most exciting thing EVER!

I’m told copies should hopefully be available at CAA 2012 in Southampton in March!

St Kilda Ranger’s Diary

This week I was invited to write an entry for the National Trust for Scotland’s St Kilda Ranger’s Diary by the lovely Gina Prior with whom the Scottish Ten team shared many a beer in the Puff Inn last summer!

You can read the full article here.

Here’s a sneak peak at the blackhouse in the context of The Street…

A view of my reconstructed blackhouse where it would have sat on The Street, the surrounding terrain was generated and textured from the laser scan and photogrammetry data by Alistair Rawlinson of the CDDV

Modelling the St Kilda Blackhouse Vol II

So here you have it, the St Kilda blackhouse!

 This week I’ve had a rush on finishing up my paper for next Wednesdays’ archaeology seminar at Glasgow Uni where I’ll be talking about the St Kilda blackhouse for the first time. When I get to this stage with a model I always feel like I want to do more, but for the meantime I’m happy with the scene as it conveys enough of what I want to discuss in my thesis as it stands.

With the blackhouse I wanted to construct a narrative around the 18^th and 19^th century written accounts of the island together with the vast early 20^th century photographic archive. The model is still ongoing, but the scene is beginning to take shape. We see a woman (I like to think its Mrs Gillies from the archive photographs!) sat at the central hearth boiling a kettle, surrounded by various items essential to life on the island. A quern stone sits near the door ready to grind cereals into flour. Ropes lay waiting to be untangled and fish hang from the ceiling to smoke over the peat fire. As all these little details are added, it’s beginning to feel a lot like home. The more depth the image has the more an audience will be drawn in and will engage with the site.

On the more technical side of things some of you may remember the tricky business I had with the roof before Christmas, a problem I solved by taking James Hephers’ wise words from TAG 2011 to heart. He said ”If you can’t draw something, if you can’t observe it then put pen to paper, then you don’t understand it.” Back in December I definitely fell prey to that! When I began to model the roof and consider the structure in detail something didn’t quite sit right. After careful study of the archive photos I noticed that the blackhouse roofs had at some stage been replaced with a more makeshift bitumen structure. After comparing the 1930′s photographs with much earlier photographs of the Street, I came to the conclusion that the gable ends of the blackhouses were modified to accommodate these replacement roofs. Presumably the thatch took too much upkeep on a structure which was no longer inhabited once the cottages were built in the 1860s, and as such they were modified.

So in order to understand the structure in more depth I turned to Chris MacGregor from Historic Scotland who sent me a series of books on the construction and maintenance of the Arnol blackhouses on Lewis.

Image from "The Hebridean Blackhouse: A Guide to Materials, Construction and Maintainance" by Historic Scotland.

 Although the blackhouses on St Kilda are smaller than the ones on Lewis, the principal is the same.

Reconstruction of the blackhouse exterior in 3ds Max showing the thatch roof and twine structure weighted down with stones.

I used the manual to base my model on, and modelled each element separately.

Reconstruction of the blackhouse exterior in 3ds Max showing the layer of peat slabs below the thatch, with gaps to allow smoke to dissipate.

.

 

Reconstruction of the blackhouse exterior in 3ds Max with the entire peat layer removed, showing the structure of the lower wooden coursing.

In the case of the blackhouse gable ends, I realise of course that I’m not the first person to notice the discrepancy between the remains still standing today and the photographs showing low rounded roof ends. But regardless, this example goes to show that it was my process of visualising that aspect of the structure that led me to the conclusion. 

Reconstruction of the blackhouse exterior in 3ds Max with all upper layers removed showing only the internal A-frame structure.

It wasn’t until I consulted the maintenance document for the blackhouses at Arnol on Lewis which had detailed diagrams of roof construction that I realised the gable ends couldn’t possibly have been peaked. I was stumped initially because I found I couldn’t model the roof with what the scans were showing me – it just didn’t make sense structurally. Naturally I didn’t understand it until I considered its construction in detail. Scanning essentially produces a 3D surface model, not a digital surrogate for the site, which is why it is vital to add interpretation to the digital record and not just to accept the data as it stands.

