>
>Call for Proposals:
>
>"Beyond GIS: Mindscapes, VR and Cultural Landscapes"
>
>Workshop and symposium
>May 9, 2004, 9 am - 5 pm
>Hearst Mining Building, University of California, Berkeley
>
>Chair: Maurizio Forte, CNR-ITABC
>e-mail: [log in to unmask]
>web: www.itabc.cnr.it/VHLab
>
>The landscape is a dynamic context of different transformations
>intelligible through the time: cultural, historic, political, social,
>geomorphologic, geographic, anthropological.
>
>The study and  analysis of the archaeological and cultural landscape
>involve a multidisciplinary approach in order to reconstruct cultures,
>paleo-environments, mental maps (mindscapes), geomorphology, and
>settlements in diachronic way. Therefore the diachronic and dynamic
>reconstruction of the landscape needs to implement different methods and
>advanced digital technologies: GIS (Geographical Information Systrem),
>remote sensing, virtual reality, predictive modelling, and multimedia
>applications.
>
>The main goal of the workshop is to start a multidisciplinary discussion
>of the digital methods of analysis and 3D representation for the
>reconstruction of the cultural and archaeological landscapes, from both
>epistemological  and technological  perspectives. The complexity of  these
>kinds of contexts tests the most advanced digital technologies in  the
>effort to  understand cultural identities, issues and differences
>through  time. The integrated use of GIS, remote sensing, virtual reality
>and multimedia applications is a fundamental approach for understanding
>the past and the present and, in  the  case of this workshop, for
>interpreting cognitive models of the landscape.
>
>The interpretation or reconstruction of previous cognition is not a simple
>process. Knowledge is cognitively processed information, and is both
>represented and the basis of action. Cognitive archaeology, the study of
>past ways of thought as inferred from material remains, still presents so
>many challenges to the practitioner that it seems if not a novel, at any
>rate, an uncertain endeavour.
>One goal is to show that people had preferences independent of economic
>necessity. A second goal is to demonstrate how ideals may be altered or
>transformed by reality into an amalgam. Settlements and housing location
>are the results of a series of personal and cultural decisions. The ideal
>pattern of settlement, in the mind of the ancient people, may be tempered,
>adjusted and transformed by topographic reality. These ideal forms are
>grounded in such economic realities as trade and transport, or established
>upon such cultural realities as heritage, aesthetic norms, or social and
>religious rules. As archaeologists, one of our ultimate goals is to
>extract the cultural ideals from the complicated reality in the complex
>patterns of prehistoric material remains. The interpretation  and the
>knowledge of archaeological landscape is the result of numerous
>compromises between ideal and real.
>
>Fundamental to archaeology is the interpretation of human behaviour over
>space and time.  Increasingly, spatial aspects of past human activity have
>been discussed through the theories and methodologies that Geographic
>Information Systems (GIS) have brought to the subject.  GIS is typically
>used to provide a series of hypothetical scenarios of, and alternative
>perspectives on, the spatial inter-relationships that exist between people
>and their environments.
>
>Archaeological research has therefore emphasised the need for an
>integration of anthropological, cultural and social values within
>ecological variables.  Especially the agency debate has re-emphasised the
>importance of human volition within the creation of an archaeological
>landscape.   Human action is influenced by how groups perceive their
>worlds and, indirectly and only in part, structured by the accommodation
>of affordances created by the dynamic interplay between humans and their
>animate and inanimate surroundings.  But human landscapes are really
>generated through unique human action and interpretation, using both
>environmental characteristics and socio-cultural understandings.  Human
>social and material interaction is fuelled by habitus and agency.  Human
>agency, representing unique viewpoints based on material culture and
>landscape (structure) and unique history (narrative), is crucial for human
>choice and action.  It is therefore argued that it is the effects of human
>agency that structure landscapes and  reveal how dynamic surroundings are
>interrogated and interpreted.
>
>Topics
>
>        Remote Sensed Archaeological data and 3D visualization;
>        3D GIS in archaeology: tools and software;
>       Cybernetics and cultural landscapes
>       Virtual museums and territory
>        Digital Ecosystems
>        Artscapes, taskscapes, mindscapes
>       Virtual Reality Systems and Visual Geographic Information;
>       3D databases in Archaeology;
>       VR devices for the advanced visualization of spatial data;
>        Virtual Reconstructions of Archaeological Landscapes;
>        Multilayered analyses of Spatial Data;
>       DGPS and archaeological surveys for monitoring and reconstructing
>       3D archaeological landscapes;
>       3D GIS and Geophysics;
>       3D Web Interfaces for Visualizing GIS archaeological data;
>        3D Virtual Libraries of Georeferenced Cultural Data;
>        Archaeological Spatial Analyses and 3D Visualization;
>        Open Gl Technologies in Archaeological VR GIS;
>        Epistemology of VR GIS in Archaeology;
>       VR GIS, Communication and Cultural Tourism.
>
>This workshop is a part of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative
>Congress, May 7-10, 2004.
>
>Caverlee Cary
>Geographic Information Science Center
>412 Wurster Hall
>University of California, Berkeley
>Berkeley, CA 94720
>TEL: (510) 642-8737
>FAX: (510) 643-3412
>URL: gisc.berkeley.edu


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The German Studies Call for Papers List
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