8th Workshop on Visualization for the Digital Humanities

Keynote Speakers

Tom Chandler, Monash University (Melbourne, Australia)

Digital Histories, Virtual Landscapes & Immersive Cartographies

Digital history is distinguished from the digital humanities in its practice of disseminating material online and in its use of computational tools, especially digital mapping. The emergence of multi-layered, digital cartographic creations that allow their makers to animate temporal depth and change over time, termed ‘Deep maps’, allude to new frontiers for digital history, most particularly in storytelling and narrative. Deep maps invite exploration; they are complex constructions composed of layers of meaning and process. Cartographers have also been interested in sound, including the use of sound to transmit both quantitative and qualitative data. Though still relatively obscure, the combination of cartographic and sonic activities, termed as ‘cartophony’ by Thulin, has similarly suggested new directions in the practice of mapping.

This presentation examines how historical cartography, 3D modelling and virtual landscapes can be melded together at different scales. The essential building blocks of these ‘maps’ and virtual landscapes are 3D models - digital sculptures of trees, temples and landmarks - each crafted against the historical evidence. Dr Chandler will overview what it means to move beyond digital maps and into virtual ones. What would it be like to go ‘inside’ a historical map? What evidence could we examine to glean the space of an historical record, and what might we hear? Virtual Reality, distinct from other computational tools, renders such experiments possible. In reconceptualising the space of the map, we can explore new ways to apprehend the space of history.

Biography
Tom Chandler is a senior lecturer in Games & Immersive Media in the Faculty of IT at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia). His research explores the interdisciplinary applications of virtual world building, with project collaborations ranging from archaeology and zoology through to industrial design and landscape ecology. His primary research endeavour, the Visualising Angkor Project, examines the evidence-based virtual reconstruction of Cambodia’s medieval capital in the year 1300. Tom’s university teaching resource www.virtualangkor.com was awarded the Innovation in Digital History prize by the American Historical Association in 2018, and the Digital Humanities and Multimedia Studies Prize by the Medieval Academy of America in 2021. —