First Renders of the St Kilda Blackhouse

I never thought I’d hear myself use the words “sexy” and “bad-ass” to describe a blackhouse, but after weeks of working with texture-less wireframe models my St Kilda blackhouse was lit and rendered for the first time today.

Wireframe model of the blackhouse

 As I watched the software computing the final gather points (a process which sees small squares dart across the screen as the image below becomes less and less pixellated) and the scene rendered in front of me, those were the only words that seemed appropriate!

Watching the scene slowly render!

This is always my favourite stage in the modelling process, when everything starts to looks real and you as the artist can begin to add those little touches to make a scene feel authentic, lived in and…well in this case cosy! In my research I’ve talked a lot about how the process of reconstruction affects the integrity of not only the captured record (in my case laser scans) but the integrity of the archaeological evidence itself.

First lighting test, loads of things still to be fixed...but warts and all it's still exciting!

Up until this point I’ve not felt like my decision-making with the model has had much of an impact on the archaeological record in terms of accounts of life on  St Kilda, excavation reports and academic papers etc. The modelling of the basic blackhouse structure was fairly straightforward, I adapted instructions on blackhouse construction from a text on the Arnol blackhouses on the Isle of Lewis to St Kildan specifications and filled the structure with appropriate artefacts. Simple and relatively accurate.

However, I’m now at the interesting and somewhat controversial stage  of building authenticity and a sense of place into the scene. I want to tell a story with my visualisation, and in order to do that I need to use a bit of artistic licence…this is where it gets good! More updates to follow in the coming weeks.

Roll Up Roll Up – Alice is giving a seminar lecture on Jan 25th!

Yes friends it’s true! On Wednesday 25th January I’ll be giving the weekly departmental seminar between 4 and 5pm. The seminars are held in the lecture theatre in the archaeology department (Room 109, Gregory Building, University of Glasgow, Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, G12 8QQ).

My paper is entitled “Visualisation and the Interpretive Process: An Investigation into the Practice of Archaeological Reconstruction” and will consider the process of archaeological reconstruction in it’s entirety – from the moment interpretation begins in the field to the creation of the visualisations, right up to taking the resulting images and animations to audiences. I will be considering the nature of the artist’s engagement with the archaeology throughout the various stages of production and what this means for the integrity of what is ultimately produced for consumption…bottom line – it’s going to change your life! Come along!

Reconstruction (clockwise from top left): Cut-away, Historic Scotland Interpretation Unit; Bodiam Great Hall, Alice Watterson; Neolithic life, Aaron Watson; broch scene and an info board at a site, Historic Scotland Interpretation Unit ; Vegetation at Catalhoyuk, John Swogger, Life at Catalhoyuk on Okapi Island in Second Life, Coleen Morgan; Avebury, Alan Sorrell.

TAG 2011

Another year and another excellent TAG (Theoretical Archaeology Group) conference, this year at the University of Birmingham. Catriona Cooper and I’s session seemed to go down very well and sparked some brilliant discussion!

Opening the session was Aaron Watson who presented his paper “Invisible Monuments” which discussed the issues surrounding the collection of ‘objective’ archaeological data from fieldwork and survey. He noted that although we understand archaeological sites to be multi-sensory, the methods we employ to survey these sites is focussed in the visual and spatial. Aaron’s work adopts a far more subjective and creative approach to interpretation and the presentation of archaeological data. One interesting question raised from the discussion following his paper was how the more experiential and embodied aspects can be incorporated into the more traditional methods of field survey, and what this would mean for consequent interpretations of the archaeological record.

Aaron's recent work investigates the multi-sensory qualities of stone together with a consideration of artefact biographies in the context of the wider Neolithic landscape (image from http://www.amexhibition.com/gaeilge/aaronwatson.html).

Our next paper “Transparent Evidence and Interpretation: the British Empire Exhibition of 1938″ would have been presented by Daisy Abbott from the Glasgow School of Art’s Digital Design Studio, but unfortunately she couldn’t make it to Birmingham so I read her paper for her, you can read more about the Empire Exhibition here.

Frank Lynam of Trinity College Dublin was next to present on the topic of “ArcSeer: a New Approach to Archaeological Representation”. Frank showed us a great example of gaming engine software being used to provide an interactive environment where users could view multiple interpretations of the same site. Furthermore, he demonstrated how users could select objects within the scene and begin discussions though a dialogue box. This raised some interesting discussion around the use of collaborative 3D environments during the modelling and interpretation of a site.

Before we paused for a well earned coffee break we were treated to a beautiful and engaging presentation of Joana Alves Ferreira’s (University of Porto) work with polaroid photography. Her presentation entitled “Instants of Waiting: The Polaroid’s Experience as an Experience of Expectation” discussed the experimental production and manipulation of 20 original polaroid photographs taken during her participation in the 2009 excavation season at the prehistoric site of Castanheiro do Vento in Northern Portugal.

The intention behind Joana’s work was intriguing, she aimed to capture her own subjective experience of the dig and her decision to work with polaroid was key in achieving this. In contrast to the digital methods most of us are accustomed to working with in the field to capture the site and the process, Joana’s use of the polaroid strips everything about documentation back to the moment the photograph is taken. Digital documentation is often more about technique than it is about the subject of survey, we spend our time fiddling with settings and technicalities; with a polaroid camera there are no menus of multiple exposure settings and such – the focus is given solely to the subject within the frame.

I also loved the idea of the polaroid as a medium which itself weathers as the chemicals in the photograph decay, much like the artefacts we strive to document.

During the break we exhibited David J. Knight’s poster and sound sculptures dealing with “Navigating Pareidolian Coincidence; an Auditory Para-archaeological Adventure Story”. The poster creatively considered the narration of different pasts and the observation of meaningful patterns in archaeological data.

David J. Knight's Poster displayed in our session.

After the coffee break we heard from Ash Scheder Black from the University of York who presented his work on “Visualising Archaeological Data in the Context of Past Environments: On the Technical and Methodological Challenges of Temporal GIS”. Ash’s work dealt with visualising a large amount of spatial data at a huge scale and was returned to during the discussion when the question of whether it is possible to visualise both an individual experiential view of the past together with an understanding of the wider context on a regional scale.

The session was concluded with James Hepher’s paper “Archaeological Survey Now! Comparing the Methods and Technologies for 3D data Capture at Two Scottish Ten Project Sites: St Kilda (Scotland) and Rani Ki Vav (India)”. It was fascinating to hear from someone based within a government body like Historic Scotland and James provided an insight into his own experience working with different types of survey. He considered this experience in terms of the ways these survey methods engaged with the site, and summed up his thoughts by saying that “if you can’t draw something, if you can’t observe it then put pen to paper, then you don’t understand it”. Wise words indeed and I couldn’t help thinking that if we all bore this in mind during our fieldwork we might engage more closely with our data.

To round up the session we opened the floor to an audience discussion where we returned to the subject of a creative and subjective approach vs. a more objective methodology to ‘narrate the gap between observation and visualisation’. Ultimately we asked what methods can be employed to facilitate the combination of traditional survey techniques with more creative approaches to allow archaeologists to engage with sites and material culture in a more actively experiential way. Bottom line – we need more collaboration!

I felt that there was a definite agreement throughout the room that in order to narrate this gap between our fieldwork and the synthesis of our data towards our final visualisations we need to adopt a far more self reflective and personal account of our process.

Watch this space for a continuation of this topic at the upcoming CAA conference in Southampton in March 2012!

Modelling the St Kilda Blackhouse

As the weather continues to get more wintry here in Glasgow (not helped by the DDS heating having been broken all week!) I’ve been imagining life inside my model of a cosy St Kildan blackhouse…

Basic model of Blackhouse G on St Kilda

After the ‘gable-ends fiasco’ last week I decided the best course of action was to re-model the walls myself based on the scans in order to avoid any unpleasantness with flipped normals and inverted vertices. But fear not fellow scanning junkies…the blackhouse will be placed back into the laser scanned context of Village Bay once the model is finished!

I’m still working on the exterior at the moment, but hope to start modelling some internal furniture and the like this week based on the archive photographs and literature, it’s all very exciting! And of course I’m keeping a detailed reconstruction diary of my efforts, trying to remain as self-reflexive and critical of my approach to each problem as I can…

Extended Deadline for CAA 2012!

The deadline for the 2012 Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) conference in Southampton has been extended to December 7th so there’s still time to get an abstract in for our session “Maintaining a Dialogue between Observation and Visualisation“!

Abstracts can be submitted through the conference website here.

Why the St Kildans have a lot to answer for!

This week I began the early stages of the reconstruction process for Blackhouse G on St Kilda. I chose this particular blackhouse after studying some of the early plans made by visitors to the archipelago in the early to mid 19th centuary. One plan identified this particular structure as having a ‘crub’ or wall bed which has been described by a number of the early visitors such as Martin Martin and Thomas as a defining feature of the St Kildan blackhouse.

Plan and section of Blackhouse G, note position of wall bed or 'crub' (Stell and Harman 1988, 40)

Blackhouse G also seemed like a great option given that, from the scans and my memory of visiting the structure myself in the summer, it seemed to be one of the best preserved examples of this type of architecture on the Street as it still appeared to have intact tall gable ends…

A cleit with a blackhouse-style thatched roof, note the curved ends (Flemming 2005, 93 - Although this is a cleit, you will have to trust me that the blackhouse roofs looked exactly the same, unfortunately I can't publish the images I have as they are unpublished and copyrighted!)

However, when I began to model the roof and consider the structure in detail something didn’t quite sit right. After careful study of the archive photos I noticed that the blackhouse roofs had at some stage been replaced with a more makeshift bitumen structure. After comparing the 1930′s photographs with much earlier photographs of the Street, I came to the conclusion that the gable ends were modified to accomodate these replacement roofs. Presumably the thatch took too much upkeep on a structure which was no longer inhabited and as such they were modified.How inconsiderate of the St Kildans! Did they not consider me when they made these modifications??

A general view down the Street around 1930, note the blackhouses have had their roofs replaced.

It just goes to show that when it comes to reconstruction trusting your eyes can be problematic! No matter how accurate the scans are, you still need an expert eye to understand not only the specialist construction of a blackhouse, but an awareness of the chronology of the site. The archive photos are proving to be essential in these early stages of modelling, I’d really be stumped without them!

CAA 2012 Call for Papers!

Catriona Cooper and I are holding another session at CAA 2012 in Southampton continuing on from our upcoming TAG session…

“Maintaining a Dialogue between Observation and Visualisation”
Session Code: Theory4

“From creativity comes innovation and this innovation in archaeological interpretation can uncover new avenues of thinking allowing new questions to be uncovered and examined. But how can we embrace the creative side of interpretation without compromising the integrity of our work?

Interpretation of archaeological evidence will always be subjective, this fact will never change. But what this session asks is whether a sustainable standard for the management of the creative processes and decisions involved in the generation of an archaeological visualisation can be achieved and what the implications of such a standard would mean. By maintaining a critical self-awareness during this creative process is it possible to confidently explore the possibilities for visualisation of the sites in question?

Carefully recorded at any level all archaeological observations are concerned with the sites as they stand today. This session explores the mechanisms for producing complimentary reconstructive narratives whether these are creative, data driven or interpretative. With the ultimate aim of bridging the gap between the observation behind the archaeological record and the multiple reconstructions of the past. This gap between observation and the narrative leaves an area of dialogue between what is considered the ‘real’ of the present site and the ‘real’ of the reconstructed past and how it is experienced. The process of interpretation produces many questions concerning how our interpretive influence affects the integrity of the captured record, the control of experience and the ways in which we model uncertainty.

This session aims to expand upon ideas introduced at a preceding session “Narrating the gap between observation and visualisation” at the UK TAG 2011 conference. The previous session argued that all archaeological research begins with the creation of the archaeological record and continues with the production of a series of narratives. This relationship was considered in terms of the extent to which visualization links the two stages. Considering in particular how such a link can relate explicitly to experience, through phenomenology, or mediated by illustration, survey, creative media or computer graphics.”

Instead of a standard session with a series of long papers, this session will be structured as more of a roundtable for discussion. We invite presenters to submit short abstracts for papers no longer than 5-7 minutes which address themes in archaeological visualisation, the subjective/objective divide, digital documentation, data standards for a sustainable visualisation workflow and perceived reality. The session will then open the floor to a discussion structured around these short presentations, addressing in addition a series of pre-defined questions which will be circulated prior to the session based on themes of discussion arising from TAG 2011.

The call for papers closes on the 30th November so get those abstracts in! They can be submitted to the website directly here!